It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, January 23, 2022
Kid exasperated by snow strikes chord with viewers around world
Not many kids would admit to wanting to be in school on a snow day, but after a hard day of snow shoveling, 9-year-old Toronto resident Carter Trozzolo was ready to head back into the classroom.
While doing a piece that aired Monday night on how the city's residents were digging out from a blizzard that struck the region, a camera crew with a Canadian TV network, CTV, stumbled upon Carter, who was digging out the sidewalk with his shovel. Given a chance to air his grievances to the world, Trozzolo, a resident of Toronto, was more than happy to share how he really felt.
"I am tired," Carter said before sighing loudly. "I really wish I was in school right now."
Apparently, his parents had decided to really put him to work, and Carter had been shoveling for "neighbors, friends, probably people I even don't know," he explained. "There was a lot of snow, let's just say that."
Carter's exasperation and exhaustion resonated with many in Canada and people across the world, including viewers as far away as Australia.
"I think a lot of us can relate to that amount of exhaustion with everything right now, so I think he captured the emotions of many people," said Rachel Disaia, Carter's mother.
The video went viral, and a camera crew returned to the Trozzolo household to see if he was still tired and how he was handling the newfound fame.
"I'm tired," he said. "I am always tired," Carter said, adding that he still wants to go back to school.
Carter is not the only snow-shoveler in recent years to go viral for their comments during an interview.
In February 2019, when a reporter from a Chicago area news channel asked Judy Ross, "You're sick of this?" while she was shoveling snow on her property, he got a rather blunt reaction in response.
"Well, yeah, especially when I'm the only one here doing all this [expletive]," said Ross, of Waukesha, Wis. "My father used to say: 'I kinda remember that little curly-haired girl that loved the snow.' And I said, 'Well, she grew up. She grew up and she doesn't want to do this anymore.'"
Despite the snow exhausting him, Carter still seems to enjoy it, as he found time to play and lay in the snow after his shoveling duties were done."I love snow days," he said.
Forecasters monitor rare out-of-season tropical development in East Pacific By Ryan Adamson, Accuweather.com The system of interest is about 1,000 miles to the east-northeast of Hilo, Hawaii.
Photo by Kanoa Withington/English Wikipedia
Despite the calendar showing January rather than June, AccuWeather meteorologists are monitoring a gale-force area of low pressure for the potential to develop into an out-of-season tropical depression or storm in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
The system of interest is about 1,000 miles to the east-northeast of Hilo, Hawaii. This places the area of interest in an area within a northward bulge in the jet stream.
"A northward bulge in the jet stream is where a tropical system can develop, especially during the warm weather season," explained AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.
Image from the AccuWeather Enhanced RealVue trade satellite showing an area of showers and thunderstorms over the Pacific Ocean early on Friday morning.
Since it's the middle of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, rather than the middle of summer, this may limit the ability of the system to develop. In addition, wind shear is already affecting the system.
"The system was being subject to significant wind shear right out of the gate, and that is likely to increase this weekend," Sosnowski said.
Although the likelihood of further development is low, it is not zero.
"There seems to be a brief window for the system to gather enough closed circulation to become a tropical or subtropical depression and storm prior to this weekend," said Sosnowski. "There continued to be strong thunderstorms erupting near the center of the disturbance early Friday morning, but no further organization was visible, he added.
Given the location of the shower and thunderstorm activity, it is not an immediate threat to land. In fact, the projected westward to southwestward movement will mean that is not expected to ever any land areas.
Regardless of development, any shipping interests in the area can expect to experience rough seas and large waves, forecasters say.
The National Hurricane Center gives the system only a 10 chance of development over the next 48 hours as of early Friday.
Despite January being well outside of the traditional tropical season, development has happened several times in the Pacific Ocean during the first month of the year.
"The most recent January storm was Category 2 Hurricane Pali, which spanned from Jan. 7 to Jan. 15 in 2016," AccuWeather meteorologist and senior weather editor Jesse Ferrell said.
Not only was Pali the most recent hurricane, but it also holds the record for the earliest storm in the calendar year. However, it is not the strongest.
"The strongest storm was Category 2 Hurricane Eneka in 1992, which lasted from Jan. 26 to Feb. 9, becoming a Category 3 in February," Ferrell noted.
Both of those storms occurred in the Central Pacific basin, which is the portion of the Pacific between 140 degrees and 180 degrees west longitude. The current disturbance is to the east of 140 degrees west, where development is even rarer during this time of year.
For the East Pacific basin only, Tropical Storm Andres last year on May 9 was the earliest-forming named storm, while Tropical Depression One-E, on Apr. 25, 2020, was the earliest-forming depression according to Ferrell.
The official start of hurricane season in the East Pacific does not occur until May 15. The first name on the list for storms in the East Pacific this year is Agatha.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor calls Texas abortion case a "disaster" in dissent By Megan Hadley Justice Sonia Sotomayor calls Texas abortion law a disaster and huge disservice to women. Pool photo by Erin Schaff/UPI | License Photo
Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the Supreme Court case involving the Texas abortion ban a "disaster" and a "grave disservice to women" in a new dissent backed by Liberal judges.
She issued the dissent Thursday after a Supreme Court order declined -- for the second time -- to send the abortion case back to the trial judge in Texas, which may have provided some leeway for abortions.
Sotomayor was joined by fellow Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan in the scathing dissent.
"This case is a disaster for the rule of law and a grave disservice to women in Texas who have a right to control their own bodies. I will not stand by silently as a state continues to nullify this constitutional guarantee," she wrote.
She described the abortion ban, known as S.B. 8, as a 'bounty hunter scheme.'
"The law immediately devastated access to abortion care in Texas through a complicated private bounty-hunter scheme that violates nearly 50 years of this Court's precedents," she wrote.
Abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy have been banned in Texas since Sept. 1. The law has a unique enforcement mechanism that allows private citizens to bring lawsuits against anyone who "aids and abets" in a prohibited abortion, making it extremely difficult to challenge in court.
In December, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out most of the arguments against the law, but allowed a narrow challenge to proceed against medical licensing officials. It is that narrow challenge that abortion providers were hoping would be allowed to play out in district court.
Study: Polluted air keeps butterflies, bees from pollinating
By HealthDay News Air pollution prevents bees and butterflies from pollinating flowers, according to new research. File Photo by Betty Shelton/Shutterstock
As air pollution worsens, fruits, flowers and the creatures that pollinate them could pay a price.
That's the takeaway from British researchers who used special equipment to control levels of two common pollutants -- diesel exhaust and ozone -- in a field of black mustard plants, and then monitored pollinating insects over two summers.
"We knew from our previous lab studies that diesel exhaust can have negative effects on insect pollinators, but the impacts we found in the field were much more dramatic than we had expected," said project leader Robbie Girling, an associate professor in agroecology at the University of Reading in the England.
There were up to 70% fewer pollinators to the affected fields up to 90% fewer flower visits and an overall reduction in pollination of up to 31%, according to findings published this week in the journal Environmental Pollution.
Pollution concentrations were between 40% and 50% of levels considered environmentally safe under U.S. regulations, which is far below the actual pollution levels worldwide.
The findings suggest that dirty air reacts with and changes the scent of flowers, making it harder for insects to locate their food -- pollen and nectar.
The researchers said the study is the first to assess how these common pollutants affect pollination in the natural world.
"The findings are worrying because these pollutants are commonly found in the air many of us breathe every day," study author James Ryalls, a research fellow at the University of Reading, said in a university news release.
"We know that these pollutants are bad for our health, and the significant reductions we saw in pollinator numbers and activity shows that there are also clear implications for the natural ecosystems we depend on," Ryalls said.
The findings could have far-reaching implications, because insect pollination is responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars in economic value worldwide.
About 70% of all crop species, including apples, strawberries and cocoa, rely on pollination.
Babies identify close relationships by saliva, study suggests
By HealthDay News Researchers said saliva sharing helps babies identify the people who are most likely to look after their needs. Photo by collusor/Pixabay
Sharing food and smooching are two ways babies can suss out whom they can depend on to take care for them, a new study suggests.
The tell-tale clue common to both is a surprising one: saliva.
"Babies don't know in advance which relationships are the close and morally obligating ones, so they have to have some way of learning this by looking at what happens around them," said senior study author Rebecca Saxe, of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
For the study, her team observed babies and toddlers as they watched staged interactions between people and puppets. The babies were 8-1/2 to 10 months of age and the toddlers were 16-1/2 to 18-1/2 months old.
In one set of experiments, a puppet shared an orange with one actor, then tossed a ball back and forth with another actor.
After the little ones watched these interactions, researchers watched their reactions when the puppet showed distress while sitting between the two actors.
Based on results of animal studies, they expected the youngsters would look first at the person they expected to help.
Not so. Researchers found the children were more likely to look toward the actor who shared food with the puppet, not the one who shared a toy
In the second set of experiments, which focused on saliva, the actor either placed her finger in her mouth and then into the mouth of the puppet, or placed her finger on her forehead and then, on the puppet's. When the actor later expressed distress while standing between the puppets, children were more likely to look toward the puppet with whom she had shared saliva.
The findings suggest that saliva sharing helps infants learn about social relationships, researchers said. It helps babies identify the people who are most likely to look after their needs.
"The general skill of learning about social relationships is very useful," said lead author Ashley Thomas, a postdoctoral student at MIT. "One reason why this distinction between thick and thin [relationships] might be important for infants in particular, especially human infants, who depend on adults for longer than many other species, is that it might be a good way to figure out who else can provide the support that they depend on to survive."
Researchers plan similar studies with infants in cultures that have different family structures. They also want to use brain imaging to investigate what parts of the adult brain are involved in making saliva-based assessments about social relationships.
The findings were published Thursday in the journal Science.
Marijuana advertising on social media targets kids, study shows
By Dennis Thompson,
HealthDay News Marijuana vendors use discounts and promotions that draw in youths in social media advertising, researcher found. Photo by 7raysmarketing/Pixabay
Some recreational pot shops are using tricks from the old playbooks of alcohol and tobacco companies to target underage users on social media, a new study reports.
Despite state laws restricting such marketing, researchers found marijuana retailers on social media promoting their wares with posts that:
Featured cartoon characters like Snoopy, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Rick and Morty.
Presented store-branded merchandise like caps and T-shirts.
Offered discounts and deals, like a Memorial Day sale or a regular Friday special.
"Those types of restricted content basically come from evidence around ways that tobacco and alcohol companies used to appeal to youth," said lead author Dr. Megan Moreno, division chief of general pediatrics and adolescent medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"For example, discounts and promotions are actually ways to draw in youths to use your products because they're very price-sensitive, and branded content is a way to draw in young people because they want the hats and the T-shirts," she said.
For this study, Moreno and her colleagues decided to examine how pot shops were using social media to market their goods, looking specifically at four of the "early adopter" legalization states: Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Alaska.
"The one remaining Wild West of marketing is still social media, and one of the issues with social media is that these platforms are most highly frequented by youth," Moreno said. "Essentially, we were wondering what's happening in a lightly regulated environment that's populated by youth, and how are cannabis companies leveraging that."
For the study, the researchers evaluated one year of publicly displayed posts on Facebook and Instagram from companies located in the four states.
One piece of good news -- of 80 recreational weed retailers identified by the researchers, only 16 had a presence on both social media sites, and two of those companies deleted their pages during the study period. Researchers wound up with 2,660 posts from 14 businesses. About 35% of the posts featured discounts or promotions, even though such marketing is restricted, the study reported. About 7% of posts used pop culture references 6% featured store-branded products and 6% appealed to youth through the use of cartoon characters.
About 12% of the social media posts also promoted the idea that you should use marijuana products until you're very impaired.
RELATED Marijuana legalization fuels rise in accidental exposure to children, study finds "In alcohol advertising, you don't often see ads that say things like, 'Hey, use our products so you can get drunker. Use our product so you can achieve a better buzz,'" Moreno said. "That's absolutely not allowable in alcohol literature, but we see a lot of that content in the cannabis literature, saying things like 'Use our product to get higher, use our product to reach that higher place we know you want to go' -- really pushing people toward the idea that you should use until you feel impaired."
Linda Richter, vice president of prevention research and analysis with the Partnership to End Addiction, noted that this is all happening in states with "some of the most robust youth protection provisions in their recreational, or adult use, marijuana laws."
Because of that, she said, "the findings are likely quite conservative regarding the extent to which cannabis businesses stray from state marketing restrictions and requirements, such that the actual state of affairs is probably worse and more damaging to teens than reflected in this study."
Richter added that "there's little doubt, based on years of research on tobacco and alcohol advertising and more recent research on marijuana, that advertising and marketing that has youth appeal or that exposes young people to the positive aspects of marijuana have a significant impact on teens' attitudes and behaviors around marijuana use."
Such tactics have been strongly associated in research studies with "reduced perceptions of the risks of marijuana, more acceptance of marijuana use as normal, and more intentions to use marijuana among young people," Richter said.
The social media posts also did a poor job including messages required by law in marijuana marketing, the researchers found. For example, only one-quarter of posts said pot can only be used by those 21 or older, and a similar percentage urged readers to avoid driving impaired.
One problem is that regulations surrounding marijuana marketing vary from state to state, Moreno said. Of the four states, only Alaska and Washington prohibit sales and promotions, for example, while only Washington prohibits store-branded merchandise.
Until recreational pot is legalized at the federal level, it's unlikely that you'll see uniform laws or regulations governing the marketing of these products, said Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, an advocacy group promoting reform of marijuana laws.
"Any potential standardization of rules and regulations governing the marketing of cannabis products is likely impossible in a legal environment where cannabis remains federally illegal, thus leaving the creation and imposition of such standards up to the individual states and localities for the foreseeable future," Armentano said.
Moreno said states should consider banning marijuana marketing from social media, considering that youth comprise about 70% of the audience for a site like Instagram.
If not that, she said states ought to require that social media platforms restrict pot marketing to people of legal age.
"The alcohol industry has actually done a fantastic job with this," Moreno said. "If you are on Instagram and you are under 21, you can't even find or access any alcohol content that is put out by alcohol companies. That's called age gating, meaning the content doesn't even appear unless you're of age."
States also could step up enforcement of their existing rules around pot marketing, with stiff fines to discourage violators, she said.
"Many companies and many policymakers are still trying to navigate how to treat social media. I think there's a view that it's not real or not real life or it doesn't really count or that it's ephemeral," Moreno said.
"I think now is a good time for us to think about how pervasive and influential that content is, as we think about the different ways it's touched our life in COVID and politics and all sorts of different ways," she added. "I think it's time to realize that what happens on social media is real life. It's taken us a while as a society to figure out that we can regulate it as real life."
Such regulations are part of the strength of an above-board and legal pot marketplace, Armentano said, adding that NORML supports restrictions that bar ads in public spaces or marketing that targets young people.
"In licit marketplaces, licensed players are motivated to abide by regulations -- such as limitations on the manner with which products may be advertised and marketed -- whereas in illicit unregulated markets, participants are not compelled to play by any rules," he said. "Unlicensed, illicit players have no qualms marketing their products to young people, possess no incentive to check ID for proof of age, and possess few if any motivations to change their behaviors."
Stray bullet kills English astrophysicist visiting Atlanta AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM This undated photo provided by Brookhaven Police Dept. shows Matthew Willson, 31, of Chertsey, Surrey, England, with his girlfriend Katherine Shepard. A stray bullet struck and killed Wilson, an English astrophysicist, while he was inside an Atlanta-area apartment on Sunday, Jan. 16, 2022. Police say the death was the result of “reckless” gunfire by random individuals.
(Brookhaven Police Dept via AP)
BROOKHAVEN, Ga. (AP) — A stray bullet struck and killed an English astrophysicist while he was inside an Atlanta-area apartment, authorities say.
Matthew Willson, 31, of Chertsey, Surrey, England, was visiting his girlfriend in the United States when he was hit by a bullet that pierced the wall of the apartment. The shooting happened early Sunday morning, only three days into his visit.
“He was supposed to be here for three months because we’ve been long distance for a while,” Katherine Shepard, his girlfriend of three years, told WSB-TV. “I picked him up from the airport, took him to his favorite eating location, and the next day, he’s gone.”
Shepard, whose apartment is in the Atlanta suburb of Brookhaven, who told the television station that the couple woke up on Jan. 16 to the sound of more than 30 gunshots coming from an apartment complex directly behind Shepard’s. A bullet traveled through Shepard’s wall, hitting Willson, she said.
“I held him for another 20 minutes while we waited for the ambulance,” she said. “And while we were waiting, there were more gunshots fired.”
Police were in the vicinity pursuing reports of gunfire when the 911 call from Shepard came in. Sgt. Jake Kissel of the Brookhaven criminal investigations division said that once officers arrived at the scene, they rendered aid until paramedics arrived.
“Dr. Willson was transported to a local trauma center where he succumbed to his injuries,” Kissel said in a statement. The shooting appeared to be a “random act involving individuals participating in the reckless discharge” of firearms.
Willson was being mourned by family, friends and his alma mater, the University of Exeter.
“Matthew Willson was a former PhD student at the University of Exeter and much-loved member of our astrophysics team,” a university spokesman said in a statement.
No arrests have been announced. Brookhaven police have asked for witnesses or anyone with information about the shooting to contact them or submit an anonymous tip to Crime Stoppers at 404-577-TIPS (8477).
Ex-athlete vows to maintain U. of Michigan sex abuse protest
Jon Vaughn, a former University of Michigan football player speaks in Ann Arbor, Mich., June 16, 2021. A financial payout for more than 1,000 people — mostly men — who say they were sexually assaulted by former University of Michigan sports doctor Robert Anderson is the latest multimillion-dollar settlement involving schools faced with sexual misconduct scandals. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
Jon Vaughn’s small blue-and-white camper has been parked outside the home of the University of Michigan’s president since early October, and he says it won’t be moving anytime soon.
The former star running back for the university’s Wolverines football team says a $490 million settlement the school recently announced is not enough by itself to remedy the sexual abuse he and more than 1,000 other students say they suffered at the hands of the university’s late sports doctor Robert Anderson.
“We’ve only really scratched the surface and touched the tip of the iceberg on how insidious this atrocity is,” Vaughn told The Associated Press on Friday. “That’s why I’m staying. The entire truth has not come out.” Anderson has been accused of molesting students over more than three decades. He worked as director of the university’s Health Service and as a physician for football and other athletic teams from 1966 until his retirement in 2003. He died in 2008.
A camper and tent are shown outside the University of Michigan's Presidents House on campus in Ann Arbor, Mich., Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022. A financial payout for more than 1,000 people — mostly men — who say they were sexually assaulted by former University of Michigan sports doctor Robert Anderson is the latest multimillion-dollar settlement involving schools faced with sexual misconduct scandals. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
In 2018, a former athlete made an allegation of sexual abuse against Anderson and police launched an investigation. Then in early 2020, five more former patients lodged accusations against the late doctor. It was then that a spokesman acknowledged that some university employees were aware of accusations against the doctor even prior to 2018.
Vaughn, who played for the Wolverines during the 1988-1990 seasons, said he was given 50 prostate exams by Anderson, the first when he was an 18-year-old freshman in 1988.
During the recruiting process, he said, football coaches knew his mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and passed the information on to Anderson.
“He made the comment, ‘I see you had cancer in your family history,’” and asked, ”‘You have any other relative with cancer?’” Vaughn said. “In that exam, he then raped me digitally for the first time.”
Vaughn said Anderson, the only doctor whom scholarship athletes could see at the university, usually started his exams with noninvasive procedures such as taking his blood pressure and checking his heart.
“Then he would tell you he needed to do a testicular cancer screening and a prostate cancer screening,” the former football player said.
As an athlete you go through exams “’cause you want to get the pass to play,” he said, noting that while at Michigan, he and other players “were in a constant state of being uncomfortable but learning to compartmentalize things to get the job done.”
Vaughn rushed for more than 1,400 yards in two years and nine touchdowns in his final season with the Wolverines. In 1990, he was picked by the New England Patriots in the fifth round of the draft. During a four-year NFL career, he also played for Kansas City and Seattle.
But he said the repercussions of what Anderson subjected him to lingered throughout his pro career and even seeped into his life outside football, namely when it came to taking care of his health.
“You don’t want to go to the dentist” and “you don’t want to go to the doctor” because of trust issues, he said. This fall, he discovered a lump on his neck, and ultimately ended up going to a doctor. It turned out to be cancerous nodules on his thyroid gland.
“I’ve been living with this now for I don’t know how long,” he said Friday morning while heading to surgery to have his thyroid removed. “I realized how long I self-treated things.”
The allegations against Anderson are not the only scandal ensnaring the university. On Jan. 15, the university’s Board of Regents removed Mark Schlissel as school presiden t because of an alleged “inappropriate relationship with a university employee.” Former University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman has been appointed interim president.
Despite his condition, Vaughn said he doesn’t plan to stop protesting the way the university handles sex abuse claims or demanding answers in the Anderson case.
“Michigan built us for this fight,” he said, referring to himself and other former players who say they were abused by Anderson. “They have no idea who we are.”
___
Williams reported from West Bloomfield, Michigan. Householder reported from Canton, Michigan.
Beachgoers congregate on Fort Beach in Cabo Frio, Brazil, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021. G.A.S Consulting & Technology, a cryptocurrency investment firm founded by Glaidson Acacio dos Santos, a former waiter-turned-multimillionaire who is the central figure in what is alleged to be one of Brazil’s biggest-ever pyramid schemes, was based in the beach town dos Santos called home.
(AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
CABO FRIO, Brazil (AP) — In April, Brazil’s federal police stormed the helipad of a boutique seaside hotel in Rio de Janeiro state, where they busted two men and a woman loading a chopper with 7 million reais ($1.3 million) in neatly packed bills.
The detainees told police they worked for G.A.S. Consulting & Technology, a cryptocurrency investment firm founded by a former waiter-turned-multimillionaire who is the central figure in what is alleged to be one of Brazil’s biggest-ever pyramid schemes.
Police say the company owned by 38-year-old Glaidson Acácio dos Santos had total transactions worth at least $7 billion ($38 billion reais) from 2015 through mid-2021 as part of a Bitcoin-based Ponzi scheme that promised investors 10% monthly returns.
In hundreds of pages of documents obtained by The Associated Press, federal and state police and prosecutors accuse dos Santos and his associates of running a sophisticated racket defrauding thousands of small-scale investors who believed they were getting rich off Bitcoin’s steep appreciation. He is now in a Rio jail awaiting trial on charges including racketeering, financial crimes and ordering the murder and attempted murder of two business competitors. He remains under investigation in the attempted murder of a third competitor.
In public statements, dos Santos has repeatedly asserted his innocence. His lawyers didn’t reply to AP requests for comment.
Despite the long list of charges he faces, dos Santos represents an unlikely hero to his fervent supporters. Many view him as a modest Black man whose unorthodox Bitcoin business made them wealthy by gaming a financial system they believe is rigged by wealthy white elites.
The case also underscores the fast-growing appetite for cryptocurrencies in Brazil, where years of economic and political crises have made digital currencies an attractive shield against depreciation of the Brazilian real and double-digit inflation.
Bitcoin fervor was particularly keen in Cabo Frio, the resort town of 230,000 where G.A.S. was based. As G.A.S. revenues rose, enriching early adopters, copycat firms sprang up, seeking to cash in on the craze. A wave of cryptocurrency-related violence soon followed.
With so many alleged pyramid schemes, Cabo Frio came to be known as the “New Egypt.” And as the town’s top dog, dos Santos was dubbed the “Bitcoin Pharaoh.”
Police say dos Santos began trading in Bitcoin after leaving his job as a waiter in 2014. A one-time evangelical preacher in training, he enlisted clients from the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, Brazil’s largest neo-Pentecostal group, who earned a referral fee for bringing in fresh recruits and kicking back money to G.A.S., police documents say.
In a statement, the Universal Church said it was cooperating with authorities and accused dos Santos of “harassing and recruiting” pastors and their flocks to join his company.
By 2017, dos Santos was starting to make serious money — and attract authorities’ attention. That year his company’s transactions totaled nearly 10 million reais ($1.8 million), 15 times higher than the previous year as money siphoned in and out of his bank accounts from all over Brazil, according to a federal police report. The country’s financial intelligence unit also noticed the company — at the time registered as a restaurant — was regularly trading cryptocurrency on online exchange platforms.
A view of the luxury condominium where former waiter-turned-multimillionaire Glaidson Acacio dos Santos had a home in Cabo Frio. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
The alleged scheme worked like this, according to prosecutors: Dos Santos would instruct clients to deposit their money – in cash to avoid further scrutiny – into bank accounts run by managing partners. The money would then be transferred to dos Santos or his Venezuelan wife, Mirelis Yoseline Diaz Zerpa, who would either pocket it, use it to buy bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies as well as traditional financial assets, or pay off other members of the scheme.
Clients were promised a 10% monthly return on their investments over 12- to 48-month contract periods, but did not own the bitcoins they were told G.A.S. was purchasing with their money. And, they were assured, it was risk-free: They would get their entire initial investment back at the end of the contract.
As Bitcoin fever grew, dos Santos was fast becoming a celebrity in Cabo Frio.
“If he wanted to run for mayor, governor even, he’d win,” said Gilson Silva do Carmo, 52, one of dos Santos’ alleged victims.
The chubby young man in thick-rimmed glasses was also gaining a taste for the high life, police and prosecutors said. Dos Santos bought expensive jewelry and a swanky apartment as contracts poured in from elsewhere in Latin America and as far away as the U.S., Europe and the Gulf.
At the same time, Brazil’s securities regulator was making digital currencies more attractive: It authorized the country’s investment funds to invest in cryptocurrencies in 2018, giving them greater credibility. Last year, Brazil approved Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, only the second country in the world to do so. And Rio de Janeiro has recently said it wants to offer incentives to those paying city property taxes using bitcoins.
Meanwhile, trades in Brazilian reais on the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, jumped to nearly $8.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, from just $152 million over the same period a year earlier, according to market data provider Kaiko.
In and around Cabo Frio, where residents had seen their neighbors reap rewards by investing their life savings in G.A.S., many began to fear missing out.
Do Carmo was among them. After catching COVID-19 and struggling to get back to work, he was forced to tap his retirement savings to make ends meet. Gilson Silva do Carmo, an alleged victim of the G.A.S Consulting & Technology, after an interview in Iguaba Grande, Brazil. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Then his therapist told him he sold his house to invest in G.A.S., and had been receiving 10% monthly returns for a year. Do Carmo invested 40,000 reais ($7,000) — just over half the money left in his retirement fund.
In Cabo Frio, dos Santos’ success inspired other budding entrepreneurs to follow in his footsteps — not to mention those of Charles Ponzi, who died nearby in a Rio de Janeiro hospital charity ward in 1949. The Italian immigrant who engineered one of the largest scams in U.S. history in the 1920s was buried in a public Rio cemetery with his last $75.
Some competitors promised even higher returns than G.A.S. — 20% or more a month.
In mid-April, he discussed with associates how rivals were encroaching on his turf, according to WhatsApp messages intercepted by federal police.
“There’s a trader here in Cabo Frio, Mr. Pessano, who’s going for my clients. I can’t let that happen,” dos Santos wrote.
Less than four months later, on Aug. 4, Wesley Pessano, who advertised himself on social media as a cryptocurrency trader, was shot dead in his Porsche. Police accuse dos Santos of ordering the hit.
Rio state police have also linked two attempted killings to dos Santos and what they called his “extermination team.” On March 20, a trader known as Nilsinho was shot while driving his BMW through Cabo Frio. He was severely injured but survived. Three months later another firm’s operator was targeted, his car hit by 40 bullets; he also survived.
Things came to a head on April 28 when Rio federal police, acting on an anonymous tip, seized the 7 million reais at the helipad of the Insolito Boutique Hotel in Buzios, a short drive from Cabo Frio. A monthslong investigation into dos Santos’ business followed.
On Aug. 25, alerted that dos Santos was planning to flee Brazil, federal police raided more than a dozen locations linked to G.A.S., including dos Santos’ home where he was found with 13.8 million reais ($2.5 million) and taken into custody. Agents also found hard drives containing 10 times that amount in Bitcoin, gold bars, jewelry and several sports cars, including a white Porsche Panamera and an electric blue BMW Z4 convertible. Fort Beach in Cabo Frio. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado) Bathers dive into the waters of Fort Beach in Cabo Frio. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
Sixteen other associates were also charged, including Diaz Zerpa, dos Santos’ 38-year-old wife, who left the country weeks before the raid and is believed to be in Florida, according to authorities. They say she withdrew more than 4,300 bitcoins worth $185 million (1 billion reais). AP attempts to locate her were unsuccessful.
Do Carmo watched in horror as the seizures and arrests unfolded; he had invested the rest of his savings in the company just weeks earlier.
“I thought, ‘My God, what have I done?’” he said. “You watch everything you fought for, your entire life wash away from one moment to the next.”
Still, many early G.A.S. investors who had been receiving regular monthly payments refused to believe dos Santos did anything illegal.
After his arrest, a crowd gathered outside broadcaster TV Globo in Rio de Janeiro to protest coverage of the alleged racket. In October, scores of supporters blocked the street outside a federal courthouse in Rio, demanding his freedom.
Jeferson Brandão, a tax lawyer, G.A.S. investor and vocal advocate of dos Santos, said the company offered an attractive alternative to a banking sector that “only charges you fees.”
G.A.S. offered investors a chance to “take part in the profit,” Brandão said. ”‘Instead of giving you a crumb of the cake, I’m going to give you a slice.’”
From prison, dos Santos has maintained his innocence. In an open letter to investors last month, he blamed the authorities for freezing G.A.S. assets and “prohibiting me from paying you.”
Brazilian law enforcement is still trying to uncover the true size of dos Santos’ empire.
Prosecutors have identified at least 27,000 G.A.S. victims, with operations in at least 13 Brazilian states and seven other countries, including the U.S., United Arab Emirates, the U.K. and Portugal. Lawyer Luciano Regis, 35, during an interview in Sao Pedro da Aldeia, Brazil. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)
The true tally is likely much higher, said Luciano Regis, a lawyer representing dozens of victims. He said one of his clients enlisted her husband, mother, brother, sister-in-law and an 82-year-old aunt, investing a total 822,000 reais (about $150,000).
“It’s hard to have a conversation with anyone in Cabo Frio who doesn’t know someone who invested,” he said.
YEMEN
Houthis, aid group: Death toll from prison airstrike hits 82 By SAMY MAGDY
This photo provided by Ansar Allah Media Office, a man is rescued early Friday, Jan. 21, 2022, after Saudi-led airstrikes targeted a site in the contested city of Hodeida, Yemen. A Saudi-led airstrike targeting a prison run by Yemen's Houthi rebels killed and wounded detainees on Friday, rescuers said, part of a pounding aerial offensive that hours earlier saw another airstrike take the Arab world's poorest country off the internet. (Ansar Allah Media Office via AP)
CAIRO (AP) — The death toll from a Saudi-led coalition airstrike that hit a prison run by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has climbed to at least 82 detainees, the rebels and an aid group said Saturday.
Internet access in the Arab world’s poorest country meanwhile remained largely down as the coalition continued airstrikes on the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, and elsewhere.
The airstrike in the northern Saada province Friday was part of an intense air and ground offensive that marked an escalation in Yemen’s yearslong civil war. The conflict pits the internationally recognized government, aided by the Saudi-led coalition, against the Iranian-backed rebels.
Ahmed Mahat, head of Doctors Without Borders’s mission in Yemen, told The Associated Press his group counted at least 82 dead and more than 265 wounded in the airstrike.
The Houthis’ media office said rescuers were still searching for survivors and bodies in the rubble of the prison site in Saada on the border with Saudi Arabia.
Saudi coalition spokesman Brig. Gen. Turki al-Malki said the Houthis hadn’t reported the site as needing protection from airstrikes to the U.N. or the International Committee of the Red Cross. He claimed the Houthis’ failure to do so represented the militia’s “usual deceptive approach” in the conflict.
The Houthis used the prison complex to hold detained migrants, mostly Africans attempting to cross through the war-torn country into Saudi Arabia, according to the humanitarian organization Save the Children.
But Mahat, of Doctors Without Borders, said the airstrike hit a different part of the facility housing other types of detainees, and no migrants were killed.
Al-Malki said reports that the coalition targeted the prison were inaccurate and that the coalition would correspond “facts and details” to the U.N. and the ICRC, according to Saudi state-run television.
The Saada attack followed another Saudi-led coalition airstrike Friday at the Red Sea port city of Hodeida that hit a telecommunications center key to Yemen’s connection to the internet. Access to the internet has remained “largely down for more than 24 hours” in the country, advocacy group NetBlocks said Saturday.
The Saada airstrike, one of the deadliest of the war, was not the first to hit a Houthi-run prison. A September 2019 airstrike hit a detention center the southwestern Dhamar province, killing more than 100 people and wounding dozens.
Rights groups have previously documented that the Houthis placing civilian detention centers near military barracks under constant threat of airstrikes.
Friday’s airstrikes have renewed criticism of the coalition from the United Nations and international aid and rights groups, who just days previous had blasted the Houthis for the attack on the Emirates.
Saudi-led coalition airstrikes have hit schools, hospitals and wedding parties, killing an estimated thousands of civilians according to monitoring groups. The Houthis meanwhile have used child soldiers and indiscriminately laid land mines across the country. They also launched cross-border attacks using ballistic missiles and explosives-laden drones on Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The coalition continued its airstrikes on Sanaa and elsewhere Saturday, targeting a Houthi-held military facility and an abandoned headquarters of Yemeni state TV in the capital. The coalition said airstrikes also targeted the Houthis in the contested Harib district in Marib.
And Yemeni forces closely allied with the UAE, known as the Giants Brigades, said they shot down three drones carrying explosives launched by the Houthis on government-held areas in Marib and Shabwa provinces.
The rebels, meanwhile, held a funeral procession in Sanaa for a senior military official killed along with family members in a coalition airstrike last week. Hundreds of Houthi supporters attended the military funeral of Gen. Abdalla Kassem al-Junaid, who headed the Air Academy.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken urged the warring parties to stop the escalation.
“We urge all parties to commit to a peaceful, diplomatic solution to ending the conflict. The Yemeni people deserve to live in peace and determine their own future,” he wrote on Twitter.
The latest escalation comes almost a year after President Joe Biden’s administration announced an end to U.S. support for the coalition and removed the designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group as part of American efforts to end the grinding war.
The latest fighting is some of the most intense since the 2018 battle for Hodeida and comes after a year of U.S. and U.N. diplomatic efforts failed to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. On Friday, the U.N. criticized the Houthis for not even allowing the body’s new envoy to visit their territories. Pitched fighting in Marib has remained a major sticking point, as the Houthis attempt to complete their control of the northern half of Yemen.
“The coalition has pulled the stops out to prevent a collapse in Marib and to shift the conflict towards a military equilibrium,” said Peter Salisbury, Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group.
The conflict in the Arab world’s poorest country began in 2014, when the Houthis took Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, forcing the government to flee to the south, then into exile in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-led coalition, backed at the time by the U.S., entered the war months later to try to restore the government to power.
The conflict has since become a regional proxy war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and fighters. The war also created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, leaving millions suffering from food and medical care shortages and pushing the country to the brink of famine.
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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
