CRYPTO CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Celsius bankruptcy examiner expected to report on Ponzi allegations

Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius Network, talks about "crypto tourists" in Beverly Hills, California

Mon, January 30, 2023
By Dietrich Knauth

(Reuters) - A court-ordered examiner is expected to release a report on Monday addressing whether bankrupt crypto firm Celsius Network operated as a Ponzi scheme, which could add to the pressure on founder Alex Mashinsky, who is already facing fraud allegations.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn, who is overseeing the crypto lending platform's Chapter 11 case, appointed former prosecutor Shoba Pillay as an independent examiner in September, tasking her with investigating Celsius customers' allegations that the company operated as a Ponzi scheme and reporting on the company's handling of cryptocurrency deposits.

Hoboken, New Jersey-based Celsius filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors last July in Manhattan after freezing customer withdrawals from its platform. It listed a $1.19 billion deficit on its balance sheet.

Celsius had consented to an examiner's review after reaching a deal that scaled back a wide-ranging investigation proposed by the U.S. Department of Justice's bankruptcy watchdog and state securities regulators from Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin.

After appointing Pillay to the job, Glenn expanded her role by asking her to address persistent customer complaints about Mashinsky's conduct.

Mashinsky was sued earlier this month by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who alleged that he defrauded investors out of billions of dollars in digital currency by concealing the lending platform's failing health.

A lawyer for Mashinsky did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but has said previously that his client denies the allegations and looks forward to vigorously defending himself in court. A spokesperson for Celsius did not immediately respond for comment.

Mashinsky, 57, is an entrepreneur who founded companies like Arbinet, which went public in 2004, and Transit Wireless, which provides wi-fi service to the New York City subway.

In hundreds of interviews, blog posts and livestreams as the public face of Celsius, Mashinsky promised its customers that they would receive high returns if they deposited digital assets on his platform, with minimal risk, according to the New York AG's lawsuit.

Bankruptcy examiners can provide courts, judges and creditors with an impartial look into the failures of a bankrupt company, but their cost is a frequent source of controversy when limited funds are available to pay existing debts.

Crypto exchange FTX, which went bankrupt in November, has resisted calls for an examiner in its own Chapter 11 case, citing the cost of overlapping investigations.

FTX CEO John Ray, who worked with examiners in the bankruptcies of Enron and Residential Capital, said in a court filing that examiner reports in those two bankruptcies cost a combined $150 million and provided "minimal" benefits to creditors.

Pillay and her team have sought to be paid $1.86 million for work performed in October and $1.69 million for November, according to court filings.

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Deepa Babington)

Osprey Funds Sues Grayscale for Misleading Advertising on Crypto Trust


Katie Greifeld and Vildana Hajric
Mon, January 30, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Digital-asset manager Osprey Funds is the latest firm to file a lawsuit against rival Grayscale Investments over its nearly $15 billion Bitcoin fund.

Osprey accused Grayscale of conducting “false and misleading advertising” for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (ticker GBTC) since late 2020, according to a complaint filed Monday in Connecticut Superior Court. Grayscale presented that GBTC would be converted into an exchange-traded fund as “foregone conclusion, when it knew that access was never likely to happen,” the suit read. US regulators denied Grayscale’s application for ETF conversion in June, prompting the firm to sue the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Because of those “unfair trade practices,” Osprey alleges that Grayscale has been able to conquer 99.5% of assets in trust-based crypto products despite the fact that GBTC’s fee is four times higher than a similar offering from Osprey. Fairfield, Connecticut-based Osprey manages about $100 million in assets.

“The lawsuit filed by Osprey Funds against Grayscale Investments is frivolous. The conversion of GBTC to an ETF is the best long-term product structure for Grayscale’s investors, and approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF would directly benefit our industry peers. At Grayscale, we remain confident in our common sense, compelling legal arguments, and we look forward to a final decision from the DC Court of Appeals by Fall 2023,” according to a Grayscale spokeswoman.

GBTC launched in 2013 versus Osprey’s Bitcoin trust, which was created in 2019.

Osprey had previously called out GBTC’s deep discount — currently around 41% — announcing earlier in January that it was looking to be installed as the sponsor of the beleaguered product in order to spur changes that could help narrow that gap. It also said at the time that were it in charge, it would reduce GBTC’s management fee from its current 2% tag.

But GBTC has come under fire on numerous other fronts, thanks to its trading at a discount, as well as due to troubles at its parent company, Digital Currency Group, whose Genesis lending unit recently filed for bankruptcy. Hedge fund Fir Tree filed a lawsuit against the asset manager related to GBTC’s discount, while Valkyrie launched an activist campaign to unseat Grayscale.

Osprey said in Monday’s filing that “through various unfair and deceptive devices, Grayscale has promoted itself and its sponsored trusts, including the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, by suggesting that their services provide access to investment opportunities that are safer and less susceptible to risk than they actually are.”

Apple Executives Violated Worker Rights, US Labor Officials Say

Josh Eidelson
Mon, January 30, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Comments by Apple Inc. executives and policies imposed on employees have been deemed illegal by US National Labor Relations Board prosecutors, who say they violate workers’ rights.

The NLRB general counsel’s office has determined that “various work rules” imposed by the tech giant “tend to interfere with, restrain or coerce employees” from exercising their rights to collective action, spokesperson Kayla Blado said Monday. The agency “found merit to a charge alleging statements and conduct by Apple — including high-level executives — also violated the National Labor Relations Act.”

Unless Apple settles, the board’s regional director will issue a complaint against the Cupertino, California-based company, Blado said in an email.

The dispute was brought to the agency by former employee Ashley Gjovik, who filed claims in 2021 alleging that an email Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook sent pledging to punish leakers, as well as a set of policies in Apple’s employee handbook, violated federal law. Gjovik’s filings cited policies restricting staff from disclosing “business information,” talking to reporters, revealing co-workers’ compensation or posting impolite tweets.

In his all-staff email, sent in September 2021, Cook wrote that “people who leak confidential information do not belong here.” Cook’s message said that Apple was “doing everything in our power to identify those who leaked” and that it didn’t “tolerate disclosures of confidential information, whether it’s product IP or the details of a confidential meeting.”

His email followed media reports about a companywide internal meeting the prior week at which management fielded questions about topics such as pay equity and Texas’ anti-abortion law.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Monday on the NLRB’s finding.

At a hearing earlier this month, company attorney Jason Stanevich said, “Apple fosters an open and inclusive work environment whereby employees are not just permitted, but encouraged, to share their feelings and thoughts on a range of issues, from social justice topics to pay equity to anything else that they feel is an important cause to promote in the workplace.”

US labor law protects workers’ rights to communicate with one another and engage in collective action about workplace issues. Complaints issued by NLRB prosecutors are reviewed by administrative law judges, whose rulings can be appealed to labor board members in Washington — and, from there, to federal court. The agency lacks the ability to impose punitive damages or hold executives personally liable for violations, but can order companies to change workplace policies.

Apple, the world’s most valuable company, has faced an unusual wave of public dissent in recent years among its white collar staff, as well as unprecedented organizing campaigns by retail employees, who voted to unionize last year in Maryland and Oklahoma. NLRB prosecutors in recent months have also found merit in claims that Apple illegally coerced workers at its retail stores in Atlanta and New York City, where some employees were seeking to unionize. The company has denied wrongdoing.

Gjovik, a senior engineering program manager, was fired by Apple in September 2021 after filing complaints with several state and federal agencies. In documents shared by Gjovik, Apple claimed she was terminated for violating policies such as the disclosure of confidential product information. Gjovik has said she was fired in retaliation for her prior complaints, which alleged that — after voicing fears about workplace health hazards — she was harassed, humiliated and asked not to tell co-workers about her concerns.

“My hope is that for the first time Apple is told by the government that this culture of secrecy is not OK,” Gjovik said Monday. “I also hope that this sends shockwaves through other corporations that even Apple can be held accountable.”

UPS Faces Rising Labor Costs, Strike Risk in Upcoming Union Fight



Thomas Black
Mon, January 30, 2023

(Bloomberg) -- United Parcel Service Inc. will pay more for labor after replacing a union contract that expires in July. The main question for Chief Executive Officer Carol Tomé is how much more — and if it’s enough to avoid a strike that would throw package delivery into chaos.

In what are likely to be the most contentious talks since UPS workers were on strike for 15 days in 1997, the Teamsters union, which represents 340,000 UPS employees, says it seeks to increase wages for part-time workers to more than $20 an hour and eliminate a controversial two-tiered wage system. On the table will also be demands for air conditioning in vehicles and for blocking inward-facing cameras.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien is promising a hard fight. He won election in late 2021 on a vow to get tougher with UPS and correct what he says was a flawed contract forced on workers in 2018. The union is also shortening the negotiation period with UPS. Talks on the nationwide contract will begin April 16, O’Brien said in an interview. The current contract ends on July 31.

“We’ve got some great arguments on why these folks should be paid,” O’Brien said. “We’ve got a great argument just on how much money the company’s been making.”

The stakes are high for Tomé and the US. UPS delivers about 20 million packages a day in the US, making it the second-largest ground courier behind the US Postal Service. If UPS workers were to walk out, it would likely be impossible for the postal service and rival FedEx Corp. to cover the volume from UPS’s customers, which include Amazon.com Inc. A strike now in the era of e-commerce would have a much bigger impact than in 1997, when most packages were sent by businesses and parcel networks operated five days a week instead of non-stop.

“It’s pretty clear that it’s going to be spicy,” Ravi Shanker, a Morgan Stanley analyst with an underweight rating on the stock, said of the negotiations. He predicts UPS may increase compensation as much as 10% a year.

Investors are eagerly awaiting the company’s fourth quarter earnings release on Jan. 31, when it is expected to provide 2023 guidance and Tomé may face questions about rising labor costs and the potential for shrinking margins from Wall Street analysts.

Wall Street has applauded Tomé, who became the company’s first woman chief executive and first-ever outsider selected for the top job in June 2020. She successfully steered UPS through the pandemic and met the challenge of keeping up with a surge in demand. Margins increased and operating profits soared, jumping 51% to $13.1 billion in 2021 from $8.7 billion in 2020.

Although the boom in home delivery has faded, UPS’s profits remained elevated — thanks in part to higher shipping prices. Tomé has pursued a “better, not bigger” strategy of seeking to focus on the most profitable operations, even going so far as to turn down some lower-margin business from large customers.

The current five-year contract had also kept labor costs predictable, shielding UPS from wage spikes that hurt profit and service at non-unionized rival FedEx. That had given UPS a temporary advantage during the pandemic when home-delivery demand surged and FedEx rushed to hire workers amid a nationwide labor shortage.

Analysts will want to know how Tomé plans to keep customers from preemptively shifting business away from the Atlanta-based courier to avoid a logistics nightmare if unionized employees do walk off the job.

“We want a win-win-win contract for our employees, our company, and the union,” a UPS spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We have more alignment on key issues with the Teamsters than not. That’s especially true with respect to maintaining industry-leading pay and benefits, and delivering the best service in the industry with the best safety record.”

UPS argues that it already pays its workers, especially drivers, much more than competitors. The average wage for a delivery driver with at least four years on the job is $42 an hour, not counting pension and health benefits, the company says. A typical wage for an experienced driver at rival FedEx Ground, depending on the region, is $20 an hour and usually comes with no benefits. The company also added 72,000 Teamsters jobs in three years through August 2021, which is more than was pledged under the current contract. UPS has about another 100,000 US workers who aren’t unionized.

President of the Rank-and-File

O’Brien said he’s determined to uphold his campaign promises on UPS, the nation’s largest private-employer labor contract, and lay the groundwork to grow Teamsters membership.

During previous negotiations in 2018, then-president James P. Hoffa agreed to create a new class of driver that was paid less and would give the flexibility of also working as package loaders and on weekends. The majority of Teamsters voted against that agreement, but Hoffa ratified it anyway on a little-known rule based on low turnout.

Rank-and-file members angered by that move voted to eliminate the controversial turnout clause during their convention in the summer of 2021, before electing O’Brien to that top job.

Besides undoing the two-tier driver scale, O’Brien wants to boost the starting wage for part-time workers to more than $20 an hour from $15.50 now. His argument is bolstered by UPS’s need to pay above $20 an hour to attract part-time workers during the pandemic in what are called “market rate adjustments.”

O’Brien has a broader goal of organizing more warehouse workers, including at Amazon, and intends to showcase the UPS contract as an example of organized labor’s newfound leverage over employers.

“We’re going to use the UPS agreement as a template to basically say, this is what you get when you work for a unionized carrier,” O’Brien said.

Negotiations on the union’s master contract will start much later than usual, as union locals bargain their supplemental contracts first, O’Brien said. This is a reversal of order, and gives more leverage to locals and reduces traditional pressure on them to settle so the national agreement can take effect. It will also give the union some sense of UPS’s negotiating tactic. Those local talks should all be under way by Feb. 1, he said.

The later start may benefit UPS if by then inflation shows clear signs of abating, said Helane Becker, an analyst with Cowen Inc. who has a market-perform rating on the stock. Becker predicts UPS’s all-in expense for compensation and benefits to increase to 50% of revenue after the new labor contract, up from about 47% now. That ratio had hovered around 52% in the few years before the pandemic swelled sales.

Getting a good agreement will be a key test of Tomé’s managerial moxie, and it’s unclear how much wiggle room the company has. The new Teamsters leader declined to say what the bottom line is for walking out.

“At the end of the day, our members are going to guide us through what’s a strike issue and not a strike issue,” O’Brien said.

U.S. court rejects J&J bankruptcy strategy for tens of thousands of talc lawsuits

Mon, January 30, 2023 

By Tom Hals, Mike Spector and Dan Levine

(Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court upended Johnson & Johnson's attempt to offload into bankruptcy tens of thousands of lawsuits over its talc products, ruling the healthcare conglomerate improperly placed a subsidiary into Chapter 11 proceedings even though it did not face financial distress.

The decision by the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on Monday dismissed a Chapter 11 petition filed by a recently created J&J subsidiary in October to address more than 38,000 lawsuits from plaintiffs alleging the company’s baby powder and other talc products caused cancer.

Before the bankruptcy, J&J faced costs from $3.5 billion in verdicts and settlements, including one in which 22 women were eventually awarded a judgment of more than $2 billion, according to bankruptcy-court records.

Several major companies, including J&J and 3M Co, have turned to bankruptcy court to manage their mass tort liabilities. Plaintiff attorneys have called the cases an improper manipulation of the bankruptcy system, while the companies say the Chapter 11 filings are aimed at compensating claimants fairly and equitably.

J&J’s maneuver is known as a Texas two-step for a state law used to create a subsidiary that shoulders litigation and then declares bankruptcy. The Third Circuit’s opinion allows talc litigation to resume against the company.

J&J said it would challenge the ruling and that its talc products are safe.

Its shares fell more than 3% - the biggest one-day percentage decline in two years.

The New Jersey-based company, valued at more than $400 billion, said its subsidiary’s bankruptcy was initiated in good faith and designed to equitably resolve talc claims for the benefit of all plaintiffs. J&J initially pledged $2 billion to the subsidiary to resolve talc claims and entered into an agreement to fund an eventual settlement approved by a bankruptcy judge.

A three-judge panel on the appeals court rejected J&J’s argument, finding the company’s subsidiary, LTL Management, was created solely to access the bankruptcy system and not because it faced financial distress.

"Good intentions - such as to protect the J&J brand or comprehensively resolve litigation - do not suffice alone," the judges said in a 56-page opinion.

The decision throws into doubt J&J’s long-planned strategy for disposing of talc litigation after it lost a bid to reverse a watershed verdict that eventually awarded more than $2 billion to 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on baby powder and other talc products.

More than 1,500 talc lawsuits have been dismissed without J&J having to pay anything, and the majority of cases that have gone to trial have resulted in defense verdicts, mistrials or judgments for the company on appeal, according to the J&J subsidiary's court filings.

'PROJECT PLATO'

A December 2018 Reuters investigation revealed that the company knew for decades of tests showing its talc sometimes contained traces of carcinogenic asbestos but kept that information from regulators and the public.

“As we have said from the beginning of this process, resolving this matter as quickly and efficiently as possible is in the best interests of claimants and all stakeholders,” J&J said in a statement. “We continue to stand behind the safety of Johnson’s Baby Powder, which is safe, does not contain asbestos and does not cause cancer.”

Facing unrelenting litigation, J&J enlisted law firm Jones Day, which had helped other companies execute Texas two-step bankruptcies to address asbestos lawsuits.

J&J’s effort, which Reuters detailed last year, was internally dubbed “Project Plato”, and employees working on it signed confidentiality agreements warning them to tell no one, including their spouses, about the plan.

The Texas two-step strategy has garnered criticism from Democratic lawmakers, and inspired legislation that would severely restrict the practice.

Jones Day did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Critics contend the strategy is an improper use of the bankruptcy system by solvent corporations wishing to escape jury trials in state courts. Bankruptcy filings typically pause litigation, forcing plaintiffs into often time consuming settlement negotiations while leaving them unable to pursue their cases in the courts where they originally sued.

“Bankruptcy courts are for honest companies in financial distress, not billionaire mega-corporations like J&J,” said Jon Ruckdeschel, a lawyer representing talc plaintiffs.

Plaintiffs and other legal experts urged U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan last year to dismiss the J&J subsidiary’s bankruptcy, arguing it was filed in bad faith and risked becoming a blueprint for large corporations seeking to avoid undesirable litigation.

Kaplan, though, denied the request, finding the J&J unit did face financial distress and that a bankruptcy court was a better forum for resolving the litigation then America’s tort system.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Mike Spector in New York; and Dan Levine and San Francisco; Additional reporting by Dietrich Knauth and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

US renewable energy farms outstrip 99% of coal plants economically – study

Oliver Milman
Mon, 30 January 2023 

Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA

Coal in the US is now being economically outmatched by renewables to such an extent that it’s more expensive for 99% of the country’s coal-fired power plants to keep running than it is to build an entirely new solar or wind energy operation nearby, a new analysis has found.

Related: How ocean wind power could help the US fossil fuel industry

The plummeting cost of renewable energy, which has been supercharged by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, means that it is cheaper to build an array of solar panels or a cluster of new wind turbines and connect them to the grid than it is to keep operating all of the 210 coal plants in the contiguous US, bar one, according to the study.

“Coal is unequivocally more expensive than wind and solar resources, it’s just no longer cost competitive with renewables,” said Michelle Solomon, a policy analyst at Energy Innovation, which undertook the analysis. “This report certainly challenges the narrative that coal is here to stay.”

The new analysis, conducted in the wake of the $370bn in tax credits and other support for clean energy passed by Democrats in last summers’ Inflation Reduction Act, compared the fuel, running and maintenance cost of America’s coal fleet with the building of new solar or wind from scratch in the same utility region.

On average, the marginal cost for the coal plants is $36 each megawatt hour, while new solar is about $24 each megawatt hour, or about a quarter cheaper. Only one coal plant – Dry Fork in Wyoming – is cost competitive with the new renewables. “It was a bit surprising to find this,” said Solomon. “It shows that not only have renewables dropped in cost, the Inflation Reduction Act is accelerating this trend.”

Coal, which is a heavily carbon-intensive fuel and responsible for 60% of planet-heating emissions from electricity generation, once formed the backbone of the American grid, generating enough power to light up 186m homes at its peak in 2007. However, by 2021 this output had dropped by 55%, while jobs in the coal mining sector have more than halved over the past decade, to less than 40,000.

... We need to accelerate the buildout of wind and solar so that when the time comes we can wean ourselves off coal.
Michelle Solomon

Most of the US’ coal plants are aging and increasingly expensive to maintain, while their fuel source has been widely displaced by cheap sources of gas. Environmental regulations, which Donald Trump vowed to roll back in an unfulfilled mission to revive the coal industry when president, have also imposed costs on the sector by enforcing cuts to toxic emissions such as mercury and sulphur dioxide.

Coal production hit a 55-year low in 2020 but the industry saw subsequent signs of an uptick in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which pushed up the price of energy worldwide and saw pressure on countries to find an alternative fuel source to Russian gas.

Supporters of coal contend it is a reliable fuel source at a time of instability and have attacked Joe Biden for attempting to shift the US away from fossil fuels. “Forcing essential coal capacity off the grid – without reliable alternatives and the infrastructure to support them – will only deepen reliability and economic challenges,” said Rich Nolan, president of the National Mining Association, in November.

“Look to our friends in Europe, who blindly rushed to close coal plants at a rapid pace and are now working from Germany to Denmark to bring those same plants back online. The global energy crisis is real and imposing costly burdens on people around the world and here at home; taking deliberate steps to intensify that crisis is reckless and unthinkable.”

While coal is in long-term decline it is unlikely to disappear in the immediate future – many utilities are still deeply invested in the fuel source and the scale of renewable infrastructure, including energy projects, new transmission lines and battery and other storage to cope with intermittent delivery, isn’t yet vast enough to trigger a mass shutdown of coal. But analysts say the broader trends, bolstered by last year’s climate spending, look set to call time on the era of coal.

A solar power farm in San Antonio, Texas. Photograph: Tannen Maury/EPA

“We can’t just snap our fingers and retire all coal plants but we need to accelerate the buildout of wind and solar so that when the time comes we can wean ourselves off coal,” said Solomon.

“There’s a huge opportunity here to invest in coal communities, build local economic resilience and save money in the process.”

James Stock, an economist at Harvard University who was not involved in the Energy Innovation report, said the analysis “rings true” and that coal is no longer economically competitive.

“We can’t shutter all these plants tomorrow, we need to do it in an orderly fashion to support grid reliability but we should be able to do it in fairly fast order,” he said. “Coal has been on a natural decline due to economics and those economics are going to continue, this is a transition that’s just going to happen.

“We built a lot of coal plants in the US around 50 years ago because we were worried about energy security in the world. That made sense at the time and they made an important contribution. But we know a lot more now about climate change, so now we need to make different decisions.”

Israel appears to have been behind drone strike on Iranian factory -US official

Eyewitness footage said to show moment of explosion at military industry factory in Isfahan

Sat, January 28, 2023 
By Parisa Hafezi and Phil Stewart

DUBAI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Israel appears to have been behind an overnight drone attack on a military factory in Iran, a U.S. official said on Sunday.

Iran claimed to have intercepted drones that struck a military industry target near the central city of Isfahan, and said there were no casualties or serious damage.

The extent of damage could not be independently ascertained. Iranian state media released footage showing a flash in the sky and emergency vehicles at the scene.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military declined to comment. Arch-foe Israel has long said it is willing to strike Iranian targets if diplomacy fails to curb Tehran's nuclear or missile programmes, but it has a policy of withholding comment on specific incidents.

Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said no U.S. military forces were involved in strikes in Iran, but declined to comment further.

That U.S. officials were pointing to an Israeli role in the attack was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, citing several unidentified sources. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters it did appear that Israel was involved. Several other U.S. officials declined to comment, beyond saying that Washington played no role.

Tehran did not formally ascribe blame for what Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian called a "cowardly" attack aimed at creating "insecurity" in Iran. But state TV broadcast comments by a lawmaker, Hossein Mirzaie, saying there was "strong speculation" Israel was behind it.

The attack came amid tension between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear activity and its supply of arms - including long-range "suicide drones" - for Russia's war in Ukraine, as well as months of anti-government demonstrations at home.

The extent of the damage could not be independently confirmed. Iran's Defence Ministry said the explosion caused only minor damage and no casualties.

"Such actions will not impact our experts' determination to progress in our peaceful nuclear work," Amirabdollahian told reporters in televised remarks.

An Israeli strike on Iran would be the first under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since he returned to office last month at the helm of the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

In Ukraine, which accuses Iran of supplying hundreds of drones to Russia to attack civilian targets in Ukrainian cities far from the front, a senior aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy linked the incident directly to the war there.

"Explosive night in Iran," Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted. "Did warn you."

Iran has acknowledged sending drones to Russia but says they were sent before Moscow's invasion of Ukraine last year. Moscow denies its forces use Iranian drones in Ukraine, although many have been shot down and recovered there.

'MINOR DAMAGE'

"Around 23:30 (2000 GMT) on Saturday night, an unsuccessful attack was carried out using micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) on one of the ministry's workshop sites," the Defence Ministry said in a statement carried by state TV.

It said one drone was shot down "and the other two were caught in defence traps and blew up. It caused only minor damage to the roof of a workshop building. There were no casualties."

A military official in the region said given the location of the strike in central Iran and the size of the drones, it was likely that the attack was staged from within Iran's borders.

Separately, IRNA reported early on Sunday a massive fire at a motor oil factory in an industrial zone near the northwestern city of Tabriz. It later said oil leakage caused that blaze, citing a local official.

Iran has accused Israel in the past of planning attacks using agents inside Iranian territory. In July, Tehran said it had arrested a sabotage team made up of Kurdish militants working for Israel who planned to blow up a "sensitive" defence industry centre in Isfahan.

Several Iranian nuclear sites are located in Isfahan province, including Natanz, centrepiece of Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, which Iran accuses Israel of sabotaging in 2021. There have been a number of explosions and fires around Iranian military, nuclear and industrial sites in recent years.

Talks between Iran and world powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal have stalled since September. Under the pact, abandoned by Washington in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, Tehran agreed to limit nuclear work in return for easing of sanctions.

Iran's clerical rulers have also faced internal turmoil in recent months, with a crackdown on widespread anti-establishment demonstrations spurred by the death in custody of a woman held for allegedly violating its strict Islamic dress code.

(Writing by Parisa HafeziEditing by Peter Graff)

‘We’ll fight until the end’: a journey through the centre of Peru’s uprising

Tom Phillips in Sicuani

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 30 January 2023

Photograph: Michael Bednar/Getty Images

One by one, the rebel campesinos clambered up to the improvised podium they had built atop a 6ft earth barricade, to declare their determination to topple the president of Peru.

“Brothers and sisters, right now our Peru needs us more than ever,” Nilda Mendoza Coronel, a 35-year-old farmer, told hundreds of strikers who had gathered under a ferocious morning sun.

“We’ll fight until the very end, carajo!” Mendoza bellowed through a megaphone. “No one will stop our struggle!”


Another speaker, Aparicio Meléndez, urged the crowd in the Andean town of Sicuani to ignore reports that army troops were en route to extinguish their revolt.

“We’ll stay here until they’ve spent their very last bullet,” the 55-year-old grazier vowed as he looked out on the protest blocking the 940-mile highway through the Peruvian Andes.

A two-word rallying cry had been painted on to the tarmac behind the barricade: “People’s insurgency.”

Residents block roads, in Sicuani-Canchis, Cusco province, Peru. Photograph: Aldair Mejia/EPA

Sicuani is at the heart of the seven-week-old insurrection against Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, and the country’s political establishment that began in early December after its leftist president, Pedro Castillo, was unseated and arrested after being accused of trying to stage a coup.

Strange and violent political winds have been buffeting Latin America and the Caribbean of late, with a far-right uprising in Brazil, political and social meltdown in Haiti, and protests after the arrest of one of Bolivia’s most prominent opposition leaders. But nowhere has the turmoil been more widespread or deadly than in Peru, where at least 58 lives have been lost since Castillo’s dramatic demise.

Huge swaths of South America’s fourth most populous country have been paralysed by protests and roadblocks since Castillo’s downfall, as his supporters – and those outraged at the government’s deadly response – hit the streets to demand Boluarte’s resignation, fresh elections and justice for the dozens allegedly killed by security forces.Interactive

The Guardian travelled through the most affected region, between the Andean cities of Cusco and Juliaca – where 17 people were killed in the worst day of violence – to hear the voices of the mutiny against the Peruvian government.

Related: ‘We feel betrayed’: Peruvians on anti-government protests

The gruelling 210-mile journey took three days and involved navigating scores of checkpoints guarded by campesino protesters, as well as hundreds of barricades made from boulders, tree trunks, dilapidated vehicles, glass and scrap metal.

Beyond the roadblocks, it was also a journey through the profound social inequality, grinding poverty and discrimination that lie behind the explosion of rural anger against what many protesters call the corrupt, self-serving and largely white political establishment in the capital, Lima.

“It’s as if we aren’t humans … It’s as if we are worth nothing,” said Raúl Constantino Samillán Sanga, whose 30-year-old brother was gunned down in Juliaca during clashes between police and protesters. “The whole of the Andes is now saying we’ve had enough – this must change.”

The trip through the centre of Peru’s political earthquake began in Cusco, once the capital of the Inca empire and, today, the South American country’s most important tourist destination, with nearly 3 million visitors each year.

Demonstrators arrive from surrounding communities and gather at Túpac Amaru square in Cusco, Peru. Photograph: Michael Bednar/Getty Images

The tourists have vanished since the uprising began, with Cusco’s airport repeatedly shut down by authorities and the nearby Machu Picchu closed earlier this month.

“Everyone’s on edge and worried and a bit scared too,” said Hannah Jenkinson, a British fashion designer who runs a boutique in Cusco’s now largely deserted historic centre.

A few streets away, hundreds of demonstrators marched towards the plaza where in the 18th century the Indigenous leader Túpac Amaru was quartered and beheaded after rebelling against Spanish rule.

“She’s going down! She’s going down! The murderer’s going down!” the crowds chanted of Boluarte as they surged through Cusco’s cobbled streets waving Peru’s red and white flag.

Twenty-five miles south-east of Cusco, past pre-Incan ruins and eucalyptus-dotted mountains, lay the village of Villahermosa – the location of the first major roadblock along Peru’s Route 3S highway.Interactive

Dozens of villagers, including elderly women clutching traditional huaraca whips woven from alpaca fleece, had blocked the road with tree trunks and tyres to express their fury at decades of government neglect and the recent wave of killings, most of which have been blamed on security forces.

Juvenal Luna Jara, 22, said he had joined the rebellion one week earlier, incensed that so many protesters had been killed in Peru’s long-neglected rural south, which was at the centre of the brutal 12-year war waged by the Shining Path guerrilla group. As he saw it, the majority of lives were lost in such regions because provincianos (country folk) were considered second-class citizens, or worse. “It’s as if they were killing dogs,” he fumed.

Hours earlier, Boluarte had implored protesters to accept a nationwide truce. But there was no hint of compromise in Villahermosa as farmers gathered to vent their rage at the president’s role in the ousting of Castillo, a former union leader who was born into poverty and was propelled into the presidency in 2021 by impoverished rural voters in places such as this.

“If there’s no solution, the struggle will go on,” the villagers roared before the Guardian’s vehicle was allowed to continue its journey.

In village after village along the boulder-strewn highway, the message was the same, as disillusioned and downtrodden farmers gathered by their blockades to offer impassioned speeches about the state of their nation and how their resource-rich mining region had been milked for profits that were never seen.

Dina Quispe wept as she denounced how Peruvian authorities had branded the protesters narco-funded terrucos (terrorists) and met their call for political change with repression and bloodshed.

“We have been humiliated and forgotten,” said the 41-year-old saleswoman from the community of Checyuyoc. “They are killing our brothers with bullets.”

Through her tears, Quispe voiced disgust that she shared a first name withPeru’s first female president. Boluarte has become a lightning rod for far deeper disillusionment with the broken politics of a country that has had seven presidents in the last six years and where a quarter of the population struggle to properly feed themselves.

Quispe said to reporters: “Please, take this voice of protest from deepest and humble Peru [to the world].”

A group of protesters block the Panamericana Sur highway, the most important highway in the country. Photograph: Aldair Mejia/EPA

A few miles away in Sicuani, a town now almost completely cut off from the outside world by the roadblocks, hundreds of Quechua women wearing sombreros, pollera skirts and dazzling quilts were on the march.

“We are fighting for our future and the future of our children and our grandchildren,” said Roxana Chahuanco, 40, as locals prepared to debate their next move after the government announced it would deploy troops to clear the roads.

There, Mendoza Coronel evoked the Indigenous martyrs Túpac Amaru and his wife, Micaela Bastidas, as she urged locals to intensify their peasant rebellion against the “corrupt” Lima elites. “They look down on us because we are the children of campesinos and for being men of the fields,” she said.

At the next village, a cow’s skull had been placed on a pole above a barricade fashioned from two heaps of rubble and earth. “It’s Dina,” joked one of the women policing the checkpoint.

From Sicuani, the highway climbed even higher into the Andes towards the spectacular 4,300-metre border with the department of Puno, where Aymara Indigenous communities are also in revolt against the new government.

Boluarte further infuriated the region’s inhabitants last week when she told foreign journalists “Puno isn’t Peru” – a declaration the president subsequently claimed had been misunderstood.

“We are Peruvians,” said one woman guarding a roadblock outside the town of Ayaviri. “It was in Puno that the Inca empire was born.”

Aerial view of relatives and friends of the victims of clashes with the Peruvian police in the main plaza of the Andean city of Juliaca, southern Peru.. Photograph: Juan Carlos Cisneros/AFP/Getty Images

After Ayaviri, the highway descended towards Puno’s largest city, Juliaca, a dilapidated and edgy mining and smuggling hub, where anti-government protests continue to rage as local families mourn their dead.

Behind a metal door decorated with a black ribbon of mourning sat María Ysabel Samillan Sanga, who lost her younger brother one Monday in early January.

Marco Antonio Samillán Sanga was a medical student who had been working as a volunteer medic in Juliaca when protesters tried to storm the city’s airport and security forces responded with live ammunition.

The 30-year-old student was shot through the heart as he attended to a boy who had inhaled teargas – one of at least 17 people to die in Juliaca that day. “It was a massacre,” said his sister. “There is no other word for it.”

Samillán Sanga wept as she remembered how her brother had worked his way out of extreme poverty and into medical school. He had dreamed of becoming a neurosurgeon and creating health programmes for Puno’s rural poor.

“Right now, I feel like I’m being obliged to live … If it was up to me, I’d die too because there are days I just cannot cope with this pain,” she said, tears coursing down her cheeks.

Samillán Sanga also saw prejudice and discrimination at the root of her brother’s death and Peru’s uprising. “We have feelings. We are humans. We feel. We cry. We have emotions. And we are in pain,” said her brother, Raúl Constantino.

The family said they feared government reprisals for speaking out but would not be silenced. “I hope someone reads this and thinks: how is the Samillán Sanga family?” said María Ysabel. “Because the truth is we have been shattered. My family will never be the same again.”

Related: Violent protests in Peru evoke memories of darkest days of civil war

Peruvians place little trust in political class to solve crisis: experts

Gonzalo RUIZ
Sun, 29 January 2023 


With a political class that is widely mistrusted and seen as weak and out of touch, Peruvians have grown increasingly disillusioned that a solution to weeks of violent unrest is at hand, experts told AFP.

The national Congress is due to debate again on Monday a proposal to bring forward elections slated for April 2024 in a bid to break a political deadlock that has seen 48 deaths over seven weeks of near-daily protests.

Parliament rejected such a move on Saturday, however, and analysts doubt this time will be different.

"This is a toxic Congress. It is rejected by 88 percent of the population, according to polls," said Alonso Cardenas, a public policy specialist in Lima.

Cardenas said Congress has been widely discredited -- branded by one civil association as "the most corrupt" institution in the country.

"Congress, like almost all the political class in Peru, lives with its back to the country. It doesn't understand" the people, said Roger Santa Cruz of the Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University in Lima.

In the early hours of Saturday, following seven hours of debate, lawmakers voted against bringing forward elections from April 2024 to October this year.

That proposal, from opposition politician Hernando Guerra Garcia, came after beleaguered president Dina Boluarte said Friday that she had told her ministers to suggest December as a possible date for a general election.

Protesters have kept pressure on the authorities since December 7, the day ousted president Pedro Castillo was arrested after attempting to dissolve parliament and rule by decree. Demonstrators want immediate elections, Boluarte's resignation and dissolution of Congress.

Castillo's supporters, many of them peasants and Indigenous peoples from the countryside, have blocked roads, causing fuel and food shortages in some areas; forced some airport closures, and clashed with security forces in Lima and other cities.

- Political calculation -

According to Santa Cruz, there is good reason for many legislators to reject snap elections, particularly rivals to Guerra Garcia's Popular Force party, led by Keiko Fujimori, who narrowly lost the 2021 election to Castillo.

"Popular Force has bases all over the country. It is better equipped to run a short campaign. Theirs is a political calculation," said Santa Cruz.

In the recent vote, Guerra Garcia's proposal was defeated by Popular Force's own right-wing allies in opposition, Popular Renewal and Advance Country.

Boluarte is from the same left-wing party as Castillo -- she was his vice president before his arrest -- but her support since then has come from the conservative opposition.

Now "the alliance that supports Boluarte is cracking," said Cardenas.

Experts say leftist politicians also deserve some blame for the current crisis by putting factional ambitions ahead of the country's needs.

The left has demanded a referendum on rewriting the constitution as a condition for supporting advanced elections, but that has little support elsewhere.

"The left knows that its proposal will never be supported by the right," said Cardenas, who believes the issue is being used as leverage to negotiate minor benefits.

"These are pretty mediocre reasons" to effectively hold the country hostage, he added.

Congress is fractured into at least 10 political forces, with no strong leaders or dominant personalities, the experts say.

Boluarte's resignation would not end the crisis, Cardenas and Santa Cruz said, as there is no experienced, unifying figure to replace her.

- Years of turmoil -

Peru is no stranger to political instability. Since 2018, it has been led by no fewer than six presidents who span the political spectrum.

Adding fuel to an unstable fire is a legislature that, experts say, seems more focused on squabbling than problem-solving.

Castillo, for his part, found himself in Congress's crosshairs almost from the day he took over.

Even if elections are now advanced to this year, political scientists say they have little faith that a stable future will follow.

"The political solution would have to come from political reform," said Cardenas, adding that change would have to come from the same politicians who are so widely mistrusted today.

str/pb/dga/bc/bbk/st

CAQ PEAU FINE

Quebec government wants Amira Elghawaby to resign as federal representative to combat Islamophobia, just days into her new job

Mon, January 30, 2023 

Amira Elghawaby is a human rights advocate and was just appointed as the representative to combat Islamophobia. (CBC News) (Simon Gohier/CBC - image credit)

The Quebec government is calling on the federal government to withdraw its support of Amira Elghawaby, the new representative to combat Islamophobia, only four days after she was first appointed.

This comes a day after her attendance at the sixth commemoration of the deadly mosque attack in Quebec City, honouring the six men who were killed in 2017 when a gunman opened fire just before 8 p.m. in the Islamic Cultural Centre in the Sainte-Foy neighbourhood.

Since her appointment on Thursday, the journalist and human rights activist has been pressured to clarify her position on Quebec's secularism law.

In 2019 she wrote a column for the Ottawa Citizen where she denounced the "anti-muslim sentiment" that surrounded the adoption of Bill 21 — which bans public servants from wearing religious symbols such as hijabs.

Courtesy of Quebec City

Jean-François Roberge, CAQ minister responsible for the French language, said Eghawaby has not properly apologized for her comments about Quebec. She "seems to be overcome by an anti-Quebec sentiment," said Roberge.

"All she did was try to justify her hateful comments. That doesn't fly. She must resign and if she doesn't, the government must remove her immediately."

In an interview with CBC's Quebec AM, Elghawaby said she has nothing to apologize for.

"The article in question actually provides the context in it," said Elghawaby.

"It was never meant to suggest that my opinion is that the majority of Quebeckers are Islamophobic. I don't believe so. I was merely analyzing the polling numbers … [an] opinion piece is meant to cause people to think, to talk, to reflect."

WATCH | NDP leader says it's time to get to work fighting Islamophobia:

Elghawaby was present for the evening ceremony at the mosque alongside Quebec City Mayor Bruno Marchand, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Federal Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and the minister of housing and diversity and inclusion, Ahmed Hussen.

Premier François Legault did not attend.

Boufeldja Benabdallah, co-founder and former president of the mosque, thanked politicians for their presence while pointing to the premier's absence at a ceremony which included reflections on the problem of Islamophobia.

"We have just one thing to ask of you," said Benabdallah, referring to Genevieve Guilbault, CAQ deputy premier. "Talk to Mr. Francois Legault and tell him: 'You have to come.'"

Rachel Watts/CBC

Guilbault took to the podium and said Legault wished he could be there.

On Monday, Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet requested an "urgent meeting" with Elghawaby, saying her actions were "more divisive than unifying."

The Parti Québécois is not calling for Elghawaby's resignation, but Joël Arseneau, the Parti Québécois transportation critic, says they are questioning Trudeau's decision.

"She's made several declarations showing prejudice against Quebec society and we don't think it's a good start for someone who wants to bring people together," said Arseneau.

Jamie Lee Curtis says 'people lost their minds' when she posed topless at age 50

Erin Donnelly
Sun, January 29, 2023 

Jamie Lee Curtis says her 2008 topless cover caused a stir. 

(Photo: REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni)

On Saturday night, actress Jamie Lee Curtis was honored with the Career Achievement Award from AARP The Magazine. But it's not the first time the publication — which shines a spotlight on people aged 50 and older — has shown the star some love.

In an Instagram post shared ahead of the magazine's annual Movies for Grownups Awards, Curtis, 64, reflected on appearing topless on the cover of its May/June 2008 issue. Then 50, the Halloween star posed naked in a swimming pool for the Andrew Eccles-lensed shoot, causing quite a stir.

"People lost their MINDS that I was TOPLESS!" Curtis, who just scored for her first Oscar nomination for her supporting turn in Everything Everywhere All at Once, shared. "A perfect statement about how weird people are about older people having any sexuality whatsoever."



Curtis's post drew support from the likes of Naomi Watts and her former Freaky Friday co-star, Lindsay Lohan. Supermodel Paulina Porizkova, no stranger to provocative photo shoots that challenge conventional thinking about aging, commented, "Yup. Apparently, older women should give that up."

Curtis has been unapologetic about aging on her own terms. In the 2008 issue, the True Lies star spoke about letting her hair — now silver, nearly 15 years later — go gray and learning to love the mature version of herself.

"I want to be older," she told the magazine. "I actually think there's an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older. I feel way better now than I did when I was 20. I'm stronger, I'm smarter in every way, I'm so much less crazy than I was then."

In more recent years, the Trading Places actress has spoken out about society's obsession with plastic surgery — which she has admitted trying and hating — and using filters to look younger.

"I've also been an advocate for not f***ing with your face," she said during an appearance on the U.K. talk show Lorraine in 2021. "And the term 'anti-aging.' What? What are you talking about? We're all going to f****ing age. We’re all gonna die. Why do you want to look 17 when you're 70? I want to look 70 when I'm 70!"

Last year Curtis shared that she is focusing more on acceptance and less on vanity.

"When I brush my teeth, of course, I look in the mirror," she said during a talk at the Radically Reframing Aging Summit. "When I pluck my eyebrows, of course, I look in a mirror. But when I get out of a shower, I just don't stare at my now 63-year-old body in the mirror. I'm not denying what I look like, of course I've seen what I look like. I am trying to live in acceptance. If I look in the mirror, it's harder for me to be in acceptance. I’m more critical. Whereas, if I just don't look, I'm not so worried about it."

Speaking at the Movies for Grownups Awards this weekend, Curtis expressed her appreciation for aging.

"At the end of the day, what I love most about grownups is that we are more alike than different — grownups suit up and show up each day, regardless of the way our cards were dealt," she said in her acceptance speech. "It's the beauty of grownups and I'm honored to be considered one because it's a badge of honor that I wear proudly on my face, on my body, in my mind and in my soul."

Michelle Yeoh opens up about being a film star at 60: 'The older you get, they see you by your age'

Erin Donnelly
January 8, 2023

Michelle Yeoh opens up about aging, infertility and her morning routine. 

(Photo: REUTERS/David Swanson)

Life at 60 is pretty good for Michelle Yeoh, who is generating Oscar buzz with her lead role in Everything Everywhere All at Once. ("Your loss, bro," she shot back when former co-star Jackie Chan texted to say that he'd been offered the plum part, originally intended for a man, first.)

But in a new interview with Seth Doane for CBS Sunday Morning, the Malaysian actress admitted that she was surprised to be cast "at this point in my career."

"The older you get, they see you by your age rather than see you by your capability," the martial arts-trained star explained.

Yeoh choked up when she recalled the "joyful" validation of the film's writers and directors, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (a.k.a. "the Daniels"), trusting her with a role that was not only physically demanding but also required the ability to navigate both comedic and dramatic moments.

The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actress grew emotional as she spoke to Doane about how meaningful it is "when someone gives you the opportunity to show what you're capable of."

That validation was unexpected for Yeoh, given her fears about seeing her "spectacular career" grind to a stop with every birthday.

"You don't want it to just slow down or end because you have gotten to a certain age," she said. "And you start getting scripts where the guy, the hero, is still in his 50s, 60s ... some even more. And they get to go on the adventure with your daughter. And then you go, like, 'No, c'mon guys, give me a chance.' Because I feel that I am still able to do all that."

Yeoh also opened up about stepping back from the film business after getting married to producer Dickson Poon in 1988, with the intention of devoting herself to motherhood. But when she learned that she "couldn't have kids," the Tomorrow Never Dies star left the marriage, explaining, "I knew that this was a family who needed kids." All the same, making that choice was "devastating."

"It is life," she told Doane. "Now I have godchildren — beautiful godchildren. They are like my extended family."

She's also found love with French motor racing executive Jean Todt, her romantic partner since 2004.

And while Yeoh's days these days are a whirlwind of red carpets and award shows, they all start the same: with stretches in bed and a meditation apology of sorts to the body she's about to use in another daring stunt.

"Please forgive me. I'm sorry. Thank you. I love you," Yeoh tells herself in an on-camera demonstration of her morning routine. "This body takes a lot of bumps and bruises, so that is my way of saying thank you to it."

HEALTHCARE STAFFING SHORTAGES PLAGUE NORTH AMERICA

Staffing shortage forces postponement of 150 elective surgeries at Whitehorse hospital

Mon, January 30, 2023 

The Whitehorse General Hospital in winter. About 150 elective surgeries have been cancelled in February and March. (Paul Tukker/CBC - image credit)

Dozens of Yukoners preparing for surgery at Whitehorse General Hospital have had their plans delayed.

The Yukon Hospital Corporation announced last week it's postponing roughly 150 elective surgeries due to staff shortages. Those surgeries were scheduled between Feb. 13 and March 31.

James Low, the corporation's director of medical staff services, said normally the hospital has 13 staffers in the operating room. Right now, only half the staff needed are available.

"Unfortunately we're in this environment where we're heavily reliant on agency or travel staff," Low said.

The cancellations represent about one third of the surgeries that normally would happen at the hospital in the same time frame.

"We're not reducing or deferring everything in this period," Low said. "We're just bringing the level down to a place where we have adequate staffing to support that service."

Low said the cancellations will not affect emergency or urgent care, and that the cancellations are a direct result of medical staff shortages being felt across Canada.

"Hospitals and health providers across the country are sort of experiencing the same challenges with respect to health human resources and the Yukon unfortunately is no different."

This is not the first time elective surgeries have been delayed at the hospital. Low first told CBC News last June that some non-urgent surgeries were being delayed.

Low said the corporation has upped its recruiting tactics — for example, turning to social media to lure professionals North.

He said it's also working with Yukon University to find longer term solutions. One idea is to create a "bridging program" for licensed practical nurses so they can become registered nurses.

As for patients affected, their surgeries have been delayed but not scrapped.

Low said most are expected to be rebooked in April or May.