FEMICIDE & MISOGYNIST REGIME OF ALMO

Serial killer case shows weakness of Mexico investigations

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A suspected serial killer in Mexico was only caught after years of alleged crimes because of the identity of the final dismembered victim: the wife of a police commander.

Without proper funding, training or professionalism, prosecutors in Mexico have routinely failed to stop killers until the bodies pile up so high they are almost unavoidable. In 2018, a serial killer in Mexico City was caught only after he was found pushing a dismembered body down the street in a baby carriage.

A suspect authorities have identified only as “Andrés” is accused of killing and dismembering a 34-year-old woman named Reyna, who ran a small cellphone shop, on May 14. Authorities can't reveal the full names of the suspect and victims under Mexican law.

Investigators found women's shoes, makeup and lists of names at the home of the 72-year-old former butcher, and thousands of pieces of bones buried under the floor at the home in the working class Mexico City suburb of Atizapan.

They also found several IDs belonging to women who disappeared as long as five years ago, and Reyna's carefully sectioned fileted body parts, a bloody hacksaw and a knife on a basement table.

Sergio Baltazar, the lawyer for the family of victim, says that Reyna's husband, Bruno, had the same frustrating experience as most Mexicans when he went to prosecutors' offices after his wife went missing.

“The detectives really let him down,” said Baltazar. “They didn't want to help him.”

But as a police commander, Bruno had means at his disposal that most Mexicans don't. With prosecutors unwilling to help, he accessed police surveillance cameras.

“Bruno did a lot of the investigative work on his own,” Baltazar said.

Reyna had been scheduled to take Andrés, a family friend, with her on a semiweekly trip to a downtown wholesale market to get supplies for her shop.

Andrés, who the family called “El Viejo,” “The Old Man,” was considered kind of a charity case by the couple and their children. They invited him into their house and fed him. He was to help Reyna carry supplies back from the market.

When Reyna failed to return home, Bruno, the husband, called Andres, who said he hadn't seen her, and that she had never shown up for the shopping trip.

But police cameras showed Reyna entering the street where Andrés lived, and never exiting.

Two days later, growing increasingly worried, Bruno showed up at Andrés' house with Reyna's brother. He had police stationed near by.

The old man got nervous, but allowed Bruno into the house, telling him he wouldn't find anything. And at first he didn't.

But then Bruno dialed Reyna's cell phone number, and heard it ringing below, in what turned out to be a makeshift basement with a narrow entrance. He discovered what remained of the body.

Andrés tried to run, but the waiting police swooped in.

Baltazar said Andrés initially admitted to some murders, but then clammed up.

“He says there are five that he remembers, but then when they showed him the notebooks (with lists of names) he says he doesn't remember,” Baltazar said. But “he does say he made recordings” of the killings.

While prosecutors have not ventured a guess on the number of victims, the ID cards, the names found in handwritten notations at the house and bone fragments suggest it may reach 15 or more.

As the lawyer for the victim's family, Baltazar wants prosecutors to investigate possible accomplices, given the suspect's age and physical condition. “It is hard to believe he had the strength to do this himself. There were probably accomplices.”

There's not much chance of that; in the few cases where they catch a culprit, prosecutors in Mexico seem happy to hang as many deaths on a single suspect as they can. For victims' activists like María de la Luz Estrada, who heads the National Observatory on Women's Killings, it seems like investigators sometimes favor lone serial killer theories as an easy way out of investigating more.

“Talking about serial killers in the context of so much impunity worries me, because what we have seen is that they don't investigate,” Estrada said.

But if prosecutors are slow, inmates at an overcrowded prison almost settled the matter; Andrés had to be transferred to another prison this week after inmates at the first facility tried to kill him.

___

AP Writer Maria Verza contributed to this report

Mark Stevenson , The Associated Press

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M MI$OGYNY
Bill Gates’ money manager created ‘culture of fear’ for staff, says report

Guardian staff 33 mins ago


The man responsible for managing the vast majority of billionaire Bill Gates’ fortune has been the subject of claims including racist remarks, showing nude pictures of women to his staff and making sexist comments, the New York Times has reported.

In an extensive investigation the newspaper said that Michael Larson, who runs Cascade Investments, had created a “culture of fear” where the employee abuses had occurred. Cascade’s sole function is to manage the fortune of Gates and Melinda French Gates, who have turned their wealth into a powerhouse of global philanthropy but are now divorcing.

Related: When rich people divorce: what does the future hold for Bill and Melinda Gates?

French Gates and Gates have said they are continuing their work at the foundation. “We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives,” French Gates tweeted on 3 May.

Her divorce petition said the couple’s marriage was “irretrievably broken”, but also indicated that the pair had inked a “separation contract” that ironed out several potential points of contention. But the couple were not able to avoid feverish press scrutiny, including on Gates’ behavior and his links to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein

.

© Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images Michael Larson in July 2008.

The newspaper, which said it had interviewed numerous former Cascade employees, reported that Larson had “judged female employees on their attractiveness, showed colleagues nude photos of women on the internet and on several occasions made sexually inappropriate comments. He made a racist remark to a Black employee.”

It added: “He bullied others. When an employee said she was leaving Cascade, Mr Larson retaliated by trying to hurt the stock price of the company she planned to join.”

In a statement to the newspaper, a spokesman for Cascade said: “During his tenure, Mr Larson has managed over 380 people, and there have been fewer than five complaints related to him in total … Any complaint was investigated and treated seriously and fully examined, and none merited Mr. Larson’s dismissal.”

Cascade is also referred to as Bill and Melinda Gates Investments.

Larson told the Times: “Calling BMGI a toxic work environment is unfair to the 160 professionals who make up our team and our culture.”

Courtney Wade, a spokeswoman for French Gates, said: “Melinda unequivocally condemns disrespectful and inappropriate conduct in the workplace. She was unaware of most of these allegations given her lack of ownership of and control over BMGI.”

'Your Social Media Apps are Not Listening to You': Tech Worker Explains Data Privacy in Viral Twitter Thread
Sara Santora 

NEWSWEEK

27/5/2021

Privacy tech worker Robert G. Reeve took to Twitter on Tuesday to share that he'd been served an ad for a brand of toothpaste his mother uses. Coincidence? Definitely not.

© Chesnot / Contributor/Getty Social Media Apps

Reeve had just returned from a weeklong stay at her home. But before people could use this as yet another example of phones listening in on conversations, Reeve put together a now-viral Twitter thread explaining how digital ads really work.

"I'm back from a week at my mom's house and now I'm getting ads for her toothpaste brand, the brand I've been putting in my mouth for a week," he tweeted. "We never talked about this brand or googled it or anything like that. As a privacy tech worker, let me explain why this is happening."

I'm back from a week at my mom's house and now I'm getting ads for her toothpaste brand, the brand I've been putting in my mouth for a week. We never talked about this brand or googled it or anything like that.

As a privacy tech worker, let me explain why this is happening. 🧵— Robert G. Reeve (@RobertGReeve) May 25, 2021

He explained that the idea of social media apps listening to private conversations is a "conspiracy theory." The fact is, he says, social media apps, internet browsers and cellular devices don't have to listen because the data freely handed to them on a minute-by-minute basis is "way cheaper and way more powerful."

"Your apps collect a ton of data from your phone," he said. "Your unique device ID. Your location. Your demographics. Weknowdis [sic]."

Purchases, browser history, etc., are all data that is bought and sold by aggregators. And because people tend to use the same email and phone number for their social media accounts as they do for online retailers, rewards programs, etc., aggregators can match an individual's purchases to their social accounts to create a more holistic profile of the individual. However, it becomes much more complex, and perhaps much scarier, than that.

"If my phone is regularly in the same GPS location as another phone, they take note of that," he said. "They start reconstructing the web of people I'm in regular contact with. The advertisers can cross-reference my interests and browsing history and purchase history to those around me. It starts showing ME different ads based on the people AROUND me."

The advertisers can cross-reference my interests and browsing history and purchase history to those around me. It starts showing ME different ads based on the people AROUND me.
Family. Friends. Coworkers.— Robert G. Reeve (@RobertGReeve) May 25, 2021

He explained that even though this aggregation can sometimes lead to an individual receiving an ad he or she doesn't want, the ad still pertains to someone in that individual's circle. This leads to a conversation about a product, which can still drive conversion.

"It never needed to listen to me for this," Reeve said. "It's just comparing aggregated metadata."

Though this research is readily available, Reeve said in the thread that people don't want to read it.

"We have decided our privacy just isn't worth it. It's a losing battle. We've already given away too much of ourselves," he said.

"So. They know my mom's toothpaste. They know I was at my mom's. They know my Twitter. Now I get Twitter ads for mom's toothpaste. Your data isn't just about you. It's about how it can be used against every person you know, and people you don't. To shape behavior unconsciously."


So. They know my mom's toothpaste. They know I was at my mom's. They know my Twitter. Now I get Twitter ads for mom's toothpaste.

Your data isn't just about you. It's about how it can be used against every person you know, and people you don't. To shape behavior unconsciously.— Robert G. Reeve (@RobertGReeve) May 25, 2021



He then encouraged his followers to block every app's ads.

People had mixed reactions to the breakdown Reeve provided. Some people thought the thread was articulate and worth sharing.

"Finally! An excellent thread explaining why your phone isn't listening to you, but sometimes feels like it is," said author and journalist Jamie Bartlett.

Finally! An excellent thread explaining why your phone isn’t listening to you, but sometimes feels like it is. https://t.co/VVZMUcTZsL— Jamie Bartlett (@JamieJBartlett) May 26, 2021

Said another Twitter user: "Social media is free for the users because we aren't their customers, we are the product."


Social media is free for the users because we aren't their customers. We are ✨ the product ✨ https://t.co/liF8IAUhKt— heriya manawari (@sheriyazaki) May 26, 2021

Others, however, still had their doubts.

"I just don't buy that it's always a coincidence," one user replied. "I mentioned a certain product out loud one day and got ads for that product the next day. Even if it's just the precision of some algorithm, it's still weird."

Someone commented back: "You see hundreds if not thousands of ads a day and don't think anything of it. You just happen to notice the ones that feel coincidental because our brains are designed for pattern recognition. Hitting [the] right people at the right time is what the ad tech industry is all about."

You see hundreds if not thousands of ads a day and don't think anything of it. You just happen to notice the ones that feel coincidental because our brains are designed for pattern recognition. Hitting right people at the right time is what the ad tech industry is all about.— Joshua Belhumeur (@goodhumeurman) May 26, 2021

Another skeptical tweeter said: "Alright, if phones don't listen in, explain this one to me: I never talk about any sort of family/mental health issues anywhere online. One day, I had a rather long conversation with my sister about these things. Not long after, EVERY SINGLE ad on insta [sic] was about remote therapy."

Data privacy and data aggregation are complex issues that involve a lot of moving pieces. So, don't be shocked to encounter a toothpaste ad after reading this article. For more detailed information, read the full thread.

Diet Culture Is Deadly — & Profitable. Elle Fanning Wants To Talk About It

Mirel Zaman 

Journalist Jessica Wapner was researching body heat when she first came across the mention of 2,4-dinitrophenol, known as DNP. The chemical had been linked to several deaths during World War I; it changes how cells expel energy, spikes body temperature, and, essentially, cooks people from the inside out. Wapner continued looking into the drug, and what she learned was as fascinating to her as it was disturbing. DNP’s toxicity had been well-established for a century, and yet it was sold online, and a small but significant number of young people continued to experiment with — and die from — it.

 

© Provided by Refinery29 Mandatory Credit: Photo by David Buchan/Variety/Shutterstock (10529175p) Elle Fanning ‘The Great’ TV Show, HULU, TCA Winter Press Tour, Panels, Los Angeles, USA – 17 Jan 2020

Why, then, would anyone take DNP? Before killing people, the drug could help them lose weight.

Wapner wrote an article about DNP for The Daily Beast, entitled “The Deadly Internet Diet Drug That Cooks People Alive.” Soon after, Elle Fanning was sent the article. The actor had recently launched her production company, Lewellen Pictures, alongside her sister Dakota. The pair wanted to experiment with podcasts in addition to movies and TV projects, and Wapner’s article seemed like a perfect fit.

“It just struck me. It’s also so well-written,” Fanning tells Refinery29. “So I came on, and Jessica and I and everyone involved had such amazing talks — we all kind of opened up about all of our struggles that we have with body image.” Because ultimately, the podcast, called One Click (as in: one click on the internet can change your life forever), has as much to do with society’s uneasy relationship to weight and unhealthy fixation on weight loss as it does with DNP. “Obviously there are so many drugs like this out there that are so harmful. People were preying on other people’s insecurities — that’s really what’s happening here,” Fanning says. “The internet or whoever wants to keep us insecure and hating ourselves so they can profit off of it. And I think that was such a chilling idea.”

To create the podcast, Wapner expanded her original article, which she now calls “an overture,” by re-investigating DNP’s past and present. “We’ve done so much more investigating about how DNP entered the world in the first place — and repeatedly over time. Like, how did a banned substance come back again? Those stories have been very surprising and I feel very excited about the reporting that we did to that end,” Wapner says.

Fanning narrates each episode. “It’s been really thrilling,” the actor says. “Even though it’s investigative, there’s a mystery to it — but then also we’re dealing with real people. This is really happening. So it has to be handled with care.” At the bottom of the first episode, Fanning notes that some listeners may be curious and compelled the drug themselves, and implores them not to. After hearing about how DNP kills people — painfully and quickly — it’s almost inconceivable that anyone would be tempted by it, until you realize that many of the young people who took the drug knew that an overdose would be fatal; the promise of easy weight loss still won out.

That deadly desire to lose weight will be explored in depth in future episodes. “There’s a lot to do with body image, and understanding why certain thought patterns can have such a grip on us,” Wapner says. “You think, ‘Well, gosh, I’m a smart, thoughtful, capable, human being. Why do I fall prey to this? Why do I still feel this way about my body?’” she says. “We have a lot of voices coming up in upcoming episodes that really blow the doors wide open on the history of these kinds of thought patterns and why you can’t just say everyone should feel good about their bodies, you know? Because then it’s like, ‘Well, what’s wrong with you for not feeling that way?’”

© Provided by Refinery29

“I compare myself to others all the time,” Fanning adds. “I compare my body to others… Especially growing up in the public eye, when you’re looking at yourself in photos and going through puberty and your hips are widening, and you’re like, God, my thighs are bigger than this person’s thighs. It can be so all-consuming, you know? You can go down that rabbit hole of just constantly harping on what you’re not.” She points out that the internet perpetuates these issues in more ways than one. Our social media feeds show us image after edited image of unattainable bodies, priming us to be vulnerable when a targeted ad pops up to sell us a quick-fix weight loss product — like DNP.

But Fanning says that one of the most surprising things she’s learned while working on this project is how difficult it is to catch the people responsible for illegally selling DNP. “People can’t wrap their head around how hard it is to catch the people that are doing this. It’s frustrating because you can’t necessarily lead it back to just one person; it’s become a global situation,” Fanning says.

Wapner says there are many parts to the story they’re telling on the One Click podcast: why it’s so hard to stop the sale of DNP in particular; the role the internet plays in the sale of dangerous products like this; and the factors that can warp a person’s body image and make them turn to a deadly drug. The podcast does not shy away from the heaviness of the subject matter; early in the first episode, one family member of a person who died after taking DNP breaks down crying, and asks to stop recording. But, that only confirms how important the message behind One Click is, and how it goes beyond the story of this specific diet drug. “If it’s not DNP, it would be something else,” Wapner says. “So what brings people to it in the first place?”

The first two episodes of One Click, Season One are available on Apple Podcasts, Audacy, Spotify and everywhere podcasts are available. New episodes of the eight-episode season will be available every Thursday.

Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?

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CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M IS CORRUPTION

U.S. charges ex-Austrian bank CEO in Odebrecht bribery scheme

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors said the former chief executive of an Austrian bank was arrested on Tuesday and charged with involvement in a long-running bribery and money-laundering conspiracy involving the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht SA.

© Reuters/AMANDA PEROBELLI The corporate logo of the Odebrecht SA construction conglomerate is pictured at its headquarters in Sao Paulo

Peter Weinzierl and co-defendant Alexander Waldstein, both of Austria, were accused of conspiring from 2006 to 2016 with Odebrecht and others to launder money in a scheme involving the use of slush funds to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to public officials.

Weinzierl is a former chief executive of Meinl Bank, later renamed Anglo Austrian AAB Bank, and a deputy chairman at the House of Julius Meinl, according to Meinl's website.

The U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, New York said Weinzierl was arrested in the United Kingdom pursuant to a U.S. request while Waldstein, an officer at Weinzierl's bank, remained at large. Both were also directors at an affiliated bank in Antigua, the office said.

Lawyers for both defendants could not immediately be located. Meinl did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside U.S. business hours.

Prosecutors said the defendants and their co-conspirators used fraudulent transactions and sham agreements to move more than $170 million from New York bank accounts through their bank, and to offshore accounts secretly controlled by Odebrecht.

According to prosecutors, some suspect payments went to government officials in Brazil, Mexico and Panama, and Odebrecht evaded more than $100 million of Brazilian taxes by improperly deducting fraudulent payments from reported profits.

Both defendants were charged in an indictment unsealed on Tuesday with two money laundering counts and one conspiracy count, while Weinzierl was also charged with a money laundering spending offense.

In December 2016, Odebrecht and its parent Braskem SA, Brazil's largest petrochemicals company, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $3.5 billion to settle bribery-related charges by U.S., Brazilian and Swiss regulators.

Odebrecht changed its name in December to Novonor SA.

The case is U.S. v Weinzierl et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 20-cr-00383.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Stephen Coates)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M COUP MEMBER
Ex-official in Bolivia charged for bribes in tear gas deal


MIAMI (AP) — Bolivia's former interior minister has has been arrested in the U.S. for allegedly taking part of $602,000 in kickbacks from Florida-based businessmen accused of selling tear gas at inflated prices to the conservative government of former interim President Jeanine Áñez.

Arturo Murillo was charged with a single count of conspiring to commit money laundering, according to a Department of Justice statement on Wednesday.

The Associated Press previously reported that Murillo's former chief of staff had been arrested as part of the investigation along with the owner of a Florida-based supplier of police and military equipment and his father, who press accounts indicate was charged two decades ago in Bolivia with weapons smuggling.

Murillo, 57, was one of the most outspoken voices in the Áñez government that took power in November 2019 after President Evo Morales stepped down amid violent protests disputing his reelection to a fourth straight term.

He has a long history of far-right provocation. As a congressman, he supported a ban on abortion by once telling women that they should commit suicide by jumping from a five-story building if they wanted to terminate a pregnancy.

As interior minister, he referred to opponents as “narco-terrorists,” brought charges against Morales for sedition and led the deadly police response against protesters that drew rebuke from international human rights groups. He also bragged about meeting with the CIA when he traveled to Washington to meet with senior officials in the Trump administration who initially viewed Áñez's ascent as an opportunity to improve bilateral relations that turned hostile under Morales.

But the crackdown on Bolivia’s left backfired, and almost a year later, Morales’ ally, Luis Arce, was elected and proceeded to lock up Áñez and other officials tied to her short-lived rule.

On Wednesday, his successor as Interior Minister, Eduardo del Castillo, said the Arce government would ask the U.S. to extradite Murillo and Sergio Méndez, his former chief of staff, so they could face justice at home. Bolivian authorities also arrested a relative of Murillo as he was withdrawing money and valuable from a security deposit box at a bank in the city of Cochabamba held in Murillo's name, according to press reports.

“Murillo became the key force behind the de facto govt’s repression,” said Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Bolivia-based Andean Information Network. “His arrest is an important message that rampant corruption and abuse cannot be tolerated by the international community.”

According to investigators, Murillo, Méndez and another unnamed co-conspirator in the Defense Ministry helped a Florida-based company obtain a $5.6 million contract to supply tear gas and non-lethal equipment to the Áñez government.

The company was allegedly owned by Bryan Berkman, a dual Bolivian-American national who purchased the tear gas in Brazil for a much-smaller sum of $3.3 million, according to an affidavit from a Department of Homeland Security agent that accompanies the complaint. Part of the profits allegedly were used to coordinate the bribe payments, some of which were to be paid from a delivery of $700,000 in cash to Bolivia.

While the American company is not named in the complaint, Berkman is the chief executive of Taramac-based Bravo Tactical Solutions, according to Florida’s corporate registry. His father, Luis Berkman, who was also arrested and charged, runs a separate Tamarac-based company called International Defense Group.

Bolivian press reports indicate that the older Berkman was arrested on weapons trafficking charges in 2001, accused of heading a criminal ring that tried to smuggle military assault weapons to Paraguay. He was declared a fugitive in 2013 without having been found guilty, according to a Bolivian judicial filing.

According to the complaint, evidence compiled from text messages, emails and bank records show that Méndez was asked by a co-conspirator to write a letter to the Brazilian tear gas manufacturer insisting that Bolivia’s government would only purchase its products via the Berkman-owned company.

On Jan. 13, 2020, Bolivia's Central Bank attempted to wire transfer $5.6 million to a U.S. account belonging to the Berkman-owned company. On the same day, Murillo met Bryan Berkman in Miami and opened a bank account with a $10,000 deposit.

However, the wire transfer from Bolivia's government was rejected, prompting Méndez to send an email from his government account to the U.S. bank to try and clear the transaction.

Once blocked, the alleged co-conspirators tried a few weeks later with a different U.S. bank.

“Help me with the payment please,” the elder Berkman wrote in a text message to Murillo, who responded “We're all going to meet at the Ministry of Economy at 7:30 tomorrow and the go-ahead will be given.”

An attorney for Murillo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

__

AP Writer Paola Flores contributed to this report from La Paz, Bolivia.

Follow Goodman on Twitter: @APJoshGoodman

Joshua Goodman, The Associated Press

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M CLIMATE DENIAL
Groups accuse Tennessee Valley Authority of misusing funds

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Four environmental organizations on Wednesday asked the Tennessee Valley Authority's internal watchdog to investigate whether the nation's largest public utility misused ratepayer money for lobbying and litigation that fought federal environmental regulations

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press  TVA CEO Jeff Lyash 

The request to the TVA's Office of Inspector General comes after the Energy and Policy Institute, an activist group, released more than 500 pages of records it obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents prove TVA's dues to the now-disbanded Utility Air Regulatory Group were used for unauthorized activities, the group said. They point to expense reports showing most of UARG's money went to a law firm. In lawsuits, the UARG frequently argued against tighter air pollution and climate regulations.

TVA CEO Jeff Lyash told Congress in a 2019 letter that the utility had contributed $7.3 million to the Utility Air Regulatory Group since 2001. Lyash said the funds were not used to lobby or sue on behalf of TVA, which would require explicit board approval. Instead, TVA used its membership in the regulatory group "to help understand, plan for, and comply with highly technical and complex regulations developed" under the Clean Air Act, Lyash wrote.

The environmental groups seeking a review of the relationship point to documents from the UARG’s Nonattainment Committee, which was co-chaired by Don Houston, a TVA senior manager. In that role, he approved billing hours and invoices from Hunton Andrews Kurth, a Washington, D.C., law firm that worked for the group, documents show.

Expense reports for the years 2015 through July 2018 show the committee spent nearly $3.5 million on legal fees and expenses and only about $48,000 on technical expenses. While TVA may not have put its name on lobbying efforts and lawsuits, it was paying for them, the environmental groups allege.

TVA did not directly respond to the new allegations but said in a written statement that “contacting the OIG or any other TVA oversight groups is an appropriate avenue for any member of the public to raise potential concerns.”

The statement added: “Although TVA supported the decision to disband the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG) in May 2019, our customers have directly benefited from the research and technical expertise gained from UARG participation, including significantly reduced air emissions and cleaner energy.”

A spokesperson for the inspector general's office, Terri Beatty, declined to comment on the letter, which also calls for a review of any TVA involvement in other trade groups, including the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, the Utility Water Act Group, the Clean Air Act Monitoring Service and the Climate Legal Group.

TVA should not be “suing the federal government over existing laws and regulations, especially when they are part of the federal government,” said Daniel Tait, chief operating officer of Energy Alabama, one of the nonprofits requesting the review. “Even if they were a private utility, these are bedrock environmental regulations that protect public health.”

The environmental groups — which also include the Center for Biological Diversity, Appalachian Voices and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy — sent a similar request to the inspector general's office in 2019. Tait said they do not know whether the watchdog agency has acted on their previous request, but with the new request they have more evidence of problems they merely suspected two years ago.

The Tennessee Valley Authority provides power to nearly 10 million people in parts of seven Southern states and is the country’s third largest electricity generator.

Travis Loller, The Associated Press

EU guidelines target tech giants over monetising disinformation

© Reuters/Dado Ruvic FILE PHOTO: Picture illustration

 of 3D-printed Facebook logo in front of EU logo

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -New stricter European Union guidelines will push Facebook, Google and other big tech companies to commit not to make money from advertising linked to disinformation.

The European Commission said on Wednesday that its strengthened non-binding guidelines, which confirmed a May 19 Reuters report, set out a robust monitoring framework and clear performance indicators for firms to comply with.

Concerns about the impact of disinformation have intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic and after claims about election fraud in the United States, with some critics pointing to the role of social media and tech giants in spreading it

"Disinformation cannot remain a source of revenue. We need to see stronger commitments by online platforms, the entire advertising ecosystem and networks of fact-checkers," EU industry chief Thierry Breton said in a statement.

Vera Jourova, Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency, said the issue was urgent because of the fast evolving threats posed by disinformation.

"We need online platforms and other players to address the systemic risks of their services and algorithmic amplification, stop policing themselves alone and stop allowing to make money on disinformation, while fully preserving the freedom of speech," she said.

Signatories to the code, which was introduced in 2018, include Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Mozilla, TikTok and some advertising and tech lobbying groups.

"We support the Commission's focus on greater transparency for users and better collaboration both amongst platforms and across the advertising ecosystem," Facebook said.

Twitter said in a statement that it "supports an inclusive approach that takes a wider look at the information ecosystem to address the challenges of disinformation".

The EU executive said it wants ad exchanges, ad-tech providers, brands benefiting from ads and private messaging services to sign up to the code.

It expects signatories to come up with details of how they aim to comply with the updated guidelines by the end of 2021 and to implement them by early next year.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee;Editing by Alexander Smith)

'Dangerous' mystery campaign seeks influencers to discredit Pfizer vaccine
Reuters 

Several French social media sites say they have been approached by a communications agency that offered them money to spread negative publicity about the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, a ploy the health minister described as dangerous and irresponsible.

© Provided by National Post A vial and syringe are seen in front of a displayed Pfizer and Biontech logo in this illustration taken Jan. 11, 2021. 

Leo Grasset, whose DirtyBiology YouTube channel has more than a million subscribers, said on his @dirtybiology Twitter account that he had been offered money to criticize the Pfizer shot.

“I have received a partnership proposal to bust the Pfizer vaccine in video. Huge budget, a client who wants to remain anonymous … if you see videos about this, you will know that it is a set-up,” he tweeted.

He added that the address of London-based agency that had contacted him was a fake.

It was not clear how many people had received such requests, where they originated or why they targeted the Pfizer vaccine, the most commonly administered in France, a country with a tradition of vaccine skepticism. About one-third of the 23 million population has received at least one dose.

Pfizer did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Pfizer and German partner BioNTech last November became the first drug manufacturers to report successful initial data from a large coronavirus vaccine clinical trial.

In April, a European Union report said Russian and Chinese media were systematically seeking to sow mistrust in Western COVID-19 vaccines in their disinformation campaigns aimed at the West.

Canadian firm works with controversial U.S. company to make ‘better’ COVID vaccine, but says Ottawa not interested

Pfizer starts testing pneumococcal shot along with third dose of COVID-19 vaccine

One of the operators of “Et ca se dit medecin” (And They Call Themselves Doctors), which has about 30,000 followers on Twitter and 90,000 on Instagram, also said on RMC TV he had been offered money to discredit the Pfizer vaccine. Sami Ouladitto, a comedian with 400,000 subscribers, had also been contacted.

“I do not know where this comes from, from France or abroad,” French Health Minister Olivier Veran said on BFM TV on Tuesday. “It is pathetic, it is dangerous, it is irresponsible and it does not work.”

It was difficult to trace the emails, which apparently came from a London-based agency called Fazze, Le Monde reported, saying Fazze had never been registered in the United Kingdom, but may be in the Virgin Islands.

However, the agency’s CEO had a LinkedIn profile indicating it operates out of Moscow, Le Monde said.

According to France24.com , those they spoke to who were targeted by the campaign — most of who are active in the health and science fields — said an apparently U.K.-based communications agency offered them “a partnership” on behalf of a client with “a colossal budget” but who wanted to remain anonymous and also to keep any deal secret.

According to the BBC , Grasset was urged not to use such words as “advertising” or “sponsored video” if he were to agree to the partnership offer.

He said the email indicated he was to “present the material as your own independent view.”

It also asked him to spread a claim that the death rate among the vaccinated by Pfizer is almost three times higher than among those who have received AstraZeneca — which is false.

“Incredible,” he tweeted. “The address of the London agency that contacted me is fake. They never had a presence there, it’s a laser surgery centre. All staff (of the agency) have weird LinkedIn profiles” which had now disappeared, but he had noticed that “everybody there has worked in Russia.”

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Léo Grasset

@dirtybiology

May 24

C'est étrange. 

J'ai reçu une proposition de partenariat qui consiste à déglinguer le vaccin Pfizer en vidéo. Budget colossal, client qui veut rester incognito et il faut cacher la sponso.

Éthique/20. Si vous voyez des vidéos là dessus vous saurez que c'est une opé, du coup.

Léo Grasset

@dirtybiology

May 24

Je sais que c'est du pain béni pour les complotistes, mais bon ça me semble important de montrer que vos youtubeurs/tiktokeurs favoris peuvent être les porte-paroles de ce qui semble être un conflit commercial dans ce cas précis (I guess)

“I don’t think that any attempt to turn (the French) away from vaccines will work,” Veran said. He had “no idea” whether such an offer might have originated in Russia.

The agency allegedly offered the equivalent of US$2,450 to influencers.

The European Union has also approved Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but not Russia’s Sputnik nor China’s Sinopharm.

— with additional reporting from France24.com

Social media heavyweights wooed for Pfizer smear campaign

LE PECQ, France (AP) — Social media influencers in France with hundreds of thousands of followers say a mysterious advertising agency offered to pay them if they agreed to smear Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine with negative fake stories.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

French YouTuber Léo Grasset was among those contacted. He said Tuesday that he was offered a potentially lucrative but also hush-hush deal to make bogus claims that Pfizer's vaccine poses a deadly risk and that regulators and mainstream media are covering up the supposed dangers.

Grasset, who has 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube, says he refused. Other France-based influencers with sizable audiences on Twitter, Instagram and other platforms also said they were contacted with similar offers of payment for posts.

The person who contacted Grasset identified himself as Anton and said his agency has a “quite considerable” budget for what he described as an “information campaign” about “COVID-19 and the vaccines offered to the European population, notably AstraZeneca and Pfizer.”

Specifically, Anton asked for a 45- to 60-second video on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube to say that “the mortality rate of the Pfizer vaccine is 3 times greater than the AstraZeneca" and querying why the European Union is buying it.

“This is a monopoly and is causing harm to public health," Anton claimed of EU's purchases.

He refused in a follow-up email to divulge who is financing the disinformation campaign, saying: “The client prefers to remain incognito.”

Grasset shared the email exchanges with The Associated Press.

The smear effort drew a withering response from French Health Minister Olivier Veran.

“It's pathetic, it's dangerous, it's irresponsible and it doesn't work," he said.

The person who contacted Grasset said he works for an advertising agency called Fazze. A website for Fazze used to give a London address but that had been scrubbed from the site on Tuesday. Companies House, where British firms are registered, has no record of Fazze.

The AP sent emails requesting comment to a contact address listed on the website and to the email address used by Anton. Neither elicited an immediate response.

Anton's emails included a password-protected link to a set of instructions in error-strewn English for the would-be campaign.

It said influencers who agreed to take part shouldn't say that they were being sponsored and should instead “present the material as your own independent view.”

Other instructions were that influencers should say “that mainstream media ignores this theme” and should ask why governments are purchasing Pfizer.

A trainee doctor in southern France with tens of thousands of followers who was also approached for the smear effort told French broadcaster BFMTV that he was offered more than 2,000 euros ($3,000) for a 30-second video post.

Grasset said that given the large size of his YouTube following, he possibly might have earned tens of thousands of euros (dollars) had he agreed to take part.

Instead, he wrote back that “I can't work for a client that won't give its name and who asks me to hide the partnership.”

“Too many red flags,” Grasset said in an interview with AP. “I decided not to do it.”

“They wanted me to talk about the Pfizer vaccine in a way that would be detrimental to the Pfizer vaccine reputation,” he said.

He said the disinformation effort drives home the need for people "to be super, super cautious” about what they see online.

“We creators on YouTube, on internet, Instagram, et cetera, we are at the center of something going on like an information war," he said. "We, as creators, need to set our standards really high because it's, I think, just the beginning."

___

AP journalist Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

France praises YouTubers over foiled Pfizer vaccine smear


LE PECQ, France (AP) — France's government offered strong praise Wednesday to YouTubers and other social media influencers who resisted a mysterious effort to recruit them for a smear campaign to spread disinformation to their millions of young followers about the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

Multiple France-based influencers with sizable audiences on Twitter, Instagram and other platforms said they were contacted with offers of hush-hush payments to make bogus claims about supposed deadly Pfizer vaccine risks.

YouTuber Léo Grasset, among those contacted, said the shady advertising agency that sought to recruit him “wanted me to talk about the Pfizer vaccine in a way that would be detrimental to the Pfizer vaccine reputation.”

He and others said they refused. They got a thumbs up Wednesday from French government spokesman Gabriel Attal.

“I want to salute the great responsibility of these young YouTubers or influencers who not only didn’t fall for this and didn’t, through cupidity, allow themselves to be manipulated but also denounced it publicly," Attal said. “I really want to salute that.”

Grasset, who has 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube, said he and other social media and internet content-creators are “at the center of something going on like an information war.”

The person who contacted Grasset identified himself as Anton and said his ad agency has a “quite considerable” budget for what he described as an “information campaign” about “COVID-19 and the vaccines offered to the European population, notably AstraZeneca and Pfizer.”

Specifically, “Anton” asked for a 45- to 60-second video on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube to say that “the mortality rate of the Pfizer vaccine is 3 times greater than the AstraZeneca” and querying why the European Union is buying it.

He refused in a follow-up email to divulge who is financing the campaign, saying: “The client prefers to remain incognito.”

Instructions he sent also said that if influencers agreed to take part then they shouldn’t say that they were being sponsored and should "present the material as your own independent view.”

Grasset shared the email exchanges with The Associated Press. He said that given his large YouTube following, he might have earned tens of thousands of euros (dollars) had he agreed to take part.

Instead, he wrote back that “I can’t work for a client that won’t give its name and who asks me to hide the partnership.”

The AP sent emails requesting comment to a contact address listed on ad agency's website and to the email address used by “Anton.” Neither elicited a response.

The Associated Press was not immediately able to determine who hosts the website of Fazze.com. Internet records show that the San Francisco firm Cloudflare provides cybersecurity protection for the site against denial-of-service and other attacks, effectively masking its host to public scrutiny. A Cloudflare spokesman said the U.S. company does not host Fazze.com and did not say who does.

Social media users in Germany also claimed to have been contacted for the disinformation campaign. German authorities said officials were discussing the incident at the international level.

“There is an exchange between the European authorities concerned,” Christofer Burger, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Berlin.

“They are part of a network that has regular contact about cases of disinformation and also about how to deal with individual incidents,” he said, without elaborating.

___

Frank Bajak in Boston and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M; #BANKSTERS

Sen. Elizabeth Warren grilled Jamie Dimon over Chase charging nearly $1.5 billion in overdraft fees during the pandemic

dreuter@insider.com (Dominick Reuter) 

© Alex Wroblewski / Stringer/getty images Alex Wroblewski / Stringer/getty images

The four major Wall Street banks collected a combined $4 billion in overdraft fees during the pandemic.

Sen. Warren said Chase was "the star of the overdraft show," charging customers nearly $1.5 billion.

Warren asked the four banks' CEOs if they would refund the fees. All said no.

Senator Elizabeth Warren singled out JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon during a banking committee hearing, grilling him over Chase's decision to continue collecting nearly $1.5 billion in overdraft charges from customers during the pandemic.

Joining Dimon were the CEOs of Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, which took in a combined $4 billion in fees from checking customers who had no money in their accounts during the pandemic, against the recommendations of bank regulators.

At the start of the pandemic, Warren explained, the bank regulators told financial institutions that they would not be charged a fee if their accounts at the Federal Reserve were overdrawn. The regulators also recommended the banks extend the same automatic protection to their customers.

Senator Elizabeth Warren asked the CEOs to raise their hands if they had followed that guidance.
-Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) May 26, 2021

"I'm not seeing anyone raise a hand, and that's because none of you gave the same help to your customers that the bank regulators extended to you - help that the regulators recommended that you give," Warren said.

Instead, the four leading Wall Street banks, which handle tens of millions of retail checking accounts, charged customers a combined $4 billion in fees during the pandemic when their balances hit zero.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, those customers were more likely to be African American or Hispanic, or be earning less than $50,000 per year. Figures from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau show that just 8% of account holders are responsible for three-quarters of overdraft fees.

Singling out Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan, whom she called "the star of the overdraft show," Warren asked if waiving the nearly $1.5 billion it collected in overdraft fees would have put the bank into financial trouble.

"We waived the fees every time a customer asked because of Covid," Dimon replied.

"Your profits would have been $27.6 billion," Warren said. "I did the math for you."

"Mr. Dimon, will you commit right now to refund the $1.5 billion you took from consumers during the pandemic?" she continued.

"No," he said.

The other three executives also declined Warren's request.

"Last year, when customers said they were struggling, we waived fees on over 1 million deposit accounts, including overdraft fees - no questions asked," Chase spokesperson Amy Bonitatibus said in a statement to Insider.

A previous study found Chase charges more than average for overdraft fees, generating more than $35 per account, compared with Citi, which charges less than $5 per account, according to Aaron Klein, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"Overdraft is an expensive fee they charge only on those people who run out of money that goes straight to short-term profits," Klein told the New York Times in April.

Wall Street bank CEOs grilled by Senate on PPP, diversity efforts, climate policies

Wall Street was in the hot seat Wednesday when the CEOs of Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley testified in a virtual meeting of the Senate Banking Committee. Led by Chairman Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, lawmakers fired off questions about diversity, worker organizing and shareholder activism in addition to more finance-specific topics like share buybacks, business lending, inflation and the economic recovery.

© Provided by NBC News

While bank executives are used to being grilled by Congressional Democrats, many of the more pointed questions on Wednesday came from Republicans like Banking Committee ranking member Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who decried what he characterized as banks’ bending to “wokeism” and left-wing “attacks on capitalism” in his opening statement. In a reference to banks’ speaking out on restrictive state voting legislation, Toomey said those kinds of issues should be “left to elected lawmakers.”

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the Senate’s lone Black Republican, also took aim at what he dubbed “woke capitalism,” which, he said, “seems to be running amok.” He used much of his allotted time pressing the executives to articulate exactly how Georgia’s new voting law — which critics say restricts access to the ballot box, particularly for voters of color — discriminates against Black voters. That bill, when signed into law by Georgia’s governor in March, triggered swift pushback not only from banks but from corporate America more broadly, drawing criticism from CEOs of companies as diverse as Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola.

In addition to commenting about political motivations in banks’ decision making processes, Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Al., also raised the issue of federal debt and its potential impact on the economy and the banking system. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon responded that the current level of federal debt, at 102 percent of GDP is “not an immediate concern,” although he added, “It will become an issue” in the future.

Dimon repeated his support for a carbon tax, revisiting a theme he had addressed in Chase’s annual shareholder letter earlier this spring. In that letter, Dimon also advocated for what he characterized a national “Marshall Plan” to invest in infrastructure, education and job training. Dimon returned to that theme on Wednesday. “Infrastructure is critical,” he said, even as he warned Senators like Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., that the economic momentum of infrastructure spending could be derailed by excessive regulation.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., grilled the executives about expanding access to the financial mainstream, saying big banks have a responsibility to offer low-cost products and services for low-income Americans — and chastised them for not doing more to engage with small businesses, particularly minority-owned businesses, in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., blasted banks’ fee-collection practices, pointing out that low- and moderate-income bank customers and minorities are disproportionately impacted by overdraft fees, which hit a record high of $33.47 in 2020, according to Bankrate. She asked why banks didn’t automatically suspend overdraft fees for customers during the pandemic even though regulators waived similar Federal Reserve fees banks typically have to pay.

"No matter how you try to spin it, this past year has shown that corporate profits are more important to your bank than offering just a little help to struggling families even when we're in the middle of a worldwide crisis," Warren said, saying claims that the bank helped customers were "a bunch of baloney."