It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, February 01, 2022
DUTY TO ACCOMODATE He got fired after going to church instead of work on a Sunday. Now employer will pay
Michael Conroy/AP Hayley Fowler Mon, January 31, 2022, 1:19 PM·3 min read
An employee in Florida who negotiated his work schedule around going to church was fired after he failed to show up for a Sunday shift, according to court documents.
Now the company owes him $50,000.
Tampa Bay Delivery Service LLC, an Amazon delivery partner out of Florida, agreed to settle allegations of religious discrimination after the former worker filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC, which is tasked with enforcing federal anti-discrimination laws in the workplace, launched a lawsuit on his behalf last year.
Under the terms of the agreement, which a federal judge approved on Jan. 27, Tampa Bay Delivery Service denied any wrongdoing but agreed to provide better training to managers and dispatchers as well as hire a religious accommodation coordinator.
“We commend Tampa Bay Delivery Service for working collaboratively with EEOC to resolve this lawsuit,” Robert E. Weisberg, regional attorney for the EEOC Miami District, said in a news release. “The company’s willingness to address EEOC’s concerns will help in preventing future employees from being forced to choose between employment and a religious belief.”
A representative and lawyers for Tampa Bay Delivery Service did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on Monday, Jan. 31.
According to the EEOC’s complaint, Tampa Bay Delivery service hired the man in May 2019 as a delivery driver. He reportedly told the company during the hiring process that he could not work on Sundays because he is a Christian and attends church on Sundays.
The owner agreed — if the man agreed to work on Saturdays, according to the lawsuit.
About four months later, Tampa Bay Delivery Service scheduled the employee to work a Sunday shift, the EEOC said. He told them that he could not work that day and went to church instead. The company fired him later that same day, the complaint states.
The former employee filed a charge of religious discrimination with the EEOC shortly thereafter, and the agency determined there was reasonable grounds to believe Tampa Bay Delivery Service had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Its attempts to resolve the matter outside of court fell short, and the EEOC filed a complaint in the Middle District of Florida on Sept. 29.
The parties filed a proposed consent decree around the same time, which the judge didn’t approve until last week, court documents show.
Under the two-and-a-half-year agreement, Tampa Bay Delivery Service will pay the former worker $25,000 in back pay and $25,000 in compensatory damages. The company also agreed to:
Designate someone as the “Religious Accommodations Decision maker” who will decide all requests for religious accommodations from employees
Create an anti-religious discrimination policy
Post a public notice about the EEOC’s allegations and resulting settlement
Provide 90 minutes of in-person training on religious discrimination to all managers and supervisors
An Amazon warehouse manager faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to stealing $273,000 worth of computer parts and selling them to a wholesaler
Dominick Reuter Mon, January 31, 2022 Robots called "pods" inside an Amazon Fulfillment Center in France.PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty Images
A 27-year-old North Carolina man pleaded guilty to mail fraud after stealing Amazon merchandise.
For more than a year, the man stole computer parts and sold them to a wholesaler in California.
The scheme targeted high-value components, including hard drives, processors, and GPUs.
A former Amazon employee has pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud related to a scheme involving the sale of stolen computer parts worth $273,000.
Douglas Wright, 27, admitted to stealing high-value components including internal hard drives, processors, and GPUs when he was an operations manager at an Amazon warehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina, the US Department of Justice announced Friday.
From June 2020 to September of last year, Wright used his access to Amazon's inventory-tracking systems to locate specific packages, which he then took home and sold to a wholesaler in California, prosecutors said. The penalties for mail fraud include a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The Justice Department is no stranger to mail-fraud investigations involving Amazon.
In December, prosecutors said a Virginia man pleaded guilty to a scheme in which he claimed refunds on goods worth $300,000 and sending back similar items of significantly lesser value.
And in October, another North Carolina man pleaded guilty to engaging in more than 300 fraudulent transactions with Amazon over four years, causing losses to the company worth over $290,000.
RUSSIAN WHITE NATIONALISTS VS UKRAINIAN WHITE NATIONALISTS
Notorious Russian Mercenaries Pulled Out of Africa Ready for Ukraine
Philip Obaji Jr. Mon, January 31, 2022
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
ABUJA, Nigeria—The infamous Wagner Group—run by one of President Putin’s closest associates—is pulling dozens of battle-hardened mercenaries out of Africa to send them to Eastern Europe where Russian forces are threatening Ukraine, The Daily Beast has learned.
According to two senior military officers in the Central African Republic (CAR) unprecedented numbers of Wagner mercenaries left the country for Eastern Europe in January and more are preparing to leave in the coming weeks.
“Usually when we hear that some have left we find out that they are just a handful—sometimes five or six people within a month,” an officer, who works at the military headquarters in the CAR capital, Bangui, told The Daily Beast. “It’s the first time we are hearing that dozens have departed in a month.”
One man who was recently detained by Wagner Group forces told The Daily Beast that he overheard CAR troops in the camp where he was being held describe a sudden exodus of mercenary fighters heading directly to Ukraine.
The move comes at a time when Ukrainian authorities have said Russia is boosting supplies of weapons, ammunition and military equipment to separatist regions in Ukraine while actively recruiting mercenaries to fight in the ongoing conflict. Kyiv’s military intelligence service said last week that Moscow was undertaking “active recruitment of mercenaries” who are being sent to separatist-controlled regions.
Some have called Wagner Putin’s “private army.” It is often dispatched undercover to regions where Russia denies having any official military presence.
It's not the first time the Wagner Group has re-deployed private special forces soldiers from Africa or other combat zones in line with Putin’s evolving foreign policy objectives—despite Kremlin denials that Wagner has any links to the Russian government.
An investigation by Bellingcat published in November found that more than 200 Russians had been sent to Belarus to destabilize the country in the run-up to its August 2020 presidential elections from other hotspots where the Wagner Group was deployed, including CAR.
If Putin was asking his friends at Wagner to increase the destabilization inside Ukraine, it would be likely that some of those Russian mercenaries would be drafted in from sub-Saharan Africa.
This is the first time the Russians have left in large numbers since Wagner mercenaries arrived in CAR at the request of the government more than four years ago, according to a military official, who said the mercenaries that have departed had come from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus and are returning to where they came from.
“We have specifically been told by their supervisors that about 20 Russians departed this January for Eastern Europe,” another official, who works closely with the Russians, told The Daily Beast privately. “What we understand is that the Russians who’ve left, and those who will leave later on, are doing so as part of their assignment rotation policy and that they would be replaced in due course.”
But no one seems to know when exactly the replacements for the departing mercenaries will arrive—if at all. The operations of the Wagner Group are often so shrouded in secrecy that even the people they work with in CAR have very little information about what they do.
“Yes, they share intelligence with us,” the military official said. “But that’s where it often ends. We rarely know anything about their itenary or plans.”
More than 1,000 Russians are deployed to CAR by the Wagner Group, which first gained international notoriety in Ukraine at the height of the 2014 incursion when they were accused of war crimes.
The organization was founded by Dmitry Utkin, who was once a member of the Russian special forces and is currently under U.S. sanctions for aiding Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
According to a CNN report, Utkin was once head of security for Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin. Prigozhin became famous as a restaurateur, and earned the nickname,“Putin’s chef” because of the lucrative contracts handed out to his catering company. Russian business outlet RBC reported a few years back that Utkin’s name appeared in a corporate database as the general director of one of Prigozhin's companies.
Progozhin denies that he is the financier of Wagner—a secretive and, under Russian law, illegal organization of private military contractors. But the allegations are persistent, the denials are pro forma, and its existence is an open secret. In 2016, the Russian broadcaster RBC published a detailed report on Wagner in the context of the global private military contractor industry.
The group has recruited many of its mercenaries from the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU, and its founder, Utkin (nickname: “Wagner”), is a veteran of the GRU’s elite Spetsnaz special-operations forces. RBC reported that the group operates under the supervision of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.
A 26-year-old trader, who was arrested at the start of January by Wagner mercenaries in the CAR town of Bria, told The Daily Beast about his experiences in the camp where he was held. He said he and dozens of other young men were forced to demolish old brick houses and then recover the bricks for use in the construction of a new base for the Russians near a diamond buying office. He said he heard soldiers for the official CAR military—known as FACA—discussing amongst themselves how the mercenaries that arrested him had now traveled to Ukraine and may not return anytime soon.
“For the 15 days we stayed in the camp, we only saw the four Russians that arrested us the first two days when we arrived,” said Patrice Gaopandia, who was picked up along with three others when the Russians stormed the area he lived and embarked on a systematic arrest of young people for forced labor.
“It was later we heard FACA soldiers say that the Russian soldiers had left for Ukraine," said Gaopandia, who was later released.
A 'sea pickle'? An animal that can grow to 60 feet long is washing up on the Oregon coast
Jordan Mendoza, USA TODAY
Hundreds of animals nicknamed "sea pickles" have been washing up on the shores of Oregon, and they are causing quite a stir in the Beaver State.
"They're not the easiest things to describe," Tiffany Boothe, administrator at the Seaside Aquarium in the state, told USA TODAY.
While they are called "sea pickles" based on their looks, the animals are actually a pyrosome. It is a "colony" of multi-celled organisms called zooids, meaning individual zooids will be tightly packed together to form a bigger version of themselves, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
National Geographic refers to them as the "cockroaches of the sea," and they are able to illuminate the ocean waters.
A single zooid is about the size of a grain of rice, but conjoined together, these colonies can make the creature about 60 feet long and wide enough for a human to fit in, according to Oceana, a non-profit ocean conservation organization.
As terrifying as this creature may sound, they aren't rare. "Sea pickles" are typically found in the warm, open ocean waters around the world, but strong currents can push them north. They first puzzled researchers in 2017 when they made it all the way up to the Alaskan coast, the first time they had ever been observed that far up north.
Boothe said recent storms in the south Pacific Ocean have created those strong ocean currents to where hundreds of people have spotted pyrosomes throughout the Oregon coast. However, these aren't the 60-foot long ones, with most there measuring around 2-feet long.
"When somebody who hasn't come across one of these on the beach comes across one, it creates a lot of questions because they are so so odd-looking," Boothe said.
So far, there have been no other reports of the creature in any other Pacific states, but if someone does spot the creature, she encourages people to get an up-close look at them. If they're washed up on shores, that means they are dead.
"If you're interested, pick it up and take a closer look at it. It's not gonna harm you since it's not alive anymore," Boothe said, "It's just kind of an interesting creature to try to wrap your mind around."
As for what they feel like?
"Kind of jellyfish-like. Gelatinous, rigid and bumpy," Boothe said.
Boothe said scientists are still trying to understand the impact pyrosomes appearing so far north have by appearing in the north. Fish have been eating them, but since they have no known nutritional value, it's unknown if they are good or bad.
"These big blooms could have implications in the marine environment that we're just not sure of yet," Boothe said.
California eyes giving 500,000 fast food workers more power Fast-food workers drive-through to protest for a $15 dollar hourly minimum wage outside a McDonald's restaurant in East Los Angeles Friday, March 12, 2021. On Monday, Jan. 31, 2022 California lawmakers approved a first-in-the-nation measure by Assemblyman Chris Holden that gives California's more than half-million fast food workers increased power and protections.
(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)More DON THOMPSON Mon, January 31, 2022
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's more than half-million fast food workers would get increased power and protections under a first-in-the-nation measure approved by the state Assembly on Monday.
Workers would be included alongside employers and state agencies on a new Fast-Food Sector Council to set statewide minimum standards on wages, working hours, training and working conditions including procedures designed to protect employees from the coronavirus pandemic.
It would be limited to fast food restaurants with at least 30 establishments nationally.
“California has a chance to lead the country and address outstanding issues in the fast food industry," said Democratic Assemblyman Chris Holden, a former franchisee himself. “It is about fairness and it is about bringing all the responsible parties to the table to collaborate on solutions.”
Organized labor made the bill regulating the fast food industry and boosting the voice of the most populous state's estimated nation-leading 557,000 fast food workers a priority. But it initially failed in June even in a Legislature overwhelmingly dominated by Democrats, falling three votes short of the 41 it needed to pass the 80-member Assembly.
It passed the state Assembly Monday on a 41-19 vote and now heads to the state Senate.
It passed over the objections of some Democrats who said it delegates too much legislative power to the council. The Legislature would have 60 days to overrule the council's regulations before they take effect.
Other opponents objected to singling out fast food workers for a council when employees in other fields may also have similar wage and safety concerns.
The bill "just drives entire franchises and franchise brands away from California,” said Republican Assemblyman Kelly Seyarto.
Supporters said fast food workers make up the largest and fastest growing group of low-wage, private sector workers in the state, but have lacked protections specific to their industry.
They estimate that about 80% of the workers in California are Latino, Black or of Asian descent, two-thirds are women, and many live in working class communities that have been hardest hit by the pandemic.
But the International Franchise Association said a growing number of women and racial minorities own franchise establishments.
“This potential for continued growth is threatened” by the bill, the group said in opposition, as is “continuing an economic recovery from the pandemic.”
Fast food workers as well as local franchisees “are often at the mercy” of fast food chains, Bob Schoonover, president of 700,000-member SEIU California, said before the vote. The bill “addresses this imbalance of power by bringing workers and franchisees together to raise standards and protections across the California fast food industry.”
Among other things, employees could sue the restaurant if they contend they have been fired, discriminated or retaliated against for exercising the rights created under the bill. And franchisees could bring actions against franchisors if they believe the corporations are impeding their compliance with health, safety and employment laws.
The council would be under the Department of Industrial Relations, with 11 members appointed by the governor and legislative leaders, all currently Democrats.
It would include two representatives of fast food restaurant employees, two representatives of advocates for fast food restaurant employees, one representative of fast food restaurant franchisors and one representative of fast food restaurant franchisees.
The remaining five members would be representatives of state agencies.
The bill was first introduced by Lorena Gonzalez, a longtime labor advocate perhaps best known nationally for her law aimed at giving many independent contractors the same rights and benefits as full-time employees. Gonzalez resigned this month to become executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation.
Letters to the Editor: Anti-vaxxers are losing their jobs. It's called 'consequences'
Mon, January 31, 2022 Protesters gather for a rally against COVID-19 vaccine mandates in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Jan. 23. (Patrick Semansky / Associated Press)
For the anti-vaccine and anti-mandate people who worry that the vaccines are rushed, of course they were developed quickly. There was a concerted effort fueled by government and private sector resources and better technology. I only wish the vaccines could have been developed faster.
As far as religious exemptions are concerned, I could claim my pet dog is the second coming of Christ, and he told me in my dreams that the vaccines are bad, so of course I'll believe him and demand that everyone accept this. These people vaccinate their children against other diseases to enroll them in school, and there's no reason not to include the latest inoculations.
The loss of jobs and differences in medical treatment (including a patient who said she was denied a heart transplant because she was unvaccinated) are what can be expected in response to such senseless claims. With 76% of the country having had at least one COVID-19 shot, there is no reason to allow the remaining 24% to prolong the pandemic.
Alan Bews, Los Angeles
.. To the editor: Your article quotes unvaccinated people spouting off at length about all kinds of anti-vaccine nonsense. You do not include a single quote from a medical professional with expertise in pandemic response.
You do manage to mention that the vaccines are 90% effective at preventing infected people from being hospitalized and that the shots were thoroughly studied, but that should be the headline.
Data show the vaccines to be extraordinarily safe and effective. If more of us had been following the advice of medical professionals and scientists, we would be in much better shape and closer to getting back to normal.
Dave Courdy, Huntington Beach
.. To the editor: "My body, my choice," say anti-vaxxers. They forget: "My consequences."
It's the first principle of being an adult. You don't get to do anything you want without consequences. These people remind me of me when I was a young teenager, when my guiding principle was "you can't make me."
As I see it, our country is facing a crisis and needs the people's help, and anti-vaxxers have chosen to put themselves and everyone around them in greater danger. They've listened to lies by people who are very good at lying, and this is the choice they've made. Losing their job is the consequence of that choice.
Adults have to do things they don't like everyday. Grow up.
An Amazon factory whistleblower who says he was tortured by Chinese police before being jailed has called on Jeff Bezos to help overturn his conviction
Isobel Asher Hamilton
Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos.Paul Ellis - Pool/Getty
Tang Mingfang was jailed after disclosing illegal work practices at a factory making Amazon products.
Tang says he was tortured during the police interrogation process that led to his conviction.
He has called on Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos to support an appeal against his conviction.
A man who was jailed after blowing the whistle on illegal working practices at a Chinese factory that makes Amazon Echo and Kindle devices has called on Jeff Bezos to help overturn his conviction.
In 2019, Tang Mingfang leaked documents to China Labor Watch, which revealed that the Foxconn factory in Hengyang, China, was making schoolchildren work illegally long hours. Tang was later charged and convicted by Chinese authorities of leaking trade secrets. He was released in September.
In a letter to the Amazon executive chairman and founder, published by China Labor Watch on Sunday and first reported by The Observer, Tang said he was "tortured during the interrogation process" at the hands of police and "forced to make false confessions."
In the letter, Tang calls on Bezos to "ask Hengyang Foxconn to face up to its own problems and apologise to me" and "communicate with the local court and assist me in my complaint about the case so that the court can finally revoke my guilty verdict."
An Amazon spokesperson said: "We do not tolerate violations of our supply chain standards. We regularly assess suppliers, using independent auditors as appropriate, to monitor continued compliance and improvement — if we find violations, we take appropriate steps, including requesting immediate corrective action."
Foxconn did not immediately reply when contacted by Insider for comment.
Opinion: Olympic movement has sold its soul by not challenging China on human rights abuses
Nancy Armour, USA TODAY
The Olympic Games can never be seen in the same way again. Once aspirational, radiating hope and the promise of all that could be, they have been tainted by the crass calculations of their leaders.
The International Olympic Committee has sold the people of China out, refusing to hold the hosts of next month’s Winter Olympics accountable for a litany of human rights abuses and, worse, providing cover for some of the atrocities. In doing so, it has sold itself and its ideals out, too.
“We know they have very close relations with China, we know it’s very corrupted. But we didn’t know (the IOC) would not only be silent but actively collaborate with the Chinese government,” Badiucao, an artist-dissident who had to flee China because of his criticism of the government, told USA TODAY Sports.
“It’s really ridiculous that we have the organization in charge of the Olympic Games, championing it as an event celebrating humanity and saying sportsmanship is more than just entertainment. How can it be so corrupted and play along with this evil regime, this evil government?”
In a word? Greed. In another? Expediency.
China is an economic powerhouse. It is the world’s fastest-growing consumer market and its largest manufacturer, and two Chinese-based companies are now among the IOC’s TOP sponsors. The last thing IOC members, partial to five-star hotels and first-class cabins, want is to alienate that growing source of wealth.
Several in Europe considered bidding only to say “Thanks, but no thanks.” By the time the vote was taken, the choices were Beijing or Almaty, Kazakhstan. Having dazzled the world with the Summer Olympics in 2008, and knowing the Chinese government would spare nothing and no one to do it again, the IOC saw Beijing as the safe and easy choice.
All it had to do was turn a blind eye when China suppressed dissent among its people. Stripped Hong Kong of its autonomy and cracked down on religious freedom in Tibet. Imprisoned more than a million of the minority Muslim Uyghur population and subjected them to slave labor, forced sterilization and abortion.
When criticism of the Chinese was at its most intense, and there were calls for substantive responses to the disappearance of Peng following her allegations of sexual assault by a former senior Chinese official, IOC president Thomas Bach staged what was essentially a photo op with her and declared that she was fine. Peng still has not spoken freely, and she has essentially been erased from Chinese social media.
“It shows us pretty clearly that the IOC is not serious when it comes to human rights concerns,” said Michael Mazza, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“Yes, it will be a stain on the legacy of the IOC and I think it will be a stain on Thomas Bach’s legacy, in particular.”
Bach will defend the IOC’s shameful inaction by saying the Olympics are supposed to be above politics. Yet he plays politics when he wants to, brokering a truce between North and South Korea ahead of the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang.
And high-minded as the idea of Olympic neutrality is, it was politics that brought the Games into being, both in ancient times and the modern era. The Olympics were seen as a way to create unity among warring peoples, to make them see their enemies in a different light.
“O Sport, you are peace!” Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Games, wrote in his poem, Ode to Sport. “You forge happy bonds between the peoples by drawing them together in reverence for strength which is controlled, organized and self-disciplined. Through you the young of all the world learn to respect one another, and thus the diversity of national traits become a source of generous and peaceful emulation.”
Now Olympic leaders stand by while the host nation wages war against its own people.
“They’re going to have to do a lot of brand protection, brand rebuilding, after this sequence of events,” said David Black, a professor at Dalhousie University whose areas of expertise include the politics of sports and governance.
“They felt themselves as having little choice but to take the line that politics should not intrude, but clearly politics have intruded. And could have been anticipated to have intruded.”
Because we have been here before.
When China was bidding for the 2008 Olympics, part of its pitch was that hosting the Games would lead to democratic reforms and an improvement in human rights. Yet before the flame was even lit, the government had gone back on that promise, and experts say conditions now are even worse.
“There’s nobody left to lock up,” said Sophie Richardson, Human Rights Watch’s China director.
“Xi Jinping’s government has worked so assiduously since (China) was awarded these Games to just crush independent civil society,” Richardson said. “Most people who could have or would have wanted to try to find ways to protest around these Games have already been arbitrarily detained, disappeared or driven in to exile.”
The IOC has rare leverage with China and other autocratic nations. Hosting an Olympics is an immense source of pride, a declaration of their status as a world power. Even the threat of taking that away would be a colossal embarrassment, one a country like China would do almost anything to avoid.
But the IOC backed down from challenging China in 2008. This time around, it didn’t even bother to try.
“The IOC is dishonest and duplicitous and weak,” Richardson said, “and perfectly willing to sacrifice the people who are doing the hard work to try to make the kind of change in China that the IOCs of the world say they care about.”
The United States, Canada and a handful of other Western nations have announced diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Olympics, their only way of showing condemnation without punishing their athletes. But sponsors have been silent, dodging questions by reporters and human rights groups alike, and COVID protocols are such that, if there are protests during the Games, they will go unseen.
So the Beijing Olympics will go on. The athletes will bring us to cheers and stun us into silence with their performances, and China will stage another spectacle grand enough to hide the ugliness that occurs when the world isn’t watching.
Almost.
“Obviously, this Olympic Games is not stopping. It will be happening in China,” Badiucao said. “But the power is in our own hands. When the whole entire world has shifted their camera and is focused on China, let’s talk about China and not be fooled by its propaganda.
“We could,” he added, “turn this into an opportunity.”
The damage has been done, however. Much like the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany, now seen as an affront to the Olympic ideals, the 2022 Games in Beijing will forever leave a stain on the Olympic movement, and those who allowed it to happen.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.
Canada's Nutrien eyes potash production boost amid turmoil in Russia, Belarus
An entry to the tunnels is seen at Nutrien's Cory potash mine near Saskatoon
Mon, January 31, 2022, By Rod Nickel and Polina Devitt
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Nutrien Ltd, the world's biggest potash miner, could boost production by up to 29% in coming years, depending on any sanctions facing rival producers in Russia and Belarus, the Canadian company's interim CEO told Reuters. Prices of granular potash fertilizer are near 10-year highs in the United States and Brazil, helped by Western economic sanctions against Belarus. Russia, home of Uralkali and EuroChem potash mines, faces possible economic sanctions if it invades Ukraine.
Uralkali and Belarus Potash Company (BPC) together account for more than one-third of global potash sales, according to BMO Capital Markets.
Soaring fertilizer prices have cut in to farmers' incomes and contributed to global food inflation. Additional potash production may slow rising costs.
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Nutrien could restart up to 4 million tonnes of idled annual capacity in that Canadian province in coming years as it assesses the long-term outlook for sanctions against competitors, interim Chief Executive Ken Seitz said in his first interview since his promotion in January.
"If these are short-lived events, we don't want to spend all kinds of money staffing and opening up ground," he said. "If this is going to be a longer-term problem for the market, we will absolutely do that. "We will absolutely step into that void."
A Russian troop buildup near Ukraine has stoked fears of war. The United States and United Kingdom are prepared to punish Russian elites close to President Vladimir Putin with asset freezes and travel bans if Russia sends troops into Ukraine, the White House and British government said on Monday.
As a first step in raising production, Nutrien may raise output by 700,000 to 1 million tonnes in the second half of 2022 at low expense, Seitz said, reiterating comments he made last year. Nutrien currently produces nearly 14 million tonnes, representing 19% of global sales.
Seitz could not say how soon Nutrien might restart the remainder of Nutrien's idled capacity, which would involve more work.
Nutrien has had no talks, Seitz said, in his short time at the helm about any form of potash partnership with BHP Group, which is building a Canadian mine.
Canpotex Ltd, the export company owned by Nutrien and Mosaic Co, is fully committed for sales through March 31, illustrating strong demand for Canadian potash.
Global operational capacity, however, exceeds demand by over 10 million tonnes this year, according to BMO Capital Markets.
"In a normal situation, the potash market is oversupplied," said BMO analyst Joel Jackson. "If I was Nutrien, I would probably hold back on my decision to expand too much too fast."
Additional production from competitors will not fully replace BPC, which previously sold about 12.5 million tonnes a year, said Elena Sakhnova, an analyst at VTB Capital.
The board of Lithuanian Railways on Monday voted to stop transporting Belarus' potash, isolating it from a key port.
Russian producers are unlikely to rush to increase their output because of speculation that Washington may grant a waiver to BPC's U.S. buyers, essentially postponing sanctions from taking effect on April 1, Sakhnova said.
A EuroChem spokesperson said the company has no plans to accelerate ramp-up of its new production. Uralkali declined to comment.
Unlike the last time potash prices were this high over a decade ago, there are few advanced junior projects to add production. Construction of a small, 250,000-tonne Gensource Potash facility could start in Canada this summer, with first output in 2024.
For larger producers, adding additional tonnes is not as inexpensive or simple as they say, Gensource CEO Mike Ferguson said.
"They are so used to just controlling things in the industry and have started to believe their own marketing about having excess capacity," Ferguson said.
(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Polina Devitt in Moscow; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
From Kabul, pregnant reporter fights NZ govt to come home
In this recent photo provided by Charlotte Bellis, Bellis poses in a selfie with her partner Jim Huylebroek in Kabul, Afghanistan. Bellis, a pregnant New Zealand reporter who is expecting her first child with Huylebroek, has chosen Afghanistan as a temporary base for her uphill fight to return home because of her country's stringent COVID-19 entry rules. Huylebroek, a freelance photographer and Belgium native, has lived in Afghanistan for two years.
(Charlotte Bellis via AP)
KATHY GANNON Sun, January 30, 2022
ISLAMABAD (AP) — She reported on the difficult conditions mothers and babies face just to survive in desperate Afghanistan. Now, a pregnant New Zealand reporter has chosen Kabul as a temporary base for her uphill fight to return home because of her country's strict COVID-19 entry rules.
Charlotte Bellis, 35, is expecting her first child with her partner, freelance photographer Jim Huylebroek, a Belgium native who has lived in Afghanistan for two years. Bellis, who is 25 weeks pregnant with a daughter, told The Associated Press on Sunday that each day is a battle.
She said she has been vaccinated three times and is ready to isolate herself upon her return to New Zealand. “This is ridiculous. It is my legal right to go to New Zealand, where I have health care, where I have family. All my support is there," she said.
Bellis first wrote about her difficulties in a column published in The New Zealand Herald on Saturday. She had tried without success to enter New Zealand via a lottery-style system and then applied for an emergency return, but was rejected.
Thousands of New Zealand citizens wanting to return home have faced delays due to a bottleneck of people in the country's border quarantine system.
On Monday, New Zealand’s COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said officials had suggested Bellis amend her application or try again under different criteria.
“I want to be clear, there is a place in Managed Isolation and Quarantine for people with special circumstances like Ms Bellis. No one’s saying there is not," Hipkins said. He said while officials had needed to make some difficult choices, the quarantine system had worked well overall by saving lives and preventing the health system from getting swamped.
However, Bellis insists the decisions have been arbitrary. She said she sent dozens of documents to the New Zealand authorities, including ultrasounds and physicians' letters specifying her due date is around May 19. Yet she said she was rejected because she was told her pregnancy didn’t meet the criteria of “threshold of critical time threat.”
“If I don’t meet the threshold as a pregnant woman, then who does?” she asked.
Bellis had worked as an Afghanistan correspondent for Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based news network. In November, she resigned, because it is illegal to be pregnant and unmarried in Qatar. Al Jazeera did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bellis then flew to Belgium, trying to get residency there, but said the length of the process would have left her in the country with an expired visa. She said she could have hopped from country to country on tourist visas while she waited to have her baby. She said this would have meant spending money on hotels without support or health care, while she fought to return to New Zealand.
In the end, she and her partner returned to Afghanistan because they had a visa, felt welcome and from there could wage her battle to return to her home. They have a house in Afghanistan and after “evaluating all of our options,” returned to Kabul, she said.
Bellis said she has set herself a deadline for leaving Afghanistan once she is 30 weeks pregnant, to protect the health of herself and her baby. “I am giving myself to the end of February,” she said. At that time, she will still have more than a month left on her Belgium visa so that she can re-enter the country, if she fails to get back to New Zealand by that time.
She said she tries to stay calm as she wages a paper war with New Zealand's quarantine system, but that she worries about how the stress she has been under will impact her baby.
“I am very concerned about a premature birth and ... also the implication of stress,” she said.
Bellis has found an Afghan gynecologist, who promised she could call her if she wakes up in the night with a problem. Bellis toured the doctor's clinic which has basic facilities, including one incubator. The doctor told her the incubator is often occupied.
Bellis has found a lawyer who is handling her case pro bono and has submitted over 60 documents to the New Zealand government, answered countless questions, only to be rejected twice for entry to her home country.
On Sunday, she received another email from the New Zealand government, this one telling her to apply as a person in danger and that this will get her home, she said.
Bellis said that prior to returning to Afghanistan, she sought permission from the Taliban. She said she had feared arriving "with a little bump and not married” could be problematic.
Instead, the Taliban response was immediate and positive.
“I appreciate this isn't official Taliban policy, but they were very generous and kind. They said ‘you are safe here, congratulations, we welcome you'," said Bellis.
The Taliban have come under international criticism for repressive rules they imposed on women since sweeping to power in mid-August, including denying girls education beyond sixth grade. However, they have said that all girls and women will be allowed to attend school after the Afghan New Year at the end of March. While women have returned to work in the health and education ministries, thousands of female civil servants have not been allowed to return to their jobs.
As she ponders her next move, Bellis said she is contemplating whether to take the latest option offered by New Zealand — applying as a person in danger — because it would exonerate the government of responsibility for her earlier rejections.
“It gives them an opportunity to deny any responsibility and frankly that is not true,” she said. The government's current COVID-19 policy has left “how many stranded around the world with no pathways to get home.”
Hipkins, the New Zealand minister, said officials had offered Bellis several options. Bellis said the only other option after her two rejections was Sunday's offer — to apply as a person in danger.
“I encourage her to take these offers seriously,” said Hipkins.
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Associated Press reporter Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report.
