The Kremlin plans to send 100,000 Ukrainians to Siberia and the Arctic Circle, report says, as Zelenskyy warns of 'filtration camps' for captured people


Sophia Ankel
Tue, April 12, 2022,

Civilians trapped in Mariupol are evacuated in groups under the control of pro-Russian separatists, in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 20, 2022.

Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Russians are forcibly sending Ukrainians to remote regions in Russia, Ukrainian officials said.

The Kremlin plans on sending them as far as Siberia and the Arctic Circle, The i reported.

Nearly 100,000 Ukrainians will be sent to these regions, The i said, citing a Kremlin document.

Russia plans to send nearly 100,000 Ukrainians as far as Siberia and the Arctic Circle, UK newspaper The i reported, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of "special filtration camps" for captured people.

A Kremlin document, cited by The i, shows Russia made an emergency order last month to forcibly move 95,739 Ukrainians to far-away regions in Russia.

The document suggests that Ukrainians will not be sent to major cities like Moscow or St. Petersburg, but rather to remote areas located thousands of miles away from their homes.

The areas include the Siberian town of Magadan, the Arctic port of Murmansk, and the Caucasus regions of Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan, according to The i.

Some Ukrainians are also being sent as far as Sakhalin — a Russian island in the Pacific Ocean, located just north of Japan — The i reported.

The regions have reportedly been told to update Moscow on new arrivals monthly.

The report comes after Ukrainian officials accused Russia of moving thousands of people from Mariupol — a heavily bombarded southern port city in Ukraine — to so-called "filtration camps" along the border before forcibly relocating them to far-away regions in Russia.

In a speech to the Lithuanian parliament on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said: "There are mass deportations of people from the occupied areas. Hundreds of thousands of people have already been deported."

"They are placed in special filtration camps," he added. "Documents are taken away from them. They are interrogated and humiliated. It is unknown how many are killed."

A temporary accommodation center where evacuees take shelter at a former sports hall in Taganrog in the Rostov region, Russia on March 21, 2022.Fedor Larin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The Mariupol City Council said last month that Russians kidnapped 20,000 of the besieged city's residents.

Several women from Mariupol who said they were forced to go to the "filtration camps" have since spoken to media outlets, including The Guardian and The Washington Post, about what their experience was like.

One unnamed woman told the Post that she was brought via bus to the Ukrainian border town of Novoazovsk after Russian soldiers found her sheltering in an underground bunker.

Once in Novoazovsk, the woman told the post she was interrogated by men who said they were part of the Russian security service, the FSB. She said she was photographed and fingerprinted and also had to hand over her phone and passwords.

"At all stages of the journey, we were treated like captives or some criminals. I felt like a sack of potatoes tossed around," the woman told the Post.

Another unnamed woman told The Guardian that she, alongside "two or three hundred" others, faced interrogation and had her personal items confiscated at the "filtration camp" in Novoazovsk.

"It was very degrading," she told The Guardian about the interrogation.

Both women were able to break away from their groups and managed to escape to Europe, according to the Post and The Guardian.

Russia has denied that anyone from Ukraine is being relocated against their will, the Post reported.

Last month, the Kremlin said it had rescued 420,000 people "from dangerous regions of Ukraine, the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics" and evacuated them to Russia, according to the Post.

A small tent camp in Sri Lankan city becomes focus of national protests



Gota-Go village run by protestors, in Colombo

   

   

Tue, April 12, 2022,
By Uditha Jayasinghe and Devjyot Ghoshal

COLOMBO (Reuters) - On a patch of grass near Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's office in the commercial capital Colombo, around two dozen tents have been erected in a small but growing camp that is becoming the focal point of national protests.

Thousands of people have taken to the streets nearby and across the country in recent days to call for Rajapaksa to step down, venting their anger at soaring inflation and lengthy power cuts caused by the spiralling economic crisis.

On a handwritten board next to the tents, not far from the colonial-era presidential building adjoining Colombo's water front, stands the sign: "Gota-Go Village".

The slogan "Gota go back," also referring to Gotabaya, is being chanted at demonstrations sweeping Sri Lanka, in an unprecedented public outcry that has brought together people of different faiths, ethnicities and social groups.

Close to the protest camp on Monday evening, a group of Christian nuns in white habits walked past a police barricade, atop which 11 protesters sat chanting. One held a poster saying "Our Govt Failed Us".

A short distance away, three Buddhist monks in bright saffron robes stood amid the crowd.

'OUR ONLY HOPE'

At the edge of a lawn, behind some tents, around 30 Muslim men sat in two lines to break their Ramadan fast.

Farzana F. Haniffa, a professor of sociology at the University of Colombo, said the protest site had become a space where all Sri Lankans could come together in a rare show of unity.

One common cause was anger at what protesters said was economic mismanagement by the Rajapaksa family.

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president's elder brother, serves as prime minister and their younger brother, Basil, was finance minister until recently.

The administration says it is doing what it can to drag Sri Lanka out of a crisis that has left it unable to buy fuel and medicine and struggling to pay its debts.

Some protesters said they would only leave if the Rajapaksas stepped down. Mahinda Rajapaksa said in a televised address that the protests were hampering attempts to improve the situation.

Walking around barefoot early on Tuesday, after another night of heavy rain, Mary Suwen was rearranging tents that her husband had brought in from his adventure tourism business.

"The country is in a crisis so you can't stay at home," said Suwen, 27, a civil engineer.

"We need to pressure them," she said, talking of the Rajapaksas. "They need to be accountable to the people."

Gagana Atapattu, 22, said he was part of the election campaign that brought Gotabaya Rajapaksa to power in 2019, but now regretted working for him.

"I'm now suffering for what I did," he said, as he helped to manage donations of food, water and other supplies that Sri Lankans were bringing to be stored in large open tents.

Among those donating was Y.C. Kanthi, who waited in a long queue for fuel and then drove 15 km (9 miles) to deliver a pile of buns stuffed with caramelised onions for the protesters.

"I gave a special order to a nearby bakery and had them made for these youngsters," said Kanthi, 53. "They are our future, they are our only hope out of this mess."

(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe and Devjyot Ghoshal; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Janet Lawrence)

INSIGHT-Drugs running out, surgeries cancelled as Sri Lanka's health system buckles


* Sri Lankan healthcare system hit hard by economic crisis

* Some patients unable to access key drugs through state hospitals

* Some medical procedures being suspended due to shortages

* Officials hope aid from India, WHO will relieve pressure

By Devjyot Ghoshal and Uditha Jayasinghe

COLOMBO, April 12 (Reuters) - Rosanne White was first diagnosed with cancer eight years ago and lost a kidney. After the cancer returned five years ago, an oncologist in Sri Lanka's commercial capital Colombo started her on Bevacizumab last May, a treatment she was responding to.

White, a 58-year-old Sri Lankan retiree, said she had received the injections free of charge as part of the country's universal government health system, which the vast majority of its 22 million people depend on.

But after 13 rounds of treatment, White said she now cannot find the injection in government hospitals.

Bevacizumab costs 113,000 Sri Lankan rupees ($359) per shot in the private market and, because she does not have insurance, White said the costs were eating into her limited savings.

"We have to call the hospital before going in for treatment to find out if our medication is available," White told Reuters. "But what do you do when the nurses say the hospital doesn't have the medication?"

White's struggle to find Bevacizumab in state-run facilities is an early sign of how Sri Lanka's healthcare system is close to collapse, under the weight of the island nation's worst economic crisis. As well as shortages of vital drugs, some procedures and tests have been suspended.

The lack of foreign exchange has left President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's government unable to import essentials including medicines and fuel, causing crippling power cuts and bringing thousands of protesters on to the streets demanding his ouster.

Reuters spoke to two government officials, six doctors and a healthcare union leader who said they had not seen Sri Lanka's health system in such a bad way before.

An internal memo from a major state-run hospital in Colombo seen by Reuters said that only emergency, casualty and malignancy surgeries would be conducted from April 7 onwards because of a lack of surgical supplies.

Sri Lanka's health ministry did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters about the problems facing the sector.

The economy, which relies heavily on tourism, has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and hit by the sharp rise in oil prices in the wake of the war in Ukraine, which has made importing enough fuel unaffordable.

Some analysts have also criticised Rajapaksa's administration for its decision in 2019 to make deep tax cuts and delay talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Those negotiations are now going ahead.

A close aide to the Rajapaksas has said previously that the tax cuts had been designed to boost the economy, but that COVID-19 then struck.

Sri Lanka now has just $1.93 billion in foreign exchange reserves, the equivalent of less than a month's imports, while government debt repayments of twice that amount are due in 2022.

The Sri Lanka Medical Association, the country's oldest professional medical body, wrote to Rajapaksa last week warning him that even emergency treatments may have to be stopped in the coming days.

"This will result in a catastrophic number of deaths," the association said.

'CRUCIAL FIVE MINUTES'

In late March, a 70-year-old woman was wheeled into a government-backed tertiary care hospital in a Colombo suburb. The patient was in septic shock, leading to dangerously low blood pressure.

The doctor dealing with the emergency said the patient ideally needed to be injected with albumin.

"In this case, it wasn't available," said the doctor, who declined to be identified because hospital medical staff are not authorised to speak to the media. "Which means I lost a crucial five minutes."

The patient died, the doctor said.

Out of 1,325 drugs that the government provides to state-run hospitals, three life-saving medicines have completely run out and another 140 essential ones are in short supply, the secretary to Sri Lanka's pharmaceuticals ministry said.

"This will not end in two months," Saman Rathnayake told Reuters. "The dollar crisis will go on."

But he added that new sources of supply could help alleviate immediate shortages.

Some medicines ordered through a credit line with neighbouring India, which supplies 80% of the island's requirement, would likely arrive within two weeks.

"If this Indian credit line works, there won't be an issue for the next six months," Rathnayake said.

Beyond that, Sri Lanka has sought help from the World Health Organization, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. "Their things will come after six months," he said. "That is how we've planned."

Desperate for supplies, some doctors' groups have made public appeals for donations.

Running out of endotracheal (ET) tubes used to help newborn infants with respiratory distress, the Perinatal Society of Sri Lanka issued a list of supplies that can be donated via the health ministry.

"We have almost used all the stocks and no ET tubes will be available in few weeks," the society's president Saman Kumara said in a letter shared on social media.

"I have instructed (staff) not to discard used ET tubes but to clean and sterilize them from now onwards as we may have to reuse them."

A list of out-of-stock supplies from the major state-run hospital in southern Colombo seen by Reuters featured more than 40 items, including urethral catheters, different types of tubes, umbilical cord clamps and glucose test strips used for checking blood sugar levels.

'WE ARE FIGHTING'

A crowd of patients waited on plastic chairs and wooden benches inside a large, brightly lit hall at a major government hospital in northern Colombo late last week.

The hospital, which records around 50,000 patient visits every month with a staff of just over 2,500, is one of the country's major urban health facilities that serves multiple districts, an official said.

"We are still fighting," the official said, asking that he and the hospital not be named. "But I don't know how long we can maintain services."

Last August, as early signs of a brewing crisis became clear, the official said the hospital stopped infrastructure improvements and major renovations, diverting the money to shore up medical supplies.

In recent weeks, after Sri Lanka devalued its currency amid soaring inflation, the official said the cost of medical supplies had increased by 30-40% and put further pressure on the finances of the hospital, already some 350 million rupees ($1.11 million) in debt.

Overall, the government owed around 4 billion rupees ($12.70 million) to suppliers of items such as gloves and reagents used for medical testing, said Rathnayake from the pharmaceutical ministry.

Ravi Kumudesh, president of the Medical Laboratory Technologists Association, said testing had dropped by 30%, with some high-end tests completely stopped. Maintenance of equipment like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines has also been delaye

"There is a gap between the treatment a patient should be getting and what they are getting," Kumudesh told Reuters.

"No one is being held accountable. Even though we are not calculating the numbers, people are dying," he said.

In an interview with Reuters on Saturday, Sri Lanka's new Finance Minister Ali Sabry said his first priority was to stabilise the supply of essentials such as medicines.

But for patients like White, coping with the crisis is becoming increasingly difficult. Slow-release morphine tablets to manage pain are often not available, she said.

"The other day my son went to get it and came back empty-handed," White said.

"I feel very helpless ... I cannot even go to a protest." ($1 = 315.0000 Sri Lankan rupees) (Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal and Uditha Jayasinghe; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Psaki rumors, Mulvaney hire at CBS News trouble journalists


White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington on March 9, 2022, left, and then White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney addresses the media at the White House on Oct. 17, 2019. The hiring of non-journalists as contributors to television news organizations isn't new. Far less common is seeing pushback from the journalists working there, as has happened recently at CBS and NBC News. CBS is hiring Mulvaney, a former Trump administration official and MSNBC is in discussions to hire Psaki when her time in the Biden administration is through. 

DAVID BAUDER
Tue, April 12, 2022,

NEW YORK (AP) — The hiring of non-journalists as contributors to television news organizations isn't new. Far less common is seeing pushback to such decisions from journalists working there, as has happened recently at CBS and NBC News.

Discontent emerged over CBS' hiring of former Trump administration official Mick Mulvaney as a commentator and discussions about current White House press secretary Jen Psaki working at MSNBC when her time in the Biden administration is through.

In both cases, journalists have been quiet publicly about their concerns over the decisions. Because of concern about Psaki — which has raised ethical issues for the press secretary — NBC News President Noah Oppenheim was compelled to address the discussions in a phone meeting with Washington-based staff, first reported by CNN.

While both cases are different, the fact that these internal complaints surfaced illustrates some of the pressures many journalists feel under, said Mark Whitaker, a former executive at NBC News, CNN and Newsweek. They already work in a hyper-partisan time and face accusations of promoting “fake news,” he said.

“There's a feeling of ‘this just makes our job harder when we’re under attack anyway,'” Whitaker said.

Each case is more complex than rubbing elbows at the water cooler with a partisan.

Neither MSNBC nor Psaki have publicly confirmed their talks about a role there. MSNBC has already hired Symone Sanders, former chief spokeswoman for Vice President Kamala Harris, for a job that begins in May. NBC News has taken pains to draw distinctions between its journalists and MSNBC, which has beefed up its opinion programming, although that's awkward when journalists like Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd both have shows on the cable network.

At least until the situation becomes clearer, NBC News journalists are put in the uncomfortable position of having professional contact with someone who may soon become a colleague.

NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker asked Psaki about her status at a recent White House briefing, saying “is it ethical for you to keep conducting this job while negotiating with a media outlet?”

Without confirming or denying those talks, Psaki said she had already gone “over and above” stringent ethical requirements. Welker followed up twice, asking “how can you be an effective briefer if you do, in fact, have plans to join a media outlet?”

Psaki said she has taken steps to make sure there is no conflict. While the situation is still in flux, CNN reported that she is not expected to do any on-camera interviews with NBC News or MSNBC personnel, and won't be involved in decisions about booking administration officials on the networks.

Oppenheim declined an opportunity to discuss the issue, through a spokesman.

CBS News said Mulvaney's signing was part of the network's buildup of its roster of contributors in advance of the 2022 midterm and 2024 presidential elections. The news division's co-president, Neeraj Khemlani, said in a staff meeting prior to the announcement that CBS is making sure that it hires contributors that ensure the network has access to officials in both parties with a midterm election looming, according to a tape of that meeting provided to the Washington Post.

In addition to internal grumbling, CBS News received outside criticism; Post columnist Margaret Sullivan, for example, blasted the “ galling cynicism ” of the move. A former congressman, Mulvaney served Trump as chief of staff, as well as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

CBS has had other like-minded outsiders as contributors, like former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus, and it recently announced the signing of former national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

Mulvaney, however, drew criticism for lying when he publicly admitted Trump had withheld aid to Ukraine to pressure the country into investigating political opponents, then later suggesting he hadn't said that. In the early days of the coronavirus, he said the media was hyping the virus as a way to bring down Trump.

“Even in opinion journalism, a respect for facts is essential,” said Geneva Overholser, a veteran consultant who's worked at both the University of Missouri and USC Annenberg journalism schools.

“I read the CBS staff reaction as trying to hold onto that principle, to continue to uphold the network's honor,” she said. “More power to them.”

Khemlani was not made available for an interview. CBS said that when Mulvaney makes appearances as a commentator on political news, he will be with news anchors who can give context to his statements.

Since the March 29 announcement that he'd been hired as a contributor, he's appeared once on the network's streaming service but not yet on TV, a spokeswoman said.

Canada's housing bubble is a cautionary tale for the US real estate market


Alcynna Lloyd
Wed, April 13, 2022

Edwin Remsberg/Getty Images

Canada's housing market is in overdrive as prices soar to record highs.


That's because, like in the US, there aren't enough homes for sale to meet demand.


The US housing market is starting to resemble Canada's — and should be a cautionary tale for us all.

Canada's red hot housing market is in overdrive as housing affordability sinks — it sounds too familiar to Americans.

The national average home price in Canada climbed to $816,720 CAN in February, hitting an all-time high according to the Canadian Real Estate Association, and 50% higher than that of the median US home price when converted to USD. The 20.6% year-over-year growth is attributed to a home buying frenzy — like that in the US — that was spurred on by record low mortgage rates in 2020.


In both the US and Canada, the problems in the housing market boil down to the simple fact that there just aren't enough homes to house everyone who wants to buy, following years of underbuilding and investors entering the market looking to make a profit.

"Ultimately, to tame housing affordability challenges, more homes and apartments must be built," Robert Dietz, National Association of Homebuilders chief economist, told Insider.

Although home prices showed signs of cooling in March, Canada's tremendous lack of available housing remains a hurdle stabilizing the market. To aid the recovery, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government last week announced a two year ban on home purchases by foreign investors, among other measures, in hopes of cooling demand in the oversaturated housing market.

But housing experts say the move is just not enough.

"I don't think prices are going to fall as a result, though I do think it takes away at least some of the competition in what is the most competitive market in Canadian housing history," Simeon Papailias, founder of real estate investment firm REC Canada told Bloomberg, adding that it's unlikely that a "two-year band-aid" is going to have an impact on a fundamental lack of homes.

As housing affordability plummets in Canada, it's impossible to ignore the similarities to the US real estate market. Whatever side of the border you're on, one thing is clear — housing availability is shockingly low in Canada and the US. If more homes aren't built to meet housing demand, the US could follow in Canada's footsteps.
Canada's housing bubble could be the future of the US real estate market

Canada may have the lowest average number of homes available per capita – but America isn't doing too hot either.

According to HUD and the US Census Bureau, housing starts — the number of privately owned new houses on which construction has been started in the US — increased 6.8% in February. However, the NAHB estimates there are still 152,000 single-family units that have yet to begin construction. This is up 24.6% from a year ago and marks a four-month high of delayed starts.

Dietz said that's helping. "However, the availability of materials, lumber, labor and lots remain key headwinds, with access to labor in particular likely to become more challenging in 2022," he said.

Employment has also been a huge challenge for the US homebuilding sector, which has experienced some of the worst job losses of the pandemic. Between December 2019 and December 2020, the field lost nearly 441,000 jobs. Although the construction employment rate is up 5.15% since Feb 2020, job losses have been damning.

According to the Home Builders Institute, 2.2 million new workers are needed within the next three years to meet housing demand. Until employment improves, the NAHB estimates the US real estate market lacks at least one million single-family homes.

While there are notable differences between the US and Canadian real estate market, the lack of available home for sale has prompted experts to discuss a possible bubble in the US market as well. As affordability plunges in Canada, it stands as a reminder of how inventory can offset a real estate market. With US housing supply remaining near four-decade lows and home prices surging to $405,000 in March, America may not be too far behind its northern neighbor.

The solution for both countries, Dietz said, is simple in theory, but harder in practice:

"The key to improving housing affordability is increasing inventory."

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
More than $7 billion of assets suspected of belonging to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich were just frozen by the Government of Jersey


Dominick Reuter
Wed, April 13, 2022

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.Clive Mason/Getty Images


Over $7 billion in assets suspected of belonging to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich were seized.


The Royal Court of the Island of Jersey froze assets located there or owned by entities incorporated there.


The amount could represent more than half of Abramovich's $13.9 billion fortune.

The Royal Court of the island state of Jersey has frozen more than $7 billion in assets suspected of being connected to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Law Officers' Department said it executed search warrants on Tuesday at locations believed to be related to Abramovich's businesses.

The freezing order, known as a "saisie judiciaire," covers assets either located in Jersey or owned by entities incorporated there.

Abramovich's fortune is currently estimated at $13.9 billion, according to Bloomberg, but it is unclear how these recently frozen assets factor in.

The steel and nickel tycoon's wealth tumbled by about $3 billion following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and in March he said he would sell the Chelsea Football Club, which he has owned since 2003.

In addition, Abramovich is believed to be the owner of several yachts, two of which appear to be avoiding ports where they might be seized, while another was reportedly transferred to a business associate just hours after the invasion started.

The UK and EU have levied sanctions against Abramovich, but the billionaire has so far escaped targeting by the US, possibly at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Abramovich was been seen attending peace talks in Istanbul in March.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
Cryptocurrency mining rig found in NUS UTown Residence in Singapore


Staff Writer, Singapore
Tue, April 12, 2022,

A cryptocurrency mining farm. (PHOTO: Getty Images)

SINGAPORE — A cryptocurrency mining rig was discovered in a National University of Singapore (NUS) residence last week.

The rig was found in the UTown Residence, a dormitory located in NUS’ University Town, during a routine inspection, according to media reports citing an advisory from the UTown Residence Management Office on Monday (11 April).

In a reply to Yahoo Finance Singapore’s queries, an NUS UTown Residence spokesperson said that its residents were informed that “crypto mining rigs are strictly prohibited as these consume very high levels of energy and emit unusually large amounts of heat, posing a fire hazard and the risk of power outage”.

It added that it is currently investigating the matter and has ordered for the rig to be removed for the safety of residents.

Cryptocurrency mining involves deploying powerful and often costly specialised machines to solve complex mathematical problems in exchange for new cryptocurrency. As the process involves a high amount of energy, mining usually happens in giant data centres owned by firms or groups of people.

According to a New York Times report released last year, Bitcoin mining consumes around 91 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, which is more power than is used by Finland, a nation of some 5.5 million.

UK financial site Money Super Market calculated that every Bitcoin transaction consumes 1,173 kilowatt hours of electricity, which is enough to power a typical UK home for more than three months.

Inspector general says post office surveillance program exceeded legal authority

·Investigative Correspondent
March 31, 2022·

WASHINGTON — An inspector general probe into the U.S. Postal Service surveillance program, known as iCOP, concluded that the agency did not have the legal authority to conduct the sweeping intelligence collection and surveillance of American protesters and others between 2018 and 2021.

The Postal Service Office of Inspector General launched an investigation into iCOP — which stands for Internet Covert Operations Program — at the request of Congress in direct response to reporting from Yahoo News last year.

“We determined that certain proactive searches iCOP conducted using an open-source intelligence tool from February to April 2021 exceeded the Postal Inspection Service’s law enforcement authority,” the March 25, 2022, inspector general report stated.

A United States Postal Service truck in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Caballer-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

“Furthermore, we could not corroborate whether other work analysts completed from October 2018 through June 2021 was legally authorized.”

The audit of the program was prompted by Yahoo News’ reporting that revealed the existence of the secret program, as well as its use of facial recognition software and other sophisticated technology and software to compile and disseminate reports on Americans’ online speech and movements. A March 16, 2021, iCOP intelligence bulletin on American protesters was widely circulated by the Department of Homeland Security to state, local and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Yahoo News’ reporting on the program prompted outrage from lawmakers and constitutional experts, who questioned whether the post office had the legal authority to target and collect information on U.S. citizens not suspected of any crime and with no connection to the post office.

In April 2021, Yahoo News revealed the existence of the iCOP surveillance, which used analysts to trawl the internet looking for “inflammatory” posts about nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. A series of follow-up reports revealed further details about the program, which had been operating without the oversight or even the knowledge of Congress. (Yahoo News has filed its own lawsuit to obtain additional records related to iCOP.)

“The Oversight Committee requested this report because of our significant concerns about intelligence activities conducted by the Postal Service Inspection Service’s analytics team related to First Amendment activity," Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, told Yahoo News in a Thursday statement. "The inspector general’s audit makes clear that the committee’s concerns were justified, and that the use of open-source intelligence by the analytics team ‘exceeded the Postal Inspection Service’s law enforcement authority.’"

A woman holds a Black Lives Matter flag during an event in remembrance of George Floyd on May 24, 2021, in St. Paul, Minn. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)

Using sophisticated technology and software, iCOP was running keyword searches like “protest” on social media to collect online speech about a host of different events that contained no threats and had nothing to do with the Postal Service’s work.

The inspector general report notes that in April 2021 Postal Inspection Service lawyers asked iCOP to remove “protest” from its keyword searches “to protect constitutional rights.”

Frank Albergo, president of the Postal Police Officers Association, told Yahoo News that the Postal Inspection Service had “lost their way.”

“At this point they might as well take their mission statement of protecting the Postal Service and its employees and throw it in the garbage,” Albergo said, arguing that not enough attention is being paid by the agency to the “mail theft epidemic” of postal property that was happening at the same time.

The 26-page report concluded that the post office did not have the legal authority to compile reports on Americans involved in Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the nation. The report also found across-the-board violations of statutory and legal authority ranging from lack of legal authority to noncompliance with federal records retention to use of facial recognition software. It also said there was no record-keeping policy or procedures in place to make sure the work was legal.

The report repeatedly stressed that the Postal Service’s surveillance efforts need a “postal nexus,” or a connection to the Postal Inspection Service’s work.

“The Postal Inspection Service’s activities must have an identified connection to the mail, postal crimes, or the security of Postal Service facilities or personnel (postal nexus) prior to commencing,” the report said.

“However, the keywords used for iCOP in the proactive searches did not include any terms with a postal nexus. Further, the postal nexus was not documented in 122 requests and 18 reports due to a lack of requirements in the program’s procedures. These issues occurred because management did not involve the Postal Inspection Service’s Office of Counsel in developing iCOP or its procedures.”

A USPS employee organizes packages in a mail truck in Houston. 

(Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

The inspector general made a series of recommendations, including a complete review and overhaul of the program and the analyst division under which it operates. Postal Service leadership responded to each recommendation, objecting to most of the report’s conclusions and arguing that it has the authority to conduct wide-ranging surveillance and intelligence collection on U.S. citizens — without needing a nexus to the post office. It agreed to review some of its policies after the completion of the internal review recommended by the inspector general.

“We strongly disagree with the overarching conclusion that the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (Inspection Service) exceeded its legal authority and conducted improper intelligence searches,” the Postal Inspection Service wrote in response to the recommendations and findings of the inspector general audit. The response was included in the report.

Maloney, the Oversight Committee chair, said: "I fully support the Inspector General’s recommendation that Postal Service management perform a full review of the Analytics Team’s responsibilities, activities, and procedures, and I look forward to reviewing its result.”

FIRE DEJOY

DeJoy says USPS will expedite midterm ballots, holds firm on electric trucks

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy talks with guests at an event where U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law H.R. 3076, the "Postal Service Reform Act of 2022" at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 6, 2022.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (Kevin Lamarque / reuters)


LONG READ 

Jacob Bogage
Tue, April 12, 2022,

WASHINGTON - Had the U.S. Postal Service incrementally made improvements over the years, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy says, Americans wouldn't know who runs their mail agency. And DeJoy, the controversial leader of the mail service, wouldn't be making "uncomfortable" changes at the Postal Service to make it fit for evolving consumer habits.

But when DeJoy, a former supply-chain logistics executive and conservative political donor, took over the Postal Service in June 2020, the agency was in dire shape. The coronavirus pandemic was on the verge of sidelining much of its workforce. Its complex transportation network was misaligned, a cardinal sin in DeJoy's logistics world. The postal chief's changes to fix what he saw as fundamental flaws cascaded into a mail-delay crisis before the 2020 presidential election that made DeJoy a household name.

"And despite all this stuff, I never really feel any stress about it," DeJoy told The Washington Post in an interview.

"We can be demonstratively the best-run agency in the United States government," he added. "Why? Because we do transactional things that are measurable, that are definable and we provide a service that is impactful."

President Joe Biden recently signed legislation into law to unburden the mail agency of years' worth of financial constraints. Its delayed service has begun to rebound. The Postal Service became a major part of Biden's pandemic response, shipping more than 320 million rapid coronavirus test kits to American households since late January.

And DeJoy has his first real opening to attempt to make the Postal Service more competitive with private-sector shippers FedEx, UPS and Amazon - companies that have used the pandemic to build out their own networks and decrease their reliance on the mail agency. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)

"All I want to do is run the place better," DeJoy said. "I'm not out there making this kind of policy or that policy. I want my trucks to run on time. I want my trucks to be full. I want my carriers to show up at the same address every day. I want my people to be safe and to like being here."

But top Biden administration priorities on climate change and voting rights are running into DeJoy's agency transformation - presenting fresh challenges in Congress, the White House and post offices across the country.

DeJoy sat down with The Post to discuss the state of the Postal Service and questions about its future. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: When you arrived at the Postal Service, what did it need in terms of logistics?

A: What this place needs from a logistics standpoint has not been solved yet. We have 500 different plants and 19,000 different delivery units, and that doesn't talk about the 31,000 retail centers. How do we optimize all that for different types of business? We got a lot of work there.

What I did do was identify that we're in a crisis and said we need to have a plan to get out of this. We were losing $10 billion a year, losing market share all over the place, burning out people, running empty trucks. Our plants are terrible. And there was no plan. It was metastasizing. And there was this false reality that existed that there was some way you could solve this thing just the way it existed.

Q: Was that difficult to do - to start telling people that you thought the Postal Service was in a much worse place than many were willing to admit?

A: From my standpoint, there was a lot of self-interest. In many ways in my head, I just called B.S. on it and looked right down the line what needed to be done. And management did have a role. I think management could have done more. The Postal Regulatory Commission had a role in taking years to find out that diminishing mail volume matters and letting us adjust our prices.

Congress had a role from unfunded mandates to letting the place run with an empty board of governors. All these things were metastasizing within the organization, and when I got here, there was no plan. The place, it just lacked definition everywhere. And that was what my 10-year transformation plan was about. There were three tenets. Number one, we're going to deliver six days a week to 161 million addresses. I wanted to get that off the table, cutting delivery days. I saw delivering six days a week as a ticket to the future - one way out.

Number two, we have to cover our cost. It's a good thing. It means that you can't do all things at all cost. And the fact of the matter is when we're losing money the way we are, we are satisfying unreasonable expectations.

Number three, make the place believe that we're a going concern, that we will meet our financial obligations when they come due, that we're going to be here 10 years from now.

Q: Was there doubt that the Postal Service would exist 10 years from now?

A: I came in, and they said, "We're going to run out of cash and we're going to lose $20 billion in the next year." The Government Accountability Office has put us on the high risk list for 10 years. The only way we survived was not paying employee health-care benefits. I was the person to take it seriously. Now you will read, "The Treasury Department will never let this happen." OK. I don't know. Maybe? What kind of carnage are we going to have here at the Postal Service and for the nation by testing that model to see if Treasury is going to jump in? I took it seriously.

Q: Let's talk about voting by mail. Will the Postal Service commit to using the same "extraordinary measures" - dedicated ballot-expediting procedures - in the 2022 midterm elections that it used in elections in 2020 and in 2021?

A: The answer is yes. It has never been in question. It's like you tie your shoes when you walk out the door and then you see a judge who says, "You must tie your shoes in the future." It was kind of a ridiculous accusation. And listen, that's not me. That was the organization that was here before. Now I may have aligned the network, had more meetings, done a little more stuff. And when you look at all the changes I'm making, I'm one person. I didn't bring in outside consultants. This is internal postal genetics. So we always use the extraordinary measures. We don't need a judge to tell us, we don't need a nonprofit to tell us. We use our best efforts to make sure every ballot that we get our hands on will get delivered. We have done it. It shows in the results. So we'll continue to do that.

Q: The Biden budget wants to give the Postal Service $5 billion for mail-in voting to make ballots postage free, reduce certain election-related costs and more. Do you want that money? Do you need that money?

A: We are interested in, to the extent that the states can standardize and use first-class mail and so on and so forth, I think it creates more reliability. We're the most consistent thing in voting by mail. Everybody else changes rules every year. We've been pretty stable in that regard. But we don't advocate for anything in that regard. This is the nation's policy.

Q:Let's move to the Postal Service's new fleet of delivery trucks. You recently ordered 50,000 trucks, 10,000 of them electric.

A: 10,019 electric.

Q: Yes, 10,019. Where do you see that headed in terms of more electric trucks? What's the trajectory on that?

A: When I got here, the truck procurement had been in a pile since 2015. We have people that can't put their trucks in reverse because they're in such bad shape. I needed to buy trucks. What we knew about electric vehicles was what an engineer would know about electric when I got here: the different type of transmission, this and that. You have a lot of information on infrastructure and so on, and we needed to move. And we almost got $6 billion, $7 billion from Congress for electric trucks in the Build Back Better Act. We were this close!

From my standpoint, my mission is delivering mail and packages. The policy of electrifying the fleet of the nation is a mission that I will support. But I would be negligent to spend all my money on doing that. So we didn't have the money, we didn't have the knowledge. We got 10,019 electric vehicles rather than 5,000 because we're in a better financial position.

I do think electrification of the vehicles is good. I'm a supporter. At this particular point in time, when I went to make the order, there's 10,019 specific routes that I know are a slam dunk that we will use them and it will work. And that is how I make decisions as we move forward. And I'm not buying 180,000. I'm buying 50,000. When I go to buy the next amount, we will reevaluate.

Q: The Postal Service's cash balance right now is somewhere between $20 billion and $24 billion. There will be people who will say you have enough money to buy electric vehicles already. Why are they mistaken?

A: Number one, whether I run out of cash tomorrow or I run out of cash three years from now -

Q: You've said this before. It's a matter of if you pay your bills.

A: Yes. Number two, I have a lot of other needs. I got 500 plants I need to address. I have 30-year-old IT. I have to spend a couple billion dollars to get my IT relevant. I have to spend a few billion dollars, at least, to get my plants relevant. Look, I made a decision on this batch. When it's ready for the next batch, I will evaluate. We're driving a lot of change and transformation, so I should expect that facts should be different for me two years from now than they are today. They're different for me from 18 months ago when I got here.

If fuel prices stay the way they are, if the technology evolves. We're still putting 10,000 electric trucks into service pretty quickly. I'm saying, we're buying 50,000 trucks and 10,019 of them are electric. And we've done it, right?

The next time when we do our next buy, we'll evaluate it under the circumstances of where we are in our transformation. We are a puppy as an organization right now. We don't know what we're going to be when we grow up. We have a direction, but that's it. I want to be able to be flexible. I appreciate everybody's interest in that, and I think it's a good interest. But that is not my total responsibility.

Q: So you see that electrification as social policy?

A: No, I don't see it as social policy. I see it as a national policy. And I mean, we have many green initiatives, but we also have lots of initiatives and only so-deep pockets. We have different needs for the vehicles. Even these 10,000, they didn't show a cost benefit in the 10,000 that we bought on the routes that we have. We're hoping long term that the economics continue to play out and in our favor in that regard.

Q: There will be people who will read what you just said and say, "That is complete nonsense."

A: Because of the cash that we have?

Q: Because of the cash. Because your competitors like Amazon, FedEx and UPS are buying EVs not because of the environment, but because they see the business sense in it. There are people who want the Postal Service to buy electric vehicles because of environmental concerns and others because they think EVs can save the agency money.

A: The service requirements that we have with these vehicles are far different than FedEx or all the rest. And the economics - people may not believe them - but the economics that my team has come up with demonstrate that at this particular point in time, these particular routes are beneficial and these particular routes are not for our application. And that is the math that we are going with.

And we have other needs for our capital. If I was buying 180,000 trucks right now, OK, I'd say everybody has a better discussion with me. I'm buying 50,000. Congress is still talking to us about other things. I don't have to make big statements about this, because we're making big statements about a lot of things.

Q: Let's move on to the more than 320 million at-home coronavirus test kits the Postal Service has shipped to Americans on behalf of the White House. Tell me about how that materialized.

A: We had a call from the White House, and the Department of Health and Human Services was partnering with them. We get lots of calls for lots of things, and I often felt that when we get involved with things, it's other agencies' glory and our cost. That's been my basic position. But this was starting to heat up in terms of being a real requirement. The team was looking at outsourcing it, and I sat down and listened to some of the plans. People were going to get 10 million square feet of buildings and 10,000 people, and I thought, this is not going to work. So I jumped in on the calls about two or three days before Christmas. I put our team together really quickly, and the day after Christmas and everybody worked nonstop.

Forty million orders came in. We have an inventory control system that we put in all the plants. Every plant was tied to Zip codes that it would deliver to. That's why the delivery was so quick; 60% of them got delivered within a day.

When I got my tests, by the time you all had inventory, it was there the next day.

Right now we're shipping a couple hundred thousand a day as we get the orders. It shows you the power of the organization. I told everybody, "Don't treat this like mail. This is inventory. This is deliberate." This is everything that I did in my previous career, and it was just phenomenal how - you know, the first days are always rough when we were making the change, but then once it clicks, the talent and the commitment, it was just fascinating to see. We were shipping 3 million orders a day, like within two weeks.

Synopsys Probed on Allegations It Gave Tech to Huawei, SMIC

Ian King and Jenny Leonard
Wed, April 13, 2022



(Bloomberg) -- Synopsys Inc., the biggest supplier of software used to design semiconductors, is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Commerce for possibly passing key technology to banned Chinese companies, according to people familiar with the matter.

Investigators are looking into allegations that Synopsys, working with affiliates in China, provided chip designs and software to Huawei Technologies Co.’s HiSilicon unit for manufacture at Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., said the people, who asked not to be identified because details of the process haven’t been made public. U.S. companies are barred from selling some types of technology to Huawei and SMIC because they’ve been designated as threats to national security by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

Synopsys in December disclosed it had received a subpoena from BIS relating to “transactions with certain Chinese entities,” without specifying when it received the request or providing further details. At the time, the company said it was in compliance with all regulations and was working to respond to the inquiry. Synopsys declined to comment beyond that initial disclosure.

The company’s stock declined as much as 4.3% in New York trading Wednesday, wiping out earlier gains of as much as 3.6%.

Mountain View, California-based Synopsys and its rival Cadence Design Systems Inc. dominate the market for software used to design semiconductors. Their products are essential for Chinese chipmakers trying to lead Beijing’s push to make the country more self reliant in electronic components.

Like many other U.S. companies, Synopsys has done business with Chinese customers through joint ventures in China, the world’s largest market for chips.

That type of arrangement has been thrown into the spotlight by another owner of foundational technology in semiconductors, Arm Ltd. The SoftBank Group Corp.-owned company, whose designs are at the heart of most smartphone processors, is still trying to remove the head of Arm China, more than a year after the board fired him. That’s added to concern that overseas companies risk losing control of their technology in China when working through joint ventures there.

“While the Department does not comment on the potential existence of investigations, BIS vigorously investigates allegations of violations of the Export Administration Regulations, including attempts to transfer controlled items or technologies to or among parties on the Entity List,” BIS said in a statement. “Any enforcement action resulting from an investigation is made public after that investigation has concluded.”

The situation highlights the difficulties U.S. companies are facing amid the growing rivalry between their home country and China, which is the largest and fastest growing market for their technology. To keep investors happy, they need to tap that opportunity without running afoul of increasing restrictions from regulators.

Huawei, a maker of networking gear and once one of the world’s largest smartphone producers, was placed on the U.S. Entity list in May 2019. SMIC, China’s largest chip manufacturer, was placed under restrictions in December 2020. Both Chinese companies have denied any wrongdoing.

California Lawyer Quits Over Allegation Newsom Meddled in Activision Case

Jason Schreier
Wed, April 13, 2022


(Bloomberg) -- A top lawyer for the state of California has resigned, accusing the governor’s office of interfering with a discrimination lawsuit against Activision Blizzard Inc.

Melanie Proctor, the assistant chief counsel for California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, said in an email to staff Tuesday night that she was resigning to protest the fact that her boss at the agency, Chief Counsel Janette Wipper, had been abruptly fired by the governor. Both lawyers had already stepped down from the Activision lawsuit earlier this month without explanation. A representative for the two attorneys confirmed that Proctor had resigned and Wipper was fired.

The allegation and loss of the top two lawyers on the case raises questions about the fate of the Activision lawsuit, which accuses the Santa Monica, California-based video game publisher of sexual discrimination and misconduct. The case is currently pending in Los Angeles Superior Court. The lawsuit, which detailed Activision’s “frat boy” culture, led to employee walkouts, calls for the chief executive officer to resign, condemnation from its business partners and a stock plunge that culminated in Microsoft Corp.’s agreement earlier this year to purchase the company for $69 billion.

Proctor said in the email to staff that in recent weeks, California Governor Gavin Newsom and his office “began to interfere” with the Activision suit. “The Office of the Governor repeatedly demanded advance notice of litigation strategy and of next steps in the litigation,” Proctor wrote in the email, which was seen by Bloomberg. “As we continued to win in state court, this interference increased, mimicking the interests of Activision’s counsel.”

Erin Mellon, communications director for Newsom, said that “claims of interference by our office are categorically false” and the governor’s office “will continue to support DFEH in their efforts to fight all forms of discrimination and protect Californians.”

Proctor wrote that Wipper had “attempted to protect” the agency’s independence and was “abruptly terminated” as a result. “I hereby resign, effective April 13, 2022, in protest of the interference and Janette’s termination,” Proctor wrote.

Wipper is “evaluating all avenues of legal recourse including a claim under the California Whistleblower Protection Act,” said her spokeswoman, Alexis Ronickher.

A spokesperson for the governor’s office referred a Bloomberg request for comment to a spokesperson for the DFEH, who said they would not comment on personnel matters. “DFEH will continue to vigorously enforce California’s civil rights and fair housing laws,” a spokesperson said.

The shakeup comes just two weeks after Activision reached a settlement with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $18 million over a similar lawsuit. In a series of court squabbles, California’s lawyers had attempted to block that settlement but were ultimately rejected by a federal judge.

Critics pointed out that $18 million was low for a company of Activision’s scale, and that Wipper’s department had gotten Riot Games Inc., a far smaller company, to pay $100 million last year to settle its own discrimination lawsuit.

Wipper started at the DFEH in 2018 and was reappointed to her position last November. She cultivated a reputation as a legal bulldog, pursuing splashy cases against tech companies such as Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s Riot and Tesla Inc. One member of the department, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said that Wipper was widely respected and that she had overhauled the agency for the better. Detractors accused her of being too aggressive at a public agency rather than deferring to civil rights plaintiff’s lawyers.

Jennifer Reisch, an attorney who has worked with Wipper, praised the agency’s transformation in recent years. “For the first time in its history, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing had a strong litigator who was actually flexing the significant muscles that statute and regulations provide to protect workers in its state,” she said in an interview.

In her resignation email, Proctor slammed the governor’s office, writing that “justice should be administered equally, not favoring those with political influence.” She encouraged staff to continue working on the agency’s ongoing litigation “to the best of your abilities.”