Energy Prices Trigger Deindustrialization In Germany

By Irina Slav - Aug 19, 2022

German factories are struggling to cope with soaring energy costs, which may prompt many to leave the country for a cheaper location, Bloomberg has reported, citing industry sources.

"Energy inflation is way more dramatic here than elsewhere," Ralf Stoffels, chief executive of BIW Isolierstoffe, a silicon parts supplier to a range of industries. "I fear a gradual deindustrialization of the German economy."

Energy prices in Europe's biggest economy and the EU's powerhouse hit a record earlier this week, with the year-ahead price per MWh reaching 530.50 euro, or $534.45.

"The longer these price rises go up, the more this will be felt across the economy," Daniel Kral, Oxford Economics senior economist, told Bloomberg. "The magnitude of the increase and magnitude of the crisis isn't comparable to anything in the past few decades."

The struggle is real for all industrial users, and it has become too much for some. For example, two aluminum smelters in Europe have been forced to shut down their operations because of excessive energy prices: one in Slovakia and one in the Netherlands.

German companies have also been warning that some of them might have to shut down if prices remain high or keep rising. In fact, earlier this year, the country's economy minister himself warned that some industrial gas consumers might become casualties of the energy crisis.

"Companies would have to stop production, lay off their workers, supply chains would collapse, people would go into debt to pay their heating bills, that people would become poorer," Robert Habeck told German media in June in comments on reduced Russian gas flows to Germany.

German utilities have been quick to stock up on LNG to fill storage caverns ahead of winter, but this will not be enough to shield Germany from the energy crunch. It will also have zero effect on price trends as the LNG bill has been much higher than Germany's usual pipeline gas bill.

Energy Inflation Threatens Thousands Of UK Businesses

By Irina Slav - Aug 19, 2022, 

Thousands of small and medium businesses in the UK are finding it increasingly hard to keep the lights on as energy prices continue to rise.

Earlier this week, official data showed UK inflation had reached a four-decade high of over 10 percent. This has affected consumer spending, which these businesses depend on for survival.

It is going to get worse, too. The Bank of England forecasted that consumer price inflation will reach 13.3 percent in October, CNBC reported today. The report cited a new survey showing consumer confidence had fallen to the lowest on record.

“While the energy price caps do not apply to businesses directly, millions of small business owners are still experiencing increased energy bills at a time when costs are rising in most operational areas,” a UK insurance executive told CNBC.

“Simultaneously, consumer purchasing power is going down as Brits cut back on non-essential spending, harming the books of SME [small and medium-sized enterprise] owners.”

The energy cap that the executive referred to is a ceiling on energy prices that gets revised twice a year to reflect wholesale energy prices. The latest revisions have been bad news for Britons, promising to raise their average annual electricity bill by the pound equivalent of more than $5,000 in the first quarter of 2023.

City A.M. reported earlier this month that at least half of the current inflation rate in the UK is the direct result of soaring energy prices, which have fuelled a cost-of-living crisis that the government is struggling to contain.

In July, a survey showed that as much as 82 percent of British businesses saw inflation as a growing concern. Now, the number is probably even higher as energy inflation remains excessively high, driving all other prices higher, too.

“Businesses face an unprecedented convergence of cost pressures, with the main drivers coming from raw materials, fuel, utilities, taxes, and labor,” said the head of research for the British Chambers of Commerce that conducted the survey in July.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Judge Deals Blow To Michigan's 

Attempt To Shut Down Line 5

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Aug 19, 2022,

A judge in Michigan has sided with pipeline operator Enbridge in a case that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer pursues to have the Line 5 oil pipeline from Canada to the United States shut down.

Judge Janet Neff ruled this week that the case should be heard in a federal court, not in a state court as the Michigan Governor wanted.

This is the second time in several months that Judge Neff has sided with Enbridge over the long-standing dispute between the company and the state of Michigan over the pipeline. Line 5 carries crude oil and natural gas liquids across the Canada-U.S. border and the Great Lakes via a twin line that runs along the lake bed. 

In November 2020, the Michigan Governor and the director of the state's Department of Natural Resources revoked Enbridge's easement for the operation of the twin Line 5 pipeline, citing repeated violations of the easement and the need to protect the Great Lakes. Michigan's notice required Enbridge to cease operations of the pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac by May 12, 2021. Enbridge ignored the notice and continued running the pipeline. The pipeline operator says that only a court and the U.S. federal government have authority to order Line 5 shut down.

Last November, the White House said it had no plans to shut down the pipeline.

Canada, which considers the pipeline indispensable for supply to Ontario and Quebec, last year sought bilateral negotiations with the United States over the future of Line 5.  

Now the judge ruled, again, that the Michigan-vs-Enbridge case on the pipeline belongs to federal jurisdiction.

"The Court reinforces the importance of a federal forum in deciding the disputed and substantial federal issues at stake, with uniformity and consistency," Judge Neff said in a written decision carried by Associated Press.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Rohingya and CAA: What is India's refugee policy?

Khushboo Sandhu and Meryl Sebastian - BBC News
Fri, August 19, 2022 

Rights groups have criticised India for its attempts to deport Rohingya refugees instead of offering them asylum

India's refugee policy is back in the spotlight after the government contradicted a minister's announcement that there are plans to provide housing and security to the Rohingya community in the capital.

Hours after Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri's tweet on Wednesday, the government said the refugees would be held in detention centres until they were deported.

The Rohingya Muslims are seen by many of Myanmar's Buddhist majority as illegal migrants from Bangladesh. Fleeing persecution at home, they began arriving in India during the 1970s and are now scattered all over the country, with many living in squalid camps.


In August 2017, a deadly crackdown by Myanmar's army sent hundreds of thousands of them fleeing across the border.

According to Human Rights Watch, an estimated 40,000 Rohingyas are in India - at least 20,000 of them are registered with the UN Human Rights Commission.

Rights groups have criticised India for its attempts to deport the refugees instead of offering them asylum.

Mr Puri's proposal to provide housing for the Rohingya was "perfectly correct", senior lawyer Colin Gonsalves told the BBC.

"The Rohingya cannot be put into detention camps as they have not committed any crime," he said. "They come here because they are forced to flee persecution."
How does India deal with refugees? What impact does it have?

India does not have a national policy or a law to deal with refugees. In his now-deleted tweet, Mr Puri wrote, "India respects and follows UN Refugee Convention 1951 and provides refuge to all, regardless of their race, religion or creed."

The country is, however, not a signatory to international laws such as the 1951 UN Convention and the 1967 Protocol, which secure the rights of refugees to seek asylum and protect them from being sent back to life-threatening places.

Experts say this leads to an "ad-hoc and arbitrary" manner of dealing with refugees irrespective of the party in power.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), refugees and asylum-seekers primarily live in urban India - 46% are women and girls, and 36% are children.

Refugees not recognised by the Indian government find it difficult to access housing and healthcare

An absence of documents can mean that refugees coming to India "have no access to basic facilities like healthcare, education and employment", says Suhas Chakma, director of think-tank Rights and Risks Analysis Group.

Refugees recognised by the Indian government can get access to education, healthcare, jobs and housing in camps.

But those registered with UNHRC get little protection in their daily lives and often do not get residential permits from the government, human rights lawyer Nandita Haksar said earlier this year.
What does law say about dealing with refugees?

Mr Chakma says India doesn't have a procedure that allows refugees to seek asylum and those entering the country without a visa are treated as illegal immigrants under the Foreigners Act or the Indian Passport Act.

The only protection they have is the right to life under Article 21 and protection against arbitrary abuse of power under Article 14 of the constitution.

In 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) which offers amnesty and expedites the path to Indian citizenship for non-Muslim "illegal immigrants" from the neighbouring countries, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

But the law was widely criticised and triggered protests across the country. Political parties, civil society and Muslim groups said the law went against secular values enshrined in the constitution.
How are refugees treated in India?

The country's ad-hoc policy means all refugees do not get the same treatment.

"[Such] decisions are taken based on geopolitical and political considerations of the state and national governments," Mr Chakma says.

India supported Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan and took in tens of thousands of refugees from there.

The Tamil Nadu government provided Sri Lankan refugees with an allowance

Journalist Nirupama Subramanian pointed out that in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were provided an allowance by the state government and allowed to seek jobs. After the end of the civil war in 2009, Tamil refugees could consult an agency like the UNHCR and decide whether they wanted to return.

India has for years supported the Dalai Lama and Tibetan refugees who followed him into exile and sought asylum in the country after a failed anti-China uprising in 1959. In 2018, after PM Modi's summit with Chinese President XI Jinping in Wuhan, India's foreign ministry discouraged government officials from attending events where the Dalai Lama or Tibetan officials were present.

But the relationship between the two countries worsened after a 2021 face-off along their disputed border in the Himalayan region.

In January, when China expressed concern over Indian lawmakers attending an event hosted by the Tibetan Parliament-in-exile, Delhi called their comment "inappropriate".

In the case of the Rohingya refugees, the country's decision to deport some men in 2017 sparked an international outcry.

Rajnath Singh, then federal home minister, insisted they were not refugees or asylum-seekers but "illegal immigrants.

Analyst Subir Bhaumik had told the BBC then that the community had become "a favourite whipping boy for the Hindu right-wing to energise their base".

The UN special rapporteur on racism, Tendayi Achiume, said later that India risked breaching its international legal obligations by returning the men to possible harm and that it was "a flagrant denial of the refugees' right to protection".

What does India need to do to have a fair policy?

"Successive governments have often said it's an issue of national security," Mr Chakma says.

In some cases, the Supreme Court stepped in to stop deportations if it found that they did not pose any threat or if sending them back could put their lives at risk.

Mr Chakma says India needs a legal framework so that refugees who enter the country are able to register themselves and access protections against arbitrary detentions.

But Mr Gonsalves, who is also founder of the Human Rights Law Networks, says the legal basis already exists - the constitution protects the rights of refugees.

Pushing Rohingya back across the border to Myanmar where their lives will be in danger will be in breach of the right to life under the constitution, he adds.

"The reason a lot of Rohingya refugees are not being deported at the moment is because there are a series of cases in the Supreme Court where the court has told the government not to take any precipitous steps," he told the BBC.

In 1996, the top court had ruled that the principle of non-return of a refugee is part of the right to life under Article 21 of the constitution.

This covers everyone within the territory of India - "citizens and non-citizens alike", Mr Gonsalves explained.

The government simply needs to implement it, he said.

The other Death Valley: hundreds of migrants are dying in remote Texas deserts

Peter Yeung in Falfurrias, Texas

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, August 19, 2022 

Eddie Canales can’t forget the moment he saw the decomposed body of a young man in his 20s hanging from an oak tree on a south Texas ranch last September.

The intense heat and humidity in this arid scrubland had quickly rotted his flesh to expose much of the skeleton, which had been at the scene for at least a week.

Clearly visible in a graphic image the sheriff’s office provided to the Guardian was the skull, lolling to one side. And both his feet are missing, probably eaten by wild animals.

The man was from Mexico, according to ID documents found. Police explored the possibility it was a lynching, but concluded it was suicide.

“Most of the bodies I encounter are already skeletonised,” said Canales, who runs the South Texas Human Rights Center, a non-profit based in Brooks county, Texas, working to put an end to the avoidable, harsh deaths, and reunite families with the remains of loved ones.

Immigrant rights activist Eddie Canales stocks remote water stations along migrant trails near Falfurrias, Brooks county, Texas. 

Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

“But this was particularly harrowing. That image will stay with me forever,” he added.

Brooks county covers almost 1,000 square miles of sparse, brush-covered, sandy ranch lands not far from the eastern end of the US-Mexico border and is at the heart of a deadly migration crisis that is seeing desperate people die in record numbers.

So high is the grim toll that the surrounding region, spanning several Texas counties near the Rio Grande, has been called the other Death Valley.

Data bears out that terrible nickname: the Missing Migrants Project, an initiative by the Swiss-based International Organization for Migration (IOM) that tracks migrant deaths and disappearances globally, recorded 715 deaths of people trying to cross the US border from Mexico in 2021 – more than double the figure in 2015, making it the deadliest land crossing in the world.

Of the four US states along the border, Texas has the longest stretch and the highest number of migrant deaths, according to a report by the University of Texas’s Strauss Center. Brooks county, where authorities recovered 119 bodies last year, has had more deaths than any other Texas county over the last three decades.

“We’re struggling to deal with all the bodies,” said Don White, county deputy sheriff. Last year the county was provided with a mobile morgue by the state in response to the grisly human reaping. “I recently had to pick up three fresh ones in a day,” he said.

Outside experts believe that federal immigration policies have exacerbated the tragedy, forcing migrants into ever-more perilous crossings, and leading refugee journeys – fleeing violence, persecution and climate disaster – to an anguished dead end.

Eva Moya, an associate professor at the University of Texas studying the precarity faced by migrants, says the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as “Remain in Mexico” – a policy introduced in 2019 under the Trump administration – have resulted in more than 70,000 people being sent back into Mexico to wait for their US court cases, often for extended periods in makeshift camps, where they are often denied basic healthcare and face violence, rape, murder and kidnappings by organised crime groups.

“The risk continues to increase,” says Moya. “Asylum seekers in Mexico are fearing for their lives and smugglers are taking advantage of that. They will do anything to make profit from these people. It’s human trafficking at its max.”

The Biden administration is finally ending the policy, after court battles, but it’s unclear how and when things will change substantially on the ground.

At the same time, Title 42, ostensibly a pandemic-related health measure introduced in 2020, closing border ports of entry and allowing the border patrol to summarily expel migrants without asylum hearings, has contributed to the deaths in Brooks county and beyond, said Alma Maquitico, director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

“Title 42 has led to a rise in deaths,” she said. “People aren’t crossing at cities any more, but in more faraway, dangerous areas. They are dying in the desert.”

Immigrants walk towards the Rio Grande to cross into Del Rio, Texas, from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

Canales also pointed to the rural, arid expanse.

“This is the real Death Valley,” he said, contrasting it with its scorching desert namesake in California.

“The immigration system has failed. The government wants to blame the cartel but not the policy that is creating this problem. The solution is to offer an ordered asylum pathway. You could fix this tomorrow,” he added.

A spokesperson for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees the border patrol’s 20,000 agents working between the land ports of entry, said the death toll was the fault of traffickers.

“Criminal organisations continue to recklessly endanger the lives of individuals they smuggle for their own financial gain with no regard for human life,” they said in a statement. “Despite these inherent dangers, smugglers continue to lie to migrants, claiming the borders are open. The borders are not open, and people should not attempt to make the dangerous journey.”

Although Brooks county is about 70 miles from the US-Mexico border, it has the largest border patrol checkpoint in Texas. Located along US Highway 281, one of the few northbound highways along the hundreds of miles-long south Texas border region, the checkpoint processes an average 10,000 vehicles – traversing the busiest route from Mexico and Central America to the US – each day.

Like other deterrence policies, the checkpoint, instead of reducing the number migrants trying to enter, has driven them into deadly routes, according to deputy sheriff Don White.

People smugglers, often known as coyotes, demand thousands of dollars to help migrants cross the Rio Grande on rafts, usually to McAllen, Texas, where they will hide in dirty, cramped safe houses.

Migrants will then be dropped off 50 miles north on sandy backroads, before being sent on a days-long trek across brutal terrain, where temperatures regularly exceed 100F during the ever-hotter Texas summers and drop below freezing in winter, in order to avoid the checkpoint.

According to Oscar Carrillo, a sheriff in Culberson county, which is also dealing with a surge in bodies, smugglers often send groups of migrants in camouflage gear as well as with backpacks of cannabis, allowing them to reduce the fees owed by delivering the contraband to a contact, if they survive the journey.

In February 2020, Carrillo apprehended a group of more than 50 people en route. “They are given an itinerary like a cruise line,” says Carrillo. “There’s been a huge rise in attempts to cross. But it’s a dangerous place – there are snakes, mountain lions. If they can’t continue, they’ll be left behind.”

For those who make it over the first hurdles in an attempt to reach densely populated cities such as Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, where they can live under the radar of the authorities, the risk is far from over.

In June, 53 immigrants, mostly from Mexico, were found dead inside a sweltering tractor-trailer on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, in what was the nation’s deadliest smuggling incident along the US-Mexico border to date.

Since 1999, more than 7,500 migrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and beyond are estimated to have died on the US-Mexico border, according to data from the CBP.

Most of these deaths can be attributed to heatstroke or dehydration, according to Canales, who maintains 90 water stations out in the brush.

Yet the real number of deaths is probably far higher, he said, due to limited data and a lack of support from federal authorities.

Since 95% of land on the southern border of Texas – and 99% in Brooks county – is private, ranchers and farmers on the remote plots – some as large as 50,000 acres – are often the ones that discover the recently or long-deceased people. Brooks county sheriff’s office estimates it finds only one out of every five bodies.

“It’s a burden that falls on volunteers,” said Canales. “It’s usually us who have to deal with the bodies.”

Yet Canales and his team of volunteers can only achieve so much. Analysis by the Center for Public Integrity found that more than 2,000 of the bodies of migrants recovered in the US have not been identified. The National Institute of Justice has called the ongoing tragedy of missing persons, which leaves families unable to properly mourn, the “nation’s silent mass disaster”.

Jonathan Alberto Callejas Corado, then 25, disappeared in June 2021 when he was attempting to cross from Mexico through Brooks county. The Guatemalan planned to join his aunt and uncle in Los Angeles, but he has been missing ever since.

“We don’t know if he’s alive or dead,” Glenda Corado, his aunt, told the Guardian. “It’s very painful for us. We can’t mourn because we don’t know what happened.”

In an attempt to find her lost nephew, last heard from in this remote corner of the nation that has become an open-air cemetery, she has visited the Guatemalan consulate, human rights organisations and even the border patrol headquarters.

“We’ve been given no support,” says Corado. “The system is broken. What has happened to our boy?”

U$A RED LINING & REAL ESTATE RACISM
Home Appraised With a Black Owner: $472,000. With a White Owner: $750,000.

Debra Kamin
Thu, August 18, 2022

Nathan Connolly and Shani Mott at their home in Baltimore on Aug. 16, 2022.

 (Shan Wallace/The New York Times)

Last summer, Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, welcomed an appraiser into their house in Baltimore, hoping to take advantage of historically low interest rates and refinance their mortgage.

They believed that their house — improved with a new $5,000 tankless water heater and $35,000 in other renovations — was worth much more than the $450,000 that they paid for it in 2017. Home prices have been on the rise nationwide since the pandemic; in Baltimore, they have gone up 42% in the past five years, according to Zillow.com.

But 20/20 Valuations, a Maryland appraisal company, put the home’s value at $472,000, and in turn, loanDepot, a mortgage lender, denied the couple a refinance loan.

Connolly said he knew why: He, his wife and three children, ages 15, 12 and 9, are Black. A professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, Connolly is an expert on redlining and the legacy of white supremacy in American cities, and much of his research focuses on the role of race in the housing market.

Months after that first appraisal, the couple applied for another refinance loan, removed family photos and had a white male colleague — another Johns Hopkins professor — stand in for them. The second appraiser valued the house at $750,000.

This week, Connolly and Mott sued loanDepot, which is based in Foothill Ranch, California, as well as 20/20 Valuations and Shane Lanham, the owner of 20/20 Valuations. Lanham conducted the first appraisal.

“We were clearly aware of appraisal discrimination,” said Connolly, 44. “But to be told in so many words that our presence and the life we’ve built in our home brings the property value down? It’s an absolute gut punch.”

The home appraisal industry, which relies partly on subjective opinions to translate home values into dollars and cents, has faced a firestorm of criticism over the past two years.

More than 97% of home appraisers are white, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and since summer 2020, when conversations on race and discrimination in America rose to the forefront after the murder of George Floyd, dozens of Black homeowners have alleged discrimination in the home valuations they received. Some have filed lawsuits, and the Biden administration in March announced a set of planned reforms to overhaul the appraisal industry and dismantle systemic bias.

Connolly and Mott live in the north Baltimore neighborhood of Homeland, known for its strong public schools and colonial architecture, which has earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places. A majority of their neighbors are white. According to their complaint, which was filed in Maryland District Court on Monday, the couple applied to refinance their mortgage with loanDepot in May 2021. The lender approved a loan at a rate of 2.25% and, according to the complaint, told the couple that their home was likely now worth $550,000 or more.

To conduct the appraisal, loanDepot hired 20/20 Valuations as a subcontractor.

Lanham conducted the inspection June 14, 2021. According to the complaint, Connolly, Mott and their three children were home during the visit, and their house was also filled with family photos, children’s drawings of figures with dark skin, a poster for the film “Black Panther” and literature by Black authors (Mott lectures on literature and Africana studies).

“It would have been obvious to anyone visiting that the home belonged to a Black family,” the complaint reads. The appraisal came back $22,000 more than they had paid, and loanDepot based its rejection of the couple’s application on the low number.

The couple criticized the way Lanham came up with his appraisal. Home appraisers frequently rely upon the sales comparison approach, in which they weigh real estate against the sale prices of similar nearby homes to determine value.

In Lanham’s appraisal, he selected three homes with values ranging from $435,000 to $545,000 (a fourth comparable, which sold for $650,000, was ultimately not used in his valuation).

The first home used, the complaint argues, would be considered a “fixer-upper,” which the home of Connolly and Mott is not. The second was outside the boundaries of the Homeland neighborhood, amid a majority-Black census block of homes.

In the third, the appraiser deducted $50,000 from the comparison amount because Connolly and Mott’s home faces a busy street — a deduction, the complaint says, that “is excessive and is inconsistent with proper appraisal practices.” An additional $20,000 was deducted for the quality of construction.

All of the selected comparable homes, the complaint says, were of lower quality than Connolly and Mott’s home, and the appraisal incorrectly stated that their home had not received any updates for 15 years.

According to the complaint, Lanham “cherry-picked low value homes as comps,” and by doing so, he “ignored legitimately comparable homes with much higher sales prices.”

When reached by phone Tuesday, Lanham declined to comment.

Connolly and Mott wrote a letter to Christian Jorgensen, a lending officer at loanDepot who had been their main point of contact up to that point, challenging the appraisal. According to the complaint, the loan officer then stopped responding to their calls.

Jorgensen did not respond to requests for comment.

Several months later, the couple applied for a new loan with Swift Home Loans, which partnered with Rocket Mortgage. This time they underwent a “whitewashing experiment,” removing indications of Blackness from their home and replacing them with signifiers that a white family might live there instead. They cleared their bookshelves of works by Black authors. They asked white friends to share family photos and placed those in picture frames around the house; on their walls, they hung art bought at Ikea that showed white people.

An American flag that was presented to Mott 10 years ago after the death of her father, a Vietnam War veteran, was removed from storage, framed and placed on the mantle.

“We had to have a conversation with our kids about why we’re pulling down all their drawings,” Connolly said. “It’s very humiliating to strip yourself of your own home.”

On the day of the second appraisal, they left their home and had the white colleague answer the door. The second appraiser provided the $750,000 estimate.

The homes pulled by the second appraiser were of significantly higher value than those selected by Lanham, selling from $749,000 to $785,000. And while Lanham docked $50,000, or 10%, from the comparable homes that were not on a busy road, the second appraiser deducted $15,000, or 2%. The complaint says that the 2% adjustment is consistent with industry standards.

Race has long played a role in housing policy in the United States, and Black Americans are denied mortgages at disproportionate rates. The effect of redlining, a racist Depression-era housing policy, continues to drive down home values in Black neighborhoods and deprive resources for communities of color.

But Mott and Connolly do not live in a Black neighborhood. The disparity in their two appraisals echoes a lawsuit brought by Tenisha Tate-Austin and Paul Austin, a Black couple in California’s Bay Area who have accused an appraiser of lowballing their home’s value by $500,000. That case, said Austin, is scheduled for mediation — a chance to resolve the matter before heading to court — in September.

“We’re looking to hold people accountable,” Austin said.

The Department of Justice made the unusual move in February of issuing a statement of interest in the Austin case, underscoring the fact that appraisers, who are bound by the Fair Housing Act of 1968 to not discriminate, can be held legally liable if they do. Austin said it was a big step for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to say that they want the appraisal industry to be overhauled.

“But I do believe it is going to take quite a few more lawsuits in order for appraisers to stop devaluing Black and brown properties,” he said. “It’s a historical aspect of how people value Black and brown lives.”

The Justice Department’s move in the Austin case came several months after Biden announced the creation of the Interagency Task Force on Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity, which aims to evaluate the causes of appraisal bias and execute an action plan to root it from the industry. The task force is led by Susan Rice, the White House domestic policy adviser, and Marcia Fudge, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development. One year in, say senior HUD officials, they are working to bolster its governance over the Appraisal Foundation, which sets standards for appraisers.

Of course, it is not unheard-of for appraisals to be far off the mark — one study in 2012, for example, found a wide berth between what was said to be the values of homes and their eventual sale prices.

Nevertheless, discrimination on appraisals continues to trouble those who work in the industry. James Park, executive director of the Appraisal Subcommittee, the independent federal agency that monitors the Appraisal Foundation, said he is deeply disturbed by accusations of discriminatory appraisals that continue to come to light.

“It’s a concern, and it should be a concern for the entire appraisal industry, as well as mortgage lenders,” Park said.

John Relman, managing partner of Relman Colfax, the law firm representing Connolly and Mott, said: “Appraisal discrimination is insidious because it’s so nuanced. But what’s unique about this case is it’s not a typical redlining case. You can’t get more accomplished than these two individuals. They have done everything the market told them to do, and they invested in a community where everyone else had the benefit of rising real estate values. And yet they were still discriminated against.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

CEO of Israeli spyware company NSO Group resigns

By Canada Express News
-August 21, 2022


JERUSALEM: Israeli spyware company NSO Group said on Sunday that Chief Executive Shalev Hulio will step down with immediate effect, with Chief Operating Officer Yaron Shohat appointed to oversee a reorganization of the company before appointing a successor.

A source at the company confirmed that about 100 employees will be laid off as part of the company’s reorganization, and that Shohat will lead the company until the board of directors appoints a new CEO.

The surveillance company, which makes Pegasus software, faces legal action after allegations that its tools have been misused by governments and other agencies to hack into mobile phones.

NSO has said its technology is intended to capture terrorists, pedophiles and hardened criminals and is being sold to “veiled and legitimate” government clients, though it keeps its client list confidential.

“The company’s products continue to be in high demand among governments and law enforcement agencies because of their advanced technology and proven ability to help these customers fight crime and terror,” Shohat said in a statement.

“NSO will ensure that the company’s breakthrough technologies are used for lawful and dignified purposes,” he added.

Palestinians working in Israel strike over demand for bank accounts






Palestinian workers in Israel strike against Israel and Palestinian Authority's recent agreement, in Tulkarm the Israeli-occupied West Bank

Sun, August 21, 2022 
By Adel Abu Neama and Nidal al-Mughrabi

TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Palestinians employed in Israel staged a one-day strike on Sunday in protest at a decision to pay their salaries into bank accounts rather than in cash.

The new payment method was agreed between Palestinian and Israeli authorities looking for a more efficient and secure way to pay salaries, but workers fear that hidden fees and new taxes will cut into their wages.

About 200,000 Palestinians cross each day into Israel or Jewish settlements for work, earning on average more than twice as much as those employed by Palestinian state bodies and businesses.

Most of the workers do not have bank accounts and putting their salaries on the books would create a new revenue source for the financially-strapped Palestinian Authority (PA), while bringing a windfall in service fees for Palestinian banks.

Under the arrangement, salaries will be paid weekly with bank fees set at $1 per transfer, according to a number of workers who spoke to Reuters.

Palestinian Labour Minister Nasri Abu Jeish said the new arrangement was meant to protect workers' rights and that there was no plan to impose new taxes.

No immediate comment was available from COGAT, Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians.

The PA, which has limited autonomy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is responsible for roughly 150,000 public sector jobs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Its budget was $330 million for 2021 and it relies heavily on foreign donors.

Mohammad Khaseeb, 43, who works at an aluminium factory in Israel, said he and thousands of others were protesting at a decision which he said was reached without taking workers' views into account.

"They decided without consulting the workers' union. Either a worker agrees or he loses his work permit," Khaseeb said.

Bassim Al-Waheidi, a 55-year-old construction worker, said that beyond losing money to bank fees and taxes, there was concern about other deductions being made.

"We reject having our salaries transferred to Palestinian Authority banks because we are afraid of the future and there is a crisis of trust," Waheidi said.

Workers' representatives said if the decision was not cancelled they would escalate their protest and might declare an open-ended strike.

(Reporting by Adel Abu Neama; additional reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Apple workers fear a ‘draconian’ return-to-office plan like Tesla’s, with an overcrowded office and tracked attendance

Chloe Berger
Fri, August 19, 2022

Apple CEO Tim Cook keeps trying to bring workers back into the office, only to find his efforts thwarted by continual coronavirus waves. After rolling out a slow hybrid plan in April, the company delayed such efforts in May due to an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

That left Apple employees continuing to work from home with the option to go into the office as they please. Not to be deterred, Apple recently announced that employees are set to finally return to the office three days a week starting September 5.

But some Apple workers fear the office isn’t ready for the influx of workers, according to their comments on Blind, an anonymous message board for techies. Blind users are mostly corporate employees who work in engineering or product, Rich Chen, director of public relations at Blind, previously told Fortune.

While Apple employees are not threatening to quit over the RTO mandate with as much ire as they did in the spring, they’re speaking of growing pains and worried about having their attendance tracked. (Apple did not respond to requests for comment.)

“I thought I was all for [a] return to office but God d*mn, is Apple park packed,” an Apple employee said on Blind, adding that the offices are overloaded: ”On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I can barely hear myself think when everyone is having a separate conversation, people’s phones are off silent getting a million messages a minute, and don’t even get me started on conference room availability.”

Another Apple employee explained the root of the problem: “three years of expansion while offices did not.”

Apple went on a hiring spree in 2021, recruiting top cloud talent. But a growing workforce may put the tech giant face-to-face with the same return-to-office dilemma Tesla dealt with: not having enough physical resources. After Tesla CEO Elon Musk mandated that employees return to the office this summer, workers found there were not enough desks or parking spaces for everyone who had been hired over the last couple of years. Some Tesla employees told The Information that shaky Wi-Fi couldn’t even handle all the workers.

As one Tesla worker commented on a Blind post about potentially overcrowded Apple offices following its RTO policy: “Welcome to the club.”

Traffic and bad coffee and surveillance, oh my!

Apple workers aren't just concerned about an office space that has outgrown its britches. They’re also waiting for an onslaught of employee monitoring in which their office attendance is tracked—not unlike the way Tesla tracks how often its workers "badge in."

“Time logging is coming as well,” an Apple employee forecasted on Blind. “You will need to badge out so that they keep a tab. Draconian times are upon us.”

Another employee dryly joked that they were unsure if their bathroom breaks would be monitored, while another was more worried about getting to Apple’s overflowing parking lot. “Here we come traffic jams and hours-long travel,” commented another Apple employee.

Some workers said they could be enticed to return to the office by free perks like drinks and corporate lunches, but others were quick to shoot that down. “Where do you get free salad?" one employee wrote in response. "Also free coffee is not drinkable, I get my own Keurig cups.”

“Apple has free coffee and salad? I thought Tom Cook was too frugal for that,” chimed in a second worker.

Apple has historically offered free dinners for iOS or OS X team members, as well as subsidized cafés that gave employees a tax break by allowing them to pay for meals using a payroll deduction plan, according to Insider. The cafés offer everything from seafood to barbecue, and apparently apples are free. Whether the food is good is a matter of taste buds.

Workers will have the chance to ask all their questions about bathroom breaks and food perks given their eventual arrival in a couple weeks. Knock on wood for Apple that there’s not another coronavirus wave on the horizon.

The recent crackdown on Tornado Cash sets a dangerous precedent. Here’s why it could be the beginning of an all-out ‘war on code’


Luke MacGregor - Bloomberg - Getty Images

Alex Tapscott
Fri, August 19, 2022 at 6:46 AM·4 min read

Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions on Tornado Cash, a popular open-source privacy tool and “mixer” that enables private and anonymous crypto transactions.

Specifically, the Tornado Cash website and associated Ethereum addresses were added to the OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) blacklist, typically reserved for “persons involved in terrorism, enemy states, or other state-sanctioned activities and ensure that these individuals cannot get the benefit of the US financial system.” All Americans are now forbidden from interacting with Tornado Cash.

The U.S. Government alleges that $7 billion has been laundered through Tornado Cash. Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, puts the figure closer to $1.5 billion.

We can all agree that government should crack down on criminals–and it’s not unusual for the government to sanction specific wallet addresses belonging to individuals suspected of supporting terrorist activity and other sanctionable behavior.

What makes this situation different is that Tornado Cash is not a “legal person”–as in an individual or corporation–but rather a technology tool that is used by many different kinds of people. Not only is the unprecedented crackdown irregular but it may also infringe on Americans’ constitutional rights.

“It appears to be the sanctioning of a tool that is neutral in character and that can be put to good or bad uses like any other technology. It is not any specific bad actor who is being sanctioned, but instead it is all Americans who may wish to use this automated tool in order to protect their own privacy while transacting online who are having their liberty curtailed without the benefit of any due process,” Coin Center’s Jerry Brito and Peter van Valkenburgh said about the action in a recent article.

Privacy is foundational to a free society–and there are plenty of good reasons to remain private in transactions. Perhaps you want to donate to a Ukrainian humanitarian group without exposing yourself to potential Russian recriminations, as Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin did. He revealed this fact on Twitter, "doxxing himself" in solidarity with Tornado Cash.

Privacy has always been a feature of transactions in the "real economy". After all, when you pay for your groceries in cash, the cashier doesn’t ask for your driver’s license.

“Anonymity is not a crime, and there are many legitimate reasons to seek anonymity in financial transactions. Privacy tools are important to, for example, activists in authoritarian states where revealing financial information could get someone jailed or executed,” the NGO Fight for the Future said in a statement.

Of course, not every transaction in Tornado Cash is used to fund bad actors. This notion is supported by Elliptic's estimates, which concluded that $5.5 billion of $7 billion processed were legal transactions.

Despite all these valid arguments, you can hardly envy the government’s position. Even if Elliptic is correct and $1.5 billion has been laundered through Tornado Cash, that’s a big number. And there’s evidence suggesting Tornado Cash is used by the North Koreans.

However, a blanket sanction on a credibly neutral technology tool feels like an overstep, or perhaps a move that was not properly thought out, with potentially unintended consequences. Any software that ultimately gets used by a criminal could be subject to the same crackdown, even if it’s open source. This feels out of step with past practices: After all, we don’t sanction the Internet when terrorists use email and Linux contributors are not sanctioned when an Android smartphone running Linux is used to plan a crime.

Readers may be familiar with the case of Silk Road, the dark web marketplace that was shut down in 2013 with its founder Ross Ulbricht arrested and convicted on several counts. Silk Road was different in that it was a centralized entity controlled by one person and used almost exclusively for illicit activities. But even companies are generally exempt when their products are used in crimes: This is why gun manufacturers don’t get sanctioned when a gun they make is used in a murder.

For now, many companies are saying “better safe than sorry” and purging Tornado Cash. Circle, the founder of the popular “USDC” stablecoin, added 38 Ethereum addresses to its blacklist that have interacted with Tornado Cash. OpenSea, Discord, GitHub, and others have taken similar steps. In the short term, this is inevitable–and probably sensible–for these companies: they don’t want to be labeled a criminal entity too. However, in the medium-long term, key stakeholders must ensure that the delicate balance between freedom of expression and the managing of undesirable actions is carefully managed. It is critical to all of us that developers continue to freely build neutral technology tools.

Alex Tapscott is the managing director of the Ninepoint Digital Asset Group. His new book, Digital Asset Revolution, was released on July 12th. This article is for information purposes only and should not be relied upon as investment advice.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

‘Gross Negligence and Foolish Behavior’: Their Crypto ‘Bank’ Failed and They Lost Six Figures Overnight – What Now?

Yaёl Bizouati-Kennedy
Sun, August 21, 2022 

hocus-focus / Getty Images

On Sunday, June 12, at 10:20 p.m., George — like thousands of other customers using crypto lending exchange Celsius — received an email reading: “Due to extreme market conditions, today we are announcing that Celsius is pausing all withdrawals, Swap and transfers between accounts.”

“I knew they had exposure but never thought they would lock up our assets,” George, who wished to publicly divulge only his first name for reasons of privacy, told GOBankingRates.

George was shocked at first, but within minutes he went to Voyager, another platform he was using, and converted his assets there to cash.

“Then on Monday, Voyager limited their withdrawals,” he said.

George, a 58-year-old consultant, used to do business with six different crypto platforms but went on to keep only Celsius, Voyager and BlockFi. “I hit the trifecta,” he said. “I thought I was diversifying — if one gets hit, I have the other two. But no. It’s insane. I picked the three worst platforms. I have to laugh about it.”

He now has $22,000 in frozen assets and says that his family has been on an “emotional roller coaster” over the past few months.

“I wish I would have pressed the platforms more on the transparency of who they were dealing with. They would have never revealed that, and I should have said, ‘Well, I’ll go somewhere else.’ Greed kept me there.”

Voyager Digital, Celsius Crash After Three Arrows Capital Collapse

Crypto lending platforms Voyager Digital and Celsius promised eye-popping yields to their customers — that is, until they both filed for bankruptcy in early July due to their exposure to the now infamous Three Arrows Capital. Three Arrows Capital went bankrupt after the implosion of Terra LUNA and its TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin.

“My problem is that I transferred all my wallet into cefi [centralized finance] platforms right at the beginning of the pandemic to get yield, a dividend, an extra kick,” George explained. “I went in when the timing was right… summer 2020.”

“Stablecoins were paying 10% interest (USDC, Tether) and when you compare that to banks, it was a no brainer.”

George explained that Celsius paid interest every Monday, sending an email to customers letting them know how much they made.

“It was a dopamine hit. You feel it’s safe. They had $18 billion in assets under management at one point. Alex Mashinsky did an AMA every Friday live and I met him twice at conferences,” he said.

As of August 5, his family is still in limbo.

“We hear very little from Celsius. As for Voyager, they had offers, one from FTX, but their lawyers pushed back and want to keep exploring options, they want to go through bankruptcy. Now it’s just time, we have to wait. And how much will we get back? Fifty cents back on the dollar? Ten?”

As GOBankingRates spoke to other affected customers, the recurring theme among the answers was the initial trust customers placed in Celsius and its CEO Alex Mashinsky, as well as the ensuing anger they felt from having that trust abused.

Jovany Lopez, a 40-year-old full-time investor, said he had heard some rumors about Celsius having issues. Lopez now has more than $120,000 frozen on the platform — assets that were intended for “savings and investing for the future.”

“And I talked about moving all of my crypto out of Celsius, but then I decided not to. Then, within a week, Celsius stopped withdrawals. I was so angry at myself for not following my gut feeling a week prior,” he shared.

Alice Huang Wijaya, a 31-year-old multimedia journalist who has $11,000 in frozen assets, tells a similar story. She feels “shock, anger with a dash of hope that it will be fine.”

She had started hearing rumors circulating on trader groups, she said. “I was about to pull out, but just two days before freezing, Mashinsky said on Twitter everything was fine and I trusted him!”

YouTuber, podcaster, crypto enthusiast, and creator of BitBoyCrypto.com Ben Armstrong — aka BitBoy Crypto — told GOBankingRates he lost more than $3 million.

“I fully blame Alex Mashinsky for gross negligence and foolish behavior with other people’s assets and trust,” he said. “Celsius stole over 1,000 Ethereum and 100 Bitcoin and other cryptos that added up over $3 million. Those funds were part of my business war chest to pay employees and make investments during the bear market.”

Although he learned the news at the same time as other clients, he had actually received correspondence from a Celsius rep just days before withdrawals were paused. At that time, Armstrong was reassured that his funds were safe.

He thinks all the money in Celsius “is gone forever and it will take years for crypto lenders to rebuild trust,” However, he hasn’t lost faith in the space, saying that, “Crypto is an emerging market that involves considerable risk, but the upside is even higher.”
Investors Feel Anger, Some Shame After Crypto Losses — But Many Still Bullish

Compounding these stories of disastrous investment, several people GOBankingRates spoke to had recommended the platforms to members of their families or friends. Dragging their loved ones into such a financial fiasco added to common sentiments of anger and for some, guilt.

George, who says he still is a big believer in crypto, had recommended all three platforms to his brother-in-law, which he says is the part that bugs him the most. “It’s painful,” he said.

George’s brother-in-law, Jorge — a 65-year-old former civil engineer who retired in April — lost $270,000. Jorge’s lost funds had been set aside partially for retirement, “but mainly to diversify my investments with the hope of making profits and later on to invest in real estate, with those winnings.”

Although he says he initially felt “angry and disillusioned,” Jorge still thinks that crypto is “a better alternative than government printed money. Crypto will be in the future, a more stable currency. I just don’t know when that future will be.”

Jorge regrets, however, placing some of his funds in USDC interest accounts. “I should have known better… that an 8% to 10% interest [rate] was unsustainable,” he said.

Lopez, the 40-year-old investor, echoes that sentiment, saying that he is still bullish on crypto for the long-term and doesn’t have “any bad feelings about it,” as he still believes in the fundamentals, especially those around Bitcoin. “The exchanges got overleveraged and greedy,” he said.

“I am not even that angry about losing $120K,” he said. “I am more disappointed and angry for the people and family who trusted Celsius. I know I can replace the money I lost but my heart breaks for the others. Celsius should pay everyone 100% back, but it’s clear they are trying to save themselves versus the customers who trusted them.”

He says he blames himself for trusting Celsius and breaking the No. 1 rule in crypto: “Not your keys, not your crypto.” He now recommends taking cryptos out of exchanges and putting them in a hot or cold wallet.
Locked Crypto Assets and Losses Leading to Bankruptcy For Some Investors

Similar stories of loss and pain are flooding the Southern District of New York, where bankruptcy proceedings are already happening. Letters included in the court proceedings show customers pleading for a way to get their money back.

For example, 72-year-old Lindsey Derence told the judge in a letter to the court that she’s at risk of losing much of her life savings. “It took me four years of buying BTC and ETH in small increments to accrue to 1 Bitcoin, 7ETH that are now locked on Celsius. I planned to hold these assets in a safe crypto ‘bank’ and wait for them to increase in value so I could pay off my mortgage. Only without a mortgage payment will I be able to exist on just social security,” she wrote.

“When I tried to move my cryptos into a custody account, I was locked out by Celsius. That shows his fraudulent intent prior to bankruptcy. Since that moment, I’ve been in a state of fear, depression, anxiety, helplessness at the prospect of losing this much of my life savings. Small depositors must be made whole again,” she penned.

Several experts said that because the crypto industry is in its infancy, it makes getting funds back more complicated in the event of a hack or the collapse of a project.
Experts Suggest Industry Reform Needed to Protect Crypto Investors

Ari Redbord, a former senior advisor for the U.S. Treasury Department and now head of legal and government affairs at TRM Labs, told GOBankingRates that with the recent collapse of stablecoin project Terra, there is little that can be done.

“Civil lawsuits are expensive and take time and there is no FDIC-style insurance the way there would be for a bank. This is why global regulators and the crypto industry have supported proposals that call for reserve requirements for these types of projects,” he said.

“One interesting answer came recently from the U.K.’s HM Treasury which, last month, released a consultation which recommends changing existing legislation to give the Bank of England power to appoint administrators to oversee insolvency arrangements with failed stablecoin issuers. The BOE would be able to either prioritize making consumers and investors whole or mitigating systemic risk of being a ‘too big to fail’ scenario,” he shared.

Jay Fraser, director Of strategic partnerships at blockchain-enabled securities exchange BSTX, agrees, noting the parallel with the Mt. Gox situation in 2014.

“People who lost their money due to the exchange being hacked still haven’t gotten it back. There are no laws governing crypto assets like there are with money held in a bank. Crypto funds essentially belong to the crypto exchange, not to you, so without regulation, there’s a high chance that account holders won’t be getting their money back,” Fraser said. He added that, ultimately, the likelihood of recovery is based on how much underlying collateral the company still has.

“With so much of the industry-wide collapse driven by the Three Arrows defaults, how much money customers get back will depend on how much money can be recovered from Three Arrows. So far, that’s only been $40 million of about $3 billion in loans. This experience, as painful a lesson as it is, could be a positive for the long-term adoption of crypto by institutional managers,” he said. “With more guardrails and regulation that closely mirrors traditional finance, risk managers could allow more exploration of crypto assets for institutional portfolios.”

As for George, he is drawing lessons from his ordeal, saying, “You learn the hard way. When you lose the most, you learn the most.”

He adds that “crypto won’t go away,” but he will only keep Bitcoin and ETH going forward — he is saying no to more altcoins. He’s also changed his mind about what he intends to do when he retires — he now plans to help underserved communities improve their financial literacy.

GOBankingRates reached out to both Voyager and Celsius for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.