Perpetua Resources gets DOD funding to study antimony production from Stibnite gold project

Staff Writer | 

Stibnite Gold project pit. Image from Perpetua Resources.

Perpetua Resources (Nasdaq: PPTA, TSX: PPTA) has been awarded two funding grants from the US Department of Defense (DOD) Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) to study the domestic production of military-grade antimony trisulfide, an essential component in ammunition and dozens of other defense materials.


Perpetua will receive $200,000 in total to evaluate whether antimony from its Stibnite Gold project in Idaho can meet military specifications to help secure America’s defense and commercial ammunition supply chain while also evaluating alternate methods for purifying antimony trisulfide.

Perpetua submitted two proposals to DLA’s “Production of Energetic Materials and Associated Precursors” Small Business Innovation Research grant solicitation. The program is focused on reducing “foreign reliance and single points of failure for the domestic manufacturing of energetic materials” through the development of a domestic source.

Related: How a gold-stibnite restoration in Idaho could add antimony to US supply chain

After a competitive review process, Perpetua was awarded SBIR Phase 1 funding of $100,000 for both programs. Each study is expected to be completed within the next six to 12 months.

“Antimony from the Stibnite Gold project site served our national defense needs during World War II and Perpetua is confident we can be part of the solution again,” Perpetua Resources CEO Laurel Sayer said in a media statement.

“We are grateful for this opportunity to work with the Department of Defense to demonstrate that our Project can develop reliable and domestically sourced antimony trisulfide for defense and commercial ammunition.”

The first program will test existing samples of antimony trisulfide ore from the project for development into antimony trisulfide to Mil-Spec. The second program will study alternative processing opportunities to develop Mil-Spec antimony trisulfide from high purity antimony metal.

After the completion of the proposed programs, Phase 2 funding could be made available for more advanced stage pilot-scale testing within the next year. Together, the Phase 1 and Phase 2 programs could confirm the Project’s ability to provide the domestic antimony source needed to meet the defense procurement demand and support commercial markets.

Antimony trisulfide is produced from high purity antimony ore feedstock and is used in small and medium caliber munitions, mortars, artillery, mines, flares, grenades, shoulder launched munitions and missiles. Currently, China, Russia, and Tajikistan control approximately 90% of the world’s antimony supply and the United States has no domestically mined source of the critical mineral.

Perpetua’s proposed Stibnite Gold Project hosts one of the largest antimony deposits in the world independent of China and Russia.

The Stibnite Gold project in central Idaho, is advancing through the sixth year of review under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Project is designed to restore environmental conditions in the historical Stibnite mining district while responsibly developing one of the highest-grade open pit gold resources in the United States and becoming the only domestically mined source of the critical mineral antimony.

Mining activity first started in the district in the early 20th century for gold and silver. During WWII and the Korean War, the US Government commissioned antimony and tungsten production from Stibnite under the authority of the Strategic Metals Act of 1939. The site produced over 90% of the antimony used by the U.S. during WWII and was influential in establishing Mil-Spec for antimony trisulfide.

Panama launch of futuristic oceanfront home goes sideways

A SeaPod Eco prototype, the first of a futuristic line of homes built over water, is shown to the press in Linton Bay Marina, Panama, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. Developers hoped to market these homes that are only accessible by boat off Panama's Caribbean coast but the prototype partially collapsed after its first showing to the press. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)

COLON, Panama (AP) — The unveiling of a futuristic luxury model home on Panama’s Caribbean coast tanked Thursday when the SeaPod Eco prototype perched above the water on a column slumped onto an adjacent dock.

Developer Ocean Builders said in a statement that the sleek white home began to “destabilize” at the end of the launch event. It said no one was injured and the cause was being investigated.

The home that is reminiscent of a space ship sits well above the water and features expansive views from a row of windows. The developers had planned to begin offering the homes for sale next year, touting them as friendly to the environment and the economy.

FRENCH MAOISM
Khmer Rouge tribunal ends work after 16 years, 3 judgments

By SOPHENG CHEANG and GRANT PECK

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In this photo released by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Khieu Samphan, right, the former head of state for the Khmer Rouge, sits in a courtroom during a hearing at the U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. The international court convened in Cambodia to judge the brutalities of the Khmer Rouge regime that caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people in the 1970s ends its work Thursday after spending $337 million and 16 years to convict just three men of crimes. 

(Nhet Sok Heng/Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia via AP)


PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The international court convened in Cambodia to judge the Khmer Rouge for its brutal 1970s rule ended its work Thursday after spending $337 million and 16 years to convict just three men of crimes after the regime caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.

In its final session, the U.N.-assisted tribunal rejected an appeal by Khieu Samphan, the last surviving leader of the Khmer Rouge government that ruled Cambodia from 1975-79. It reaffirmed the life sentence he received after being convicted in 2018 of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Busloads of ordinary Cambodians turned up to watch the final proceedings of a tribunal that had sought to bring justice, accountability and explanations for the crimes. Many of those attending Thursday’s session lived through the Khmer Rouge terror, including survivors Bou Meng and Chum Mey, who had given evidence at the tribunal over the years.

Khieu Samphan, sitting in a wheelchair and wearing a white windbreaker and a face mask, listened to the proceedings on headphones.

He was the group’s nominal head of state but, in his trial defense, denied having real decision-making powers when the Khmer Rouge carried out a reign of terror to establish a utopian agrarian society, causing Cambodians’ deaths from execution, starvation and inadequate medical care. It was ousted from power in 1979 by an invasion from neighboring communist state Vietnam.

“No matter what you decide, I will die in prison,” Khieu Samphan said in his final statement of appeal to the court last year. “I will die always remembering the suffering of my Cambodian people. I will die seeing that I am alone in front of you. I am judged symbolically rather than by my actual deeds as an individual.”

His appeal alleged the court made errors in legal procedures and interpretation and acted unfairly, making objections to more than 1,800 points.

But the court noted Thursday that his appeal did not directly question the facts of the case as presented in court. It rejected almost all arguments raised by Khieu Samphan, acknowledging an error and reversing its ruling on one minor count. The court said it found the vast majority of Khieu Samphan’s arguments “unfounded,” and that many were “alternative interpretations of the evidence.”

Thursday’s ruling makes little practical difference. Khieu Samphan is 91 and already serving another life sentence for his 2014 conviction for crimes against humanity connected with forced transfers and disappearances of masses of people.

The court ordered that Khieu Samphan, who was arrested in 2007, be returned to the specially constructed jail where he has been kept.

His co-defendant Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge’s No. 2 leader and chief ideologist, was convicted twice and received the same life sentence. Nuon Chea died in 2019 at age 93.

The tribunal’s only other conviction was that of Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who was commandant of Tuol Sleng prison, where roughly 16,000 people were tortured before being taken away to be killed. Duch was convicted in 2010 of crimes against humanity, murder, and torture and died in 2020 at age 77 while serving a life sentence.

The Khmer Rouge’s real chief, Pol Pot, escaped justice. He died in the jungle in 1998 at age 72 while the remnants of his movement were fighting their last battles in the guerrilla war they launched after losing power.

The trials of the only other two defendants were not completed. The former foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Sary, died in 2013, and his wife, former Social Affairs Minister Ieng Thirith, was deemed unfit to stand trial due to dementia in 2011 and died in 2015.

Four other suspects, middle-ranking Khmer Rouge leaders, escaped prosecution because of a split among the tribunal’s jurists.

In a hybrid arrangement, Cambodian and international jurists were paired at every stage, and a majority had to assent for a case to go forward. Under the French-style procedures the court used, the international investigators recommended the four go to trial, but the Cambodian partners would not agree after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen declared there would be no more prosecutions, claiming they could cause unrest.

Hun Sen himself was a middle-ranking commander with the Khmer Rouge before defecting, and several senior members of his ruling Cambodian People’s Party share similar backgrounds. He helped cement his political control by making alliances with other former Khmer Rouge commanders.

With its active work done, the tribunal, formally called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, now enters a three-year “residual” period, focusing on getting its archives in order and disseminating information about its work for educational purposes.

Experts who took part in the court’s work or monitored its proceedings are now pondering its legacy.

Heather Ryan, who spent 15 years following the tribunal for the Open Society Justice Initiative, said the court was successful in providing some level of accountability.\
“The amount of time and money and effort that’s expended to get to this rather limited goal may be disproportionate to the goal,” she said in a video interview from her home in Boulder, Colorado.

But she praised having the trials “in the country where the atrocities occurred and where people were able to pay a level of attention and gather information about what was happening in the court to a much greater extent than if the court had been in The Hague or some other place.” The Hague in the Netherlands hosts the World Court and the International Criminal Court.

Michael Karnavas, an American lawyer who served on Ieng Sary’s defense team, said his personal expectations had been limited to the quality of justice his clients would receive.

“In other words, irrespective of the results, substantively and procedurally, were their fair trial rights guaranteed by the Cambodian Constitution and established law afforded to them at the highest international level?” he said in an email interview. “The answer is somewhat mixed.”

“The trial stage was less than what I consider fair. There was far too much improvisation by the judges, and despite the length of the proceedings, the defense was not always treated fairly,” said Karnavas, who has also appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

“On the substantive and procedural law, there are numerous examples where the ECCC not only got it right, but further contributed to the development of international criminal law.”

There is a consensus that the tribunal’s legacy goes beyond the law books.

“The court successfully attacked the long-standing impunity of the Khmer Rouge, and showed that though it might take a long time, the law can catch up with those who commit crimes against humanity,” said Craig Etcheson, who has studied and written about the Khmer Rouge and was chief of investigations for the office of the prosecution at the ECCC from 2006 to 2012.

“The tribunal also created an extraordinary record of those crimes, comprising documentation that will be studied by scholars for decades to come, that will educate Cambodia’s youth about the history of their country, and that will deeply frustrate any attempt to deny the crimes of the Khmer Rouge.”

The bedrock issue of whether justice was served by the court’s convictions of only three men was addressed by Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which holds a huge trove of evidence of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge.

“Justice sometimes is made of satisfaction, recognition, rather than the number of people you prosecute,” he told The Associated Press. “It is a broad definition of the word justice itself, but when people are satisfied, when people are happy with the process or benefit from the process, I think we can conceptualize it as justice.”

___

Peck reported from Bangkok. AP journalist Jerry Harmer contributed to this report.

James Cameron turns to Earth before release of new ‘Avatar’

By MARK KENNEDY

This image released by National Geographic shows a locust from "Super/Natural,” a six-part series from National Geographic, airing on Disney+. (Jonjo Harrington/National Geographic via AP)


NEW YORK (AP) — There’s a new nature documentary series that promises to show viewers incredible animal behavior in vibrant clarity. Heard that all before? Well, this one is on steroids.

“Super/Natural,” a six-part series from National Geographic now streaming on Disney+, has tapped “Avatar” creator James Cameron as executive producer, and he’s added special effects on top of leading-edge filmmaking technology.

The effects sometimes morph the animals into something like stars in a Marvel movie, with their bellows distorting the air, lumbering attacks that cause shock waves in sand or pheromones from an insect rendered as bursting noxious clouds. Even trees light up when sugars move through their roots.

“We’re not actually falsifying or turning it into a superhero movie. We’re giving an access portal for our limited senses into a natural world that goes far, far beyond anything that we can sense directly,” Cameron told reporters recently.

The episodes are arranged by theme — eat or be eaten, the mating game and bloodlines are some of the topics — and viewers get a visual treat as cameras capture everything from fireflies in Mexico producing a synchronized light show to bottlenose dolphins teaming up with Brazilian fishermen to catch mullet.

Videographers armed with the latest science data underwent 80 animal shoots in 25 countries to create the series, using such high-tech gear as high-speed cameras and drones. Cameron listed what they tried to capture — infrasound, ultrasound, ultraviolet and infrared, among them.

“What’s our purpose in this? Not just to entertain, but absolutely to teach and to show the wonder, the majesty, the complexity, of nature,” said Cameron. “We’re going to pull out every trick we know as entertainers, as storytellers, to try to get that engagement.”

So unlike a traditional nature documentary where adding effects is a strict non-no, “Super/Natural” allows us to feel what bat sonar might look like, see what a bumblebee sees or how bears communicate with invisible clues.

“The bear can smell pheromones, but we can’t see it. It’s a visual medium; it’s not a smell medium,” he said. “It is real. It’s just that we can’t see it. So we have to use the effects to see as they see or to smell as they smell.”

The series is narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch, who is lively, sly and delicious in his descriptions. “The female of the species is into some pretty freaky stuff,” he says of vampire spiders. Of cicadas popping out after 17 years underground, he drily adds: “America’s biggest speed dating event is about to begin.”

Cameron was full of praise for Cumberbatch: “He doesn’t just narrate it; he acts it,” he said. “He gets you inside what’s happening in a way that I think is very relatable.”

Cameron, an ardent environmentalist and vegan, sees “Super/Natural” as a logical extension of his latest filmmaking, which includes the upcoming fantasy “Avatar: The Way of Water.” In both, he hopes to reawaken a sense of wonder for the natural world.

“The natural history stuff is not just a side gig to making ‘Avatar’ movies. To me, they go together perfectly as something that’s equally exciting to me,” he said. “It always awakens in me this sense of amazement at how complex nature is.”

That amazement is captured in the series with images of glow-in-the-dark flying squirrels soaring the length of a football field, burrowing owls copying the sound of a snake rattle to scare away predators and devil rays leaping 6 feet out of the ocean.

Cameron’s last documentary series on animals was “Secrets of the Whales” narrated by Sigourney Weaver. The director has fond memories from growing up in Canada of exploring the woods, trapping insects and watching birds.

“It blows your mind how amazing nature is, things that we just take for granted, and how nature has developed all these different amazing strategies for these animals and these plants over millions of years.”

He also took a gentle swipe at the attention the latest images from the James Webb Space Telescope have garnered, from Neptune’s rings to galaxy clusters.

“This is the only planet we know of for sure — evidence-based — that has life. And it’s an amazing planet,” he said. “There’s hundreds of millions of species here as opposed to Mars, where we don’t even know if there’s one species.

“I love Mars. I love exploration in space and underwater. But we have to take care of this planet. We have to understand it before we destroy it.”

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Palestinian strife highlights lost hopes of armed youths

THE STATE IS THE STATE 

NO MATTER ITS NAME

By SAM MCNEIL

Palestinian security forces clash with Palestinians following an arrest raid against local militants, in the West Bank city of Nablus Sept. 20, 2022. The rare eruption of deadly clashes this week between Palestinians and their own security forces has cast a spotlight on the growing ranks of disenfranchised, impoverished young men taking up arms. Many have spent their entire lives in a territory occupied by Israel, scarred by infighting and segmented by checkpoints. They have no hope in the long-stalemated peace process. 

(AP Photo/Nasser Nasser, File)

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) — Nablus was a battered city. Shops gaped open to the street, their windows smashed. Street signs were overturned. Ash stained the roads. Armored vehicles roamed the city center, still pockmarked and splattered with paint from a day of protests.

The destruction resembled the aftermath of firefights between Palestinian youths and the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank’s second-largest city, where posters of killed Palestinians paper the old city’s limestone walls. But this time, Israel was not involved. The violent chaos on Tuesday that left a 53-year-old man dead erupted between Palestinians and their own security forces, who coordinate with Israel in an uneasy alliance against Islamic militants.

The rare outburst, coming amid the deadliest violence in the West Bank since 2016, underscored the internal divisions tearing at Palestinian society and cast a spotlight on the growing ranks of disillusioned, impoverished young men taking up arms

Many have spent their entire lives in a territory occupied by Israel, scarred by infighting and segmented by checkpoints. They have not known a national election since 2006. They have no hope in the long-stalemated peace process. Their aging president, Mahmoud Abbas, is in his 18th year of what was supposed to be a four-year term. They see his Palestinian Authority as a vehicle for corruption and collaboration with Israel.

The clashes erupted after Palestinian forces arrested two men, including Musab Ishtayyeh, a popular local militant wanted by Israel. A 26-year-old man who lives in the area said that although the sides reached a truce, further violence was likely unless Ishtayyeh is released.

“I do not recognize the presidency of Abu Mazen,” he said, voicing a popular sentiment in the neighborhood. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared arrest.

“There is no difference between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” he added, saying the Palestinian security forces “want to burn the resistance and kill those who fight.”

The latest violence stems from a series of deadly Palestinian attacks inside Israel last spring, which triggered a surge in nightly Israeli arrest raids across the territory. Some 90 Palestinians have been killed in the crackdown. Israel says many were militants or local youths who hurled stones and firebombs at troops, though several civilians have also died.

Experts say the escalation has deeper roots in a power struggle, as Palestinian leaders vie over the succession of the 87-year-old Abbas.

“The leadership vacuum is trickling down from the top all the way down. High-level members are trying to rally their supporters for doomsday,” said Tahani Mustafa, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “In these sorts of contexts, radicalism really thrives.”

A lack of opportunity and political horizon has also fueled the unrest. Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, and its military occupation shows no signs of ending.

The last round of substantive peace talks broke down in 2009, and Israel has steadily consolidated its control of the territory with ever expanding construction of settlements that are now home to some 500,000 Jews. The Palestinians seek all of the West Bank, along with Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, for a future state.

Widely disenchanted with the PA, young Palestinians are flocking to an array of militant groups to get weapons. Palestinian security has struggled to assert control in flashpoint cities in the northern West Bank, like Nablus and Jenin.

The instability has consequences for Israel, which depends on cooperation with Palestinian security, and for the United States and other countries that have relied on the PA to establish order in the West Bank and serve as a partner in stalled peace negotiations.

“We need the PA to operate as a buffer between us and all the (Palestinian) organizations,” said Michael Milstein, a former head of the Palestinian department in Israeli military intelligence. “The test has only just begun.”

Palestinian security officials declined to comment on this week’s violence or the reasons for their unpopularity.

In recent months, the Israeli military has grown frustrated with what it describes as the PA’s reluctance to maintain order in flashpoint cities under its control.

“The PA has the manpower, the ammunition and the arms,” said one Israeli military official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with military guidelines. “In certain places, we feel they don’t have the will.”

The official said the army has seized 300 guns since Israel began its West Bank raids. He said the arms come mainly from small factories that make improvised pistols, or are smuggled from Jordan, Egypt or Lebanon. Some guns stolen from the military also make their way to the West Bank.

Wednesday’s truce temporarily halted the fighting, but the streets still bristled with tension and an armed group vowed to continue the battle on behalf of their arrested comrades.

“We will not abandon our brother … who is wanted by the occupation forces and is currently kidnapped,” the militant group, named the Den of Lions, wrote to the AP.

The group, based in the stone warren of the old city, is tied to Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, a prominent militant who was killed in an Israeli raid last month. His photo is on coffee stands, graffiti, posters and necklaces worn by children in Nablus. The Palestinian security services identified him as the son of one of their own colonels — a schism that illustrates how younger Palestinians, who grew up during the searing violence of the second Palestinian intifada, have lost faith in their leaders.

Many Palestinians see their security forces as protecting Israel against Palestinian protests, not Palestinians from Israeli assaults. The forces also have faced widespread criticism over brutal tactics, like last year when riots erupted over an anti-corruption activist’s death in custody.

Gangs of young Palestinian men are increasingly firing at Israeli forces during raids or shooting at soldiers manning checkpoints. The gangs operate without the backing of traditional political factions and militant groups.

Last week, two Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli soldier at a military checkpoint in the northern West Bank before they were shot dead. One of the attackers was a Palestinian security officer.

Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian peace negotiator and Cabinet minister, acknowledged there is little public faith in the Palestinian leadership. He blamed a lack of hope and repeated Israeli measures that have weakened the Palestinian Authority.

“If everybody would maintain the same attitude and practices,” he warned, “we are going gradually toward the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and chaos in Palestinian society.”

—

AP writers Tia Goldenberg and Eleanor Reich in Jerusalem contributed to this story.

Facebook violated rights of Palestinian users, report finds

By BARBARA ORTUTAY

An Israeli air strike hits a building in Gaza City, May 17, 2021. Actions by Facebook and its parent Meta during last year's Gaza war violated the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation and non-discrimination, a report commissioned by the social media company has found. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa, File)


Actions by Facebook and its parent Meta during last year’s Gaza war violated the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation and non-discrimination, a report commissioned by the social media company has found.

The report Thursday from independent consulting firm Business for Social Responsibility confirmed long-standing criticisms of Meta’s policies and their uneven enforcement as it relates to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: It found the company over-enforced rules when it came to Arabic content and under-enforced content in Hebrew.

It, however, did not find intentional bias at Meta, either by the company as a whole or among individual employees. The report’s authors said they found “no evidence of racial, ethnic, nationality or religious animus in governing teams” and noted Meta has “employees representing different viewpoints, nationalities, races, ethnicities, and religions relevant to this conflict.”

Rather, it found numerous instances of unintended bias that harmed the rights of Palestinian and Arabic-speaking users.

In response, Meta said it plans to implement some of the report’s recommendations, including improving its Hebrew-language “classifiers,” which help remove violating posts automatically using artificial intelligence.

“There are no quick, overnight fixes to many of these recommendations, as BSR makes clear,” the company based in Menlo Park, California, said in a blog post Thursday. “While we have made significant changes as a result of this exercise already, this process will take time — including time to understand how some of these recommendations can best be addressed, and whether they are technically feasible.”

Meta, the report confirmed, also made serious errors in enforcement. For instance, as the Gaza war raged last May, Instagram briefly banned the hashtag #AlAqsa, a reference to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, a flash point in the conflict.

Meta, which owns Instagram, later apologized, explaining its algorithms had mistaken the third-holiest site in Islam for the militant group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of the secular Fatah party.

The report echoed issues raised in internal documents from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen last fall, showing that the company’s problems are systemic and have long been known inside Meta.

A key failing is the lack of moderators in languages other than English, including Arabic — among the most common languages on Meta’s platforms.

For users in the Gaza, Syria and other Middle East regions marred by conflict, the issues raised in the report are nothing new.

Israeli security agencies and watchdogs, for instance, have monitored Facebook and bombarded it with thousands of orders to take down Palestinian accounts and posts as they try to crack down on incitement.

“They flood our system, completely overpowering it,” Ashraf Zeitoon, Facebook’s former head of policy for the Middle East and North Africa region, who left in 2017, told The Associated Press last year. “That forces the system to make mistakes in Israel’s favor.”

Israel experienced an intense spasm of violence in May 2021 — with weeks of tensions in east Jerusalem escalating into an 11-day war with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. The violence spread into Israel itself, with the country experiencing the worst communal violence between Jewish and Arab citizens in years.

In an interview this week, Israel’s national police chief, Kobi Shabtai, told the Yediot Ahronot daily that he believed social media had fueled the communal fighting. He called for shutting down social media if similar violence occurs again and said he had suggested blocking social media to lower the flames last year.

“I’m talking about fully shutting down the networks, calming the situation on the ground, and when it’s calm reactivating them,” he was quoted as saying. “We’re a democratic country, but there’s a limit.”

The comments caused an uproar and the police issued a clarification saying that his proposal was only meant for extreme cases. Omer Barlev, the Cabinet minister who oversees police, also said that Shabtai has no authority to impose such a ban.

___

Associated Press reporter Josef Federman contributed from Jerusalem.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

FTC says Bezos, Jassy must testify in probe of Amazon Prime

By MARCY GORDON

 Then Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks at the the Amazon re:MARS convention on June 6, 2019, in Las Vegas. Federal regulators are ordering Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy to testify in their investigation of Amazon Prime Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022, rejecting the company’s complaint that the executives are being unfairly harassed in the government's probe of the popular streaming and shopping service. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators are ordering Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy to testify in the government’s investigation of Amazon Prime, rejecting the company’s complaint that the executives are being unfairly harassed in the probe of the popular streaming and shopping service.

The Federal Trade Commission issued an order late Wednesday denying Amazon’s request to cancel civil subpoenas sent in June to Bezos, the Seattle-based company’s former CEO, and Jassy. The order also sets a deadline of Jan. 20 for the completion of all testimony by Bezos, Jassy and 15 other senior executives, who also were subpoenaed.

Jassy took over the helm of the online retail and tech giant from Bezos, one of the world’s richest individuals, in July 2021. Bezos became executive chairman.

Amazon hasn’t made the case that the subpoenas “present undue burdens in terms of scope or timing,” FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson said in the order on behalf of the agency. However, the FTC did agreed to modify some provisions of the subpoenas that it acknowledged appeared too broad.

The FTC has been investigating since March 2021 the sign-up and cancellation practices of Amazon Prime, which has an estimated 200 million members around the globe.

The company said it was disappointed but not surprised that the FTC mostly ruled in favor of its own position, but it was pleased that the agency “walked backed its broadest requests” in the subpoenas.

“Amazon has cooperated with the FTC throughout the investigation and already produced tens of thousands of pages of documents,” the company said in a statement. “We are committed to engaging constructively with FTC staff, but we remain concerned that the latest requests are overly broad and needlessly burdensome, and we will explore all our options.”

In a petition to the FTC filed last month, the company objected to the subpoenas to Bezos and Jassy, saying the agency “has identified no legitimate reason for needing their testimony when it can obtain the same information, and more, from other witnesses and documents.” Amazon said the FTC was hounding Bezos, Jassy and the other executives, calling the information demanded in the subpoenas “overly broad and burdensome.”

The investigation has widened to include at least four other Amazon-owned subscription programs: Audible, Amazon Music, Kindle Unlimited and Subscribe & Save, as well as an unidentified third-party program not offered by Amazon. The regulators have asked the company to identify the number of consumers who were enrolled in the programs without giving their consent, among other customer information.

With an estimated 150 million U.S. subscribers, Amazon Prime is a key source of revenue, as well as a wealth of customer data, for the company, which runs an e-commerce empire and ventures in cloud computing, personal “smart” tech and beyond. Amazon Prime costs $139 a year. The service added a coveted feature this year by obtaining exclusive video rights to the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football.”

Last year, Amazon asked unsuccessfully that FTC Chair Lina Khan step aside from separate antitrust investigations into its business, contending that her public criticism of the company’s market power before she joined the government makes it impossible for her to be impartial. Khan was a fierce critic of tech giants Facebook (now Meta), Google and Apple, as well as Amazon. She arrived on the antitrust scene in 2017, writing an influential study titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” when she was a Yale law student.

Inflation, unrest challenge Bangladesh’s ‘miracle economy’

By JULHAS ALAM

1 of 4

Trainees work at Snowtex garment factory in Dhamrai, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, April 19, 2018. Bangladesh's economic miracle is under severe strain as fuel price hikes amplify public frustrations over rising costs for food and other necessities.

 (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad, File)


DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Standing in line to try to buy food, Rekha Begum is distraught. Like many others in Bangladesh, she is struggling to find affordable daily essentials like rice, lentils and onions.

“I went to two other places, but they told me they don’t have supplies. Then I came here and stood at the end of the queue,” said Begum, 60, as she waited for nearly two hours to buy what she needed from a truck selling food at subsidized prices in the capital, Dhaka.

Bangladesh’s economic miracle is under severe strain as fuel price hikes amplify public frustrations over rising costs for food and other necessities. Fierce opposition criticism and small street protests have erupted in recent weeks, adding to pressures on the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, which has sought help from the International Monetary Fund to safeguard the country’s finances.

Experts say Bangladesh’s predicament is nowhere nearly as severe as Sri Lanka’s, where months’ long unrest led its long-time president to flee the country and people are enduring outright shortages of food, fuel and medicines, spending days in queues for essentials. But it faces similar troubles: excessive spending on ambitious development projects, public anger over corruption and cronyism and a weakening trade balance.

Such trends are undermining Bangladesh’s impressive progress, fueled largely by its success as a garment manufacturing hub, toward becoming a more affluent, middle-income country.

The government raised fuel prices by more than 50% last month to counter soaring costs due to high oil prices, triggering protests over the rising cost of living. That led authorities to order the subsidized sales of rice and other staples by government-appointed dealers.

The latest phase of the program, which began Sept. 1, should help about 50 million people, said Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi.

“The government has taken a number of measures to reduce pressures on low-income earners. That is impacting the market and keeping prices of daily commodities competitive,” he said.

The policies are a stopgap for bigger global and domestic challenges.

The war in Ukraine has pushed higher prices of many commodities at a time when they already were surging as demand recovered with a waning of the coronavirus pandemic. In the meantime, countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Laos — among many — have seen their currencies weaken against the dollar, adding to the costs for dollar-denominated imports of oil and other goods.

To ease the strain on public finances and foreign reserves, the authorities put a moratorium on big, new projects, cut office hours to save energy and imposed limits on imports of luxury goods and non-essential items, such as sedans and SUVs.

“The Bangladesh economy is facing strong headwinds and turbulence,” said Ahmad Ahsan, an economist and director of the Dhaka-based Policy Research Institute, a thinktank. “Suddenly we are back to the era of rolling power cuts, with the taka and the forex reserves under pressure,” he said.

Millions of low-income Bangladeshis, like Begum, whose family of five can barely afford to eat fish or meat even once a month, still struggle to put food on the table.

Bangladesh has made huge strides in the past two decades in growing its economy and fighting poverty. Investments in garment manufacturing have provided jobs for tens of millions of workers, mostly women. Exports of apparel and related products account for more than 80% of its exports.

But with fuel costs so high, authorities shut diesel-run power plants that produced at least 6% of total production, cutting daily power generation by 1,500 megawatts and disrupting manufacturing.

Imports in the last fiscal year, ending in June, 2022, rose to $84 billion, while exports have fluctuated, leaving a record current account deficit of $17 billion.

More challenges are ahead.

Deadlines are fast approaching for repaying foreign loans related to at least 20 mega infrastructure projects, including the $3.6 billion River Padma bridge built by China and a nuclear power plant mostly funded by Russia. Experts say Bangladesh needs to prepare for when repayment schedules ramp up between 2024 and 2026

In July, in a move economists view as a precautionary measure, Bangladesh sought a $4.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund, becoming the third country in South Asia to recently seek its help after Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Finance Minister A.H.M. Mustafa Kamal said that the government asked the IMF to begin formal negotiations on loans “for balance of payments and budgetary assistance.” The IMF said it was working with Bangladesh to draw up a plan.

Bangladesh’s foreign reserves have been falling, potentially undermining its ability to meet its loan obligations. By Wednesday they had dropped to $36.9 billion from $45.5 billion a year earlier, according to the central bank.

Usable foreign reserves would be about $30 billion, said Zahid Hussain, a former chief economist of the World Bank’s Dhaka office.

“I would not say this is a crisis situation. This is still enough to meet three months of imports, three and half months of imports. But it also means that … you do not have a lot of room for maneuvering on the reserve front,” he said.

Still, despite what some economists say is excessive spending on some costly projects, Bangladesh is better equipped to weather hard times than some other countries in the region.

Its farm sector — tea, rice and jute are major exports — is an effective “shock absorber,” and its economy, four to five times larger than Sri Lanka’s, is less vulnerable to outside calamities like a downturn in tourism.

The economy is forecast to grow at a 6.6% pace this fiscal year, according to the Asia Development Bank’s latest forecast, and the country’s total debt is still relatively small.

“I think in the current context, the most important difference between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh is the debt burden, particularly the external debt,” said Hussain.

Bangladesh’s external debt is under 20% of its gross domestic product, while Sri Lanka’s was around 126% in the first quarter of 2022.

“So, we have some space. I mean debt as a source of stress on the macroeconomy is not much of a much problem yet,” he said.

Waiting in a line to buy subsidized food, 48-year-old Mohammed Jamal said he was not feeling such leeway for his own family.

“It has become unbearable trying to maintain our standard of living,” Jamal said. “Prices are just out of reach for the common people,” he said. “It’s tough living this way.”

Judge tosses most charges against Kansas researcher

By MARGARET STAFFORD

 This undated file photo provided by the University of Kansas shows researcher Franklin Feng Tao. A federal judge  threw out nearly all charges against Tao, a Kansas researcher accused of illegally concealing work he was doing at a Chinese university while working at the University of Kansas, leaving only a conviction for making a false statement on a form.

 (Kelsey Kimberlin/University of Kansas via AP, File)

A federal judge on Tuesday threw out three of four convictions against a Kansas researcher accused of illegally concealing work he was doing at a Chinese university while working at the University of Kansas, leaving only a conviction for making a false statement on a form.

A jury convicted researcher Feng “Franklin” Tao in April on three counts of wire fraud and one count of false statements. He was accused of not disclosing that he was working for Fuzhou University in China while employed at the Kansas university.

However, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson ruled that federal prosecutors did not provide sufficient evidence to support the wire fraud convictions. She upheld the making a false statement conviction and denied Tao’s request for a new trial on that count.

Tao’s attorney, Peter Zeidenberg, said in a statement that the defense team was gratified that Robinson found Tao did not intend to defraud Kansas or the federal government, and that Tao was “an outstanding researcher and award-winning professor” at Kansas.

“This will hopefully drive a final stake through the heart of these China Initiative cases, where the government has claimed that the failure to disclose a relationship to China constitutes federal grant fraud even when the researcher has completed all of the work on the grant to the government’s complete satisfaction,” Zeidenberg wrote.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Kansas said Tuesday it would have no comment on Robinson’s ruling.

Zeidenberg said the defense team is considering its next steps related to the filing a false statement conviction, which carries a possible sentence of up to five years.

Federal prosecutors argued during the trial that Tao concealed his work in China to defraud the University of Kansas, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. The federal agencies had awarded Tao grants for research projects at Kansas.

Defense attorneys argued that Tao was merely “moonlighting.” They said Tao completed all the research he received grants to conduct in Kansas and that his work in China wasn’t illegal because he wasn’t paid for it.

Robinson said Tao was deceptive in not disclosing his activities at Fuzhou University but there was no evidence Tao received money or property for the work, which is required for a wire fraud conviction.

“During the time period of the alleged scheme to defraud, Tao continued to rightfully receive his salary from KU for his services and continued to successfully perform the research required by DOE and NSF under their research grants,” Robinson wrote.

She said Tao did make a false statement to Kansas on a conflict of interest statement he submitted to the university in 2018.

The case against Tao was part of the U.S. Justice Department’s China Initiative, a program started in 2018 to crack down on efforts to transfer original ideas and intellectual property from U.S. universities to Chinese government institutions. The department ended the program in February amid public criticism and several failed prosecutions.

Tao did not disclose on conflict of interest forms that he was named to a Chinese talent program, the Changjiang Professorship. As part of that program he traveled to China to set up a laboratory and recruit staff for Fuzhou University, while telling Kansas officials that he was in Germany.

Zeidenberg noted during the trial that Tao listed his affiliation with both schools in some papers, suggesting he wasn’t hiding it. He also noted that the university honored Tao for his research efforts in April 2019, just months before his arrest.

Tao was born in China and moved to the U.S. in 2002. He began working in August 2014 as a tenured associate professor at the University of Kansas’ Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis, which conducts research on sustainable technology to conserve natural resources and energy.

‘Knocking on famine’s door’: UN food chief wants action now


David Beasley, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, speaks at the United Nations Headquarters on Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. The U.N. food chief is warning that the world is facing "a perfect storm on top of a perfect storm" when it comes to hunger. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. food chief warned Thursday that the world is facing “a perfect storm on top of a perfect storm” and urged donors, particularly Gulf nations and billionaires, to give a few days of profits to tackle a crisis with the fertilizer supply right now and prevent widespread food shortages next year.

“Otherwise, there’s gonna be chaos all over the world,” World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley said in an Associated Press interview.

Beasley said that when he took the helm of WFP 5 1/2 years ago, only 80 million people around the world were headed toward starvation. “And I’m thinking, `Well, I can put the World Food Program out of business,’” he said.

But climate problems increased that number to 135 million. The COVID-19 pandemic, which began in early 2020, doubled it to 276 million people not knowing where their next meal was coming from. Finally, Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, sparking a war and a food, fertilizer and energy crisis that has pushed the number to 345 million.

“Within that are 50 million people in 45 countries knocking on famine’s door,” Beasley said. “If we don’t reach these people, you will have famine, starvation, destabilization of nations unlike anything we saw in 2007-2008 and 2011, and you will have mass migration.”

“We’ve got to respond now.”

Beasley has been meeting world leaders and speaking at events during this week’s General Assembly gathering of leaders to warn about the food crisis.

General Assembly President Csaba Korosi noted in his opening address Tuesday that “we live, it seems, in a permanent state of humanitarian emergency.” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that conflicts and humanitarian crises are spreading, and the funding gap for the U.N.’s humanitarian appeals stands at $32 billion -- “the widest gap ever.”

This year, Beasley said, the war shut down grain shipments from Ukraine — a nation that produces enough food to feed 400 million people — and sharply curtailed shipments from Russia, the world’s second-largest exporter of fertilizer and a major food producer.

Beasley said donor fatigue often undermines aid, particularly in countries in ongoing crisis like Haiti. Inflation is also a serious issue, raising prices and hitting poor people who have no coping capacity because COVID-19 “just economically devastated them.”

So mothers, he said, are forced to decide: Do they buy cooking oil and feed their children, or do they buy heating oil so they don’t freeze? Because there’s not enough money to buy both.

“It’s a perfect storm on top of a perfect storm,” Beasley said. “And with the fertilizer crisis we’re facing right now, with droughts, we’re facing a food pricing problem in 2022. This created havoc around the world.”

“If we don’t get on top of this quickly — and I don’t mean next year, I mean this year — you will have a food availability problem in 2023,” he said. “And that’s gonna be hell.”

Beasley explained that the world now produces enough food to feed the more than 7.7 billion people in the world, but 50% of that food is because farmers used fertilizer. They can’t get those high yields without it. China, the world’s top fertilizer producer, has banned its export; Russia, which is number two, is struggling to get it to world markets.

“We’ve got to get those fertilizers moving, and we’ve got to move it quickly,” he said. “Asian rice production is at a critical state right now. Seeds are in the ground.”

In Africa, 33 million small farms feed over 70% of the population, and right now “we’re several billion dollars short of what we need for fertilizers.” He said Central and South America also faced drought and India was buffeted by heat and drought. “It could go on and on,” he said.

He said the July deal to ship Ukrainian grain from three Black Sea ports is a start, but “we’ve got to get the grains moving, we’ve got to get the fertilizer out there for everybody, and we need to end the wars.”

Beasley said the United States contributed an additional $5 billion for food security, and Germany, France and the European Union are also stepping up. But he called on Gulf states to “step up more” with oil prices so high, particularly to help countries in their region like Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia.

“We’re not talking about asking for a trillion dollars here,” Beasley said. “We’re just talking about asking for a few days’ worth of your profits to stabilize the world,” he said.

The WFP chief said he also met with a group of billionaires on Wednesday night. He said he told them they had “a moral obligation” and “need to care.”

“Even if you don’t give it to me, even if you don’t give it to the World Food Program, get in the game. Get in the game of loving your neighbor and helping your neighbor,” Beasley said. “People are suffering and dying around the world. When a child dies every five seconds from hunger, shame on us.”

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Edith M. Lederer is chief U.N. correspondent for The Associated Press and has been covering international affairs for more than half a century. For more AP coverage of the U.N. General Assembly, visit https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations-general-assembly