Record $1.5 Trillion Rift Opens Between Mutual Fund, ETF Flows

Isabelle Lee
Fri, December 16, 2022




(Bloomberg) -- Investors are spurning mutual funds at a record clip, driving a $1.5 trillion gap in the flow of money from the old-school investment vehicles and into ever-popular ETFs.

The divide this year between the two investment types widened to an all-time high, up from $950 billion in 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. The growing disparity is one measure of the speed with which ETFs are eating into the market dominance of mutual funds.

The tide has been shifting for years in an embrace of ETFs’ easier-to-trade and tax-friendly structure. But the market turmoil and a fixed-income rout amid aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes in 2022 further accelerated the divide as investors elected to make faster moving bets in exchange-traded funds over their staid brethren.

“Bonds having their first major bear market in over 40 years has resulted in a colossal industry-altering move from mutual funds to ETFs,” according to Todd Sohn at Strategas Securities.

“It’s been a development really two years in the making, going back to the Fed buying fixed-income ETFs in 2020, and then the rise of inflation and a tighter Fed resulting in a major bear market for bonds,” the ETF strategist said.

Mutual funds saw investors pull $480 billion out of fixed income, the first yearly outflow for the asset class since 2015. At the same time, ETFs have raked in bond investments of $184 billion as of Dec. 15, less than the over $200 billion seen in the prior two years.

The unusual year for stocks and bonds, where both markets tumbled in near total lockstep, has put pressure on money managers to seek hedges elsewhere amid surging inflation and tightening monetary policies that drove yields higher. This may have prompted investors to increase their weight in bonds, according to Sohn.

“There are investors out there who need to re-up their weight to fixed income given the decline and so using ETFs is another route to do that,” Sohn said.

ETFs have been gaining ground across the board, luring in nearly $588 billion so far this year and are on course for their second-best ever annual haul, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data. Meanwhile, mutual funds have seen roughly $950 billion of cash leave the asset class, the biggest outflow on record.

ETF investments now make up about 28% of total US fund assets, up from around 20% five years ago, Bloomberg Intelligence data show.

The chance to lock in mutual fund losses and offset capital gains tax, a practice called tax-loss harvesting, is also helping drive the migration out of mutual funds this year.

“Right now may be an opportune time to move into ETFs offering similar market access without running the risk of facing huge capital gains,” said Cinthia Murphy, director of research at ETF Think Thank. “The numbers would suggest a lot of investors are making this transition out of mutual funds, adopting the typically-lower cost and more tax-efficient ETF wrapper.”

Still, the $15 trillion mutual fund universe far outweighs the $6 trillion ETF market. Mutual funds, for one, have been around longer, and taxes on gains for longer-term holders make them harder for investors to switch, said Drew Pettit, director of ETF analysis and strategy at Citi Research. People also stay invested in mutual funds because the more established asset class offers more strategies.

“Not all of the mutual fund strategies that are out there have made their way into ETFs,” Pettit said in an interview at Bloomberg’s New York office. Although, he noted, conversions of existing mutual funds into ETFs are slowly shifting the dynamic.

“We don’t have this huge ground swell of hedge fund-like strategies and ETFs, but more and more of that is coming to market,” he said.

--With assistance from Sam Potter.

The FTX Meltdown Calls for Higher Standards in Crypto Journalism

Christopher Robbins
Thu, December 15, 2022


The law is catching up with Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), co-founder and former CEO of collapsed crypto exchange FTX.

The whole situation has led to a loss of trust in the cryptocurrency industry, which needs to be addressed by financial advisors.

If there is a bright side to this mess, it’s that the traditional finance (Tradfi) industry has managed itself through these types of crises regularly over the past century. Memories of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the massive Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme still loom large in the industry.

You're reading Crypto for Advisors, a weekly look at digital assets and the future of finance for financial advisors. 

Now FTX’s bankruptcy is rippling through the crypto industry and impacting other major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase. Can any of these exchanges be trusted as a place to store crypto?

The best answer we have right now is probably “maybe.”

We’ve talked about the issue of trust in the crypto space – that it’s hard for advisors to tell clients where to store their crypto because there is no one perfect answer for everyone. It’s hard to know which service providers to trust.

Well, that concern about trust applies equally to crypto journalism, as we have lately been thrown into doubt over whose advice to take.

Crypto journalism and trust

When CoinDesk published a piece by Ian Allison revealing problems with the FTX balance sheet and tipped off the entire meltdown, it provided perhaps one of the better examples of independent journalistic reporting. CoinDesk’s parent Digital Currency Group (DCG) also owns crypto trading firm Genesis, which was forced to halt withdrawals and thrust under regulatory scrutiny following the FTX collapse.

But a recent turn of events has revealed that journalism in crypto has also contributed to increasing distrust. A great example is the revelation over the past week that Bankman-Fried was secretly the financial backer of The Block, another cryptocurrency news publication.

Those of us journalists covering crypto know that finding and delivering trustworthy information in the industry has been hard enough to begin with.

Crypto journalists have already had to contend with the most aggressive financial marketing blitz of the last 20 years as startups and incumbents alike tried to capture some of the benefits of the crypto gold rush. So while many of us searched in earnest for good sources to share information on a very new and sometimes arcane phenomenon, we have had to sort through the people talking about their own book and looking for free advertising space to pitch their product.

We’ve also had to deal with conflicts of interest. Crypto publications are supported by advertisements of crypto companies, naturally. But in the traditional news industry there is typically a strict separation between the editorial content and what is advertised.

You may notice that the websites you read my material on are supported by advertiser dollars – but those dollars don’t impact what I write or what I get to cover. Nothing should be able to stop a good journalist from being a truth-teller and a tireless pursuer of fact.

Political implications of mistrust

Bankman-Fried has had tendrils that wrapped around so many entities within and outside of the digital assets industry – it’s hard to tell what’s legitimate anymore.

It seems that even those of us working in the margins of the cryptocurrency industry are going to be directly impacted by the avalanche of distrust that Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX have set off.

The revelation of Bankman-Fried's funding of CoinDesk competitor The Block comes at a time when trust in the media is at an all-time low, especially online where the depths of social media censorship and cooperation with public and political officials are only now being seriously plunged.

But SBF’s influence didn’t stop there. On Tuesday, a federal indictment was unsealed in New York alleging that FTX client funds were used to fund the campaigns of recently elected public officials from both major parties, in hopes of influencing the future direction of crypto regulations.

Nevermind that we’re also in an era of declining trust in elections and public institutions that has led to civil unrest at the U.S. Capitol in recent years.

A word of caution

As we come to the end of a tumultuous year, it’s still very hard to know who is really a truth-teller in the crypto industry right now, even for those of us trying to cover the industry.

When information is tainted by questionable actors like Bankman-Fried, the deliverers of information are rendered less worthy of trust.

This issue of misinformation is especially important to keep in mind as an investor in the crypto space. Nowhere is misinformation better reflected than in cryptocurrency prices.

While we’ve discussed some of the fundamentals behind various crypto tokens – like the network effect and processing power – the main driver of token prices is human sentiment, and human sentiment is flawed and easily misled.

Is bitcoin really worth $17,800? Is ether really worth $1,300? Like with many of the serious questions in finance, the best answers we have are “maybe” and “it depends.”

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M FTX

Boies law firm makes odd moves in FTX case against Tom Brady, celebs

Alison Frankel
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Lawyer David Boies speaks on the phone after a bail hearing in

 U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking case in New York City

By Alison Frankel

(Reuters) - The law firm led by famed litigator David Boies appears to have engaged in some unusual litigation tactics on behalf of FTX crypto exchange users who accuse NFL quarterback Tom Brady, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, comedian Larry David and other celebrities of inducing them to open FTX accounts.

This tale ventures deep into the weeds of federal court filing procedures, but the upshot is that Boies’ firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, and co-counsel from The Moskowitz Law Firm filed three different but obviously related FTX lawsuits in the same federal court in Miami without asking the court to consolidate the cases before just one judge.

The cases were assigned to three different Miami federal judges before the judges realized they were related. Last week, U.S. District Judge Michael Moore of Miami entered an order consolidating the lawsuits and clarifying that he will oversee the litigation.

That was apparently not what the Boies and Moskowitz firms were hoping. In mid-November, the firms filed the first of their three FTX lawsuits in federal court. The suit, a class action on behalf of FTX accountholders in the U.S., alleged that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and celebrity endorsers violated Florida securities and consumers laws by promoting the FTX yield-bearing accounts as a safe way to invest in cryptocurrencies.

I’ll pause here to point out that law firm Latham & Watkins, which is representing Brady, Bundchen and David, declined to comment on the cases. Bankman-Fried counsel Mark Cohen of Cohen & Gresser did not respond to a query. I also did not receive a response from the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, which is also named as a defendant.

As you are doubtless aware, Boies is known for high-profile matters, including his representation of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in the U.S. Supreme Court case that decided the election of 2000. More recently he has represented Jeffrey Epstein accusers including Virginia Giuffre.

On the official form that accompanied Boies Schiller's FTX lawsuit, which is known as a cover sheet, the Boies and Moskowitz firms said the FTX class action was related to a different class action that the firms are litigating on behalf of crypto investors who used the Voyager Digital Ltd platform. The Voyager case similarly accuses a celebrity crypto endorser – Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban – of deceptive promotion of a crypto investment. Cuban counsel Stephen Best of Brown Rudnick told me he is confident the class action will be tossed, in part because Voyager account holders did not rely on Cuban's endorsement.

Presiding over that case is U.S. District Judge Roy Altman, who was a partner at the plaintiffs' firm Podhurst Orseck before joining the bench in 2019. He has yet to rule on Cuban's motion to dismiss the case, but in November determined that the Boies and Moskowitz firms were entitled to discovery from Cuban.

By asserting that the first FTX suit was related to the Cuban case before Altman, the Boies and Moskowitz firms apparently hoped Altman would also be appointed to oversee the FTX class action, even though there was no overlap between the plaintiffs and defendants in the cases.

The court instead assigned the case to Moore, a George H.W. Bush appointee and former federal prosecutor, on the same day it was filed.

On Nov. 21, the Boies and Moskowitz firms filed a second FTX class action, this time on behalf of non-U.S. FTX customers. The cover sheet said the case was not related to any other proceeding in Miami federal court, although it mentioned the Voyager class action in a box where such information can be listed. The cover sheet did not refer to the case before Moore.

The second suit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles.

On Dec. 7, the Boies and Moskowitz firms filed a third FTX class action in federal court in Miami, this time on behalf of all FTX customers, in and out of the U.S. Once again, the cover sheet for the filing did not mention the firm’s previous (and very similar) FTX suits. Once again, the Voyager class action showed up in the box for related cases.

The third suit was assigned to U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom. (Both Bloom and Gayles are former Florida state-court judges who were appointed by former President Barack Obama).

The day after Bloom’s assignment to the case, the Moskowitz and Boies firms voluntarily dismissed the two previously-filed FTX class actions before Moore and Gayles. They then submitted an amended complaint in the case before Bloom, adding the lead plaintiffs from the other two now-dismissed suits.

Those maneuvers seem to have caught Bloom’s attention. She issued an order on Dec. 9, transferring the remaining class action to Moore, who had been assigned the first suit filed by Moskowitz and Boies. Moore issued his order consolidating the litigation in his courtroom on the same day.

I emailed Adam Moskowitz of the Moskowitz firm and four Boies Schiller lawyers, including David Boies, to ask why they had said the first FTX suit was related to the Voyager case and why they failed to disclose that their second and third FTX suits were related to the first class action. Specifically, I asked if they were trying to avoid Moore and get the FTX litigation before Altman, the judge overseeing the Voyager case.

Moskowitz said in two email responses that the firms’ goal has always been to have all of the federal cases consolidated before one judge. (His firm and the Boies firm also have filed several cases in Florida state courts.)

“As we got more cases, we filed more cases,” Moskowitz said. “We wanted to make sure to cover all of these victims.”

Moskowitz said the firms “always try our best to complete all information on all court forms.” He and Boies lawyers, he said, have been coordinating with defense counsel in both the state and federal FTX cases, despite the “different cases, different clients and different law firms.”

Both the state and federal cases, Moskowitz said, are now sorted out and will be overseen by one judge in federal court and one in state court.

“After four weeks of hard work, cooperation and coordination, including with defense counsel, we are happy to at least have two avenues for all of those victims across the globe (in Florida state and federal courts),” Moskowitz said. “It is a good day for the victims.”

Boies lawyers did not respond beyond Moskowitz’s emails.

Read more:

FTX's Bankman-Fried, Tom Brady and other celebrity promoters sued by crypto investors

'They ain't seen nothing yet': President Biden has accused oil companies of 'war profiteering' and threatened them with a new windfall tax.

 Will it help with gas prices?

Sigrid Forberg
Fri, December 16, 2022


In the wake of scorching inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine, major gas companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobil are raking in profits. And it’s got President Joe Biden hot under the collar.

In November, days before the midterm elections, Biden launched an attack on the industry, calling their record profits "a windfall of war," not the result of anything "new or innovative."

And now, his international energy envoy is calling on oil companies to think of American consumers.

“I think that the idea that financiers would tell companies in the United States not to increase production and to buy back shares and increase dividends when the profits are at all-time highs is outrageous,” Amos Hochstein told the Financial Times. “It is not only un-American, it is so unfair to the American public."

"You want to pay dividends, pay dividends. You want to pay shareholders, pay shareholders. You want to get bonuses, do that, too. You could do all of that and still invest more. We are asking you to increase production and seize the moment.”

With gas prices still elevated, and an expensive winter ahead, Biden says he’s ready to force these oil companies to act — but while his words for these companies may be strong, he may not have the power to back them up.

Biden doesn’t mince his words

Biden has been waging a battle with oil companies over the last few months, but he escalated it in November when he called on them to “act beyond their narrow self-interest,” to “invest in America by increasing production and refining capacity” on behalf of “their consumers, their community and their country.”

And if they don’t? Biden warns they’re going to face “a higher tax on their excess profits and … higher restrictions.”

The president didn’t elaborate on what those restrictions might be, but promised his administration would work with Congress to evaluate all the available options.

“It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering, meet their responsibilities in this country and give the American people a break,” Biden added.
Oil companies fire back

While gas has dropped from a record high of over $5/gallon in June, it’s still currently hovering around $3.21. And that, along with a dangerously low oil supply and a dwindling diesel stockpile is clearly weighing on Biden.

But oil companies argue they’re already contributing to the cause. Exxon Mobil’s CEO Darren Woods took a moment during the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Oct. 28 to address Biden. “There has been discussion in the U.S. about our industry returning some of our profits directly to the American people,” Woods said. “That’s exactly what we’re doing in the form of our quarterly dividend."

The president didn’t take kindly to that, tweeting his response a few hours later: “Can’t believe I have to say this but giving profits to shareholders is not the same as bringing prices down for American families.”

Any taxes would face an uphill battle

Biden appears to be proposing a “windfall” tax to redistribute profits to American consumers still paying out the nose at the pump. But even with Biden’s backing, there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to pass a new corporate tax. For that, he’d need support from Congress and with a Senate divided in half between Republicans and Democrats, that seems unlikely.

He does seem prepared to compromise, though. According to a report in Bloomberg, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm addressed oil and gas executives in Washington on Wednesday at a meeting of the National Petroleum Council, an outside federal advisory group with members from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc.

“We are eager to work with you,” Granholm said, adding that fossil fuels are likely to be around for a while.

She also acknowledged the administration has "butted heads" with the industry, referring to it as the “elephant in the room." And with growing demand and a shortage of diesel in the Northeast, she says the administration is aware fossil fuel production will need to increase soon.

Still, the president isn’t likely to back down entirely. In November, Exxon and Chevron, two of the country’s biggest oil companies, reported hefty profits for the fourth consecutive quarter. That same day, in a briefing from the White House, Biden pointed out that six of the largest companies “made $70 billion in profit” in just 90 days.

Appalled that all that money was going back to their shareholders and executives, Biden issued a promise: “I’m going to keep harping on it. [These companies] talk about me picking on them, they ain’t seen nothing yet. I mean it. It outrages me.”

Ending finance for new oil and gas drilling projects is the minimum banks should do

Tim McDonnell
Fri, December 16, 2022 


London-based bank HSBC will immediately stop lending and underwriting for new oil and gas drilling projects, the bank announced Dec. 14, making it the first large multinational bank—and top-tier funder of fossil fuels—to adopt such a policy.

The policy change follows a year of pressure from activist shareholders, and raises the bar for other major banks that have set long-term goals to decarbonize their lending but have so far been reluctant to close the purse strings for oil and gas producers.

“HSBC’s announcement is groundbreaking and will send shockwaves to governments and fossil fuel giants,” said Jeanne Martin, head of the banking program at ShareAction, an advocacy group that spearheaded climate-related shareholder resolutions at HSBC and worked with the bank on its new oil and gas policy.

HSBC will continue lending to fossil fuel companies

To be clear, the policy only affects project-specific finance, where an oil and gas company seeks a loan for a particular new drilling project or infrastructure to support it. HSBC will continue to lend and provide financial services to oil and gas companies, including those with plans to expand drilling, at the general corporate level, i.e., finance not designated for one particular project. On average across European banks, 92% of finance for oil and gas companies came at the corporate level, with only 8% for specific projects, according to ShareAction. HSBC is the top European financier of oil and gas companies, providing $59 billion in lending, underwriting, and other financing from 2016 to 2021.

Still, cutting off project finance “sends a clear signal to its clients that the bank is losing its appetite for this kind of activity,” Martin said. And it could be a stepping stone to more wide-reaching restrictions; all major European banks now have some restrictions on corporate-level financing for coal companies, a broad shift that also started with project-level finance.

HSBC can still clean up its advertising

There’s still plenty HSBC can do to improve on its climate policies, Martin said. In October, UK officials banned some of the bank’s ads for making claims that were misleading or greenwashing. And although HSBC has said it will require its corporate clients to deliver net-zero transition plans, it hasn’t said how it will assess those plans or whether it would sever ties with clients whose plans are inadequate.

Still, if HSBC can at least target project finance, there’s no reason why JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, and other major fossil fuel financiers can’t follow suit. And the more expensive and elusive finance for drilling becomes, the more pressure oil and gas companies will feel to speed up their shift to lower-carbon business models.

“The fact that HSBC could make this commitment makes it very hard for other banks to not make similar commitments,” Martin said.

California’s Reparations Task Force looks beyond slavery, turns to state discrimination



Marcus D. Smith
Fri, December 16, 2022 

Looking beyond the abuses of enslavement, California’s Reparations Task Force at an Oakland meeting this week dug into racist state policies of the 20th Century as it worked to quantify harms committed against Black communities.

Dozens of people gathered at Oakland City Hall to contribute to the discussion, sharing concerns and seeking information about California’s first-in-the-nation effort to advance reparations.

The committee has already recommended that California provide financial reparations to descendants of enslaved people and Black Californians who can trace their ancestry in the state to the 19th Century. It’s expected to submit a final report to the Legislature next year, after which lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom could act on its findings.

Now it’s working on other questions, such as how to compensate people for unjust property takings by eminent domain, devaluation of Black businesses, housing discrimination and homelessness, over-policing and the disproportionate mass incarceration of Black people, and health harms.

“This conversation deserves a lot more, it’s the most important conversation that we’re going to have,” said task force member Monica Montgomery Steppe.

The task force is trying to determine a time frame to assess damages against Black Californians.

For unjust property takings, the task force suggested the state consider damages from 1920 to today. Committee members described how city governments razed several Black residential areas and replaced them with infrastructure, such as railroads and highways. That dynamic played out throughout the Bay Area, including in San Francisco’s Western Addition and in a once-thriving commercial strip in West Oakland.

When it comes to the devaluation of Black businesses, the task force proposed to trace damage as early as 1900, which could include a lineage requirement.

In dealing with housing discrimination and homelessness, the task force advised lawmakers to revisit the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 and Home Owner’s Loan Corporation in 1937, which effectively created redlining, the blueprint to keep Black American to specific neighborhood with less resources.

Between 1946 and 1960, the task force found through studies that less than 1% of Federal Housing Administration loans went to Black people living in Northern California.

Redlining forced Black Californians into under-resourced neighborhoods, contributing to health harms that African Americans continue to face today. The task force report determined Black residents are 40% more exposed to carbon dioxide and particulate matter from cars, trucks and buses than white California residents.

The report found that Black people are 75% more likely to live near hazardous waste facilities. The task force considers 1900 to present day as a damage time frame regarding health harms Black residents face.

Committee members suggest that mass incarceration and over-policing became heightened in 1970 due to the War on Drugs, an issue which continues to persist in the present day and economists agree.

To repair some of the harms inflicted, members of the task force suggested a plethora of recommendations such as ending the three-strikes sentencing, implementation of anti-bias policing, allocate funds to remedy harms of incarceration such as abolishing cash bail, among other suggestions.

The task force is continuing to analyze how compensation fits into the deliberation of reparations. It is still unclear on how reparations will be paid and measured to ensure the form of payment aligns with an estimate of damages.

Task force members voted to continue the conversation to its next pair of meetings scheduled for Jan. 27 and 28 in San Diego. The task force will plan to hold meetings in Sacramento in February 2023.

Thousands protest in Brussels over cost-of-living crisis, hitting public transport

People demonstrate against the rising cost of living in Belgium


Fri, December 16, 2022 


BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Brussels on Friday to protest against the rising cost-of-living, hitting public transport systems and disrupting this week's European Union (EU) summit.

The Brussels police said 16,500 people had turned up at the demonstration, which was organised by trade unions representing many public sector workers demanding better pay and working conditions as inflation rises across Europe.

"Increase Wages And Pensions!," read one banner held aloft by a protester.

Gas and electricity prices have surged in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Belgium's headline inflation figure stood at 10.63% in November, while consumer inflation within the euro zone as a whole is at around 10%.


"You get back home to your children, you want your house to be warm. You should not be having to make calculations on using energy," said one demonstrator.

The event passed off peacefully, but Brussels Airport said flights had to be cancelled as a result of the protest, while local police said traffic had been disrupted.

(Reporting by Christian Levaux and Sudip Kar-Gupta, Editing by William Maclean)

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE OVER ROGUE NATION TEST
India tests long-range missile for nuclear deterrence

ASHOK SHARMA
Thu, December 15, 2022 

NEW DELHI (AP) — India on Thursday successfully test-fired a long-range “Agni-5” intercontinental nuclear-capable ballistic missile, a government minister said, that is expected to strengthen its deterrence against long-time rival China.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi said the missile was fired Thursday from Abdul Kalam Island in eastern Odisha state.

“The missile will add great value to the defense and strengthen national security to a greater extent,” Joshi tweeted, citing its range of 5,400 kilometers (3,300 miles) or more.

Ahead of the test, Indian authorities issued a notification and declared the Bay of Bengal as a no-fly zone, said Indian media reports, adding that its range covers almost the entire China mainland.

Fresh tensions arose between India and China following clashes between their army soldiers Dec. 9 along their disputed border in Arunachal Pradesh state.

India's Defense Minister Rajnath Singh said no Indian soldiers were seriously hurt and troops from both sides withdrew from the area soon afterward. A statement from the Indian army Monday said troops on both sides suffered minor injuries.

Rahul Bedi, a defense analyst, said this was the second user test by India's Strategic Forces Command since it was inducted in 2018. The first test was carried out in 2021.

Bedi said Indian authorities did not take cognizance of the reported presence of a Chinese spy ship in the region and went ahead with the test.

India has developed a family of medium- to intercontinental-range ballistic missiles called “Agni,” which means “fire.” Agni missiles are long-range, nuclear-capable, surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.

For decades, India and China have fiercely contested the Line of Actual Control, a loose demarcation that separates Chinese and Indian held territories from Ladakh in the west to India’s eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims in its entirety. India and China fought a war over the border in 1962.

Mexican president condemns gun attack on prominent journalist


March in support of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in Mexico City

Fri, December 16, 2022 

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday condemned an apparent assassination attempt on a prominent news anchor and critic of the president who said assailants had opened fire on him while he was driving his car.

Television and radio presenter Ciro Gomez Leyva said on Twitter two unidentified people on a motorcycle had shot at him around 200 meters (660 feet) from his home on Thursday night, and shared images of bullet impacts on the vehicle.

Thanks to the vehicle's armor, he was still alive, he said. Gomez was back on the air on his morning radio show on Friday.

Lopez Obrador, who has repeatedly lambasted Gomez and other prominent journalists critical of his policies, opened his daily morning conference by denouncing the attack.

"He's a journalist, a human being, but he's also a leader of public opinion. Hurting a figure like Ciro creates a lot of political instability," Lopez Obrador said.

On Wednesday, Gomez was singled out for criticism during a regular section of the news conference dedicated to identifying what Lopez Obrador calls the media's "lies of the week".

"Imagine if you just listened to Ciro or Loret de Mola or Sarmiento," Lopez Obrador said, naming him and other leading journalists. "It's even bad for your health, I mean if you listen to them a lot, you could even develop a brain tumor."

Mexico is the world's most dangerous country for journalists, according to a report published Wednesday by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

The report identified 11 killings of media professionals this year, though other groups have documented a higher number.

Pope returns Greece's Parthenon Sculptures in ecumenical nod



Vatican Parthenon Sculptures

The marble head of a young man, a tiny fragment from the 2,500-year-old sculptured decoration of the Parthenon Temple on the ancient Acropolis, is displayed during a presentation to the press at the new Acropolis Museum in Athens Pope Francis has decided to send back to Greece this and other two fragments of Parthenon Sculptures that the Vatican Museums have held for two centuries.

 (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

NICOLE WINFIELD
Fri, December 16, 2022 


VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis will send back to Greece the three fragments of the Parthenon Sculptures that the Vatican Museums have held for two centuries, in the latest case of a Western museum bowing to demands for restitution of artifacts to their countries of origin.

In announcing the decision Friday, the Vatican termed the gesture a “donation” from Francis to His Beatitude Ieronymos II, the Orthodox Christian archbishop of Athens and all Greece, and said it was “a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth.”

The return, which is expected to still take some time to execute, is likely to add further pressure on the British Museums, which has refused decades of appeals from Greece to return its much larger collection of Parthenon sculptures, which has been a centerpiece of the museum since 1816.

The 5th century B.C. sculptures are mostly remnants of a 160-meter-long (520-foot) frieze that ran around the outer walls of the Parthenon Temple on the Acropolis, dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom. Much of the frieze and the temple's other sculptural decoration was lost in a 17th-century bombardment, and about half the remaining works were removed in the early 19th century by a British diplomat, Lord Elgin.

Aside from the British Museums, fragments have ended up in museums around Europe, and recently a small museum in Sicily decided to return its lone fragment to Greece in a loan that Greek authorities hope will be extended indefinitely.

The Vatican's three fragments include a head of a horse, a head of a boy and a bearded male head. The head of the boy had been loaned to Greece for a year in 2008.

Greece’s Culture Ministry said it welcomed the pope’s donation, which it said followed a request by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians.

The decision helps Greek efforts for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures from the British Museum “and their reunification with those on display in the Acropolis Museum,” a ministry statement said. The Acropolis Museum, for its part, also welcomed Francis' gesture.

The Vatican statement suggested the Holy See wanted to make clear that it's donation was not a bilateral state-to-state return, but rather a religiously inspired donation from a pope to a primate. The intent may be to avoid a precedent that could affect other priceless holdings in the Vatican Museums, amid broader demands from Indigenous groups and colonized countries for Western museums to return looted artifacts, and artworks and material culture obtained under questionable circumstances during colonial times.

In the case of the Vatican Museums, Indigenous groups from Canada have made clear they want the Holy See to return artifacts sent by Catholic missionaries to the Vatican for a 1925 exhibition and are now part of its ethnographic collection.

Jos van Beurden, who administers the “Restitution Matters” Facebook group that tracks the global restitution debate, suggested the use of the term “donation” for specifically religious purposes and “not a government to government affair” was deliberate and could inspire other groups to seek the return of items on similar grounds.

“Does this offer a chance to a claim of an Ethiopian diaspora group in the USA for the return of hundreds of ancient manuscripts looted from the Debre Libanos Monastery by the Italian fascist Enrico Ceruli during Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia?” he asked. “Or to the Ethiopian claim for eleven Tabots in the British Museums?”

He was referring to the 11 plaques that are a foundational part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and have been the subject of repeated appeals from Ethiopian patriarchs and others to the British Museum for restitution. According to the Museum Association, the plaques were looted by the British in an 1868 battle but have never been displayed or photographed in recognition of their sanctity.

The British Museum recently pledged not to dismantle its Parthenon collection, following a report that the institution’s chairman had held secret talks with Greece’s prime minister over the return of the sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles.

The Parthenon was built between 447-432 B.C. and is considered the crowning work of classical architecture. The frieze depicted a procession in honor of Athena.

Francis last met with Ieronymos in 2021 in Athens where he issued an appeal for greater unity between Catholics and Orthodox. At the time, Francis “shamefully” acknowledged the “mistakes” that the Catholic Church had inflicted on others over the centuries, actions which he said “were marked by a thirst for advantage and power.”