UN says Damascus conditions for cross-border aid 'unacceptable'

Amélie BOTTOLLIER-DEPOIS
Fri, July 14, 2023 

The delivery of humanitarian aid through the Bab al-Hawa crossing has been stalled since Monday, when a 2014 UN deal expired (OMAR HAJ KADOUR)

The United Nations is concerned about "unacceptable conditions" set by Damascus for allowing aid to flow through its Bab al-Hawa crossing to rebel-held areas in northwest Syria, according to a document reviewed Friday by AFP.

The delivery of humanitarian aid through the crossing has been stalled since Monday, when a 2014 UN deal expired.

A letter this week from Syrian authorities allowing use of the border crossing between Turkey and Syria "contains two unacceptable conditions," according to a document sent to the UN Security Council from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

OCHA said it was concerned that the Syrian government had "stressed that the United Nations should not communicate with entities designated as 'terrorist.'"

The second condition it bridled at was that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) should "supervise and facilitate the distribution of humanitarian aid" in northwest Syria.

The UN says more than four million people in northwest Syria are in need of food, water, medicine and other essentials.

Through an arrangement that began in 2014, the UN largely delivers relief to northwest Syria via neighboring Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing.

Syria announced on Thursday that it would authorize the UN to use Bab al-Hawa to deliver vital humanitarian aid to millions of people in rebel-held areas for six months.

Syria's ambassador to the UN Bassam Sabbagh told reporters on Thursday that his country had taken a "sovereign decision" on allowing the aid to continue.

- 'Comprehensive and unrestricted' -

That announcement followed the expiration on Monday of a mechanism that has allowed UN convoys to use the crossing to rebel areas without authorization from Damascus.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Friday that "there's been no crossings in Bab al-Hawa with United Nations humanitarian aid," adding that authorities were reviewing Syria's authorization.

"We're taking a look at... what exactly was expressed in the letter," he said.

"These things need to be studied carefully," he added, reiterating the UN's "commitment to delivering humanitarian assistance guided by humanitarian principles of non-interference, of impartiality."

The OCHA document seen by AFP also called for the need to "review" and "clarify" parts of Damascus' letter, saying the deliveries "must not infringe on the impartiality... neutrality, and independence of the United Nations' humanitarian operations."

Damascus regularly denounces the UN aid deliveries as a violation of its sovereignty, and major ally Moscow has been chipping away at the deal for years.

Russia on Tuesday vetoed a nine-month extension of the agreement, and then failed to muster enough votes to adopt a six-month extension.

The 15 UN Security Council members had been trying for days to find a compromise to extend the cross-border aid deal.

Syria's conflict has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country's infrastructure and industry.

"The scale of needs in Syria requires a comprehensive and unrestricted approach to humanitarian aid," the ICRC delegation in New York told AFP.

"We stand ready to support in ways that fall within our capabilities and with the consent of all parties involved."

abd/jh/caw/lb

Syria gives green light to reopen key crossing to rebel-held northwest from Turkey— with caveats



Thu, July 13, 2023 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Syrian government gave a green light Thursday for the United Nations to use a key crossing from Turkey to the country’s rebel-held northwest that was closed earlier this week, but it wants to take away U.N. control over aid deliveries to the region.

Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bassam Sabbagh, said the government is granting the U.N. and its agencies “permission” to use the Bab al-Hawa crossing for six months starting Thursday, but he said it must be done “in full cooperation and coordination with the government.”

He told reporters the U.N. also should not communicate with “terrorist organizations” and their affiliates illegally controlling the Idlib region and must allow the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to run aid operations in “terrorist” controlled areas,

Sabbagh made the announcement after delivering letters to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council president with the government’s decision. It followed Tuesday’s failure of the Security Council to renew authorization of aid deliveries through Bab al-Hawa, a U.N. operation that had been vital to helping a region of 4.1 million people.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said: “We’ve received the letter and are studying it for now.”

But Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Barbara Woodward, was clearly not impressed, saying Bab al-Hawa has “gold standard aid monitoring” yet now Syrian President Bashar Assad has said he will open it without U.N. monitoring.

“Control of this critical lifeline has been handed to the man responsible for the Syrian people’s suffering,” Woodward said. “The priority needs to be getting aid flowing again, fast, to the people who need it — and then getting certainty over its future. We will not hesitate to bring this back to the Security Council.”

The main insurgent group in northwest Idlib is Hayat Tahrir al Sham, whose origins were in al-Qaida. The group and other militants are a mix of home-grown fighters and foreign jihadis who began coming to Syria in 2011 after an initially peaceful uprising against Assad turned into an armed insurgency.

Many people in Idlib have been forced from their homes during the 12-year civil war, which has killed nearly a half million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. Hundreds of thousands live in tent settlements and have relied on aid that comes through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.

The Security Council initially authorized aid deliveries in 2014 from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan through four crossing points into opposition-held areas in Syria. But over the years, Syria’s closest ally Russia, backed by China, has reduced the authorized crossings to just Bab al-Hawa from Turkey — and the mandates from a year to six months.

After the devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake that ravaged northwestern Syria and southern Turkey on Feb. 8,, Assad opened two additional crossing points from Turkey, at Bab al-Salameh and al-Rai, to increase the flow of assistance to victim, and he extended their opening until Aug. 13.

The United Nations has also been using those crossings to deliver aid. But U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric reiterated after Tuesday’s vote that the secretary-general was trying to reopen Bab al-Hawa, which is closest to Idlib and where 85% of U.N. cross-border aid passed through.

Pressed on what “full cooperation and coordination with the government” will mean in practice, Sabbagh said that “I leave these details to the U.N. to explain,” saying the government wants Bab al-Hawa open. He said Syria also wants the U.N. to support the country’s development, recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction of roads, power stations, mining activities.

On Tuesday, Syria’s close ally Russia vetoed a compromise resolution drafted by Switzerland and Brazil that would have extended the U.N. operation through Bab al-Hawa for nine months. That was supported by 13 of the 15 council members, as well as by the secretary-general and humanitarian organizations.

A rival Russian resolution that would have extended the aid deliveries only for six months but added new requirements failed to get the minimum nine “yes” votes for approval and was only supported by Russia and China. Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council that if Moscow’s resolution wasn’t accepted it would not approve any compromise.

The Russian draft resolution included language supporting Assad’s government, which has for years delayed U.N.-led negotiations on a new constitution as a key step to elections and ending the conflict that began in 2011. It also referred to U.S. and European Union sanctions on Syria and asked the secretary-general to provide a special report on the impact of these measures in December.

Eleven children die every week attempting to cross Mediterranean, new UN figures show

Harriet Barber
Fri, July 14, 2023 

This year, an estimated 11,600 children have made the dangerous crossing

 - Olmo Calvo/AP

An average of 11 children drown every week when attempting to cross the Mediterranean, according to new data from the United Nations.

The findings lay bare the tragic scale of the mounting refugee crisis in Europe, which last month left an estimated 100 children dead after a fishing boat sank off southern Greece.

This year, an estimated 11,600 children have made the dangerous crossing and an estimated 289 died or disappeared, according to Unicef, the UN’s branch for children.

Since 2018, 1,500 children have died or gone missing, the agency added.

Organised smuggling gangs charge thousands of pounds for the crossing, forcing hundreds of migrants onto run-down and unsafe boats, often before taking the engines away and leaving the vessels to drift.

Lisa Ward, an NHS paramedic who has worked on rescue boats in the Mediterranean, has witnessed first-hand the consequences of this exploitation.

“There are many, many babies, and children under three or four,” she said. “In one rescue I had three drowned toddlers brought to me in half an hour. I managed to get one breathing but I couldn’t sustain it. They all died. There were probably more [in the water]. The mothers were looking for their children.”

Hundreds of migrants are often forced onto run-down and unsafe boats

 - VINCENZO CIRCOSTA/AFP via Getty Images

Many shipwrecks on the Central Mediterranean Sea crossing leave no survivors or go unrecorded, making the true number of child casualties impossible to verify and likely much higher.

The majority of children depart from Libya and Tunisia, having already travelled from countries across Africa and the Middle East.

“Some of the children would have marks on them for torture; electric burns,” Ms Ward said. “Some would have urine burns, where people had urinated on the boat and the children had been sitting in it for days.

“On one rescue, the boat listed and everyone went into the water. Most of these people can’t swim. Male adults were taking life jackets off the children.”
‘Tackle trafficking and smuggling networks’

The UN said a huge proportion of the children that make the journey across the Mediterranean do so by themselves.

In the first three months of 2023, some 3,300 children – 71 per cent of all children arriving to Europe via this route – were recorded as unaccompanied or separated from parents.

Girls travelling alone are especially vulnerable and “likely” to experience violence, Unicef said.

“Instances of systematic rape are well known and well documented. So it is not with a light heart that we are saying these girls are facing extreme risks before, during and after their journeys,” Verena Knaus, Unicef’s global lead on migration told The Telegraph.

“In other instances, we encounter girls travelling on their own who paid the price for crossing a border with their bodies and are now bearing an unwanted child. We hear of this happening with smugglers, border guards and even those in search and rescue.”

Judith Sunderland, acting deputy director of Europe at Human Rights Watch, said “no one deserves to drown at sea but the thought of children – so many children – going under the waves is gut-wrenching.”

She said: “Each of us should think past the statistics to picture the children in our own lives facing that kind of death.”

“It’s important to tackle trafficking and smuggling networks for the real harms they cause to both children and adults, but the best way to minimise dangerous migration journeys is to create more safe and legal channels,” she added.

Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu declares state of emergency over food

Azeezat Oluwa & Cecilia Macaulay - BBC News, Lagos & London
Fri, July 14, 2023 

Many farmers, especially in the north of Nigeria, have had to stop cultivation because of the threat of violence from criminal gangs

Nigeria's President Bola Tinubu has declared a state of emergency to tackle rising food prices and shortages.

Some of the initiatives include using money saved by the recent removal of a fuel subsidy to provide fertiliser and grain to farmers.

Protection is also to be increased for farmers, many of whom have abandoned their land after becoming the target of gangs that kidnap for ransom.

Poorer households are to be helped too with $10 (£8) a month for six months.

"I assure all Nigerians that no-one will be left behind in these strategic interventions," said Mr Tinubu, who took office in May.

A UN report in January projected that 25 million Nigerians were at high risk of food insecurity this year - meaning they would not be able to afford enough nutritious food every day.

Concerns about food insecurity have been longstanding in Nigeria - Africa's most-populous country, which has also been battling widespread insecurity for several years.

More than 350 farmers were kidnapped or killed in the 12 months up to June 2022 alone, according to a Nigerian security tracking website.

Many of these attacks have taken place in the north of the country.

But new security measures would mean farmers could return to the farmlands "without fear of attacks", government adviser Dele Alake said.

No further details were given about how the government intends to tackle the notorious organised criminal gangs, whose members are referred to as bandits.

All matters relating to essential food and water will now to be the responsibility of the National Security Council, which is made up of the country's security chiefs and headed by the president.

Mr Tinubu's first major policy move after taking office was to remove the fuel subsidy, which had been in place for decades and kept the price of petroleum products low.

Its removal has led to increases of up to 200% in some parts of the country, but the new president has defended the move, saying it is essential to use that money more effectively.

The rise in fuel has had a knock-on effect on the economy, with many Nigerians depending on generators for their electricity supply.

Just a few days ago the Association of Master Bakers and Caterers of Nigeria warned that bread prices would spike by 15%.

Some families have told BBC Pidgin that they cannot afford to buy bread.

"My monthly pension cannot cover the cost of buying bread everyday so we have switched to another more affordable food," Mallam Ado Yahaya, from the northern state of Kano, said.

The new monthly stipend is going to 12 million households via a scheme known as the National Safety Net Programme - it is separate from another initiative launched by the previous government through which they receive about $6 a month.

These more vulnerable people are also likely to be getting access to grain and fertiliser being offered to farmers - although the statement was not clear on numbers.

"It is expected that the programme will stimulate economic activities in the informal sector and improve nutrition, health, education, and human capital development of beneficiaries' households," President Tinubu said.

UN Warns That AI-Powered Brain Implants Could Spy on Our Innermost Thoughts



Frank Landymore
Fri, July 14, 2023

Thought Police

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has sounded the alarm bell on neurotechnology, warning that its "warp speed" advancement, catalyzed by artificial intelligence, poses a threat to human rights and mental privacy, Agence France-Presse reports.

In response, UNESCO will develop an "ethical framework" to address the potential human rights concerns raised by neurotech, it said at an international conference in Paris on Thursday.

"We are on a path to a world in which algorithms will enable us to decode people's mental processes and directly manipulate the brain mechanisms underlying their intentions, emotions and decisions," Gabriela Ramos, UNESCO assistant director-general social and human sciences, said at the event.

Brain-o-Scope

Roughly speaking, neurotech describes electronic devices that connect with your brain or nervous system, such as brain computer interfaces, also known as brain implants, and brain scans.

Typically, the tech has been reserved for more medical purposes, like helping paralyzed people move again, or regain their eyesight or hearing.

But recent advancements have given experts pause over its potential invasiveness. One study with decidedly dystopian implications was able to successfully pair the use of a large language model AI with a functional MRI brain scan to literally read people's thoughts and spell them out in words.

It's still early days for the field, but these advances wouldn't be possible without AI, which can be used to help process brain data at astonishing rates — and that has experts worried that we could be on the precipice of grim new privacy concerns.

"It's like putting neurotech on steroids," Mariagrazia Squicciarini, a UNESCO economist specializing in AI, told AFP.

Massive Investment

The enormous amounts of capital being pumped into the neurotech industry should also be cause for concern, not too dissimilar to how breathless AI hype has seen the tech run amok. Money talks, and it usually doesn't have the average person's best interests in mind.

Between 2010 and 2020, investment in neurotechnology companies soared to over $33 billion, according to a new UNESCO report coauthored by Squicciarini — a 22-fold increase. Meanwhile, the number of neurotech patents has doubled in half that time period.

Among many companies spearheading that charge is Elon Musk's Neuralink, which recently received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to test its brain implants in humans, and is now backed up by Musk's recently launched AI firm, xAI.

UNESCO representatives say neurotech isn't all bad, however — though there's a clear dearth of future-proofed regulation.

More on neurotech: Companies Already Investing in Tech to Scan Employees’ Brains

A new outbreak of Canadian wildfires is sending a plume of unhealthy smoke into the US yet again

Eric Zerkel
Sat, July 15, 2023

A recent outbreak of wildfires in western Canada is again sending a plume of unhealthy smoke into the United States.

Air quality alerts were in effect Saturday for at least eight states across the northern Plains and upper Midwest as smoke from the wildfires returns.

Smoke will be heaviest across parts of Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa on Saturday before shifting southeastward later in the weekend. Minneapolis and Des Moines, Iowa, will see the worst of the smoke Saturday while cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, and Cincinnati will begin to see the effects on Sunday.

The Midwest will continue to see poor air quality and decreased visibility into early next week as the smoke lingers.

Chicago experienced some of the worst air quality in the world amid heavy smoke in late-June.

This time, the smoke plume is not coming from the Canadian province of Quebec. It is instead funneling across Canada from much further away in the West, so it shouldn’t reach the Northeast like it did in early June, when New York City’s skies turned an apocalyptic shade of orange.

On Friday, the encroaching smoke dropped air quality in parts of Montana and North Dakota to code red, or unhealthy levels on the Air Quality Index, and to code orange, or unhealthy for sensitive groups, in Minnesota, according to airnow.gov

An out-of-control fire burns 60 miles southeast of Kamloops, British Columbia, on Wednesday, July 12, 2023. - Pete Laing/BC Wildfire Service

Wildfire smoke contains tiny pollutants known as particle matter, or PM 2.5, that can get into the lungs and bloodstream once inhaled. These pollutants most commonly cause difficulty breathing and eye and throat irritation, but have also been linked to more serious long-term health issues like lung cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The plume was birthed from nearly 400 fires sparked in Canada’s province of British Columbia in the past week, nearly half of which were started by 51,000 lightning strikes from thunderstorms, the BC Wildfire Service said. Some of those thunderstorms were “dry” or produced inconsequential amounts of rain to help squelch any fires, a dangerous prospect in a province experiencing the worst level of drought.

Parts of the US will be at risk of smoke for the foreseeable future depending on weather patterns and fire flareups because Canada is experiencing its worst fire season on record. More than 24 million acres have burned so far this year, an area roughly the size of Indiana.

British Columbia has had more than 1,000 fires start since April. Those fires have already burned through nearly three times the amount of land compared to an average year in British Columbia over the last 10 years, the BC Wildfire Service said.

ONE FATALITY

One firefighter died Thursday responding to one of the blazes near Revelstoke, British Columbia, a press release from the firefighter’s union said. The BC Wildfire Service confirmed the death to CNN. The firefighter has not been identified.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau eulogized the firefighter on Twitter Friday.

“The news from British Columbia – that one of the firefighters bravely battling wildfires has lost her life – is heartbreaking,” Trudeau said. “At this incredibly difficult time, I’m sending my deepest condolences to her family, her friends, and her fellow firefighters.”

 CNN.com

CRYPTO CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Binance lays off employees days after executive exodus


Updated Fri, July 14, 2023 
By Jaiveer Shekhawat

(Reuters) -Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has cut jobs just days after it was hit by a wave of executive exits, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The layoffs at the world's biggest crypto exchange come at a time when the industry's future in the U.S. market is uncertain, with regulators aggressively clamping down on what they deem are illegal activities.

The job cuts were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said more than 1,000 people had been let go in recent weeks.

"As we continuously strive to increase talent density, there are involuntary terminations. This happens in every company. The numbers reported by media are all way off," Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted, adding that the exchange is "still hiring."

Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Binance and Zhao for allegedly operating a "web of deception." Binance has said it would defend itself vigorously.

The lawsuits against Binance and peer Coinbase Global underpin SEC Chair Gary Gensler's tough approach towards the industry, but a U.S. judge recently siding with crypto firm Ripple Labs highlights that the regulator is facing an uphill battle.

Applications for spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from asset management giants BlackRock and Fidelity have also been viewed as a vote of confidence for the industry.

"Over the last six years, we have grown from 30 to a team of almost 8,000 across the globe. As we prepare for the next major bull cycle, it has become clear that we need to focus on talent density across the organization to ensure we remain nimble and dynamic," a spokesperson for Binance said.

Last week, a string of executives quit Binance, which included its Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Hillmann.

(Reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh and Jaiveer Shekhawat and Pritam Biswas in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

BlockFi Management Ignored Warnings About FTX and Alameda, Creditors Allege

Jonathan Randles
Fri, July 14, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- BlockFi Inc. executives dismissed repeated warnings from its risk management team about not issuing substantial loans to Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research that were collateralized with digital tokens created by FTX, BlockFi creditors allege in a newly unsealed report.

The report, prepared by a committee representing BlockFi unsecured creditors, blames the crypto lender’s failure on missteps made by Chief Executive Officer Zac Prince and other senior managers. The creditors’ findings were made public Friday, days after BlockFi released its own investigation contending Prince and other executives had little reason to worry about lending to Alameda before Bankman-Fried’s platform collapsed amid allegations of fraud.

The committee said as early as August 2021, BlockFi had a copy of an Alameda balance sheet showing the trading firm relied substantially upon FTT, a digital token created by FTX. Alameda’s over-reliance on FTT “set off alarms at BlockFi,” the committee said, but those concerns were dismissed by Prince. The report quotes Prince saying in an email that Alameda represented “the largest/clearest growth opportunity we have.”

The FTT token played a major role in FTX’s failure. In early November, industry publication Coindesk reported on the same balance sheet BlockFi had, triggering a public run on FTX that forced Bankman-Fried’s platform into bankruptcy within days, according to the committee’s report.

Aside from allegedly dismissing red flags from FTX, the committee claims BlockFi’s business was “fundamentally flawed” because it required riskier investment counterparties to deliver high customer returns. That meant BlockFi could only do business with a relatively small number of firms, like Alameda, capable of delivering high enough returns to pass on to customers, including failed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital Ltd. and a Bitcoin trust launched by Grayscale Investments, the committee said.

Prince’s lawyers didn’t return a message seeking comment and a BlockFi spokesman referred to the company’s earlier investigation. BlockFi disputes the committee’s conclusions, which the company described as misleading, and denies Prince or other executives ignored warnings about Alameda and FTX. Criticisms about BlockFi’s business could be leveled against any lending business, the company said.

FTX Concerns

BlockFi said executives performed reasonable due diligence before entering into transactions with Alameda and implemented checks on Prince’s decision-making authority. The crypto lender said management supported the transactions in part because Alameda quickly returned $1 billion in loans last year, before FTX collapsed. The company is seeking to settle allegations against Prince and other BlockFi executives in exchange for their help in valuable litigation involving FTX and other firms it did business with.

The committee’s report said some BlockFi executives were concerned about FTX. A year before Bankman-Fried’s platform unraveled, BlockFi Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Flori Marquez said to Prince in a series of Slack messages that using FTT as collateral “just sounds sketchy” and asked about associated risks.

Prince wrote “if FTX went down, FTT was going down with it.”

“That’s my concern,” Marquez responded.

“and we would be sitting on a pile of worthless FTT in our fireblocks wallet,” Prince said.

Lawyers for Marquez didn’t return a message seeking comment. BlockFi said in its earlier report that the committee mischaracterized the Slack exchange. Prince wasn’t discussing the value of FTT, the company said, but instead discussing the risks and benefits of taking the tokens as collateral and staking them on FTX’s platform for additional yield. He was expressing that if Bankman-Fried’s platform went down, it wouldn’t matter where the FTT is custodied, according to BlockFi’s lawyers.

BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 protection in late November and is planning to liquidate in bankruptcy in an effort to repay customers as much as possible.

The case is BlockFi Inc., 22-19361, US Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey (Trenton).

An Arrest, a Ruling, a Rally: Crypto’s Wild Day in the Courts


Muyao Shen, Yueqi Yang and Sidhartha Shukla
Thu, July 13, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- It was a day that started with something of a bang: the charismatic Alex Mashinsky, former chief executive officer of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network under arrest and charged with fraud.

In a flurry of enforcement activity, the US Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission all filed lawsuits Thursday against both Mashinsky and Celsius itself.

Allegations against Mashinsky ranged from pumping up the price of CEL, the lender’s native token, to wire fraud. Mashinsky has pleaded not guilty and will be released on bail after agreeing to a $40 million personal recognizance bond.

Then, shortly before noon, a judge issued a long-awaited ruling in the case of the SEC v Ripple Labs Inc. that sent crypto Twitter into a frenzy and token prices soaring. US District Judge Analisa Torres held that XRP, the token associated with Ripple Labs and central to the case, is a security when offered to institutional investors but not the general public.

“Institutional buyers would have understood that Ripple was pitching a speculative value proposition for XRP with potential profits to be derived from Ripple’s entrepreneurial and managerial efforts,” the judge wrote.

But Torres ruled that finding didn’t apply to programmatic investors, meaning the broader public. She said there was no evidence that such investors could parse the many statements made by Ripple about XRP, and found that many statements cited by the SEC may not have been shared with the broader public.

Whether cryptocurrencies are securities has been a major question hanging over the industry, which has long fought efforts to regulate it by arguing that the tokens do not meet the necessary criteria.

XRP almost doubled, soaring to as much as 94 US cents on Thursday before easing back to 78 cents as of 1:20 p.m. on Friday in Singapore. An offshoot of XRP, Stellar’s XLM, also surged.

Other tokens that were recently described as unregistered securities by the SEC increased too: Solana is up about 30% since the ruling and Cardano 25%. Bitcoin held a 3% gain to roughly the highest since June 2022, while Ether breached $2,000.

“Judge Torres’ decision in Ripple is a huge win for the cryptocurrency and digital asset industry,” said Arthur G. Jakoby, co-chair for Securities Litigation and Enforcement at the law firm Herrick Feinstein LLP. “If upheld on appeal, this decision significantly narrows the SEC’s jurisdiction over the crypto market.”

Shares of crypto-dependent companies also rallied. Coinbase Global Inc. rose the most since its public debut, closing Thursday at $107. The exchange is embroiled in a lawsuit of its own with the SEC that alleges that it sold tokens that are unregistered securities.

“This underscores that direct sales of digital assets by an issuer will often be securities, but other sales, most notably sales on the secondary market, are unlikely to be deemed securities, which is a key argument in Coinbase’s defense against the SEC,” said Elliott Stein, Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst for litigation.

MicroStrategy jumped 11.7% and crypto miner Marathon Digital closed more than 14% higher on the day.

“My overall impression is this is a positive decision for the digital asset industry,” said Daniel Tramel Stabile, partner at Winston & Strawn. “The court expressly concluded that XRP is not, in and of itself, a security. Instead, the focus must be on the circumstances of the offering itself.”

The SEC sued San Francisco-based Ripple and top executives in December 2020. At the time, the regulator accused the company, co-founder Christian Larsen and Chief Executive Officer Brad Garlinghouse of misleading investors in XRP by selling more than $1 billion worth of the tokens without registering them, depriving investors of information about the cryptocurrency and about Ripple’s business.

Even prior to the day’s enthusiastic price action, cryptocurrencies have been on a tear.

In recent weeks, a raft of filings for spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US, driven in large part by an application by Wall-Street heavyweight BlackRock Inc., has reinvigorated traders who’d been buffeted by the long crypto winter.

Bitcoin has risen around 90% in 2023, rebounding from a rout last year that was exacerbated by a string of industry scandals and bankruptcies, including that of Mashinsky’s Celsius. The token remains some way below its all-time high of almost $69,000 in 2021.

--With assistance from David Pan, Chris Dolmetsch and Allyson Versprille.

 Bloomberg Businessweek

White House Economists Defend Industrial Policy in New Paper



Jordan Fabian
Fri, July 14, 2023

(Bloomberg) -- The White House began offering a more detailed defense of its industrial policy against critics who doubt its effectiveness, saying it will deliver clear benefits for the US economy.

Officials from the National Economic Council and Council of Economic Advisers wrote in a new paper that hundreds of billions of dollars President Joe Biden approved for infrastructure, the energy transition and domestic semiconductor manufacturing are essential for keeping the US competitive, and that those fields suffered from decades of private sector neglect.

“The administration is taking strategic action in cases where markets on their own have not delivered. We are unlocking the potential for these industries to thrive, while keeping costs low for families,” the officials wrote in the paper, which was obtained by Bloomberg News.

The White House has sought to rebrand and promote Biden’s economic policies as “Bidenomics,” in an effort to reverse the president’s poor approval ratings on his handling of the economy ahead of the 2024 election.

Republican critics argue Biden’s agenda will drive up the national debt, stymie growth and fuel inflation. Some economists say there’s little evidence massive government spending in certain sectors will make the US economy more efficient and resilient.

The full benefits of Biden’s climate, health, tax, chips and infrastructure laws will not be seen for years, making it difficult for Americans to feel their effects. But the White House has argued the laws are already helping lift the economy, and some measures like factory construction have already risen.

“What we invest in and how we invest paves the way for whether and how the economy benefits families, communities, and business all across the country,” said Investing in America Cabinet chief economist and CEA member Heather Boushey, a co-author of the paper. “This modern American industrial strategy lays the foundation for good jobs and decades of sustained—and sustainable—equitable growth.”

White House economic advisers wrote that “public investment can attract more private sector investment, rather than crowd it out.” The paper cited more than $500 billion in commitments from companies on new US semiconductor and electronics manufacturing and also clean energy, electric vehicle and battery projects as evidence the approach has bolstered domestic industries.

“This is particularly true in sectors that are central to the long-term economic and national security interests of the United States—from our infrastructure, to semiconductors, to clean energy and climate security,” the paper said.

Private investors in the past have been too risk averse to fund research and development on their own in technologies to accomplish goals like hastening the transition away from fossil fuels, they argue.

The paper also offered a defense of elements of Biden’s signature legislation, such as “buy American” and prevailing wage provisions. Critics have said those policies could hamper underlying projects and products by making them more expensive compared to their competition.

The White House said that those types of policies are crucial for shoring up and expanding an American middle-class hollowed out by de-industrialization. Building up key industries could protect the US against future supply-chain shocks and counter China.

“When it comes to the US-China relationship, economic resilience and national security go hand-in-hand. We continue to have significant bilateral trade, but we also need to build more secure value chains and ensure appropriate safeguards,” the officials said.

WEST VIRGINIA THE MANCHIN PROJECT

Mountain Valley Pipeline Builder Asks Supreme Court to Let Work Resume




Ari Natter and Greg Stohr
Fri, July 14, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Equitrans Midstream Corp. asked the US Supreme Court to allow it to resume construction on its controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline after a federal appeals court issued a pair of orders blocking the $6.6 billion project earlier this week.

The company urged Chief Justice John Roberts to lift a pair of orders issued by the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which came despite language in recently enacted debt-ceiling legislation intended to prevent the pipeline from being stalled by the court. The company has said the pipeline, which has backing from West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, may not meet its goal of being completed by the end of this year unless the court’s orders are quickly reversed.

The route for the roughly 300-mile (480-kilometer) pipeline runs through the Appalachian Mountains, a national forest and across hundreds of streams as it carries natural gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia. It has drawn fierce opposition from environmentalists.

Roberts is the justice assigned to handle emergency matters from the 4th Circuit. He could act on his own or refer the request to the full nine-member court.

Toughest ESG Rule Yet Puts EU on Collision Course With US


Frances Schwartzkopff
Fri, July 14, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- The woman in charge of getting Europe’s toughest piece of ESG legislation through the bloc’s parliament says she’s confident the US will embrace the global accountability the bill introduces, once politicians stop being distracted by lobbyists.

US skepticism toward the legislation has perhaps “been confused a little bit by the lobbying going on,” said Lara Wolters, the lawmaker helming the passage of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive through EU’s legislative chamber. This week, she worked to close any loopholes companies might try to use.

“What we’re after here is accountability and surely the US government doesn’t support a lack of accountability for causing or contributing to human rights harms,” Wolters, a Dutch member of the EU parliament who’s been in the chamber since 2019, said in an interview.

The comments come roughly a month after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned of “negative, unintended consequences” stemming from CSDDD. If passed, the directive means large companies selling products and services in the EU — wherever they’re based — would risk civil lawsuits for failing to address human rights and environmental violations in their value chains. CSDDD would also require companies to have climate transition plans that are aligned with the Paris Agreement.

Yellen said in June that the Biden administration is “concerned about the directive’s extra-territorial scope.” There’s support for CSDDD’s high-level aims, but some requirements “where there is no clear nexus to the EU” are concerning, so talks are underway with the EU, Yellen said.

The EU’s plan to push ahead with CSDDD underscores the very different trajectory the bloc is on from the US when it comes to environmental, social and governance frameworks. In the US, Republicans have sought to ban ESG across much of the country, and are penalizing firms that embrace it.

In a hearing last month, US Representative Frank Lucas, a Republican from Oklahoma, said Europe shouldn’t set standards for US companies, and regulators must be “diligent” in “defending US sovereignty.”

The House Financial Services Committee is holding hearings this month, during which the matter is set to come up. Among legislation proposed by the GOP is a requirement that the US Comptroller “conduct a study on the detrimental impact” of CSDDD and of ESG reporting requirements.

In Europe, meanwhile, lawmakers and regulators are rolling out the world’s most comprehensive set of rules ultimately designed to reinvent capitalism and steer money into greener, fairer activities. Much of the legislation is global in scope, as it requires compliance from asset managers and businesses that target EU customers.

Though far from perfect in its execution of the huge array of measures being pushed through, the European Union has moved much faster than other jurisdictions with its ESG ambitions.

Wolters says that CSDDD is necessary because markets can’t be relied on to self-regulate.

“It’s our job as policymakers to make guard rails where market forces fail,” she said. “I think the aim is absolutely one that the US government probably can subscribe to.”

Regulatory focus on ESG risks in supply chains is already shaping corporate priorities. A recent survey by Deloitte showed that ESG is now the second-top concern of chief procurement officers. As recently as 2021, it ranked seventh.

As it’s currently worded, CSDDD would require ESG due diligence checks up and down the value chains of companies or subsidiaries with annual sales in the EU starting at €40 million ($45 million).

The directive also targets the finance industry. An analysis published in June by the European Central Bank found that the litigation risks for banks “may substantially increase” once CSDDD becomes reality. The ECB has recommended a gradual phase-in of the directive.

CSDDD has already made its way through the EU Parliament and lawmakers are now negotiating its final wording with the European Council and the EU Commission. Wolters says there’s little likelihood the cross-border scope of the directive will be curtailed.

“What we’re doing here is, we’re setting out how companies of a certain size, of a certain turnover, ought to behave when it comes to human rights and environmental harm,” Wolters said. “And in this case, where there is significant turnover within the EU, I think it’s only normal that we set rules for that.”

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Larry Fink isn't saying 'ESG.' But he is urging investors to stay focused on climate.

ESG investing: Virtue signaling or force for corporate good?


Ben Werschkul
·Washington Correspondent
Fri, July 14, 2023 

BlackRock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink on Friday kept to his pledge to no longer use the acronym ESG. But he also made it clear that investors would be wise to keep their focus on climate concerns.

In its quarterly earnings announcement, BlackRock announced that assets under management rose to $9.4 trillion while net income rose and revenue fell. Then, in a conference call, Fink seized on a question about transition investing, which is loosely defined as putting money beyond the transition to a carbon-free economy.

He didn't refer to ESG — an acronym he believes has been "weaponized" by the left and the right — but called transition investing "probably one of the greatest opportunities in the world today." ESG stands for investing with environmental, social, and corporate governance principles.

"We're having more and more conversations with more and more corporations about how they think about their platform related to decarbonization," he added.

Fink has become a prominent face in the debate about ESG in recent years as Republicans in Washington now look to limit do-good investing.

Larry Fink, Chairman and CEO of BlackRock, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City in April. (REUTERS/Brendan McDermid)

"One of the concerns I've got is the fiduciary responsibility of these investment groups like BlackRock," Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Republican from Missouri, said at a Congressional hearing this week.

Luetkemeyer is one of the leaders of the anti-ESG efforts expressing worry that "political agendas overshadow sound financial management."

'There's not a government that is not focused on this'

BlackRock has garnered much of the political attention because of its outsized power across the economy and the proxy voting power it holds at nearly every major S&P 500 company.

Fink is certainly not shying away from his focus on climate issues. He traveled earlier this week to the United Kingdom for a climate-themed event at Windsor Castle that featured King Charles III and President Joe Biden as well as other business leaders like Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Britain's King Charles III enter a climate engagement with philanthropists and investors at Windsor Castle on July 10. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP)

Fink on Friday emphasized that government actions around climate change represent much of the opportunity for investors in the years ahead.

"There's not a government that is not focused on this, [and] how do they successfully navigate their economy and energy and power is becoming one of the dominant conversations."

BlackRock itself has also taken an increasingly direct role in the energy transition by providing funding to companies looking to raise capital for energy projects.

On Friday, Fink touted a recent $700 million investment in Australian battery storage and a carbon sequestration project in the US.

For Fink, a focus on the climate will clearly be a long-term focus, saying, "We look at this as a multi multi-year growth opportunity."

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

Brazil Taps JPMorgan, Itau, Santander for Debut ESG Bond Sale

Vinícius Andrade
Fri, July 14, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Brazil is tapping banks for advice on the nation’s first-ever sustainable bond sale, a long-awaited transaction that’s expected to hit markets by the end of the year.

The Treasury said Friday it will work with Banco Itau BBA, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Banco Santander Brasil SA to sell the notes and revise its framework for debt that relates to environmental, social or governance goals.

Brazil — home to the majority of the Amazon rainforest — is expected to debut in global ESG debt markets following an investor roadshow in late August or early September, a person familiar with the matter said last month.

The terms of the sale, including exact timing and size, were still being discussed, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

Earlier this year, Brazil sold $2.25 billion of dollar bonds due 2033, luring strong-enough investor demand to up-size the deal. That was the country’s first debt offering in global markets in about two years.

Brazil plans to keep monitoring debt-market conditions for potential issuances of traditional external debt, according to the statement.

RIGHT WING NATIONALIST GVT

Finnish Racism Scandal Sparks Opposition Bid to Oust Cabinet




Kati Pohjanpalo
Fri, July 14, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Finland’s opposition wants the parliament recess to be interrupted in the middle of summer holidays to gauge confidence in government due to its ongoing racism scandal.

The five opposition groups asked Speaker Jussi Halla-aho to reconvene lawmakers after a debacle surrounding the coalition’s junior partner, the Finns Party, gathered pace. Halla-aho is the former leader of the anti-immigrant party, and has in recent days taken a reticent stance to calling back the parliament from the break.

The scandal over racist and extremist remarks by the far-right party’s members has been swirling since the four-party cabinet was put together in late June, hampering its agenda of addressing the Nordic nation’s ballooning public debt and stagnant economy. It’s already led to the resignation of Vilhelm Junnila as economy minister after just 10 days over his alleged association with white extremists.

Since then, the party’s other ministers have been under mounting scrutiny, including Interior Minister Mari Rantanen over using the term “the great replacement” which refers to a white nationalist conspiracy theory, and most recently Finance Minister and party leader Riikka Purra over blog posts fantasizing about violence. Rantanen has since said she does not believe in conspiracies.

Some of Purra’s remarks were made about 15 years ago under the pseudonym ‘riikka.’ Purra on Wednesday apologized for them, telling reporters “I do not condone the language and words I have used” and saying “I have never accepted, and will never accept, any form of violence.”

But the scandal did not die down, with more recent racist remarks emerging, such as her 2019 blog writings where she refers to Muslim immigrant women as “black sacks.”

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Purra refused to apologize for the remarks four years ago, saying she was defending “western society” against an influx of immigrants that erodes “women’s freedoms and women’s rights.”

“If we start down the path of examining the past of the Finns Party, what we have said and written, that will never end,” she said. “It’s clear that our frank and unembellished words, the rhetoric we use and our criticism of immigration have been portrayed in a way that allows people to keep bringing up this topic.”

The ouster of a government in Finland would not automatically trigger snap elections. Instead, it’s customary to attempt to forge a new ruling coalition from the sitting parliament. Finland’s general election was held in April and Orpo’s cabinet got sworn in just weeks ago.

Purra said she believes the coalition partners still have confidence in her and that she hasn’t considered resigning. Lawmakers from the Swedish People’s Party, one of the ruling parties, are set to meet Friday evening to discuss the opposition motion. Their support would bring the motion majority in parliament, which the speaker has said would strengthen the case for resuming work.

In a rare departure, President Sauli Niinisto who tends to stay away from commenting on domestic politics, has already intervened twice during the scandal, urging the government to adopt a stance of zero tolerance toward racism.

That’s precisely what Prime Minister Petteri Orpo on Wednesday pledged, seeking to quell the crisis. But his words touting “zero tolerance toward racism or extremism” rang hollow.

The Finns Party’s far-right sympathies aren’t shared by the coalition government’s other members. Orpo has said no ideological glue binds the ruling parties together, but that their main focus lies in fixing the public finances.

“The government has an important task to accomplish and we have committed to reforming the economy,” Orpo said on Wednesday.