EU demands Meta and TikTok detail efforts to curb disinformation from Israel-Hamas war

The Canadian Press
Thu, October 19, 2023 



LONDON (AP) — The European Union on Thursday demanded Meta and TikTok detail their efforts to curb illegal content and disinformation during the Israel-Hamas war, flexing the power of a new law that threatens billions in fines if tech giants fail to do enough to protect users.

The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive branch, formally requested that the social media companies provide information on how they're complying with pioneering digital rules aimed at cleaning up online platforms.

The commission asked Meta and TikTok to explain the measures they have taken to reduce the risk of spreading and amplifying terrorist and violent content, hate speech and disinformation.

It's the prelude to a possible crackdown under the new digital rules, which took effect in August and have made the EU a global leader in reining in Big Tech. The biggest platforms face extra obligations to stop a wide range of illegal content from flourishing or face the threat of fines of up to 6% of annual global revenue.

The new rules, known as the Digital Services Act, are being put to the test by the Israel-Hamas war. Photos and videos have flooded social media of the carnage alongside posts from users pushing false claims and misrepresenting videos from other events.

Brussels issued its first formal request under the DSA last week to Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

European Commissioner Thierry Breton, the bloc's digital enforcer, had previously sent warning letters to the three platforms, as well as YouTube, highlighting the risks that the war poses.

“In our exchanges with the platforms, we have specifically asked them to prepare for the risk of live broadcasts of executions by Hamas — an imminent risk from which we must protect our citizens — and we are seeking assurances that the platforms are well prepared for such possibilities,” Breton said in a speech Wednesday.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it has a “well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks during a crisis while also protecting expression."

After Hamas militants attacked Israeli communities, “we quickly established a special operations center staffed with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers, to closely monitor and respond to this rapidly evolving situation,” the company said.

Meta said it has teams working around the clock to keep its platforms safe, take action on content that violates its policies or local law, and coordinate with third-party fact checkers in the region to limit the spread of misinformation.

TikTok didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The companies have until Wednesday to respond to the commission's questions related to their crisis response. They also face a second deadline of Nov. 8 for responses on protecting election integrity and, in TikTok's case, child safety.

Depending on their responses, Brussels could decide to open formal proceedings against Meta or TikTok and impose fines for “incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information,” the commission said.

Kelvin Chan, The Associated Press

US Weighs Leaning on Banks to Curb Hedge Fund Leveraged Trading

Lydia Beyoud and Katanga Johnson
Thu, October 19, 2023 




(Bloomberg) -- Top US regulators are zeroing in on dangers posed by highly leveraged hedge fund trades, and considering options to rein in risks to the broader financial system.

Regulators are especially concerned about the growth of one strategy known as the basis trade, which involves the use of leverage to profit from the price gap between Treasury futures and the underlying cash market. Borrowing in the repurchase market using US Treasuries as collateral has soared in recent years to almost $3 trillion.

Although hedge funds are subject to less direct regulatory oversight, they rely on highly regulated large banks to finance many of their trades. That gives several US agencies sway to limit the activity, and in early-stage plans, regulators are weighing options ranging from pushing banks to gather more data on exposures to pressing them to ramp up haircuts on some secured borrowing, according to people familiar with the matter.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler this week sounded the alarm bells. He said on Wednesday that the funding that prime brokerages provide to some hedge funds on a “very generous basis” is the biggest source of risk in the financial system. “If a problem happens, it’s going to be the public that bears the risk of any challenges in this market,” Gensler said in an interview.

Officials across Washington, including Gensler, have for months flagged significant blind spots into hedge fund trading.

The SEC, which has jurisdiction over bond trading and oversees investment companies, is seeking rule changes to bolster visibility. The US Financial Stability Oversight Council, which is led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, has formed a hedge fund working group. Last month, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Martin Gruenberg flagged high levels of leverage as a particular concern.

Representatives for the Treasury, FDIC and Federal Reserve, which is responsible for ensuring safety and soundness in the banking system, declined to comment.

Repo Borrowing

Some US officials have recently discussed a 2 percentage-point haircut on Treasury repo borrowing, according to one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.

The idea of a hypothetical minimum haircut of at least that size was floated in a research note by two Fed staffers last month.

Under that scenario, the note suggested a prime brokerage would only extend $100 in financing if a hedge fund posted $102 of collateral in a Treasury repo transaction. The hedge fund would have to shoulder the remainder from its own capital, effectively increasing the cost of leveraged trading.

The Fed research found that most funds could handle the lower leverage levels. However, it could make trades less profitable and desirable, the research found.

Today, many hedge funds are able to borrow the full amount of their Treasury purchases by pledging the bonds as collateral in repo transactions, allowing the hedge fund industry to obtain an aggregate 56-to-1 leverage on $553 billion of Treasury repo borrowing as of December, the note said.

In addition to using existing bank supervisory authorities to make it more expensive for hedge funds to finance leveraged trades, officials have been discussing ways to press banks to require consistency in data they gather from counterparties like hedge funds, said another one of the people. Some officials also want FSOC to look for risks stemming from relationships between hedge funds and their prime brokerages, another person said.

Interest Rate Exposure

Advocates for hedge funds say the basis trade serves an important market function by allowing insurance companies and pension funds to manage their interest-rate exposure, and any moves to crack down on it could have unintended consequences.

“Leverage enhances market efficiency by increasing liquidity, dampening volatility, and enhancing capital allocation,” said Bryan Corbett, who leads the Managed Funds Association trade group. “Leverage, in and of itself, does not present a financial stability risk.” He added that clamping down could drive up government borrowing costs.

But regulators discussing options within their current powers over banks indicates they want to address the risks without having to wait for more sweeping proposals that face legal pushback and bureaucratic lags.

Read More: Infamous Hedge-Fund Trade Draws Fresh Scrutiny During Debt Saga

Because the activity is being driven by investment firms that face less scrutiny than banks, regulators say it’s harder to know exactly how much risk is actually building up and where it lurks.

The ultimate fear is a repeat of 2020, when the outbreak of the pandemic upended the Treasury market and caught hedge funds wrong-footed, eventually leading to an intervention by the Federal Reserve to restore normalcy.

“Regulators are right to focus on the relationship between leverage at nonbanks, especially hedge funds, and the banking system,” said Lev Menand, an associate professor at Columbia Law School, who teaches about financial institutions and administrative law. “Bank regulators can use their supervisory powers to examine and assess the safety and soundness of prime brokerage businesses and bank lending to hedge funds.”

Times of Stress

The hedge fund working group at FSOC, whose members include Treasury, the Fed, SEC and the FDIC, flagged the basis trade in April as a potential danger in times of stress.

Data published by Treasury’s Office of Financial Research show that transactions of repurchase agreements secured by US Treasuries and settled in tri-party repo have surged in the past two years, an indicator of the basis trade’s surge in popularity, though the volume has declined in the last few months.

Meanwhile, a sweeping effort by the Biden administration to develop a blueprint for sticking firms other than banks, including possibly hedge funds, with the too-big-to-fail tag is underway. That bid, however, faces fierce legal challenges as industry titans are already preparing to fight any attempts to stick them with that systemically important label and Fed oversight.

Karen Petrou, a managing partner at Washington-based consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics Inc., says that regulators are aware of the difficulties of imposing major rule changes or designating firms.

“The banking agencies know this,” she said. “Short of these new tools, then, regulators are hoping to reduce counterparty risk by using their existing powers.”

--With assistance from Hannah Levitt, Hema Parmar, Liz Capo McCormick, Edward Bolingbroke and Viktoria Dendrinou.

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Exclusive-Japan's JFE Steel eyes stake in Teck's coal business -sources


Divya Rajagopal and Neha Arora
Thu, October 19, 2023 

 Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) annual conference in Toronto

By Divya Rajagopal and Neha Arora

TORONTO (Reuters) - Japan's JFE Steel Corp is in talks to invest in the metallurgical coal business of Canada's Teck Resources, two people aware of the development told Reuters.

The talks have been going on since September, another source said. Both the sources declined to be identified as they are not authorized to speak to the media.

"We will continue to consider the acquisition of interests in coking coal, but we cannot answer individual questions," a spokesperson for Tokyo-based JFE Steel said in an email response to Reuters. JFE is one of Japan's largest steel maker.

The talks are early and may or may not result in a final transaction, one of the sources added.

Teck is considering splitting its coal and copper business since March this year, but the original proposal was voted down by its shareholders. In April, Teck also rebuffed a $22.5 billion unsolicited takeover offer for the entire company from Swiss mining and trading firm Glencore.

Teck told Reuters the company does not comment on market rumours or speculation, and directed to its earlier news release that said the company is engaging with various counterparties regarding the steelmaking coal business.

(Reporting by Divya Rajagopal and Neha Arora; Editing by Denny Thomas and Nick Zieminski)

Canada Goose Plunges to All-Time Low as Jacket Sales Pressured

Stephanie Hughes
Thu, October 19, 2023 





(Bloomberg) -- Canada Goose Holdings Inc. shares plummeted to a record low for the second day in a row as economic and consumer pressures prompted a pair of analyst downgrades.

The parka retailer’s stock fell as much as 9.8% to $11.48 in New York trading after analysts from Wells Fargo & Company and TD Cowen recommended investors move to the sidelines as the economic outlook for key markets sours. Warmer than usual fall weather and weak customer trends are also expected to weigh on sales.

TD Cowen analysts led by Oliver Chen pointed to cautious economic news out of China and Europe in a note downgrading the company to market perform from outperform and lowering the price target to $15 from $22.

They fear the outlook for China is poised to grow worse before it improves given the nation’s shaky real estate market, higher savings rate as consumers tighten purse strings and elevated youth unemployment rate. The analysts estimate that China makes up a quarter of Canada Goose’s sales, but tourism means Chinese clientele could make up a much larger portion.

Wells Fargo & Co. analyst Ike Boruchow also downgraded the stock Thursday, reducing his team’s recommendation to equalweight from overweight and trimming the price target to C$20 from C$25. Boruchow pointed to a weakening economic outlook in the US and China.

He also noted that the warmer-than-usual Black Friday and Christmas holiday forecasts are a poor setup for Canada Goose, which posted the biggest observed sales decline among apparel retailers in August.

The downgrades leave Canada Goose with three analysts who still recommend buying the stock, eight who say hold and two who recommend selling, according to Bloomberg compiled data. Canadian shares were the worst performing on the S&P/TSX Composite Index.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M
Profits, markups rose as competition weakened over 20 years: Competition Bureau

The Canadian Press
Thu, October 19, 2023 



OTTAWA — The Competition Bureau says profits and markups have increased over the last two decades as the state of competition in Canada has deteriorated.

The bureau published a report today analyzing how competition evolved across industries between 2000 and 2020.

It finds that the most concentrated industries got even more concentrated over time, while more industries came to be considered highly concentrated.

Large firms are facing fewer challenges from smaller competitors, and fewer new companies are finding a foothold.

The bureau also analyzed profits and markups, and says both have increased over the last two decades.

Commissioner Matthew Boswell says the report highlights the need to modernize Canada's competition law and for governments to adopt pro-competitive policies.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 19, 2023.

The Canadian Press

Competition in Canada declining, laws need update -regulator


Reuters
Thu, October 19, 2023 


OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada needs to promote greater competition among businesses by modernizing its laws, the country's antitrust regulator said on Thursday, citing a study of data from 2000 to 2020.

The study found that competitive intensity, a measure of how hard businesses feel they need to work to gain advantage over competitors, had fallen.

"The result of this decline in competitive intensity is that both consumers and businesses have seen fewer of the benefits that a more competitive economy has to offer, such as lower prices, greater choice and more innovation," Competition Bureau Canada said in a statement.

Canada's weak competition laws have been long blamed for allowing a few players dominate industries ranging from banks to telecoms and groceries. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to amend the Competition Act to help reduce prices.

The Competition Bureau said its study found that profits and price mark-ups both rose during the 20-year period, and the increases were generally greater for firms already earning high profits and mark-ups.

Concentration - which indicates to what extent a few companies dominate an industry - rose in the most concentrated industries and the number of highly concentrated industries increased.

The largest firms in industries are being less challenged by their smaller competitors over time and fewer firms have entered industries overall, the bureau said.

"Our findings further highlight the need to modernize Canada's competition laws and adopt a whole-of-government approach to promote competition," Competition Commissioner Matthew Boswell said.

"Taking action to increase competition will drive lower prices and make life more affordable for Canadians," Boswell said.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Rod Nickel)

RACIST REAL ESTATE

Justice Department secures $9 million settlement with Ameris Bank over redlining in Florida

The Canadian Press
Thu, October 19, 2023



WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has secured a $9 million settlement with Ameris Bank over allegations that it avoided underwriting mortgages in predominately Black and Latino communities in Jacksonville, Florida, and discouraged people there from getting home loans.

It’s the latest settlement over a practice known as redlining, which the Biden administration has set to combat with a new task force that previously secured the largest settlement of its kind in the department's history.

Between 2016 and 2021, the Atlanta-based Ameris Bank's home lending was focused disproportionately on mostly white areas of Jacksonville while other banks approved loans at three times the rate Ameris did, the government said.

The bank has never operated a branch in a majority Black and Hispanic neighborhood, and in one-third of those areas it did not receive a single application over the six-year period, even though other banks did, Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

“Redlining has a significant impact on the health and wealth of these communities. Homeownership has been one of the most effective ways that Americans have built wealth in our country. When families can’t access credit to achieve homeownership, they lose an opportunity to share in this country’s prosperity,” Garland said at a news conference in Jacksonville announcing the settlement.

Ameris Bank did not immediately have comment on the case. It has nearly $25 billion in assets and operates in nine states across the Southeast and mid-Atlantic, according to federal officials.

Garland has prioritized civil rights prosecutions since becoming attorney general in 2021, and the current administration has put a higher priority on redlining cases than before. The anti-redlining effort has now secured $107 million in relief, including the Ameris settlement, which a judge must approve.

A $31 million settlement with Los Angeles-based City National in January was the largest for the department.

The practice of redlining has continued across the country and the long-term effects are still felt today, despite a half-century of laws designed to combat it. Homes in historically redlined communities are still worth less than homes elsewhere, and a Black family’s average net worth is a fraction of a typical white household's.

The Ameris case is the first brought by the department in Florida, said Roger Handberg, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida. “For far too long, redlining has negatively impacted communities of color across our country,” he said.

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said combating redlining “is one of the most important strategies for ensuring equal economic opportunity today.”

Ameris Bank will invest $7.5 million in a loan subsidy fund made available to people in majority-minority neighborhoods under the settlement and spend $1.5 million on outreach and community partnerships, as well as open a new branch in those neighborhoods, along with other requirements as part of the settlement.

___

Associated Press writer Ken Sweet in New York contributed to this report.

Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Pr

Russia moves its combat dolphins closer to the frontline to defend against Ukrainian special forces, report says


Sophia Ankel
Thu, October 19, 2023 

A Bottle Nose Dolphin belonging to Commander Task Unit (CTU-55.4.3) leaps out of the water while training on the USS Gunston Hall (LSD 44) on March 18, 2003.

REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Brien Aho

Russia moved its trained dolphin force to a different part of the Black Sea, Naval News reported.


Dolphin pens appeared in Novoozerne, which is 56 miles northwest of where they were first spotted.


It comes at a time when Ukraine is ramping up attacks on Russian naval assests in the Black Sea.

Russia has moved its navy-trained dolphins closer to where fighting is happening in the Ukraine war, Naval News reported on Wednesday.

Militarized dolphin pens appeared at the southern naval base in the town of Novoozerne, in the western part of Crimea, Naval News reported, citing satellite images.

Crimea is a region of Ukraine that Russia annexed in 2014 and has controlled ever since. Russia's claim to Crimea has not been recognized internationally.

The pens were initially spotted in the summer around Sevastopol, a major port on the Black Sea. Novoozerne is 56 miles northwest of Sevastopol and much closer to where Ukrainian special forces have made incursions and landed on the Crimean peninsula.

They were likely moved in an effort to defend against constant Ukrainian attacks on Russia's Black Sea fleet, which includes attack submarines and vessels with long-range strike capabilities.

Placing dolphins at the mouth of the port could stop Ukrainian forces from getting into the harbor underwater, the United States Naval Institute said earlier this year.

Ukraine has become an increasingly threatening force in the Black Sea after it launched multiple attacks using underwater sea drones. It has also been successful in seizing vital gas platforms offshore.

Russia, which has a history of using marine animals in its military, has ramped up the number of marine mammal pens in and around the Black Sea in the last few months, the UK Ministry of Defence said in an intelligence update in June.

The dolphins can detect any intruder, collect intelligence, or possibly even deliver a lethal strike.

California Sikhs report threats, troubling incidents to FBI following assassination in Canada


Joe Rubin
Thu, October 19, 2023

Bobby Singh looked at his ringing cell phone and noticed the caller on the other end was the FBI. He wasn’t surprised.

He answered the phone and the agent on the other end informed Singh that he might be in imminent danger. That, too, did not surprise him.

Just two days earlier, Singh, who is a Sacramento Sikh rights activist, had heard devastating news. A man he considered a mentor, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, was slain by masked gunmen outside a gurdwara — a Sikh place of worship — near Vancouver, Canada. Nijjar was a leader of a movement to create an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaking in parliament, would later say that Canadian intelligence had found “credible evidence” that “agents of the government of India” had carried out the assassination. The increasingly Hindu nationalist government of India, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had labeled Nijjar a terrorist and sought his extradition for years.

The June 18 assassination and growing tension between Sikhs and the Modi government are of particular concern in the Central Valley and Bay Area, home to a large Sikh population. California elected officials of Sikh descent, including Elk Grove’s Mayor and a member of the California Assembly, told The Sacramento Bee that the assassination of Nijjar is part of a worrying trend of transnational repression that they believe can be traced to the Government of India.

For Singh, the assassination was especially personal.

Singh, whose parents immigrated from India in the 1980s, befriended Nijjar at a Sikh activist conference in Toronto in 2019. Nijjar and the young activist communicated frequently via texts and phone calls.

“It was just so shocking. It’s something I am still coming to terms with,” Singh said. “We all have to carry on his work.”

Singh says that two days before Nijjar was cornered by a vehicle and shot with dozens of bullets, he told Singh in a phone call he was being followed. Singh said that Nijjar told him he strongly suspected India.

Three days after the shooting — and just a day after he received the call from the FBI concerned for his safety — Singh received this text, which he shared with The Bee: “Just a head up for you. You’re next in the USA. We have all the tools ready to fix the problems.”

The text message was sent from a masked cell phone number. The chilling message, which Singh shared with the FBI, concluded with a nationalist Indian slogan, “Jai Hind,” which translates to Victory to Hindustan.


The threat to Singh is just one of a number of troubling instances that have been shared with The Bee following Nijjar’s assassination.

On June 24, two days after Dr. Pritpal Singh, founder of the American Sikh Caucus Committee, was warned by the FBI about concerns for his safety, security footage showed an SUV taking cell phone images in front of Singh’s Fremont home.

In August, after Sikh American Assemblywoman Jasmeet Kaur Bains championed a resolution declaring a massacre of at least 3,000 Sikhs in Punjab province in 1984 a genocide, Bains said that four Indian men visited her Bakersfield office and threatened her. Bains told The Bee she filed a complaint with Bakersfield Police and the California Highway Patrol.

On Sept. 7, according to a gurdwara in Stockton, California known for being an important center of Khalistan activism, a man claiming to be a representative of the Indian government visited the gurdwara and told a priest that there would be immigration and other consequences if the gurdwara did not back off its pro-Khalistan activism. According to the gurdwara, the man asked for and received phone numbers for board members of the gurdwara.

On October 15, a man was arrested at a gurdwara in Fremont, California after he allegedly tore down posters memorializing Hardeep Sing Nijjar. As police took the man away in handcuffs, he could be heard in a cell phone video filmed by a bystander yelling, “Khalistan is a terrorist organization.”

The Indian Consulate in San Francisco and the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C. did not respond to inquiries from The Bee.

Bobbie Singh-Allen, Elk Grove’s mayor and the first elected Sikh woman mayor in the United States, told The Bee that it is hard to know, given the current tense climate, what is state-sponsored harassment and what is simply a byproduct of polarization created by the Modi government.

“You want to support your community,” Singh-Allen said, “but these days you have to look over your shoulder and wonder what the consequences will be.”

A Washington Post investigation last month into a “digital campaign by Hindu nationalists to inflame India” concluded that, “They have perfected the spread of inflammatory, often false and bigoted material on an industrial scale.”

Singh-Allen said that she has felt the flames of hatred directed toward her numerous times, including when she spoke out against a three-day shutdown of the internet in her native Punjab in March. The shutoff was justified by the Indian government as a necessary part of a manhunt for a Sikh separatist.

“Can you imagine our government blocking forms of communication to the outside world while looking for one person?” Singh-Allen wrote on Facebook.

The mayor told The Bee that men she suspected of having connections to the Indian government confronted her at a conference in Los Angeles

“A few aggressive men cornered me, and asked, ‘why am I against India’?” she recalled. “I’m not against India, I’m against the world’s largest democracy not behaving like one. Anytime a Sikh speaks up, they are labeled suspicious.”

The Sacramento State activist Bobby Singh was not the only person to receive a call or be paid a visit by the FBI following the assassination of Nijjar.


The Bee learned of at least a half-dozen such outreach efforts in California including one to Dr. Pritpal Singh’s home in Fremont. According to Dr. Singh, he was visited by agents who told the founder of the American Sikh Congressional Caucus they had a “duty to warn.”

Tipped off by FBI concern, Singh reviewed security footage and discovered a person on June 24 (six days after the assassination of Nijjar) in a black SUV in front of his gate taking cell phone photographs for several minutes. He provided the footage to the FBI.

Dr. Singh said he suspects that the SUV was sent by the Indian government.

“We will not be intimidated by India’s transnational repression threatening individuals on U.S soil.,” he said. He added that he believes it’s important that Congress “receives a full briefing from the intelligence community on the threats posed to Americans by the rogue Indian state.”
Little Punjab

While Sikhs make up two percent of the overall population in India, about 40 percent of Californians of Indian descent are Sikhs, or an estimated 250,000, with the majority living in the Central Valley and Bay Area.


So many Sikhs have settled in Yuba City, an hour north of Sacramento, the city is informally referred to as Little Punjab. An annual Sikh festival in November, Nagar Kirtan, draws hundreds of thousands.

While Sikh leaders say they are concerned about several incidents in California, none raised more alarms than the Sept. 7 visit to the Stockton Gurdwara by a mysterious visitor.

The Gurdwara, the oldest Sikh house of worship in the United States, provided The Sacramento Bee with security footage showing a man entering the gurdwara on foot and ultimately, gurdwara leaders say, delivering a message to a priest: Either back off pro-Khalistan activism or face consequences. Afterward, the man could be seen on the security video making a call on his cell phone. Minutes later he was picked up by a 2023 Cadillac Escalade.

The Gurdwara says it has alerted the FBI. It’s not known if the man was officially representing the Indian government. The FBI declined to comment on any investigation into Indian intelligence operations in the United States.

According to the President of the Gurdwara, Ravinder Singh Dhaliwal, the visit followed mysterious phone calls he received with similar warnings to curtail Sikh activism.

“What’s ironic,” Dhaliwal said, “is that our Gurdwara in the early 20th century played a pivotal and historic role in India’s Independence movement from the British. Now it seems the government of India is attacking our fundamental rights of free expression.”

Dhaliwal said that during the visit with one of its priests, “this visitor claimed that the visit was part of an Indian government’s operation to keep a watch on all gurdwaras in the U.S. This man told the employee that the Indian Government can influence the employee’s legal status.”

According to Dhaliwal, the priest provided the visitor with a list of board members of the Gurdwara, including their phone numbers.

Jasjit Singh, a Sacramento Unified School District School Board Member and practicing Sikh, said that the Stockton incident was particularly chilling because Nijjar was slain outside a gurdwara.

“Gurdwaras are open to anybody regardless of religion, race, creed, sexual orientation,” he said. “That openness and acceptance is part of being a Sikh.

“But when you put on the hat of the Indian state, especially after the killing of Hardeep, what is being described is not the visit of an average person, it’s state business, used to intimidate and strike fear into community members.”

Intelligence experts said that Sikhs in California have reason to be concerned.

“After Mr. Nijjar was killed in British Columbia, Sikhs in Canada were saying, Oh, ‘it’s India, it’s India.’ And then all of a sudden you find out it almost certainly was India,” Dan Stanton, Former Executive Manager of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), told The Bee.

Stanton added, “If they can do this in Canada, they can do this anywhere, I’m certain U.S. officials are taking concerns of the Sikh diaspora very seriously.”

For the moment U.S. officials, who seek India’s cooperation on the international stage in the Middle East, China, and Ukraine have only made relatively reserved statements on the Nijjar killing, though behind the scenes assisted Canada with intelligence.

“We’re very concerned about the allegations that have been raised by Canada, by Prime Minister Trudeau,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said at a news conference last month. Blinked added, “we have been in close contact with Canada about that and at the same time we have engaged with the Indian government and urged them to work with Canada on an investigation.”

India under Modi, who was first elected in 2014, has long been concerned about Sikh activism in California. In 2016, officials from the Indian Consulate in San Francisco made the unusual move of visiting every member of the Fresno City Council, stalling a resolution recognizing the 1984 coordinated killing of thousands of Sikhs as a genocide. After a nine-month delay, the resolution ultimately passed.


Seven years later, Bains, a family physician who became the first South Asian woman elected to the California Assembly in 2022, described a toxic backlash when she introduced a resolution in the assembly in March recognizing the 1984 mass killing of Sikhs as a genocide.

After the resolution passed, Bains said she received numerous anonymous threats to her safety. Then in August, four Indian men paid a visit to her office.

Bains thought the meeting was just a typical get-together with constituents, but things derailed when one of the men uttered a racist trope.

“Sikhs were created to protect Hindus,” Dr. Bains recalled one of the men telling her. I told him “that is offensive, my identity is much larger than that as a Sikh American.”

The same man, according to Bains, began yelling and pointing his finger at her, telling her, “I will do whatever it takes to go after the person behind this. This is an open challenge to you Doctor Bains.”

Bains says she filed complaints with both the Bakersfield Police and the California Highway Patrol, which protects California legislators. She said because the incident happened in a state office, she believes several laws were broken.

Bains said she would like to see more forceful statements of concern from U.S. officials about the Nijjar killing and the general atmosphere that Sikhs are facing.

“When the Canadian Prime Minister spoke out, I think that there was a collective feeling amongst California Sikhs that we were absolutely right to think this way,” she said. “The concern is now that we have proof, why isn’t more being done to protect Sikh activists within America?”

Large portion of Americans doubt democracy and view violence as acceptable, poll finds

Brendan Rascius
Wed, October 18, 2023 

J. David Ake/AP

A large portion of Americans on both sides of the aisle favor getting rid of democracy and imposing violence on their political opponents, among other authoritarian measures, according to a new poll.

Thirty-one percent of Donald Trump supporters and 24% of President Joe Biden supporters said democracy is “no longer viable” and an alternative system should be tried, according to an October poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

The poll surveyed 2,008 registered voters from Aug. 25 to Sept. 11 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

Other key findings:

When asked whether it is acceptable to employ violence to stop political opponents from attaining their goals, 41% of Biden supporters and 38% of Trump supporters said yes.

30% of Trump supporters and 25% of Biden supporters said elections should be suspended in times of crisis.

41% of Trump supporters and 30% of Biden supporters said they favor either conservative or liberal states seceding from the union.

Nearly half of Biden supporters, 47%, and 35% of Trump supporters said the government should restrict the expression of views “considered discriminatory or offensive.”

The polling comes as Trump, the leading contender for the GOP nomination, continues to claim without evidence that the 2020 election was rigged against him.

The results, which signal a desire for an authoritarian crackdown, come at a time when public trust in government is at a near-record low, according to the Pew Research Center. In a 2023 poll, only 16% of Americans said they trusted the government to do what is right at least most of the time.

The poll reveals “really troubling findings about democracy and the potential for violence,” Rick Hasen, the director of UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, said on X.

Biden's campaign team just joined Truth Social, and it already has more followers than Trump's campaign team


Kwan Wei Kevin Tan
Wed, October 18, 2023 

Joe Biden (left) and Donald Trump (right).Win McNamee via Getty Images; Scott Eisen via Getty Images

Biden's campaign team has more followers on Truth Social than the Trump team.


Biden currently has 27,900 followers. Trump has 23,600 followers.


The Biden campaign said it joined Truth Social "because we thought it would be very funny."

President Joe Biden's campaign team account on Truth Social has more followers than Donald Trump's team does.

The Biden campaign said on Monday that it had joined Truth Social "mostly because we thought it would be very funny." A campaign official had previously told Axios, in a story published in May, that they wouldn't be joining Trump's platform.

The account, which uses the handle @BidenHQ, is gaining traction. As of press time, Biden's campaign account had about 27,900 followers. Trump's campaign account, @TeamTrump, had about 23,600 followers. Trump's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, currently has over 6.45 million followers.

Trump launched the conservative social media site in February 2022. The former president said in October 2021 that he was creating his own social media platform after getting banned from platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube following the January 6 Capitol siege. The site is estimated to have approximately 2 million active users, much lower than the billions of users that giants such as Facebook have.

On Monday, Biden's campaign officials told Fox News Digital that joining Trump's platform was akin to entering "the lion's den to point out Republicans' hypocrisy" while having "a little fun at their own expense."

"Crooked Joe Biden and his team are finally acknowledging that Truth Social is hot as a pistol and the only place where real news happens," a campaign spokesperson for Trump told Insider.

Representatives for Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.