CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Bankman-Fried dodges questions during his US crypto trial

2023/10/26

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the collapsed crypto firm FTX, plans to testify in his own defense at his criminal fraud trial

New York (AFP) - Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, parried with a federal prosecutor on Thursday in high-stakes legal jousting at his criminal fraud trial that seemed to frustrate the judge.

Bankman-Fried was scheduled to take the witness stand after three weeks of devastating testimony for the 31-year-old crypto wunderkind, accused of stealing billions of dollars from clients.

But federal Judge Lewis Kaplan took the unusual step of sending the jury home Thursday and listening to Bankman-Fried, his defense lawyers and a prosecutor go over technical aspects of his upcoming testimony.

The move pushed Bankman-Fried's appearance before the jury back until at least Friday.

Bankman-Fried, once one of the most respected figures in crypto, has been charged with seven counts of fraud, embezzlement and criminal conspiracy.

If convicted, he could face a de facto life sentence of more than 100 years in prison.

Thursday's hearing initially seemed confined to points of detail, but assistant US Attorney Danielle Sassoon soon found Bankman-Fried, known widely as SBF, offering evasive answers, drawing a pointed remark from the judge.

She asked Bankman-Fried about business practices, specifically whether any internal document laid out how Alameda Research, his personally owned trading company, could use funds placed in FTX, which he could not fully answer.

Initially calm, Bankman-Fried grew visibly surprised and delivered evasive answers.

"The defendant has an interesting way of answering questions," Judge Kaplan said.

At another moment, Bankman-Fried would not make it clear whether he knew that Alameda owed money to FTX, or that the investment company enjoyed preferential treatment over other clients.

Throughout the hearing, Bankman-Fried's lawyer, Mark Cohen, suggested that the questions went beyond the scope of a technical hearing, but the judge did not intervene.

"Our position is that the use of funds was not improper and that our client didn't believe it was improper," Cohen said.

For his part, Bankman-Fried repeatedly challenged Sassoon's formulation that Alameda used FTX customer funds to invest.

At the time of FTX's bankruptcy in November 2022, some $8.7 billion was unaccounted for. Most of the funds have since been recovered by liquidators and should be paid out to customers in early 2024.

Bankman-Fried has blamed former colleagues for FTX's sudden collapse.

But key witnesses in recent weeks, all former FTX or Alameda employees, refuted his account.

Supported by internal documents compiled by the prosecution, they said he was behind the breaches and did not lose sight of the financial situation of FTX and Alameda.
Ex-girlfriend offers damning evidence

Among those taking the stand was Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried's former business partner and girlfriend.

She offered damning evidence against him and delivered details on his management, saying he was involved in all major decisions.

Ellison, a Stanford University mathematics graduate, was appointed by Bankman-Fried in 2021 to head Alameda, whose activities were largely financed by money from customers of FTX without their knowledge.

She has pleaded guilty to fraud charges and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution, as have two other close associates of Bankman-Fried.

Bankman-Fried's decision to testify in his own defense is unusual in a country where criminal defendants generally decline to do so because they have to face cross-examination and run the risk of incriminating themselves.

Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, comedian Bill Cosby, singer R. Kelly and drug trafficker Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman were among high-profile defendants who declined to testify at their recent trials.

© Agence France-Press

US prosecutors rest case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried


Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, arrives at court as lawyers push to persuade the judge overseeing his fraud case not to jail him ahead of trial, at a courthouse in New York, U.S., August 11, 2023. 

REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz//File Photo© Thomson Reuters

By Luc Cohen and Jody Godoy

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Federal prosecutors rested their case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Thursday after presenting 12 days of testimony in which former colleagues at the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange said he directed them to divert customer funds to his hedge fund and lie to investors and lenders.

That paves the way for the defense to begin presenting its case in the fraud trial. Defense lawyer Mark Cohen said in a court hearing on Wednesday that Bankman-Fried would testify, a risky move that would give prosecutors the chance to cross-examine the 31-year-old former billionaire about testimony from former close colleagues that he directed them to commit crimes.

The final prosecution witness, FBI agent Marc Troiano, testified about Bankman-Fried's use of the encrpyted messaging application Signal when the trial resumed on Thursday morning in federal court in Manhattan after a week-long break.

Troiano said Signal groups that Bankman-Fried was in with colleagues often were set to delete messages automatically, as jurors saw screenshots from a phone belonging to Caroline Ellison, the former chief executive of Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research hedge fund and his on-and-off girlfriend.

Ellison testified earlier in the trial that Bankman-Fried directed employees to "be careful with what we put in writing, and not put into writing something that could get us into legal trouble."

Cohen said on Wednesday the defense plans to call three brief witnesses before Bankman-Fried takes the stand.

Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to two counts of fraud and five counts of conspiracy. If convicted, Bankman-Fried could face decades in prison. Prosecutors have said Bankman-Fried used the misappropriated funds to prop up his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research, make speculative venture investments, and donate more than $100 million to U.S. political campaigns.

Legal experts have said Bankman-Fried has little to lose by bucking conventional wisdom and testifying, given weeks of testimony against him by insiders painting an unflattering portrait of his character.

He has already taken an unusual approach for a criminal defendant. Instead of laying low after he was charged, he published blog posts on his view of what went wrong and met with several journalists.

Bankman-Fried has maintained that while he made mistakes running FTX, he never intended to steal funds. His lawyers have said three of his former colleagues, who have pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, tailored their testimony to implicate Bankman-Fried in the hopes of receiving lenient sentences.

Cohen in a Wednesday evening court filing told U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan he wanted to ask Bankman-Fried about FTX lawyers' involvement in structuring loans from Alameda to FTX executives, which prosecutors have said was a key way the defendant and others took funds from unwitting customers.

But Cohen said Bankman-Fried's "knowledge that lawyers were involved in structuring and documenting the loans would be probative of his good-faith belief that there was nothing inappropriate."

Prosecutors may ask Bankman-Fried about why he did not disclose Alameda's privileges to FTX customers or equity investors, and why he posted on social media in the midst of a wave of customer withdrawals last November that FTX was "fine" when he knew it was short billions of dollars in funds.

In the letter, Cohen said Bankman-Fried reserves the right to decide not to testify.

Cohen said on an earlier conference call the defense could finish presenting its case by Friday, paving the way for closing arguments and jury deliberations next week.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Will Dunham, Noeleen Walder and Jonathan Oatis)

Governor hopeful quoted Hitler and downplayed the Holocaust in unearthed posts: Report

Lieutenant governor of North Carolina and a leading Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, quoted Hitler and downplayed the Holocaust in an unearthed Facebook post, according to a new report.

Robinson has a long history of regurgitating antisemitic conspiracy theories and downplaying of the Holocaust, according to Jewish Insider. But at a press conference two weeks ago, he denied that he is antisemitic

Robinson said his past social media posts had been dealt with and he had "moved past" them.

But he has been hit with new accusations that, in a Facebook post, he quoted Hitler and suggested the horror of the Holocaust wasn't as bad as the abuses of communism. He also compared the removal of Confederate statues to anti-Jewish pogroms in 1930s Europe, the Jewish Insider reported.

“We often speak of the 'appeasement’ of Hitler. But the biggest ‘appeasement’ of ALL TIME is how we turned a blind eye to the clear and present danger of MARXISM,” Robinson said in a post from 2019.



“It is EXTREMELY distressing that many well-meaning and intelligent people are so focused on long dead Hitler while the living political descendants of Stalin are currently fighting to destroy our REPUBLIC,” he wrote in a separate post days earlier.




Some GOP activists are worried that the discovery of more comments will hurt Robinson's chances of winning the governor race.

"The lieutenant governor, whom polls show as the front-runner, is now facing five Republican primary challengers, including Bill Graham, a wealthy trial lawyer who announced his campaign last week, vowing to spend millions of his own money," Jewish Insider reported. "The winner is expected to face off against a Jewish Democrat, Josh Stein, who is the state’s attorney general. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is term-limited."

Read the full report over at Jewish Insider.

Taliban free Afghan activist arrested 7 months ago after campaigning for girls’ education




KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban have freed an Afghan activist who campaigned for the education of girls, a local nonprofit organization said Thursday. Matiullah Wesa was arrested seven months ago and spent 215 days in prison, according to the group, Pen Path.

Wesa has been outspoken in his demands for girls to have the right to go to school and repeatedly called on the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan to reverse its bans on female education.

Since their takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have barred girls from school beyond the sixth grade. Last December, they banned women from going to universities. Afghanistan is the only country in the world with restrictions on female education.

Pen Path gave no further details on Wesa’s release or his condition.

The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, welcomed the news about Wesa.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Bennett also called for the “immediate and unconditional release of all Afghanistan human rights defenders who are arbitrarily detained for standing up for their own rights & the human rights of others."

Amnesty International said Wesa should never have been jailed for promoting girls' rights to education.

“The Taliban de-facto authorities must release human rights defenders and women protesters Rasool Parsi, Neda Parwani, Zholia Parsi and Manizha Sediqi and all others who are unfairly kept behind bars for standing up for equality and denouncing repression,” the rights group said on X.

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Prior to his arrest, Wesa and others from Pen Path launched a door-to-door campaign to promote girls’ education.

“We have been volunteering for 14 years to reach people and convey the message for girls’ education,” Wesa said in social media posts. “During the past 18 months we campaigned house-to-house in order to eliminate illiteracy and to end all our miseries.”

Wesa’s brother Attaullah said Taliban forces surrounded the family home in late March, beat family members, and confiscated Matiullah’s mobile phone.

The Associated Press

China has sent its youngest-ever astronaut crew to the Tiangong space station

Story by By Marc Stewart, Mengchen Zhang and Nectar Gan, CNN  

When China’s first astronaut Yang Liwei blasted off into space in 2003, it was a history making moment that declared his country’s arrival as an emerging space power.

Two decades on, China has become a major presence in space – a status that mirrors its growing economic, political and military ascendency on Earth. It now has its own permanent outpost in orbit – a fully operational space station – and routinely rotates crews to live and work there.

On Thursday, three Chinese astronauts lifted off on the Shenzhou-17 spacecraft from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center deep in the Gobi Desert, heading for the Tiangong space station for a six-month stay.

They are the youngest crew China has ever sent to space – with an average age of 38. Among their tasks on board is to repair the solar panels that were damaged by space debris – the first time Chinese astronauts will carry out repair work outside the station.

This is China’s sixth manned mission to its space station since 2021. The new crew will take over from the Shenzhou-16 astronauts, who have been onboard since May.

Ahead of the launch, the crew was sent off in full pageantry, greeted by government officials and supporters lining the road. The three astronauts waved at the crowd, who held up Chinese flags and flowers. A band played patriotic songs and the crowd sang along.

Since his own trip to space, Yang has sent off many Chinese astronauts on their missions. But Thursday’s launch was especially emotional, coming just days after the 20th anniversary of his own historic flight.

“Looking at this launch as a veteran, the first thing I see is how far China’s manned spaceflight has come. Over the past 20 years, it has developed rapidly and made great achievements,” Yang told CNN at the Jiuquan center on Wednesday, ahead of the launch.

Completed late last year, the Tiangong – or “heavenly palace” in Chinese – is one of the two space stations currently in orbit. With a lifespan of 15 years, it could become the only one left when the NASA-led International Space Station retires in 2030.

China has already announced plans to expand the Tiangong in coming years, adding three modules to its existing three to allow more astronauts to stay abroad at the same time. Currently, it can house a maximum of three astronauts, compared with seven at the ISS.

Yang said he was also thrilled to see a younger generation of Chinese “taikonauts” taking up the baton. “In them, I see the strength of our reserve force, and the hope for the future development of China’s aerospace industry,” he said.

Two of the Shenzhou-17 crew members – Tang Shengjie, 33, and Jiang Xinlin, 35 – are new comers, having joined China’s third batch of astronauts only a little over three years ago.

They are led by Tang Hongbo, 48, who hails from the country’s second batch of astronauts.

Tang, a former fighter jet pilot, was on China’s first crewed mission to its space station in 2021. His return to the Tiangong also set a new record for the shortest interval between two spaceflight missions by Chinese astronauts.

Chinese astronauts Jiang Xinlin, Tang Shengjie and Tang Hongbo, 

who will carry out the Shenzhou-17 spaceflight mission, at the

 Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on October 26.

 - VCG/Getty Images© Provided by CNN

China’s space ambition

Tiangong has become a symbol of China’s ambition and capabilities in space, after Chinese astronauts were shut out of the ISS, a US-led collaboration with Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, for more than two decades.

Since 2011, NASA has been effectively banned from cooperating with China, after Congress passed the Wolf Amendment due to espionage-related concerns. That exclusion has at least in part spurred Beijing to build its own space station.

China has sought to open up its station to collaboration with international partners, including by hosting experiments from other countries. And that offer will be all the more appealing after the ISS retires, which is scheduled around 2030.

Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut and ISS commander, said NASA has contracted with different private groups to create commercial space stations that its astronauts could operate in. But “we’ll have to see how all that goes,” he told CNN.

“The other nations that participate in spaceflight, particularly human spaceflight, they’ve been talking to China. And so if they’re the only game in town, that’s the only way that these companies or these countries can participate in human spaceflight, until we get these commercial space stations that are partially funded by NASA into orbit and operational,” Chiao said.

Beijing for years has been leveraging its rising prowess as a global space power to offer partnerships and development opportunities to other countries.

As China and the United States intensify their economic, technological and geopolitical rivalry on earth, space has become a natural extension – and crucial frontier – in their great power competition.

Following the demise of the Soviet Union’s space program, the US has enjoyed a period of unparalleled leadership in space. But in recent years, US observers and politicians have warned that America’s dominance could soon be challenged by China’s fast-growing space capabilities.

That concern has only deepened with a series of important and high profile Chinese achievements.

In 2019, it became the first country to land on the far side of the moon. A year later, it successfully put into orbit its final Beidou satellite, setting the stage to challenge the US Global Positioning System (GPS). And in 2021, it became the only country after the US to put a functioning rover on Mars.

China’s ambitions do not end there. Next year, it plans to bring back the first samples ever collected from the moon’s far side. By the end of this decade, it wants to send astronauts to the moon and build an international lunar research station. A number of countries have reportedly joined onto its planned lunar station, including Russia, Venezuela and South Africa.

Chiao, the retired NASA astronaut, said the main challenge now facing China’s space program is to get the operational experience that an organization like NASA has.

“We’ve been operating spacecraft, space shuttle, space station for decades. And we have so much experience and know-how on training astronauts on operating in space – and that’s where they’re playing catch up,” he said.

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Environmental groups reject deep-sea mining as key UN meeting looms

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Environmental groups on Wednesday urged a moratorium on deep-sea mining ahead of a meeting in Jamaica of a U.N. body that conservationists fear will soon authorize the world’s first license to harvest minerals from the ocean floor.

More than 20 countries have called for a ban or moratorium on deep-sea mining ahead of Monday's opening of a nearly two-week meeting of the U.N. International Seabed Authority’s council. Companies including Samsung and BMW also have pledged to avoid using minerals mined from the deep sea.

“Sea mining is one of the key environmental issues of our time, and this is because the deep sea is among the last pristine areas of our planet,” said Sofia Tsenikli, from the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, a Netherlands-based alliance of environmental groups.

The development of clean energy technologies including electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines is driving up demand for metals such as copper, nickel and cobalt that mining companies say can be extracted from more than 600 feet (180 meters) below sea level.

Demand for lithium tripled from 2017 to 2022, while cobalt saw a 70% jump and nickel a 40% rise, according to a market review published in July by the International Energy Agency.

Mining companies say that harvesting minerals from the deep sea instead of land is cheaper and has less of an environmental impact. But scientists and environmental groups argue that less than 1% of the world’s deep seas have been explored, and they warn that deep sea mining could unleash noise, light and suffocating dust storms.

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“It has the potential to destroy Earth’s last wilderness and endanger our largest carbon sink while proving itself neither technical nor financially feasible,” said Bobbi-Jo Dobush from The Ocean Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

The International Seabed Authority, which is tasked with regulating deep international waters, has issued more than 30 exploration licenses. China holds five, the most of any country, with a total of 22 countries issued such licenses, said Emma Wilson with the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition.

Much of the exploration is focused in an area known as the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, which spans 1.7 million square miles (4.5 million square kilometers) between Hawaii and Mexico. Exploration is occurring at depths ranging from 13,000 to 19,000 feet (4,000 to 6,000 meters).

No provisional mining licenses have been issued, but scientists and environmental groups worry that a push by some members of the International Seabed Authority and its secretariat to adopt a mining code by 2025 could soon change that.


“The very existence of this institution relies on mining activities beginning,” Wilson said, noting that the authority would be financed by royalties from mining contracts.

The authority said in a statement to The Associated Press that its mandate is to protect and regulate, and that the decisions taken reflect the will of member states.

“The ISA is not pushing for exploitation,” it said. “ISA member states have agreed that no mining will begin before an agreement is reached on regulations regarding economic exploitation and environmental protection.”

The authority also said it is ensuring that ongoing negotiations are informed by the “best available science,” and that in addition to its 169 members, it takes into account input from more than 100 observers, including non-governmental and civil society organizations.

The authority is still debating rules and regulations for a proposed mining code, but any company at any time can apply for a mining license.

Dánica Coto, The Associated Press

Malaysia to warn TikTok, Meta over alleged blocking of pro-Palestinian content

Story by Reuters 

FILE PHOTO: A TikTok logo is displayed on a smartphone in this illustration taken January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo© Thomson Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) -Malaysia's communications regulator will issue a warning to social media firms TikTok and Meta for allegedly blocking pro-Palestinian content on their platforms, its communications minister said on Thursday.

Meta has since said it was not deliberately suppressing voices on its Facebook platform after Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil said the social media platforms had been accused of restricting content supporting the Palestinians.


FILE PHOTO: People are seen behind a logo of Meta Platforms, during a conference in Mumbai, India, September 20, 2023. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo© Thomson Reuters

"If this issue is ignored, I will not hesitate to take a very firm approach and stance," Fahmi said in a posting on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Without elaborating, Fahmi said many parties had urged the government to take firm action against social media platforms for allegedly restricting pro-Palestinian content.

A spokesperson from Meta said there was "no truth" to the claim.

"Our policies are designed to keep people safe on our apps while giving everyone a voice," the spokesperson said in an email to Reuters on Thursday.

TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Fahmi said Malaysians have a right to freedom of speech regarding the Palestinian cause, adding that right will not be taken away.

He said he will meet TikTok representatives next week to discuss the matter.

The concerns come two weeks after Fahmi said TikTok had not complied fully with Malaysia's laws and had not done enough to curb defamatory or misleading content. TikTok in a response said it would take proactive measures to address the issues raised.

(Reporting by Danial Azhar, Rozanna Latiff and A. Ananthalakshmi; editing by Martin Petty and Jason Neely)

Editorial: States have a good case in suing Meta for preying on kids

2023/10/27

Meta corporate headquarters is seen in Menlo Park, California, on Nov. 9, 2022. 

- Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Thirty-three state attorneys general left, right and center have filed suit in California federal court against internet giant Meta, and another nine are suing the company in their respective states. The central claim — that the company has built Instagram and Facebook features “to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens … and has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its social media platforms” — must be taken seriously.

Endless, and endlessly circular, is the debate about whether social media is bad for teenagers, and if so, how bad. There’s no question that for many kids, platforms from Instagram to TikTok to X (formerly Twitter) to YouTube and beyond provide real value, exposing them to new ideas, facilitating healthy social connections and encouraging creativity.

However, there’s simultaneously little doubt that America’s young people are in the throes of a mental health crisis. According to the Centers for Disease Control, feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors, rose sharply among young people — and that was before COVID’s disruptions kicked in. Research is growing that there’s something psychologically unhealthy in one’s formative years to be endlessly glued to a barrage of nastiness and unhealthy comparisons.

A May 2023 advisory by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy asserted that “95% of youth ages 13-17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use social media ‘almost constantly’” — and while 13 is the generally the minimum legal age for using social media, “nearly 40% of children ages 8-12 use social media.”

And while acknowledging that “More research is needed to fully understand the impact of social media,” the surgeon general says that although it may have benefits for some younger youngsters, “there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” Those risks include exposure to deeply disturbing content including live depictions of self-harm, low self-esteem from ceaseless body image scrutiny, and more.

“Excessive and problematic social media use, such as compulsive or uncontrollable use, has been linked to sleep problems, attention problems, and feelings of exclusion among adolescents,” he wrote.

Big research questions remain — which is to say, a moral panic that tries to cut young people off entirely would be terribly excessive — but the law is the law, and the AGs make a persuasive case that Meta has been whistling past it. Building on the Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files investigation, the lawsuit cites a series of devious design decisions specifically designed “to induce young users’ compulsive and extended use,” including “infinite scroll” and persistent alerts.

It’s against federal statute to deceive users about a product’s safety, which is precisely what the complaint alleges the company did. And it is against federal statute to collect young people’s personal data without their parents’ permission, another credible claim made in the legal papers.

As scrutiny has mounted in recent years, Meta and its many rivals have been adding safety features. The question for the courts is whether requiring a few basic but still overlooked ones, such as forcing alerts to be turned off by default and fixing data collection practices, will protect young people and bring the behemoths in line with the law.

___

© New York Daily News

NY natural history museum changing how it looks after thousands of human remains in collection

NEW YORK (AP) — There are stories in the human bones at the American Museum of Natural History. They tell of lives lived — some mere decades ago, others in past centuries — in cultures around the world.

But the vast collection of thousands of skeletal parts at one of the world's most visited museums also tells a darker story – of opened graves, disrupted burial sites and collecting practices that treated some cultures and people as objects to be gawked at.

The New York museum announced this month that it is pulling all human remains from public display and will change how it maintains its collection of body parts with the aim of eventually repatriating as much as it can and respectfully holding what it can’t.

The museum now holds around 12,000 sets of remains, including the bones of Indigenous people and enslaved Black people, often amassed in the 19th and 20th centuries by researchers looking to prove theories about racial superiority and inferiority through physical attributes.

Some of the other remains are people — likely poor or powerless — whose bodies had once been used at medical schools before they were given to the museum as recently as the 1940s.

American Museum of Natural History President Sean Decatur, who in April became the museum’s first Black leader, said that for the most part, the remains in the collection were acquired without clear consent of the dead or their descendants.

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“I think it’s fair to say that none of these people set out or imagined that their resting place would be in the museum’s collection,” he said. “And in most of the cases, there also was a clear differential in power between those who were collecting and those who were collected.”

The process of pulling human remains from public display will impact six of the museum's galleries. Objects being removed include a musical instrument made from human bone, a skeleton from Mongolia that is more than a thousand years old and a Tibetan artifact that incorporates bones.

The idea that human remains and artifacts taken from other cultures should be returned is not new. A U.S. law passed in 1990 created a legal process for some Native tribes to recover ancestral remains from museums and other institutions. In a letter to museum staff, Decatur said about 2,200 sets of remains at the museum fall under that category.

Other museums and institutions are grappling with the issue as well. At the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, for example, more than 100 human remains have been returned to the relevant communities. The museum is working to return four other sets of remains that don't fall under the federal law's purview.

“Fundamentally, we have a responsibility to do more than acknowledge the harm caused by historical collecting practices that treated peoples and cultures as objects of scientific study,” Chris Patrello, curator of anthropology at the museum, said in an email.

In 2022, an estimated 870,000 Native American artifacts, including remains that should be returned to tribes under federal law are still in possession of colleges, museums, and other institutions across the country, according to The Associated Press.

But its not just Indigenous remains being in museum collections that are troubling.

Decatur said some of the remains in the museum are believed to be of five Black people whose bones were removed from a northern Manhattan burial ground during a road construction project at the start of the 1900s.

“Enslavement was a violent, dehumanizing act; removing these remains from their rightful burial place ensured that the denial of basic human dignity would continue even in death,” Decatur said in his letter to the museum staff.

Historically, Black graves have been subjected to robbery, said Lynn Rainville, a professor of anthropology at Washington and Lee University. They have also been covered over or disrupted in construction and development projects.

Decatur said the American Museum of Natural History's holdings also include about 400 bodies that came from four New York medical schools in the 1940s, even though there’s no obvious process by which bodies used for medical training in anatomy should have ended up in a museum.

One of the medical schools no longer exists; the others were connected to Columbia, Cornell and New York University. Columbia’s medical school had no comment. The other two did not respond to emails seeking information. Museum officials said they were talking with the schools and as far as they had been able to determine, the bodies had not come to the institution in any nefarious way.

“It’s one of those things that is jarring and sort of ... hits closer to home than an archaeological expedition that’s looking at things that are a thousand-plus years old. But it’s a practice that was incredibly common” at the time, Decatur said.

Susan Lederer, professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin’s medical school, said that as the number of medical schools increased in the 19th century and dissection became an essential part of training, schools needed to find more cadavers.

States passed laws making unclaimed bodies, mostly of very poor people, available to medical schools.

“It reflects longstanding assumptions about the differences between middle-class and either working-class or underclass people” that it was deemed acceptable to turn certain bodies over but not others, she said.

The practice at most medical schools shifted in the second half of the 20th century for a number of reasons, including more people in the U.S. being willing to donate their bodies after death, she said.

The museum's process of figuring out how to handle those and other remains in storage will take some time, Decatur said. Officials will need to determine what can be returned and to whom, as well as how to properly care for any remains that stay behind.

Deepti Hajela, The Associated Press

71% of Americans believe the climate crisis is harming people now, poll shows

Story by By Ella Nilsen, CNN  • 

Alarge majority of Americans – 71% – believe the climate crisis is causing at least some harm to people in the US, while slightly less than two-thirds of the population believe harmful climate impacts will get worse over their lifetimes, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The poll shows Americans have a “dim view” on how climate change is impacting the nation, said Alec Tyson, associate director of science and society at the Pew Research Center and a lead pollster on the report.

While Pew has done polling in the past on how Americans view climate change policy and solutions like wind and solar energy, this is the first time they took a hard look at Americans’ perception of the threat climate change may pose to their lives. The team surveyed 8,842 US adults online from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1.

After a summer of extreme weather – like the deadly Southwestern heat wave and devastating Vermont floods – Tyson’s team wanted to examine whether the impacts were making an impression on the American public.

“What we wanted to do with this survey was to focus more on the perceived personal impacts to the country and folks’ own lives,” Tyson said, calling it Pew’s “most dedicated effort” to-date focusing on “what people think is going to happen in their own lives” when it comes to climate change.

Pew found nearly half of Americans expect to have to make minor sacrifices over the course of their lifetimes due to climate impacts, while around a quarter of Americans think they’ll have to make major sacrifices. Another 28% expect to make no sacrifices at all due to climate change. Tyson told CNN the Pew team didn’t specify what kinds of sacrifices qualified as major or minor.

The Pew survey found deep partisan divisions impact people’s perceptions of climate change; for instance, 86% of Democrats expect negative climate impacts to get worse during their lifetime, while just 37% of Republicans said the same.

“Nothing matters more than partisanship,” Tyson noted, adding that factors like age and geographical location weren’t as strong as partisan divides in influencing opinions on climate change. “Democrats foresee much greater negative impacts from climate (change) over the coming decade, Republicans not so much.”

Tyson and the team at Pew found that where people lived and what age they are also impacts how they view climate change. For instance, a majority of those polled nationally said they expected that coastal Florida, Southern California and the Southwest will become worse places to live over the next 30 years due to the effects of climate change.

About half of adults polled who live in the Western US said they expect climate change will make conditions in their region worse, compared to just 30% of Midwestern residents who said the same.

“Climate experts talk about how impacts may be more severe in some places than others; that concept seems to resonate with the public,” Tyson said. “That’s quite striking.”

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/10/how-americans-view-future-harms-from.html

 Canada Is Considering Introducing Guaranteed Basic Income & Here's Who Could Get Money

UBI BY ANY OTHER NAME

 Provided by Narcity Canada

You might not know that Canada is considering a basic income program across the country to "benefit individuals, families and communities."

A lot of people could qualify for universal basic income in Canada and get money from the federal government if it's introduced.

Now that a bill requiring the federal government to develop a national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income could become law, here's what you need to know.

That includes what basic income would be, who would qualify for it and how much money a universal basic income could give out.

What is guaranteed livable basic income in Canada?

Bill S-233, which is also known as an act to develop a national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income, is a bill sponsored by Senator Kim Pate that's currently being considered in Canada's Senate.

It has stated that "every person should have access to a livable basic income" and a guaranteed basic income would help eradicate poverty in Canada and improve income equality, health and education.

"A guaranteed livable basic income would benefit individuals, families and communities and protect those who are made most vulnerable in society," according to the bill.

Also, Bill S-233 said that a national basic income program would "ensure the respect, dignity and security of all persons in Canada."

This bill that would get the ball rolling on introducing basic income across Canada has been moving through the Senate over the last few years.

Its first reading was completed on December 16, 2021, and its second reading was completed on April 18, 2023.

Then, on October 17, 2023, the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance studied Bill S-233.

The committee heard from experts including former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, Dr. Evelyn Forget and Dr. Jiaying Zhao.

Pate and MP Leah Gazan, who sponsored a similar bill in the House of Commons, shared that all of the experts agreed now is the time to move forward with guaranteed livable basic income.

"Faced with increasing economic uncertainty, Canadians rightly expect their governments to both help individuals make ends meet and treat public money with care," said Pate and Gazan.

Both noted that guaranteed livable basic income has been tested in Canada already and it's "a meaningful solution promising a wealth of economic, social, and health benefits."

Once the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance's study of Bill S-233 is complete, committee members and all Senators will be able to vote to send the bill to the House of Commons.

Then, it could become law following a review in the House.

Who would qualify for universal basic income in Canada?

If Bill S-233 becomes a law, it would require the minister of finance — who is currently Chrystia Freeland — to develop a national framework for the implementation of a guaranteed livable basic income program throughout Canada.

Any person over 17 years old, including temporary workers, permanent residents and refugee claimants, would qualify for universal basic income in Canada.

The framework developed by the minister of finance would have to include several measures laid out in the bill.

That includes measures to determine what constitutes a livable basic income for each region in Canada.

It would have to take into account the goods and services that are necessary for people to have "a dignified and healthy life" and the cost of those goods and services.

National standards for health and social supports that complement a guaranteed basic income program and guide the implementation of such a program in every province would be required as well.

The framework would need to ensure that having an education or training or participation in the labour market is not required for people in Canada to qualify for a guaranteed livable basic income.

Also, it must ensure that the implementation of a guaranteed livable basic income program doesn't decrease services or benefits that are meant to support someone's needs related to health or disability.

What would be Canada's guaranteed basic income amount?

Back in 2021, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer put out a report on the fiscal analysis of a national guaranteed basic income program in Canada.

To figure out how a basic income program could work financially, the report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer used Ontario's basic income pilot project from 2017 as a framework.

It also limited the analysis of the potential program to Canadians who are between 18 and 64 years old.

Ontario's basic income project ensured that people received up to 75% of the low-income measure which was estimated at $16,989 for a single person and $24,027 for a couple.

Individuals with a disability also received an additional universal amount of $6,000 a year.

The guaranteed basic income was reduced as an individual received more employment earnings at a rate of $0.50 for every dollar made.

According to the report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, households that have one adult with children could see a change in average household disposable income of 12.3% — which is $4,210 — if a national guaranteed basic income program was introduced.

For households with two or more adults and children, that income would go up by 31.6% which works out to $13,797.

Single adults would see a 32.1% change in average household disposable income. That's an increase of $5,453.

In households with two or more adults, it would be a 64.5% change which works out to $17,057.

The report found that more than six million people (16.4% of Canada's population) would see a rise in their disposable income because of guaranteed basic income.

That would work out to a net positive impact of $8,227 — 49.6%.

But, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, over 16 million people would have a net income loss of $3,114 — -5.4% — on average.

Despite that, guaranteed basic income "significantly reduces poverty rates" across Canada, cutting it almost in half at a national level.

The report found that the poverty rates would be reduced by 40.2% in B.C., 43.7% in Alberta, 49.2% in Saskatchewan, 61.9% in Manitoba and 49.2% in Ontario.

Also, rates would go down by 60.4% in Quebec, 32.6% in New Brunswick, 55% in Nova Scotia, 45% in P.E.I., and 13.5% in Newfoundland and Labrador if a basic income program was introduced.

Even though the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report used Ontario's $16,989 to $24,027 payments as a framework, the exact basic income amounts should the program be implemented are still unknown.

Bill S-233 would require the minister of finance to determine what a livable basic income is for each region in Canada so how much money people get could vary depending on where they live.

This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.

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