Stellantis CEO: electric vehicle tariffs are a trap

By Joseph White and Christoph Steitz

May 22, 2024

Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares poses in front of the Ram 1500 Revolution electric concept pickup truck during a Stellantis keynote address at CES 2023, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. January 5, 2023. REUTERS/Steve Marcus Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

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Tavares: European auto sector is in Darwinian period

Tavares: Chinese OEMs have 30% cost edge

Chinese OEMs on track to take 10% market share in Europe

Brussels set to decide in June on provisional tariffs

MUNICH, May 22 (Reuters) - Stellantis (STLAM.MI), opens new tab expects a major battle with Chinese rivals in the European market for electric vehicles, warning of significant consequences for jobs and production as a result, the group's Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said on Wednesday.

The comments in an interview with Reuters are among the CEO's most strongly worded yet as tensions among Beijing, Brussels and Washington over EV trade grow. The EU is expected to decide next month on whether to follow the U.S. in imposing additional tariffs on Chinese carmakers.

U.S. officials said Wednesday they plan to hit Chinese made EVs and EV materials with duties up to 100% by Aug. 1.
Tavares said tariffs on Chinese vehicles imported to Europe and the United States are "a major trap for the countries that go on that path" and will not allow Western automakers to avoid restructuring to meet the challenge from lower cost Chinese manufacturers.
The European Commission will unveil an initial decision on potential tariffs on Chinese EV imports on June 5. China has been threatening counter tariffs.

"When you fight against the competition to absorb 30% of cost competitiveness edge in favour of the Chinese, there are social consequences. But the governments, the governments of Europe, they don't want to face that reality right now," Tavares said.
Tavares said that tariffs would only fuel inflation in the regions where they are imposed, potentially impacting sales and production.
"We are not talking about a Darwinian period, we are in it," Tavares said at a Reuters Events Automotive Europe conference in Munich, adding the price battle with Asian rivals would be "very tough". bout twice the size of the Netherlands, where I live.

"This is not going to be easy for the dealers. It's not going to be easy for the suppliers. It's not going to be easy for the OEMs. As we know in Europe, everybody is talking about change as long as change is for somebody else."
Italy's nationalist government has been pressing Stellantis to commit to building 1 million vehicles a year in the country, up from 750,000 last year. Tavares did not respond specifically to a question about Italy's demand, but outlined the overcapacity looming over the European auto sector.

Chinese automakers are already on track to sell 1.5 million vehicles in Europe, equivalent to a 10% market share and up to 10 assembly plants worth of production, Tavares said.
"If we let the share of the Chinese OEMs grow ... then it's obvious that you are going to create an overcapacity, unless you fight against that competition," Tavares said.
Tavares said Stellantis is in "very rewarding discussions" with labour unions at its European operations: "Most of the time they agree with us in terms of what is the risk that we are facing and how we should go through that period."

Stellantis last week announced it would start selling EVs of its Leapmotor (9863.HK), opens new tab Chinese partner outside China during this year, starting form Europe in September.

The Stellantis-Leapmotor joint venture, the first one between a Western and a Chinese carmaker designed to sell and produce EVs from a Chinese manufacturer outside China, will help the Franco-Italian group expand its global offerings of budget vehicles.
"We will try to be Chinese ourselves, which means instead of being purely defensive vis-à-vis the Chinese offensive, we want to be part of the Chinese offensive," Tavares said.

Actors union backs Scarlett Johansson after claim of voice misuse by Sam Altman’s OpenAI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has since clarified that the voice belongs to a different professional actress and has removed it from the company's products.


Pranav Dixit

Updated May 22, 2024

Scarlett Johansson

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has voiced its support for actress Scarlett Johansson following her concerns over the use of a voice in OpenAI’s new GPT-4o system. Johansson claimed the voice, belonging to a persona named "Sky", bore a striking resemblance to her own, despite her previous refusal to participate in the project.

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'I was shocked, angered and in disbelief': Scarlett Johansson accuses OpenAI of using AI voice 'eerily similar to hers'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has since clarified that the voice belongs to a different professional actress and has removed it from the company's products. However, the incident has ignited a larger conversation about the rights of actors in the age of increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence.

"We thank Ms. Johansson for speaking out on this issue of crucial importance to all SAG-AFTRA members," a spokesperson for the union stated. "We share in her concerns and fully support her right to have clarity and transparency regarding the voice used.”

SAG-AFTRA, which represents approximately 160,000 entertainment and media professionals worldwide, played a pivotal role in recent negotiations with Hollywood studios, securing better pay and increased protections for actors against the unauthorised use of their likenesses through AI.

This recent dispute underscores the growing concerns surrounding the use of AI in entertainment. As technology advances and computer-generated images and sounds become increasingly realistic, the line between human performance and AI replication continues to blur. This raises critical questions about ownership, consent, and compensation for artists.

SAG-AFTRA has affirmed its commitment to protecting its members' rights, stating that it is "strongly championing federal legislation that would protect their voices and likenesses." The union plans to continue engaging with OpenAI and other industry stakeholders to establish clear guidelines and safeguards for performers.

A step too far right? France's RN splits with AfD over SS comments

Issued on: 21/05/2024 - 

04:28 Video by:  Mark OWEN

France's main far-right party said Tuesday it will no longer sit in the EU parliament with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) faction, indicating it had lost patience with the controversies surrounding its German allies. The head of the AfD's list in the polls, Maximilian Krah, had said in a weekend interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica that someone who had been a member of the SS was "not automatically a criminal". 

Pierre Benazet reports from Brussels.

U.S. Sites with radioactive material more vulnerable as climate change increases wildfire, flood risks

Climate climate change increasingly threatens research laboratories, weapons sites and power plants across the nation that handle or are contaminated with radioactive material or perform critical energy and defense research. 

BY TAMMY WEBBER

AP
May 21, 2024

As Texas wildfires burned toward the nation’s primary nuclear weapons facility, workers hurried to ensure nothing flammable was around buildings and storage areas.

When the fires showed no sign of slowing, Pantex Plant officials urgently called on local contractors, who arrived within minutes with bulldozers to dig trenches and enlarge fire breaks for the sprawling complex where nuclear weapons are assembled and disassembled and dangerous plutonium pits — hollow spheres that trigger nuclear warheads and bombs — are stored.

“The winds can pick up really (quickly) here and can move really fast,” said Jason Armstrong, the federal field office manager at Pantex, outside Amarillo, who was awake 40 hours straight monitoring the risks. Workers were sent home and the plant shut down when smoke began blanketing the site.

Those fires in February — including the largest in Texas history — didn’t reach Pantex, though flames came within 3 miles (5 kilometers). And Armstrong says it’s highly unlikely that plutonium pits, stored in fire-resistant drums and shelters, would have been affected by wildfire.

But the size and speed of the grassland fires, and Pantex’s urgent response, underscore how much is at stake as climate change stokes extreme heat and drought, longer fire seasons with larger, more intense bl

Dozens of active and idle laboratories and manufacturing and military facilities across the nation that use, store or are contaminated with radioactive material are increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather. Many also perform critical energy and defense research and manufacturing that could be disrupted or crippled by fires, floods and other disasters.

There’s the 40-square-mile Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where a 2000 wildfire burned to within a half mile (0.8 kilometers) of a radioactive waste site. The heavily polluted Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Southern California, where a 2018 wildfire burned 80% of the site, narrowly missing an area contaminated by a 1959 partial nuclear meltdown. And the plutonium-contaminated Hanford nuclear site in Washington, where the U.S. manufactured atomic bombs.

“I think we’re still early in recognizing climate change and ... how to deal with these extreme weather events,” said Paul Walker, program director at the environmental organization Green Cross International and a former staff member of the House Armed Services Committee. “I think it’s too early to assume that we’ve got all the worst-case scenarios resolved ... (because) what might have been safe 25 years ago probably is no longer safe.”
___

That realization has begun to change how the government addresses threats at some of the nation’s most sensitive sites.

The Department of Energy in 2022 required its existing sites to assess climate change risks to “mission-critical functions and operations,” including waste storage, and to develop plans to address them. It cited wildfires at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories and a 2021 deep freeze that damaged “critical facilities” at Pantex.

Yet the agency does not specifically consider future climate risks when issuing permits or licenses for new sites or projects, or in environmental assessments that are reviewed every five years though rarely updated. Instead, it only considers how sites themselves might affect climate change — a paradox critics call short-sighted and potentially dangerous.

Likewise, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers only historical climate data rather than future projections in licensing decisions and oversight of nuclear power plants, according to a General Accounting Office study in April that recommended the NRC “fully consider potential climate change effects.” The GAO found that 60 of 75 U.S. plants were in areas with high flood hazard and 16 were in areas with high wildfire potential.

“We’re acting like ... (what’s) happening now is what we can expect to happen in 50 years,” said Caroline Reiser, a climate and energy attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The reality of what our climate is doing has shifted dramatically, and we need to shift our planning ... before we experience more and more of the extreme weather events.”

The National Nuclear Security Administration’s environmental safety and health division, which oversees active DOE sites, will conduct an internal review and convene a work group to develop “crucial” methodologies to address climate risks in permitting, licensing and site-wide assessments, John Weckerle, the division’s director of environmental regulatory affairs, told The Associated Press.

The agency said last year that climate change could “jeopardize the NNSA mission and pose a threat to national security.”

“We all know the climate is changing. Everybody’s thinking about, what effect are we having on the climate?” Weckerle said. “Now we need to flip that on its head and say, ‘OK ... but what do we think is going to happen as a result of climate on a particular site?’”

Assessments before and after projects are built are critical to protecting infrastructure and waste materials, said Dylan Spaulding, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“We know that climate change makes it likely that these events will happen with increased frequency, and that brings the likelihood for unprecedented consequences,” Spaulding said. Sites “can be better protected if you are anticipating these problems ahead of time.”
___

One of the most dangerous radioactive materials is plutonium, said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. It can cause cancer, is most dangerous when inhaled, and just a few hundred grams dispersed widely could pose a significant hazard, he said.

Experts say risks vary by site. Most plutonium and other radioactive material is contained in concrete and steel structures or underground storage designed to withstand fire. And many sites are on large tracts in remote areas where risk to the public from a radiation release would be minimal.

Even so, potential threats have arisen.

In 2000, a wildfire burned one-third of the 580-square-mile (1,502-square-kilometer) Hanford site, which produced plutonium for the U.S. atomic weapons program and is considered the nation’s most radioactive place.

Air monitoring detected plutonium in nearby populated areas at levels higher than background, but only for one day and at levels not considered hazardous, according to a Washington State Department of Health report.

The agency said the plutonium likely was from surface soil blown by the wind during and after the fire, though site officials said radioactive waste is buried several feet deep or stored in concrete structures.

Because the Hanford site is fire-prone — with 130 wildfires between 2012 and 2023 — officials say they’re diligent about cutting fire breaks and removing flammable vegetation.

The 2018 Woolsey Fire in California was another wakeup call.

About 150,000 people live within 5 miles (8 kilometers) of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, a former nuclear power research and rocket-engine testing site.

The fire burned within several hundred feet of contaminated buildings and soil, and about 600 feet (183 meters) from where a nuclear reactor core partially melted down 65 years ago.

The state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control said sampling by multiple agencies found no off-site radiation or other hazardous material attributable to the fire. But another study, using hundreds of samples collected by volunteers, found radioactive microparticles in ash just outside of the lab boundary and at three sites farther away that researchers say were from the fire.

The state ordered demolition of 18 buildings, citing “imminent and substantial endangerment to people and the environment because unanticipated and increasingly likely fires could result in the release of radioactive and hazardous substances.”

It also ordered cleanup of old burn pits contaminated with radioactive materials. Though the area was covered with permeable tarps and did not burn in 2018, the state feared it could be damaged by “far more severe” wildfire, high winds or flooding.

“It’s like these places we think, it’ll never happen,” said Melissa Bumstead, founder and co-director of Parents Against Santa Susana Field Laboratory. “But ... things are changing very quickly.”

Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said he and others successfully urged federal nuclear security officials to include a wildfire plan in a 1999 final environmental impact statement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The next year, the 48,000-acre (19,000-hectare) Cerro Grande Fire burned 7,500 acres (3,035 hectares) at the laboratory, including structures, and came within a half-mile (0.8 kilometers) of an area with more than 24,000 above-ground containers of mostly plutonium-contaminated waste.

The plan’s hypothetical fire “eerily matched the real fire,” Coghlan said, adding that it “could have been catastrophic,” if containers had been compromised and plutonium become airborne. But the lab had cut fire breaks around the area — and since then, most containers have been shipped to a permanent storage site in southern New Mexico.

Remaining radioactive material — including from the World War II Manhattan Project — now is underground with barriers to prevent leaching, or in containers stored under fire-retardant fabric-and-steel domes with paved floors until it can be processed for disposal.

The amount of radioactive material in each container is kept low to prevent a significant release if it were compromised, said Nichole Lundgard, engineering and nuclear safety program manager at DOE contractor N3B.

The lab also emphasizes fire preparedness, including thinning forests to reduce the intensity of future fires, said Rich Nieto, manager of the site’s wildland fire program.

“What used to be a three-month (fire) season, sometimes will be a six-month season,” he said.
___

Wildfires aren’t the only climate-related risk. Flooding from increasingly intense rainstorms can wash away sediment — especially in areas that have burned. Floods and extreme cold also can affect operations and have forced the shutdown of several DOE sites in recent years.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California was evacuated during a 2020 wildfire, and last year the lab was forced to shut down for three weeks because of heavy flooding.

The 2000 fire at Los Alamos was followed by heavy rainstorms that washed away sediment with plutonium and other radioactive material.

In 2010, Pantex was inundated with 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain that forced the plant to shut down, affecting operations for almost a month. The plutonium storage area flooded and corrosion later was found on some containers that’s since “been addressed,” said Armstrong, the field office manager.

In 2017, storms flooded facilities that processed nuclear material and led to power outages that affected a fire alarm control panel.

Then in 2021, Pantex was shut down for a week because of extreme cold that officials said led to “freeze-related failures” at 10 nuclear facilities and other plants. That included failure of a sprinkler head in a radiation safety storage area’s fire suppression system.

Pantex has since adopted freeze-protection measures and a cold weather response plan. And Armstrong says there have been upgrades, including to its fire protection and electrical systems and installation of backup generators.

Other DOE sites also are investing in infrastructure, the nuclear security agency’s Weckerle said, because what once was considered safe now may be vulnerable.

“We live in a time of increased risk,” he said. “That’s just the heart of it (and) ... a lot of that does have to do with climate change.”
___

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.


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University of Michigan clears 50 from pro-Palestinian encampment

Three known arrests, two students confirmed hospitalized.

By Chris Benson

May 21 (UPI) -- Campus authorities on Tuesday cleared about 50 protesters from a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at the University of Michigan early Tuesday morning.

The University of Michigan confirmed that just before 6 a.m. EDT, the school's law enforcement began clearing the encampment on the university's Central Campus Diag.

"The university can and must regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure one group's right to protest does not infringe on the rights of others, endanger our community or disrupt the operations of the university," University of Michigan President Santa Ono said a statement Tuesday morning outlining the school's decision to clear and remove the encampment after nearly a month.

In addition to at least three known arrests, two students were confirmed to be hospitalized, according to the student-lead Tahrir Coalition, who said pepper spray was also involved.

Protestors were then seen on social media rallying at the Washtenaw County government building in Ann Arbor.

Up to 200 protesters reportedly inhabited the encampment in the days and hours before. It was first setup weeks ago on April 22 to demand that the university divest itself from Israeli-backed institutions amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

"Following a May 17 inspection by the university fire marshal, who determined that were a fire to occur, a catastrophic loss of life was likely, the fire marshal and Student Life leaders asked camp occupants to remove external camp barriers, refrain from overloading power sources, and stop using open flames," Ono wrote, saying protestors refused to comply, forcing the university to act.

Michigan state police were reportedly seen on campus around the encampment in recent weeks. But local police in Ann Arbor said they were "not involved with the clearing of protesters on the University of Michigan campus and made no arrests connected to the protest."

The university's public safety officials said their officers issued three verbal warnings over a 15-minute period, "asking the approximately 50 people who were in the encampment to leave voluntarily before being subject to arrest," the department said in a statement.

"In recent days, encampment participants have also received numerous outreach attempts from U-M administrators and DPSS leadership, asking them to leave," they said in a news release before 10 a.m.

"The encampment posed safety risks, both to participants and the community at large, and its presence was in violation of policies and regulations," they said, adding that its removal was important "to help maintain the safety and security of the U-M campus community."

In his letter, Ono noted "the disregard for safety directives was only the latest in a series of troubling events centered on an encampment that has always violated the rules that govern the Diag -- especially the rules that ensure the space is available to everyone."

This fresh encampment removal echoes a series of similar events recently at other American universities or college campuses, like New York's Columbia University, that have been calling for Israeli financial divestments in a pattern that extends back to South Africa's apartheid.

But divesting from Israel poses challenges in Michigan since the state has a law prohibiting state contracts with anyone who supports divesting from or boycotting Israel. In Michigan, a 1983 law did call for the state's higher learning institutions to divest from South African-based investments which got initial pushback from the University of Michigan

"Moving forward, individuals will be welcome to protest as they always have at the University of Michigan, so long as those protests don't violate the rights of others and are consistent with university policies meant to ensure the safety of our community," Ono's letter says.

"To be clear, there is no place for violence or intimidation at the University of Michigan. Such behavior will not be tolerated, and individuals will be held accountable."

Petrochemical company fined more than $30 million for 2019 explosions near Houston


 Smoke from an explosion at the TPC Group plant is seen Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2019, in Port Neches, Texas. The Texas petrochemical company has pleaded guilty to a violation of the Clean Air Act and has agreed to pay more than $30 million related to two explosions in 2019 at their facility in Port Neches, which caused the evacuation of thousands and injured workers, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday, May 21, 2024.

 (Marie D. De Jesús//Houston Chronicle via AP, File)

, May 21, 2024

BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) — A Texas petrochemical company has pleaded guilty to a violation of the Clean Air Act and agreed to pay more than $30 million in connection with two explosions that injured workers and caused the evacuation of thousands, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday.

The explosions at a TPC Group plant in the coastal city of Port Neches the day before Thanksgiving 2019 prompted the evacuation of more than 50,000 people from the area, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Houston.

Those explosions released more than 11 million pounds of extremely hazardous substances and caused more than $130 million in offsite property damage and other impacts to human health and the environment, according to a news release from the DOJ.

“TPC Group sincerely regrets the damage and disruption caused by the November 2019 incident at our Port Neches facility,” the company said via a statement on Tuesday. “Since the event, TPC Group has cooperated fully with all federal, state, and local investigations.”
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The company entered into a plea deal with the government on Monday and agreed to pay over $30 million in criminal fines and civil penalties. The plan also includes spending about $80 million to improve its risk management program and improve safety issues at TPC Group’s Port Neches and Houston facilities.

“Today’s guilty plea shows that businesses that choose to place profits over safeguards and legal compliance will face serious consequences,” said U.S. Attorney Damien M. Diggs for the Eastern District of Texas.

Caterpillar to pay $800K to settle discrimination charge with Labor Dept.

By Clyde Hughes

May 21 (UPI) -- Caterpillar has agreed to pay $800,000 in back wages and interest to settle an alleged systemic hiring discrimination charge involving 60 Black applicants who sought work at its facility in Decatur, Ill., the Labor Department said Tuesday.

The department said that during a routine compliance review by its Office of the Federal Compliance Programs found that the heavy equipment manufacturer discriminated against Blacks who applied for fabrication specialist/welder positions at the Decatur facility from March 30, 2018, to March 30, 2020.

The conciliation agreement guaranteed that Caterpillar will provide training about discriminatory practices to all managers, supervisors and other company officials who oversee hiring decisions.

"Over the past 58 years, OFCCP has helped define and defend equal employment opportunities in the American workplace," Michelle Hodge, acting director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in a statement.

"Companies that accept federal contracts must monitor their hiring processes to ensure applicants are not rejected based on unlawful practices."

Carmen Navarro, regional director of the OFCCP's Chicago office, said the resolution of its conflict with Caterpillar is an example of its efforts to address discrimination issues with companies receiving government contracts.

Since 2018, Caterpillar has signed federal contracts totaling $481 million to provide machinery to the U.S. Army.

"This agreement provides meaningful compensation and job opportunities to affected individuals and aims to ensure that all applicants, irrespective of their race, are considered equally for employment."

According to its website, Caterpillar's sales and revenue reached $67.1 billion in 2023 as the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, and industrial gas turbines.

Torturers deployed as UN peacekeepers

Naomi Conrad | Arafatul Islam | Birgitta Schülke

DW

MAY 21, 2024




Bangladesh and Sri Lanka sent officers implicated in torture and killings as UN peacekeepers, DW, Netra News, and Süddeutsche Zeitung reveal in a new investigation. And the UN is seemingly turning a blind eye.

At first glance, the photo is an innocuous one: Taken on a sunny day in 2022, a cheerful group of twelve men and women are huddled together, posing for a selfie. They’re all dressed in military fatigues — their badges identify them as Egyptian, Indonesian and Bangladeshi officers. One man is wearing the light blue beret of a UN peacekeeper: The group has just finished their induction course for their stint at MONUSCO, the UN's mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Innocuous, that is, but for a bald man with glasses in the center of the photo; his arm casually draped around the shoulder of an Indonesian officer. A military source shared the picture pulled from social media with DW, Sweden-based investigative outlet Netra News, and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Before the officer was deployed to the UN mission, he was deputy director of the Intelligence Wing of an elite force in Bangladesh: The Rapid Action Battalion, RAB.


The force, made up of Bangladesh’s police and military, was set up in 2004 with the support of the US and others to fight terrorism and violent crime. But its brutally efficient methods meant it was soon mired in accusations of wide-spread human rights violations, leading its former backer, the US, to impose sanctions on RAB in 2021.

In an investigation published last year, DW and Netra News revealed that RAB commits torture, murder, and abductions – and goes to great lengths to cover up its crimes. Its targets: alleged criminals, opposition activists, and human rights defenders.

Its members seemingly operate with complicity from the highest political level in Bangladesh, according to two whistleblowers. A claim the government rejected as "baseless and untrue."

RAB was set up with the initial support of the US and others to fight crime and terrorism.

Image: Netra News

RAB members sent to UN missions

A year after those revelations, DW, Netra News and Süddeutsche Zeitung can reveal that members of this infamous unit are seemingly being sent on peacekeeping missions: The deputy intelligence chief turned peacekeeper was not, we found, the only man who came from the group that several of our sources referred to as "death squad."

For months, DW and its partners conducted interviews with military and UN sources in Bangladesh and beyond; trawled through classified military files, deployment lists and painstakingly identified officers through Flickr, LinkedIn and Facebook.

One man's UN deployment was corroborated with the help of his daily running routes uploaded on a jogging app: for months, the avid jogger ran around Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, the seat of the UN's MINUSCA mission. In another picture, he posed for a selfie outside RAB's headquarters in Dhaka.
Two deputy heads of unit that runs torture cells among the peacekeepers

We found more than 100 RAB officers who went on peacekeeping missions, 40 of them within the last five years alone.

Three men worked for RAB's Intelligence Wing.

Image: DW

While we don’t have evidence that every single officer was implicated in crimes, at least three of them — Nayeem A., Hasan T. and Masud R. — worked for RAB's infamous Intelligence Wing, two as deputy directors. According to several sources, it is this unit that runs a secret network of torture cells across Bangladesh, some of them located in safe houses, others hidden deep inside RAB’s compounds. Survivors and military sources told DW and Netra News of beatings, mock executions, waterboarding and electric shocks.

"We have all the available tools," one former member of RAB explained. One particularly brutal method he witnessed was to place a detainee inside a container and heat it from below. "At some point the temperature is untenable," and the detainee, he said matter-of-factly, "would speak up."

The torture cells, another source said agreed, are "where they get information from civilians."

A source in RAB told DW, Netra News and Süddeutsche Zeitung that both of the two deputy directors were implicated in crimes, such as torture and executions.

While the claim cannot be corroborated independently, several other sources confirmed that it was likely that deputy directors with command responsibility would have signed off on what was happening in the torture cells, or at the very least known what was happening.

And yet, they were later tasked, as peacekeepers, to protect vulnerable civilian communities. The idea of peacekeeping was born after the Second World War: a force at the behest of the international community made up of soldiers and police officers drawn from the UN's member states, sent by the Security Council when governments fail and countries descend into turmoil.

Currently, tens of thousands of peacekeepers are deployed globally, in conflicts and crises ranging from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and the Central African Republic to Kosovo and Kashmir.

Despite these lofty ideals, peacekeeping operations, individual soldiers and entire contingents have over the years been embroiled in scandals, which the UN has always been swift to condemn. Critics say peacekeeping missions have been ineffective, while those defending peacekeeping say they have saved countless lives.

In 2012, after several sexual abuse scandals by peacekeepers made headlines, most notably of children in Haiti, the UN implemented a new human rights policy for its personnel.

Up to 'abusive government' to vet peacekeepers

While troop contributing countries generally continue to select and vet the military personnel they send to missions with the exception of Force Commanders and their deputies, they now have to attest for each soldier that they have not committed or are alleged to have committed any human rights violations.

In the case of Bangladesh, that means that "they are asking an abusive government to then decide which officers are abusive or not," Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy director for South Asia at Human Rights Watch said in a phone call.

Bangladesh's government, Ganguly explained, "does not seem to believe that people that commit human rights violations need to be prosecuted and held to account.” Indeed, few members of RAB have ever been prosecuted.

And that is why she, together with several other human rights organizations, both Bangladeshi and international, has long called for RAB to be banned entirely from peacekeeping operations.

They are not the only ones to sound a warning: In August 2019, the Committee against Torture, a UN body made up of independent experts that monitor human rights in UN member states, published its report on Bangladesh.

Its authors voiced concern at "numerous reports" of cases in which members of RAB "have been credibly alleged to have committed torture, arbitrary arrests, unacknowledged detention, disappearances and extrajudicial killings of persons in their custody."

'Grave concern'

One of the report's authors is Jens Modvig, a medical doctor who runs Dignity, the Danish Institute Against Torture, an NGO housed in an unassuming office block in Copenhagen.

While making coffee in the organization's small kitchen, he recalled the experts’ "grave concern" at the reports of human rights abuses by Bangladesh's security forces. It was a term, he said, they had "not used lightly."

The Committee's recommendations, Modvig said, "was that former and current members of RAB should not be allowed to do service in peacekeeping operations."

And yet, our investigation shows nothing happened.

DW, Netra News and Süddeutsche Zeitung sent several requests for an on-camera interview to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. They were declined.

Instead, the UN agreed to respond in writing to the findings: "We do not have", a spokesperson wrote, "the resources to screen each and every person and have a long-standing policy that places specific responsibility on troop and police contributing countries."

In the case of Bangladesh, the spokesman went on, UN Peacekeeping "has continuously engaged bilaterally with national authorities to convey concerns about serious allegations of human rights violations by defense and security forces, in particular by members of RAB".

What does the departure of German troops mean for Mali?

UN susceptible to blackmail?

We did eventually find one man willing to go on-the-record: Andrew Gilmour, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights. Today, he heads the Berghof Foundation in Berlin that advocates for global peace: a-long-time UN diplomat, who, he said, picks his jackets according to an interview’s topic and mood.

For a story about peacekeeping and human rights abuses, he donned a somber blue.

If he was still in the UN, he said, "I probably wouldn't be able to be this frank and to say we get some really pretty useless troops and some pretty brutal ones as well."

Bangladesh, he concluded, was far from a unique case: "It is not the first time that member states have put forward people with bad human rights records to serve in their battalions that they assign to the UN." At times, he said, "it can be entire contingents that were implicated in some action, repressing people in their own country, for example, and other times it is individuals."

He stressed repeatedly that the UN was doing its best to prevent that from happening.

But he conceded, if the UN pushed countries too hard, there was a risk they might threaten to pull out their troops entirely. It was "pretty hard to do something about if the government of that member state is insisting on putting forward a contingent or an individual."

In one case, he recalled, "one country that was really important in contributing troops to a number of peacekeeping operations literally said, OK, we're going to pull out all together." And so, he explained, the UN's Secretary General at the time "had to basically go to that country and essentially apologize to the head of state."

Otherwise, four UN peacekeeping operations would have collapsed, Gilmour said.

Western countries play a smaller role in peacekeeping than they once did.

Image: IMAGO/ABACAPRESS

His testimony seemed to point to one thing: that when it comes to peacekeepers, the UN is seemingly susceptible to blackmail.

A UN source agreed: at even the slightest hint of criticism, officials in Bangladesh — one the UN’s major troop contributors — threatened to withdraw their troops. As of March of this year, about 6,000 Bangladeshi peacekeepers were actively deployed worldwide.

It's unclear, however, whether Bangladesh would actually go through with this threat and thus lose access to UN missions, which are lucrative both for individual soldiers and the countries deploying them.

According to government officials, Bangladesh has received more than 2.5 billion USD over the past 23 years. Individual peacekeepers receive a higher salary than they would back home.

The spokesperson for UN Peacekeeping rejected the claim that the UN is seemingly powerless when faced with threats: "The largest troop contributor at the moment contributes less than 10% of the 65,000 personnel deployed. Therefore, no single troop contributor can credibly threaten to undermine the viability of a peacekeeping operation by withdrawing all of their forces".

UN's hands seemingly tied

There is a reason why, according to Gilmour, the UN's hands are seemingly tied. When he was "very, very young," the majority of UN peacekeepers came from places like Sweden and Ireland, he explained.

But over the years, as the Cold War drew to a close in the early 1990s, faced with deadlier missions, Western governments increasingly started to pull their troops out of peacekeeping operations, preferring to pay for them instead.

Democratic governments had to weigh whether they could pay a certain blood toll, according to a political source from a western European country with inside knowledge of the workings of the UN. If soldiers deployed to UN missions returned in body bags, he explained, their governments could soon have a parliamentary inquiry on their hands.

How the elite force RAB terrorizes the people of Bangladesh 28:30

 

 

That, he added, was not a problem countries like Bangladesh had to deal with. At the same time, he conceded that UN peacekeeping missions were lucrative for both individual soldiers and governments to fill their coffers.

Argentinian film workers rally in Cannes as President Milei takes chainsaw to movie industry

Argentina’s Oscar-winning movie industry is battling for survival as President Javier Milei applies his “chainsaw” approach to budget cuts to the country's cultural sector. At the Cannes Film Festival, where several movies from Argentina are on show, the country’s film workers are determined to get their message across, both on and off the screen.


Issued on: 21/05/2024 -

Argentinian film workers rally at the Cannes Film Festival against President Javier Milei's move to defund the country's film industry.

 © David Rich, FRANCE 24

By:David RICH|Benjamin DODMAN

Cinema’s glitzy Riviera gathering is often described as a celebrity bubble, but politics and activism are never far away.

This year’s edition has already made festival history with a series of protests against sex abuse in cinema, on the heels of a belated #MeToo reckoning that has swept France’s film industry. The wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East have also been frequent topics of discussion, though festival organisers have been at pains to avoid any red-carpet protests.

Read more‘Wind of revolt’ sweeps French cinema in belated #MeToo reckoning

On Monday night, the spotlight fell on the upcoming US presidential election with the red-carpet premiere of Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice”, which traces Donald Trump’s rise as an ambitious young property developer in 1970s and '80s New York under the sinister mentorship of cutthroat attorney Roy Cohn.

A spokesman for Trump described the film as “garbage” and “election interference by Hollywood elites”, threatening legal action, though some film critics in Cannes found it surprisingly lenient with the tycoon former president.

A still from "The Apprentic", starring Sebastian Stan (right) as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as his mentor Roy Cohn. © Courtesy of Tailored Films

Cinema’s “liberal elites” are a frequent target of Argentina’s Trump-admiring leader Javier Milei, whose crippling budget cuts were the focus of another protest earlier in the festival, part of the Argentinian film industry’s efforts to raise awareness of its plight under the self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” president.

On Sunday, about a hundred Argentinian film workers rallied in Cannes to denounce Milei’s policies of defunding film industry and the wider cultural sector.

“The current government has embarked on a crusade against culture, science and education,” said Argentinian film producer Clara Massot. “And it seems to be relishing this demolition of the cultural sector.”

She accused the government of stripping Argentina “of its very identity by attacking an industry that is a vital source of jobs for tens of thousands of Argentinian households”.

Film industry on hold

A champion of the radical right, Milei has set in motion the “fiscal shock” promised in his inaugural speech to drag Argentina out of the economic crisis it has been experiencing in recent years. His “chainsaw” approach to budget cuts has plunged the country into austerity, gutting social benefit schemes, squeezing state education budgets and slashing cultural subsidies.

On March 11, Milei’s government announced drastic spending cuts for the film industry, including an end to state support for festivals. The world-famous Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Argentina’s biggest annual film gathering, must now rely on private funding to survive.

Milei’s plans to defund Argentina’s National Institute of Film and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA) also jeopardises Argentina’s leading film school, ENERC, where it is unclear whether classes will resume at the start of the next academic year. Also at risk is the Ventana Sur film and television market, a partner of the Cannes Film Market, which is reportedly considering a move to neighbouring Uruguay.

“Everything is suspended right now and we don’t know what will happen next,” said producer Nicolas Avruj, who helped organise the Cannes protest. “We’ve become a punching ball [for the government],” he added.

“The aim is not to kill us off right away but to bleed us dry.”

Argentinian film producers Nicolas Avruj and Clara Massot attend a rally in support of the country's film industry in Cannes. 

© David Rich, FRANCE 24

Milei himself has said the country must choose between “funding movies that nobody watches” and “feeding people”. Film workers counter that defunding their industry will only increase unemployment, pushing more families into poverty.

While Massot acknowledged the depth of Argentina’s current economic crisis, she described the government’s squeeze on the film industry as a “false remedy”. She noted that France’s national film institute, the CNC, was set up in the wake of World War II, when the country was broke.

“This supposed antagonism between culture and the economy, where we have to choose one or the other – it’s a lie,” she said.
‘Filmmaking will become a rich man’s sport’

The crisis roiling Argentina’s film industry has resulted in a diminished presence at Cannes this year. There is no Argentinian Pavilion on the palm tree-lined Croisette, the town’s iconic seaside boulevard, and no INCAA stand at the festival’s sprawling Film Market.

But the likes of Massot and Avruj are determined to get their message across at the world’s largest movie gathering, rallying under the banner “Cine Argentino Unido” ("Argentine Cinema United").

03:35"Rumours" at Cannes: Cate Blanchett speaks to FRANCE 24 (2024) 

© France 24 (Juliette Montilly)

Cannes is showcasing seven movies from Argentina this year, all of them screened in the festival’s parallel segments separate from the flagship Palme d’Or race. Some of the films shed light on the social and economic crisis that has precipitated the rise of Milei’s far right.

In the Directors’ Fortnight, Hernan Rosselli’s comedy, “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed” explored Argentina’s shadow economy, following a family of bookmakers in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. In the Critics’ Week sidebar, director Frédéric Luis focused on the discrimination suffered by people with disabilities in his “Simon de la montaña” ("Simon of the Mountain"). Meanwhile, Augustina Sanchez’s short film “Nuestra sombra” ("Our Own Shadow") tackled the human cost of deforestation in the country’s rural northeast.

Over in the ACID (independent film association) section dedicated to emerging talent, 36-year-old Iair Said won plaudits for his feature-length fiction debut “Most People Die on Sundays”, about a gay, middle-class Jew from Buenos Aires who returns from studying abroad to attend his uncle’s funeral. Played by the director himself, the endearingly clumsy protagonist struggles to find his place as he grapples with an ageing mother and a comatose father kept alive by an artificial respirator.

A still from Iair Said's "Most men die on Sundays". 

© Courtesy of Campo Cine

Inspired by Said’s own experience, “Most People Die on Sundays” exposes the prohibitive cost of funerals in the crisis-stricken Latin American country.

“When my father died, we had to pay $10,000 to bury him in a Jewish cemetery. It took us two and a half years to pay that amount,” said the filmmaker, who also voiced his concern about the future of Argentina’s film industry.

“Because of these reforms, far fewer people will have the opportunity to make films. Without public funding, it will become a rich man’s sport,” he said, adding that reliance on public funding would put the industry on a “dangerous path” to curtailing artistic freedom.

“I am not optimistic about the future of Argentinian cinema,” he said. “But we have to resist and find ways to continue telling our stories, hoping that this is only a bad patch we are going through.”

Half of mangrove ecosystems at risk: conservationist's

Geneva (AFP) – Half of the world's mangrove ecosystems are at risk of collapse due to climate change, deforestation and pollution, according to a study published Wednesday.

Issued on: 22/05/2024

A man plants mangroves at a beach at Pekan Bada, Indonesia's Aceh province 

© CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN / AFP/File

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), known for its red list of threatened species, has for the first time taken stock of the world's mangroves, evaluating 36 different regions.

IUCN director general Grethel Aguilar said the assessment "highlights the urgent need for coordinated conservation of mangroves -- crucial habitats for millions in vulnerable communities worldwide".

Mangroves are trees or shrubs that grow mainly in seawater or brackish water along coastlines and tidal rivers, in equatorial climes.

Released on the International Day for Biodiversity, IUCN said its findings show that "50 percent of the mangrove ecosystems assessed are at risk of collapse" -- categorised as either vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.

According to the assessment, 20 percent were at severe risk of collapse.

Half of mangroves at risk of collapse © Julia Han JANICKI, Valentina BRESCHI / AFP

Mangroves are threatened by deforestation, development, pollution, and dam construction.

However, the risk is increasing due to sea-level rise and the greater frequency of severe storms associated with climate change.

Around 15 percent of the world's coasts are covered by mangroves, covering about 150,000 square kilometres.

Disastrous disappearance

Climate change threatens a third of mangrove ecosystems assessed, due to rising sea levels.

According to estimates, at the current rate, a quarter of the global area of mangroves is expected to be submerged in the next 50 years, IUCN said.

The northwest Atlantic Ocean, the northern Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the South China Sea, and the Gulf of Aden coasts are expected to be particularly severely affected.

"Mangrove ecosystems are exceptional in their ability to provide essential services to people, including coastal disaster risk reduction, carbon storage and sequestration, and support for fisheries," said Angela Andrade, chair of the IUCN commission on ecosystem management.

A plastic bottle and rubbish are seen near mangrove trees during the World Mangrove Day in Banda Aceh on July 26, 2023 

© CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN / AFP/File

"Their loss stands to be disastrous for nature and people across the globe."

The study said looking after mangroves was essential for mitigating the effects of climate change, with healthy ecosystems coping better with sea level rise and providing inland protection from the effects of severe storms.

Without significant improvement by 2050, climate change and rising sea levels will lead to the loss of 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon stored in mangroves.

Mangroves currently store nearly 11 billion tons of carbon -- almost three times the amount of carbon stored by tropical forests of the same size.

Maintaining good sediment circulation and allowing mangroves to expand inland will help them cope with sea level rise, IUCN said. It also called for the restoration of mangroves which have already disappeared.

"A very good study of mangrove change globally that was published in 2022 indicates about 5,000 square kilometres of mangrove were lost" between 1996 and 2020, IUCN's Marco Valderrabano told AFP.

© 2024 AFP