Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Electrifying time-lapse image captures 100 lightning bolts torching the sky over Turkey

Harry Baker
Tue, June 20, 2023 

Hundreds of lightning bolts illuminate the night sky during thunderstorm

A photographer has captured a striking time-lapse photo of more than 100 individual lightning bolts during a fierce thunderstorm in Turkey.

Astrophotographer Uğur İkizler created the electrifying image by combining shots of the sky near his home in the coastal town of Mudanya. The individual images were collected over a 50-minute period around midnight on June 16 — meaning that, on average, there was a lightning strike every 30 seconds.

"Each and every one of them is beautiful, but when I combined all the lightning bolts into a single frame, it was a frightening sight," İkizler told Live Science in an email. The thunderstorm was a "magnificent visual feast," he added.


At least three different types of lightning are visible in the image — cloud-to-cloud, where the bolt begins and ends in the clouds; cloud-to-ground, where the bolt hits the ground; and cloud-to-water, where the bolts hit the water instead of land, according to Spaceweather.com.

Related: What's the longest lightning bolt ever recorded?

It is not uncommon for there to be so many lightning strikes during a single thunderstorm. Globally, there are 1.4 billion lightning strikes every year, or around 3 million every day. That works out as 44 lightning bolts every second, according to the U.K. Met Office.

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Each individual bolt likely has a voltage somewhere between 100 million and 1 billion volts, as well as billions of amps in current. This much energy can raise the temperature of the surrounding air by between 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit (10,000 degrees Celsius) and 60,000 F (33,000 C), according to the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA). (For context, the sun's surface only reaches 10,000 F (5,500 C), according to Live Science's sister site Space.com.)

The new image shows off the iconic zigzag shape of lightning bolts. Researchers are not exactly sure what causes these crooked shapes, but a 2022 study suggested that the characteristic patterns are caused by a highly conductive form of oxygen that builds up irregularly as the bolt travels toward the ground.
Unlocking Climate Trillions With a Global Plan From a Sinking Island

Akshat Rathi
Tue, June 20, 2023





(Bloomberg) -- A financial official from an island that’s among the world’s most vulnerable to global warming has a plan to quickly increase the amount spent on climate solutions in developing nations. And his plan requires little additional spending by rich countries.

“If you focus only on grants, only on people transferring money to you, you’re never gonna get the scale we need to save the planet," says Avinash Persaud, a Barbados-born, UK-raised development economist who was previously a banker in the City of London. His target for spending on emissions-reducing projects alone by developing countries is about $1.5 trillion per year — or seven times the sum rich countries currently give in overseas development aid for all causes, including health and poverty reduction.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg Green, the impatient 56-year-old who serves as the financial adviser to Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley explained that the obstacle is better understood not as the lack of money but how to adjust the rules of global capitalism to end the prevailing climate-finance deadlock.

“The problem is that everyone believes someone else should be doing more. Why? Because it’s a cost to them to do it,” Persaud says. “So if we can reduce the cost for them, they won’t spend their time pointing their finger at someone else — they will get it done.”

His proposals — under the Bridgetown 2.0 agenda — face enormous challenges that could prevent implementation. But they’re being taken seriously. A summit in Paris this week will bring together the heads of government from more than 100 countries to grapple with financial scarcity as the single-biggest impediment to climate action. Bridgetown solutions — devised by Persaud’s team and championed by Mottley, who is co-hosting the event alongside French President Emmanuel Macron — will take the spotlight across two days of meetings about how to reform the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral lenders.

How did political players from a small-island nation end up at the center of a longshot push to rewire global finance for the climate era? It helps that Mottley’s star-turn speeches at United Nations podiums tend to get far more views on YouTube than the population of Barbados. Her speech at COP26, for example, has been watched more than every other speech by every world leader that year — combined.

But Mottley hasn't been relying on her speechmaking prowess or her moral stature as the face of an island with extraordinary vulnerability to rising seas and violent storms. She’s also been pulling political levers by fronting practical solutions that are designed to unlock trillions of dollars in private spending for dealing with climate change. That program has been assembled by Persaud, whom she first met while studying at the London School of Economics.

Under the original Bridgetown Initiative, named after the capital of Barbados, Persaud first pitched an ambitious set of solutions to the climate-finance deadlock last year. Those proposals, aimed chiefly at reforming the IMF and World Bank, failed to gain the backing needed for policy changes within giant institutions mostly controlled by a small group of wealthy nations. But his ideas — helped by Mottley’s speeches and diplomatic acumen — succeeded in capturing outsized attention.

Now Persaud is back with Bridgetown 2.0, a brief policy document that has been circulating in its current form among climate diplomats since April but hasn’t been previously reported in full. He hopes to bring to his cause some of the leaders gathering in Paris for this week’s meeting, known as the New Global Financing Pact. The summit is expected to draw the likes of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the leaders of the IMF and World Bank. (Bloomberg Philanthropies is one of the summit’s official sponsors.)

Persaud’s ideas are specific and pragmatic, even if their political feasibility remains largely untested. The new Bridgetown plan is “comprehensive and very ambitious,” said Frank Schroeder, senior policy advisor on global finance and economics at E3G, an environmental think tank.

Bridgetown 2.0 aims to create currency exchange guarantees, add disaster clauses to debt deals and tweak the rules to enable much greater lending from multilateral lenders. Another proposal would enact a levy on emissions from the shipping industry or impose a fee on oil exports. Doing these things would be difficult, Persaud admits, but can unleash trillions of dollars in finance without simply relying on calls for increased aid from wealthy nations.

Those calls, no matter how righteous, have a way of going unfulfilled — particularly when the rationale is global warming. Developed nations first agreed to muster $100 billion per year in climate finance payments to developing countries back in 2009 and have yet to fulfill that goal. Unmet financial promises often lead to breakdowns in climate talks, such as the preliminary UN meeting last week in Germany that concluded last week without significant progress. Finance will also play a prominent role in the year-end COP28 climate summit that will be held in Dubai.

From Persaud’s point of view, fixes for climate finance need to be sorted in three financial buckets. Into the smallest bucket goes that $100 billion per year of promised grants that cover mounting damages to life and property wrought by climate change. Persaud witnessed first-hand why large grants are necessary when he examined the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017 on the island state of Dominica, a neighbor to Barbados. A single storm led to losses valued at more than 200% of the country’s gross domestic product.

“These are for people who do not have any resources,” he says. “Insurance companies are not going to insure them. Countries can’t borrow for this, so we need grants.”

The smallest bucket is still a lot of money. All the overseas development aid from rich countries each year accounts for $200 billion, and it goes for every cause from health care to poverty reduction. Persaud acknowledges that there’s no way those countries are going to increase that aid by 50% just to address climate impacts.

Instead, he champions a proposal to tax shipping’s carbon emissions that could help toward the $100 billion fund. The International Maritime Organization will debate such a tax next week when it meets in London. Another funding option he’s suggested would be a small fee on oil exports, which could be modeled on an existing polluter-pays model that’s used for oil spills.

Persaud’s second bucket would need to be filled with about $300 billion. This is money that governments ought to be able to borrow, because the cost-savings from spending it on protective infrastructure should be manifestly clear. “All very unglamourous stuff but very important,” he says of such spending on climate defenses. “You don’t make money from having a seawall,” he offers by way of an example, “but you save money from all the times that the capital city is not flooded because you’ve got a new seawall.”

Lending to pay for seawalls, early-warning systems for extreme weather events, or action plans during heat waves can come from multilateral development banks. These institutions, however, are currently under some of the same constraints as private banks. They all need a certain amount of money in reserve to ensure they can repay the bonds that raise the capital they lend to countries.

Persaud and many other economists argue that lending institutions backed by sovereign governments are not like other private banks. The reality of their government backing should make it possible to lend a lot more money against the limited reserve they already have; Persaud thinks this increase in lending could be hundreds of billions of dollars more each year.

There’s currently a review happening that would allow the World Bank to retain its AAA credit rating while starting to lend more money. The odds of a dramatic change are long. “No one’s going to fully implement it,” said Karen Mathiasen, project director with the Center for Global Development and who previously served as acting US executive director at the World Bank. “But the review is underway.”

Persaud’s final Bridgetown 2.0 bucket, and by far the largest, already has about $1 trillion — and needs an additional $1.5 trillion, according to a group of UN-backed experts. Most of this is invested in clean-energy projects, such as building a solar farm, that generate real returns. It’s the type of money that should be attractive to private investors in rich countries because it’s actually profitable.

But for all the evidence that solar and wind are the cheapest sources of power, there’s still not enough capital flowing into these green transition projects in developing countries. Persaud took a deep dive into the costs of renewable energy projects in developing countries and compared them to those in developed countries. He concluded that supply-chain troubles and difficulties in execution presented smaller obstacles for investors than something that would seem relatively trivial: currency-exchange rates.

When foreign investors back green energy projects in developing countries, they’re doing two things. First, they’re using their dollars, pounds or euros to buy reals, pesos or rupees, and then they’re using that local currency to take a stake in a local project. When they want to cash out, they do the reverse. The project might be profitable, but if the value of the local currency depreciates, it eats away at the gains.

To guard against these currency risks, many emerging-markets investors, in projects green and otherwise, pay for currency hedges. Those instruments are also expensive. Persaud, who used to trade emerging-markets currencies in his finance career, says investors often overpay for hedges. The currency risk adds a layer of cost and complication, both of which deter otherwise willing investors.

That’s why Bridgetown 2.0 calls for the World Bank and IMF to offer a solution by backing a separate agency designed to reduce the cost of hedging for investors. The multilateral lenders can do so in the form of currency-exchange guarantees and thus trim off the “overpayment” that’s currently made in the open market. In turn, that would boost the return on clean-energy projects and make many more of them bankable.

Persaud’s estimation is that a facility with $100 billion to offer in such guarantees could unlock an additional $1.5 trillion in annual spending on clean energy in the developing world. But not everyone is convinced it will work. “Using scarce aid money on derisking or juicing up returns for the private sector has failed to generate the promised catalytic effect in all but a handful of instances,” said Sony Kapoor, professor of climate, geoeconomics and finance at the European University Institute.

But the world also cannot wait for perfect solutions. “If the global south is serious about changing the conditions under which we operate, removing the imperial shadow, looking for a fair deal with respect to access to finance,” Mottley said on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the African Export-Import Bank in Accra, Ghana on Tuesday, “then I believe that it is possible to shift together.”

The goal of this week’s Paris summit is to create a new accord between rich and poor countries, helping them deal with not just climate change but also rising inequality and loss of biodiversity. It’s happening at a time when, following the economic impacts of the pandemic, more than 50 countries are in distress because of extremely burdensome debt payments. But Persaud’s ideas are also getting attention now because the reform of the World Bank and IMF has become a strategic benefit to Europe and the US. It’s potentially a way to counter China’s growing economic influence. Beijing is now the biggest lender to many developing countries.

But that doesn’t mean the Paris meeting is likely to result in immediate changes. Instead, it could produce a list of clear targets and perhaps timelines that will be endorsed by the world leaders attending. “The momentum for change is growing,” said E3G’s Schroeder.

The annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in October in Morocco could be the first chance to secure the votes needed. What’s clear now is that changes to the global financial system are necessary, but they won’t work if the fixes are on the margins.

“The system is broken,” says Persaud. “If it’s not fixed, it will just be brushed away as irrelevant.”

--With assistance from Oscar Boyd, Ekow Dontoh and Eric Martin.

Bloomberg Businessweek

Explainer-What is the 'Bridgetown Initiative' asking for at Paris financial summit?


Reuters
Mon, June 19, 2023

FILE PHOTO: The IMF logo is seen outside the headquarters building in Washington


PARIS (Reuters) - President Macron hosts a summit in Paris this week to discuss reform of the world's multilateral finance institutions in the face of climate change and other development challenges.

A key topic of discussion will be suggestions from a group of developing countries, led by Barbados, dubbed the 'Bridgetown Initiative'.

The key demands of the Bridgetown Initiative are:

LIQUIDITY SUPPORT

U.N. member states should fast-track the transfer of $100 billion in so-called 'Special Drawing Rights', a monetary reserve currency, to programmes that support climate resilience and subsidise lending to low-income countries.

The International Monetary Fund should also immediately suspend surcharges - additional interest payments imposed on heavily indebted borrowing countries - for two to three years.

It should also restore "enhanced access limits" established during the COVID pandemic for two emergency financial support instruments, the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) and Rapid Financing Instruments.

DEBT SUSTAINABILITY

G20 creditor countries should redesign their Common Framework for restructuring the debt of poor countries in default, notably by speeding up debt relief talks and allowing middle-income countries to access it.

The IMF should encourage the restructuring of unsustainable debt in a way that is consistent across countries, and change the way it analyses the debt to incentivise investments that create future savings, such as those for climate adaptation.

Public and private creditors should include disaster clauses in lending deals to allow countries to divert debt payments to disaster relief; and refinance high-interest and short-term debt with credit guarantees and longer maturities.

U.N. member states should agree to raise $100 billion a year for a fund to help pay for the climate-related loss and damage suffered by developing countries.

PRIVATE CAPITAL

The IMF and multilateral development banks should offer $100 billion a year in currency risk guarantees to help drive private sector investment in projects that would help developing countries make the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Connected to that, they should also expand their support to countries to help them create a pipeline of investable projects, and make greater use of blended finance and other structures where public lenders take on more project risk.

DEVELOPMENT LENDING


The G20 and other shareholders of the World Bank, IMF and development institutions should fully implement the 2022 recommendations of a panel of experts aimed at boosting lending by the multilateral development banks.

They should commit an extra $100 billion a year in fresh capital to the various institutions and move the Special Drawing Rights capital to multilateral development banks, starting with the African Development Bank by September 2023.

Increase the leveraging of the World Bank's International Development Association, which provides concessional finance; fully fund its emergency support facility to $6 billion by end-2023; and scale up the IDA's funding to $279 billion.

Raise the access limits to concessional finance through the Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust and the Resilience & Sustainability Trust.

Assess funding eligibility in light of a country's vulnerability and provide low-cost, 50-year loans to help them invest in areas including climate resilience, water security, pandemic preparedness and access to renewable energy.

Simplify and harmonise the way countries can apply to access loans across the world, and provide more support in the process. The international financial institutions should also finance development plans that help protect shared resources.

TRADING

Groups such as the World Trade Organisation and other major trading partners should work with governments to strengthen supply chains to make them more resilient, ensure they benefit countries that produce raw materials and protect the vulnerable.

GOVERNANCE

The governmental shareholders of International Financial Institutions should change the way they are structured and run - largely by richer nations in the Global North - to make them more "inclusive and equitable".

(Reporting by Simon Jessop and Leigh Thomas; Editing by Christina Fincher)
World well short of pace needed to meet UN's 2030 sustainable development goals





 Somalis, who have been displaced due to drought, settle at a camp on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia, Sept. 19, 2022. The world is falling well short of the progress needed to meet the United Nations’ sustainable development goals by 2030 in areas ranging from poverty to clean energy to biodiversity, according to a report Tuesday, June 20, 2023, from the nonprofit tracking the goals. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
MELINA WALLING
Tue, June 20, 2023

The world is falling well short of the progress needed to meet the United Nations' sustainable development goals by 2030 in areas ranging from poverty to clean energy to biodiversity, with a growing gap between wealthy and developing nations, according to a report Tuesday from the nonprofit tracking the goals.

The coronavirus pandemic stalled the limited progress made in the years after United Nations member states adopted the goals in 2015. Now, halfway through the 15-year time frame, not a single one of the goals is on target to be met.

“We're at the risk of a lost decade for sustainable development,” said Guillaume Lafortune, a lead author of the report and vice president and head of the Paris office of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the nonprofit launched by the UN to foster and track sustainable development. “And there’s actually a risk that the gap between rich and poor countries on sustainable development might be bigger in 2030 than it was in 2015.”

The goals, which the authors described as “an ethical imperative,” cover a range of areas, including threats to the climate and environment but also basic human rights such as food, health and education.

The authors noted that goals for reducing hunger, improving health and protecting biodiversity are particularly off-track. They said changing global governance mechanisms and global finance architecture are critical for improving progress on all the goals.

Lafortune pointed to the global finance summit that opens Thursday in Paris as an important moment for the world. A main focus of the summit is how international finance can be reformed to help the developing nations that are often most vulnerable to climate change but least able to raise capital for things like transitioning to renewable energy.

The report analyzed countries' progress on the sustainability goals by assigning them scores from zero to 100. They examined factors like poverty, hunger, disease, carbon dioxide emissions, subjective well-being scores and dozens of other indicators. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Austria ranked highest. South Sudan ranked lowest, followed by the Central African Republic, Chad, Yemen and Somalia.

Lafortune called particular attention to the “disappointing” United States scorecard, which he said was below average for developed countries. He said the U.S. was one of the worst performers in terms of its commitment efforts and was one of only five member countries that did not present action plans and priorities to the international community. But Lafortune did note that some U.S. cities voluntarily provided local reviews.

Kimberly Marion Suiseeya, an associate professor of political science and environmental policy and culture at Northwestern University who did not work on the report, said that while she sees pressing global development shortfalls on issues like the climate emergency, she thinks the Biden administration is taking climate seriously. She also saw signs of optimism in China's progress on renewable energy. Though the country ranked below the U.S. in the report, it has invested more in clean energy, according to research firm BloombergNEF.

Anita Ramasastry, a law professor and director of the Sustainable International Development graduate program at the University of Washington, said she wasn't surprised that the sustainable development goals are off track. Ramasastry, who had no part in the report, said she doesn’t think many governments with more advanced economies, like the U.S., have embraced the goals or made them relevant to citizens’ daily lives.

She questioned whether the goals were overly ambitious and added that it will be important to examine how the 2030 agenda is financed, as well as the role of the private sector.

“Business has been asked to fill a role. And I think there’s just an ultimate question, which is should we have asked business to fill that role?” she asked. “Because ultimately the SDGs are meant to be about governments and states.”

The report made the same point repeatedly, singling out several “basic failures” in global governance. Those included voluntary implementation of the goals with no enforcement mechanisms when countries fall short, international trade and finance rules not geared to sustainability, and national governments not coordinating well with smaller units of government on the goals.

Lafortune called for countries to keep the sustainable development goals in mind as they approach the Paris summit and other global conferences. He said Paris has the opportunity to act as an “accelerator” toward reforming international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which he sees as possible elements of a global strategy for investment in tackling climate change and other sustainable development goals.

“Despite all the fragmentation right now in geopolitics, the many crises and so on, we still need to keep that sort of long-term vision and this idea of multilateralism and global cooperation alive. I think this is absolutely crucial,” Lafortune said. “I don’t think the world will be better off if we just forget about these goals because we won’t achieve them.”

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Follow Melina Walling on Twitter at @MelinaWalling

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
UN adopts first treaty governing the high seas



Sarah Fortinsky
Mon, June 19, 2023 

The United Nation adopted its first legally binding treaty to protect marine life in international waters on Monday.

The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, commonly referred to as the High Seas Treaty, was approved unanimously, with delegates from all 193 member nations in favor. The Associated Press reported that delegates erupted in applause when the gavel came down after hearing no objections.

The treaty would need to be ratified by 60 countries for it to take effect. In the United States, two thirds of the Senate would need to approve a resolution to ratify the treaty. The treaty will be open for signatures during the annual meeting of world leaders at the General Assembly on Sept. 20, and will remain open for two years.

Discussions of a treaty protecting biodiversity in international waters had been in the works for more than two decades, but several obstacles prevented progress on an agreement.

U.N. Secretary General António Gueterres hailed the adoption of the agreement and called on member states to ratify the treaty “without delay.”

“You have pumped new life and hope to give the ocean a fighting chance. By acting to counter threats to our planet that go beyond national boundaries, you are demonstrating that global threats deserve global action,” Gueterres said, adding, “and that countries can come together, in unity, for the common good.”

The treaty would be the first protecting marine life outside of national boundaries. It would strengthen the legal framework for the “conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in over two-thirds of the ocean.”

It would create a body to oversee the conservation of ocean life and to establish “marine protected areas” in the high seas. The treaty also outlines specific rules for conducting research and commercial activities in the oceans, measured by their environmental impact.

The treaty text states that its general objective “is to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, for the present and in the long term, through effective implementation of the relevant provisions of the Convention and further international cooperation and coordination.”

“This is critical to addressing the threats facing the ocean, and to the success of ocean-related goals and targets — including the 2030 Agenda and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework,” Guetteres said.
Nearly 40 countries at UN back LGBTQ families

AFP
Tue, June 20, 2023 at 1:11 PM MDT·2 min rea

Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the United States were among the signatories (HENRY NICHOLLS)

Nearly 40 countries at the United Nations backed LGBTQ families on Tuesday, at a time when some Muslim and African nations are contesting sexual orientation and gender identity language in UN forums.

"Families play a fundamental role in society. Supporting families is an important element in promoting and protecting human rights," 37 countries said in a statement at the UN Human Rights Council.

"This support must be inclusive of all family compositions, including multigenerational and extended families, single parent households, LGBTIQ+ families and Indigenous kinship groups," Australia's representative said on behalf of several countries. They were mainly from Europe and the Americas, plus Israel, New Zealand and East Timor.


They called on countries and UN bodies "to continue to apply an inclusive lens to families, and to ensure that equality, non-discrimination, and the universality of human rights remain at the centre of engagement in supporting families".

Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Spain and the United States were among the signatories.

The statement comes as several other countries, notably from the Middle East, are mounting a defence of the traditional family in UN forums.

Sexual orientation and gender identity issues will be at the heart of the 53rd Human Rights Council session, which started on Monday and runs until mid-July.

Such issues have become a contentious in several branches of the UN.

Countries in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and many African nations, plus Russia and China, are trying to roll back concepts and language which have been embedded in UN documents for at least a decade.

Earlier this month, OIC and African countries were blocking the adoption of the UN labour agency's budget, before agreeing to a last-minute compromise over references to discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

"Promoting a framework around discrimination that does not have international consensus and reflects priorities of the few risks undermining the spirit of cooperation," said Pakistan's Khalil Hashmi, on behalf of the OIC group, before the vote was finally passed.

The World Health Organization has since last year seen attempts to remove such references from its strategy on infection prevention, while the Human Rights Council faces growing opposition to long-standing efforts to monitor for discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. 





Pictured: Greta Thunberg arrested at oil tanker protest in Sweden


George Styllis
Mon, June 19, 2023 

Police officers carry Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg away

Gretha Thunberg was dragged away by police and arrested after blocking oil tankers in Malmo harbour, Sweden, for five days.

Ms Thunberg was with members of Ta tillbaka framtiden, or Take Back the Future, when she was led away by officers on Monday.

The campaigner has been arrested several times before for her activism including in Germany, and in Oslo where she was protesting over an onshore wind farm.

Police officers talk to Ms Thunberg - Johan Nilsson

Police officers lead off the Swedish climate activist - Johan Nilsson

Tweeting on Saturday, she said: “The climate crisis is a matter of life and death for countless people. We choose to physically stop fossil fuel infrastructure. We are reclaiming the future.”
Founder of US 'orgasmic meditation' group to challenge forced labor charge


Wed, June 21, 2023 
By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK, June 21 (Reuters) - The founder of OneTaste, a sexual wellness company that claims to teach "orgasmic meditation," plans to challenge a federal criminal charge that she surveilled group members and withheld promised wages, her lawyer said on Wednesday.

Reid Weingarten, a lawyer for Nicole Daedone, told U.S. District Judge Diane Gujarati in a hearing in Brooklyn federal court that the indictment made public earlier this month lacked details and that he would move to dismiss it.

"Who are they saying were the victims?" Weingarten said. "Who are the slaves that we enslaved?"

Daedone, who also served as OneTaste's chief executive until 2017, and former head of sales Rachel Cherwitz have each pleaded not guilty to one count of forced labor conspiracy.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn say they induced volunteers, contractors and employees to incur debt to take courses that they claimed could heal sexual trauma and dysfunction, and instructed them to engage in sex acts for "freedom and enlightenment."

Jenny Kramer, a lawyer for Cherwitz, told Gujarati her client denied the charges.

Founded in 2004, California-based OneTaste was the subject last year of the Netflix documentary "Orgasm Inc," which followed its rise and includes interviews with former members.

The company has said it has cooperated with prosecutors but called the charges the culmination of a "misogynistic" campaign to "tear down a feminine empowerment project." 

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York Editing by Matthew Lewis)



KETTLE CALLING POT BLACK
Google accuses Microsoft of anticompetitive cloud practices - The Information

Reuters
Wed, June 21, 2023 

VivaTech conference dedicated to innovation and startups in Paris

(Reuters) - Alphabet's Google formally filed a complaint to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday saying Microsoft used its dominant position in enterprise software to push customers towards its cloud services, The Information reported on Wednesday.

Microsoft used the licensing terms in its Office 365 productivity software to lock customers into separate contracts with its Azure cloud server business, Google's complaint said, according to the report.

There is intense rivalry between the two U.S. tech giants in the fast-growing, multi-billion-dollar cloud computing business, where Google trails market leaders Amazon.com and Microsoft.

The sector has recently drawn greater regulatory scrutiny, including in the United States and in Britain, because of the dominance of a few players and its increasingly critical role as more and more companies shift their services to the cloud.

In March, Google Cloud had accused Microsoft of anti-competitive cloud computing practices and criticized imminent deals with several European cloud vendors, saying these do not solve broader concerns about its licensing terms.

Earlier this year, the FTC had said it is seeking information from the public on the business practices of cloud computing companies, including details on their market power, competition and potential security issues.

Google and Microsoft did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment, while the FTC declined to comment.

(Reporting by Urvi Dugar and Samrhitha Arunasalam in Bengaluru; Additional Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Amazon duped millions of consumers into enrolling in Prime, US FTC says


Wed, June 21, 2023 
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday accused Amazon.com of enrolling millions of consumers into its paid subscription Amazon Prime service without their consent and making it hard for them to cancel, the latest action by the agency against the ecommerce giant in recent weeks.

The FTC sued in Amazon in federal court in Seattle, alleging that "Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime." The FTC said Amazon used "manipulative, coercive or deceptive user-interface designs known as 'dark patterns' to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions."

The lawsuit is one of several actions taken by President Joe Biden's administration intended to rein in the outsized market power of Big Tech firms as it tries to increase competition to create greater consumer protection.

The FTC said Amazon Prime is the world's largest subscription program, generating $25 billion in revenue annually. It offers fast, free shipping on millions of items, various discounts and access to movies, music and television series, as well as other benefits. Prime members in the United States pay $139 per year and drive much of Amazon's sales volume. Prime has more than 200 million members worldwide.

The FTC said that "one of Amazon's primary business goals - and the primary business goal of Prime - is increasing subscriber numbers."

The lawsuit said that under substantial pressure from the FTC, Amazon changed its cancellation process in April but that "violations are ongoing" and that it still "requires five clicks on desktop and six on mobile for consumers to cancel from Amazon.com."

The agency is seeking civil penalties and a permanent injunction to prevent future violations.

Amazon's shares were down 0.9% in midday trading.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FTC has been investigating sign-up and cancellation processes for the Prime program since March 2021.

"Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money," FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement.

Consumers who attempted to cancel Prime were faced with multiple labyrinthine steps to accomplish the task of cancelling, according to the complaint. The FTC complaint said Amazon used the term "Iliad Flow" to describe the process it began in 2016, referencing Homer's epic poem about the lengthy Trojan war.

Amazon also committed "intentional misconduct" meant to delay the FTC's investigation by providing "bad faith" responses to requests for documents, the agency said.

The FTC on May 31 announced a $5.8 million settlement with Amazon's Ring doorbell camera unit after the agency said cameras had been used for spying on some customers. On the same day, the FTC said Amazon agreed to pay $25 million to settle allegations that it violated children's privacy rights by failing to delete Alexa virtual assistant technology recordings at the request of parents and keeping them longer than necessary.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Will Dunham and Doina Chiacu)
U$ Senate moves closer to a ‘claw back’ of executive pay after bank failures

Ben Werschkul
·Washington Correspondent
Wed, June 21, 2023 


A bipartisan effort to ‘claw back’ compensation from bank executives who oversee a failure advanced in the Senate Wednesday, one of the most significant legislative moves to rein in the industry since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

The bill advanced out of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in a vote of 21 to 2. It came after late-night negotiations with a host of senators haggling up until the last minute on how much power to give regulators when confronting future banking failures.

We "threaded the needle pretty well," said Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown (D-OH) of the final package. He says, if enacted, the bill would give officials new power to step in if another situation arises where "executives failed at the basics of bank management."

The bill grants the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) new powers to force the return of executive compensation in return for a government takeover to protect the depositors at troubled banks. The bill puts the previous two years of compensation among senior bank executives on the table with a focus on perks like bonuses and stock option profits.

The bill would also allow new fines as well as the banning of executives from the banking industry if misconduct is proven.


Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Ranking Member Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) confer during a recent hearing. (Michael A. McCoy/ Getty Images)

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the committee's ranking member, was closely involved in the negotiations and signaled that the "tailored" nature of the final bill would likely mean continued broad bipartisan support in the weeks ahead. He called it a "commonsense solution" that would not leave taxpayers paying for mismanagement in the banking sector.

The bill was also passed with a last-minute package of amendments that, among other things, introduced new requirements on banking regulators who oversee the industry.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) co-authored one of the adopted amendments. She said the additional requirements on regulators would “hold the Federal Reserve accountable for the cultural and operations changes that are needed.”

Two GOP senators voted no Wednesday, with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) saying there is still "a lot of work to be done" on the issue. He said he was opposed because he worries the current measure remains overly expansive and would stifle innovation by not discriminating between innovative ideas at banks and management malpractice.

Nevertheless, the bill now goes to the full Senate where its broad bipartisan support in committee could mean it will likely to be considered soon by all 100 lawmakers.
Two main approaches to the issue

Wednesday’s debate hinged around two different proposals.

The hearing was called to consider a bill called the Recovering Executive Compensation from Unaccountable Practices (RECOUP) Act, which was authored by Sens. Brown and Scott and formed the basis for the final bill.

But also up for debate was a more far-reaching proposal from figures like from Sens. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). That bill has many similar provisions but would go further in some areas.

Their bill would bring a wider range of senior officials at banks under scrutiny - from executives to directors to controlling shareholders - and also put the three years of compensation on the table.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing in May. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Sen. Warren said Wednesday her position remains that the bill needs to go further to cover "every bad actor" but she nevertheless she called Wednesday’s product a reasonable compromise and voted yes.

Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.