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Disney’s ‘Raya’ gets lackluster debut in theaters amid streaming

InternationalMar 08. 2021Kelly Marie Tran stars as a Southeast Asian princess on a quest, center, in “Raya and the Last Dragon.” MUST CREDIT: Disney

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Yueqi Yang ·

Walt Disney Co.’s “Raya and the Last Dragon” brought in lower-than-expected box office sales of $8.6 million in North America during its opening weekend, failing to draw audiences back to theaters in large numbers instead of streaming at home.

The animated film about a young warrior girl, featuring the voices of Kelly Marie Tran and Awkwafina, was simultaneously launched on the Disney+ streaming platform for an extra $30 and will become free to subscribers on June 4. The film had been projected to generate about $12 million in ticket sales, according to an estimate from Boxoffice Pro.

Globally, “Raya” debuted to an estimated $26.2 million this weekend, with China its second-largest market. Disney didn’t disclose sales of the movie on the streaming platform.

Warner Bros.’s “Tom & Jerry,” also simultaneously released on HBO Max, came in second this weekend, making $6.6 million, according to industry researcher Comscore Inc.

At least one major chain, Cinemark Holdings Inc., said it won’t show “Raya,” amid disputes between theaters and studios over when and how releases can be made available on streaming platforms during the pandemic. Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Chapek said at a conference last week that theaters need to get used to movies being released in different ways, since customers have grown accustomed to having more viewing options.

With New York City reopening theaters on Friday after a yearlong hiatus, about 45% of all North American theaters are now currently open, up from 42% last weekend, according to Comscore. Disney said “Raya” will have extended play through spring-break periods in March and April as more markets and theaters re-open then.

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Explosions rock Equatorial Guinea’s largest city; 17 dead, hundreds injured

InternationalMar 08. 2021President Teodoro Obiang Nguema

By The Washington Post · Max Bearak

KHARTOUM, Sudan – At least 17 people were killed and hundreds injured Sunday as four massive explosions at a military camp shook Equatorial Guinea’s largest city, authorities said.

The blasts Sunday afternoon in the port city of Bata sent giant plumes of smoke into the air and destroyed dozens of buildings. Images broadcast on state-run television showed injured residents fleeing. Some seemed to be carrying bodies of the dead.

The Health Ministry said it had confirmed 17 dead and 420 injured. A doctor in Bata, a former capital, told the state-run TVGE television network that at least 20 were dead.

In a statement read by TVGE’s broadcasters, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema called the incident an “accident” and blamed it on the “negligence” of those tasked with guarding stores of dynamite and munitions. He ordered an investigation and asked the international community for help in rebuilding parts of the city that had been destroyed.

Televised footage showed patients streaming into hospitals and rescue crews pulling survivors out of rubble. A news anchor pleaded with viewers to donate blood.

Equatorial Guinea is a small and impoverished country wedged between Gabon and Cameroon on Africa’s Atlantic coast. It’s divided into two parts: the mainland, home to Bata, and an island called Bioko, about 150 miles to the northwest, where the capital, Malabo, is located.

Obiang has been in power since a coup in 1979, and is known for his repressive rule, a vast network of corruption and lavish vanity projects. The world’s longest serving president, he secured a sixth term in 2016, claiming 99% of the vote.

While the country is rich in oil and timber, the majority of its million and a half citizens are poor. By some measures the rate of extreme poverty is 40%.

Numerous coup attempts have been staged against Obiang over his decades in power, and in those instances, news coverage has been heavily curtailed. On Sunday, state-run TV showed uninterrupted coverage of the blasts throughout the afternoon and evening.

Blasts at arms depots have been seen in central Africa. Nine years ago, about 250 people were killed in similar blasts on the outskirts of Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo.

Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo are both ruled by leaders who have spent decades in power, and who often use their militaries’ might against their own people to suppress dissent.

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Greece thinks ‘vaccine passports’ could save summer holidays, while others in Europe see inequalities

InternationalMar 08. 2021

By The Washington Post · Rick Noack

BERLIN – Ahead of Europe’s summer holiday season, some top destinations such as Greece and Spain are pushing the European Union to introduce digital “vaccine passports” to ease entry for visitors – and their tourism cash.

But what some countries see as a path toward reopening has been viewed by others, led by France and Germany, as a path toward a two-tier system that could leave the unvaccinated as outsiders in places such as gyms, restaurants and cinemas.

“Immunity passports could reinforce inequalities both within and between countries,” said Emilian Kavalski, a professor at the University of Nottingham’s campus in Ningbo, China.

Some countries have already taken steps in that direction.

In Britain, now outside the European Union, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said vaccine certificates are “under consideration” even as other British officials dismissed the idea. Israel recently launched digital vaccination certificates to allow access to gyms or restaurants.

Israel also agreed to trial a travel bubble with E.U. members Greece and Cyprus to open the door for vaccinated travelers. Meanwhile, Cyprus has also said it will begin in May to welcome vaccinated visitors from Britain.

The European Commission is expected to submit a proposal on how to bridge the divides with the bloc later this month, which could lay out a joint plan for digital vaccination certificates that would work across the European Union and potentially beyond.

Compromise proposals could include exceptions for individuals who have recovered from covid-19 or those who can provide a recent negative test result.

It is unclear what a digital vaccine certificate would look like. Personalized QR codes – used in Israel and difficult to forge – would be one possible option.

But finding common ground across the Europe Union will not be easy. Vaccination rates vary widely. So does the political will to put the vaccinated in the fast lane for travel – with countries most dependent on tourism cash leading the way.

“Those who are vaccinated should have full freedom,” said Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who has joined Greece and Spain in support of vaccination documents.

“Some countries are very much preoccupied with now,” Greece’s tourism minister, Harry Theocharis, told the Financial Times last month, in an apparent reference of German and French hesitancy.

Tourism accounts for about 20 percent of Greece’s GDP, which declined by 10 percent last year.

“People will gradually realize that there is not much of an alternative,” said Andreas Papatheodorou, a Greek tourism researcher. If no E.U.-wide solution can be found, Greece and other countries may opt for bilateral deals, he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled openness to study possible vaccination certificates later this year. But she has insisted that treating vaccinated travelers preferentially now “isn’t on the agenda, given the low vaccination coverage at this point.”

French officials have made the same argument. They also appear worried about how a proposed pass would be received by the large number of vaccine skeptics in the country. Only around half the population was willing to get vaccinated when the rollout began two months ago.

French vaccine approval has recently inched upward. Some officials still fear a “vaccination passport” would risk undoing that progress.

Some groups – including members of ethnic minorities or pregnant women – would be disproportionately impacted, because covid vaccination rates among them are lower than in the general population, according to recent studies. Young people who are last in line to receive vaccines or older people with no smartphones would also be disadvantaged.

There is also still no scientific consensus on the extent to which vaccines reduce transmission of the virus, raising the possibility that vaccinated travelers may spread the virus even if they do not get sick themselves, said Melinda Mills, director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at Oxford University.

President Joe Biden said this week that there will be enough vaccines for all U.S. adults by May. The European Commission hopes to vaccinate 70 percent of the European Union’s adult population by the end of the summer, which would still leave more than 100 million Europeans without immunization in late September.

“If you introduce this right away, you’d be excluding a huge group just on age-based discrimination,” Mills said of possible “vaccine passports,” adding that court challenges would likely follow.

Other questions are piling up, too.

Would E.U. citizens qualify for a certificate if they receive vaccines not approved by the E.U. drug regulator, such as Russia’s Sputnik V and Chinese vaccines? What happens if variants spread that reduce some vaccines’ efficacy?

Then there are privacy concerns. For decades, paper certificates have been used for travel to show vaccinations against yellow fever and other diseases.

But a digital certification, potentially with QR-codes, raises worries about whether the data could be used to track travelers’ movements.

Some global companies have already vowed to make use of their right to ban customers. Alan Joyce, the head of Australia’s carrier Qantas, said last year that proof of vaccination would soon become a prerequisite for flying.

“I think that’s going to be a common thing talking to my colleagues in other airlines around the globe,” he said. Similar requirements could be introduced for people entering sports stadiums or workplaces.

The idea of requiring travelers to carry health certificates is a relatively modern concept, said Kavalski, who has researched the historical evolution of passports.

Passports were widely introduced during World War I in what some saw as a temporary measure. But the 1918 flu pandemic helped shape international travel with “the practice of allowing only ‘healthy’ bodies to cross borders,” said Kavalski.

“I would say the (current) pandemic will have a lasting impact on the practices and experience of border crossing,” said Kavalski.

How travel brought two coronavirus variants to the U.S., the CDC says

We could be traveling again by summer. Here’s what you need to know to plan.

The argument against ‘vaccine passports’ is growing

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Senate passes Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill after voting overnight on amendments, sends measure back to House

InternationalMar 07. 2021Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N,Y., prepares his floor speech before walking to the Senate floor on Jan. 22. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Melina Mara.

By The Washington Post · Tony Romm, Jeff Stein, Erica Werner

WASHINGTON – The Senate approved a sweeping $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan on Saturday, putting Congress one step closer to fulfilling an electoral promise from President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies to shepherd a swift, equal recovery to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

With its massive price tag, and major expansion of federal social safety net programs, the package is set to count among one of the largest rescue measures in U.S. history, reflecting Democrats’ pledges to erase disparities that long predate the deadly pandemic.

The bill authorizes $1,400 checks to millions of low- and middle-income Americans, bolsters families by providing new yearly child tax benefits, boosts unemployment payments for workers still out of a job, and invests heavily in the country’s attempt to climb back from a public-health emergency that has devastated families, workers, students and businesses alike.

Senate Democrats adopted the measure entirely on party lines, muscling through a marathon, 25-hour debate that forced them to confront dissent from within the party’s own ranks. The House is set to vote on the Senate’s version of the stimulus on Tuesday, teeing up checks and other financial assistance to start to reach Americans as soon as this month.

“I promised the American people help was on the way,” Biden said Saturday, celebrating the first legislative victory of his administration. “Today, I can say we’ve taken one more giant step of delivering on that promise.”

The Senate passage of the measure, known as the “American Rescue Plan,” provided a fresh burst of positive news for the White House. In recent weeks, the Biden administration has presided over an improving job market – even though there are still 9.5 million more unemployed workers than there were before the pandemic. The country also has witnessed a decline in coronavirus infections and an acceleration in a nationwide effort to vaccinate millions of Americans in need.

But the Senate’s vote illustrated the harsh political realities facing Biden and his ambitious economic agenda. The president’s early pledges for unity and bipartisanship collided with the reality of Capitol Hill, where Democrats opted against scaling back the stimulus significantly in order to attract GOP support. It also foreshadowed the difficulties Democratic leaders may face holding together their disparate caucus of progressive and moderate lawmakers during the even tougher fights on the horizon.

Ebullient party leaders still celebrated the stimulus bill’s passage on Saturday, which they said showed Democrats can overcome obstacles – and advance other major priorities still to come.

“We promised them checks; they’re going to get checks. We promised they were going to get a better availability and distribution of vaccines; that will happen,” said Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., in an interview.

“All of that is going to happen, and that’s going to change people’s outlook . . . not just to be more Democratic, which I think it will, but to see government can work for them,” he said.

Along with new stimulus checks and unemployment aid, the bill that passed the Senate includes a bevy of programs to lessen businesses’ tax bills, improve city and state governments’ finances, assist Americans in paying for child care and invest in transit and other infrastructure reforms. The aid for families and children could cut poverty by a third, analysts estimate, while making it easier for them to pay their rents or mortgages and purchase necessities including food.

Schools and hospitals are set to receive a major financial boost as the U.S. government labors to respond to the coronavirus while simultaneously preparing to return to regular life more than a year after the pandemic first arrived.

Senate lawmakers began considering the $1.9 trillion stimulus on Friday, embarking on a debate that quickly exposed the fissures in the Democratic caucus – between progressive-minded lawmakers, who are willing to spend big and act aggressively to achieve sweeping economic reforms, and their fellow party moderates, who have preached political unity and fiscal restraint.

Leading up to the vote, some moderate Democrats had secured changes to the coronavirus aid package that narrowed the number of Americans who receive one-time stimulus checks and rethought how some state and local aid might be distributed. An effort to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour ultimately faltered as well, after some centrist Democrats opposed an effort to override the Senate’s parliamentarian, who had determined it was incompatible with the arcane rules lawmakers used to advance the legislation.

Yet tempers flared most around unemployment benefits, as one of the chamber’s most influential centrist lawmakers, Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, sought to lessen the weekly benefits that had been approved by House lawmakers earlier in the month.

Democratic leaders at one point Friday thought they had brokered a deal to address his concerns only to discover Manchin prepared to side with Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio on an even more aggressive amendment to scale back the jobless aid.

Manchin’s dissatisfaction around the unemployment payments soon left the Senate locked in a nine-hour standoff. The tense discussions spilled out onto the Senate floor Friday, as Portman sparred with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., over the need for some of the unemployment relief in the first place.

“Suddenly, if you’re on unemployment insurance you don’t have to pay taxes. But if you’re working, you do have to pay taxes. How does that work?” Portman charged.

Wyden responded that the tax forgiveness only included modest relief for jobless Americans, adding of the GOP’s opposition: “The party that claims to want to help workers on their taxes won’t lift a finger.”

Democrats ultimately resolved the stalemate with a deal that authorized the extra unemployment payments at $300 per week, a lower amount than the House approved, while extending the aid until early September. From there, party lawmakers banded together to jettison dozens of Republican amendments that would have dramatically slashed spending, struck funds set aside for transit systems and local governments or otherwise poisoned the bill.

In doing so, GOP lawmakers repeatedly faulted Democrats for failing to negotiate in good faith over the size and scope of the stimulus package – and for breaking Biden’s promise for political unity in a post-Trump Washington.

“The Senate has never spent $2 trillion in a more haphazard way, or through a less rigorous process,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a speech before the chamber adopted the measure.

“Voters gave Senate Democrats the slimmest possible majority. Voters picked a president who promised unity and bipartisanship,” he continued, noting Democrats instead had opted to “ram through” their stimulus bill.

The relief plan nevertheless remained intact as it cleared the chamber on a 50-49 vote, with every Democrat backing it – and every Republican opposing the measure. Schumer, reflecting on the outcome, said the GOP had failed to support a law that many conservative-leaning voters appear to find popular, leaving Democrats no choice but to act on their own.

“The hope is Republicans see now we meant it,” the Democratic leader said. “You don’t work with us then we’ll do it on our own.”

Emboldened, Schumer pledged to return to lingering issues in the coronavirus aid debate, including raising the minimum wage. And he and his fellow Democrats soon are set to start considering new investments in the country’s infrastructure, reforms to immigration laws and rewrites of the U.S. tax code – debates that touch on deep political divides within the caucus about the role of government to tax, regulate and spend.

Schumer, however said he had reason for optimism: “Democrats have more confidence we can get things done if we stay unified.”

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A decade after Fukushima nuclear disaster, contaminated water symbolizes Japan’s struggles

InternationalMar 07. 2021

By The Washington Post · Simon Denyer

TOKYO – Beside the ruins of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, more than 1,000 huge metal tanks loom in silent testament to one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, the meltdown of three nuclear reactors 10 years ago this month.

The tanks contain nearly 1.25 million tons of cooling-system water from the 2011 disaster and groundwater seepage over the years – equivalent to around 500 Olympic-size swimming pools – most of it still dangerously radioactive.

Running out of space to build more tanks, the government wants to gradually release the water into the sea – after it has been decontaminated and diluted – over the next three decades or more.

Even though a formal decision has yet to be announced, the government and the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) have insisted that an ocean release is their preferred solution and that it is perfectly safe.

The only thing holding them back appears to be the Olympics and the bad publicity it could generate before the Games begin in July, experts say.

The idea of releasing the water has infuriated Fukushima’s fishing community, only now getting back on its feet after taking a battering in the wake of the 2011 disaster and the subsequent ocean contamination. Also angry is South Korea, even though it is more than 600 miles away on the other side of Japan.

“Recovery is the most important thing for us, and releasing the water will pull back the recovery process” said Takayuki Yanai, head of the trawler fisheries cooperative association in the port of Onahama. The local fisheries industry is still only half as big as it was before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, he said. “I really want them to stop. There must be other options.”

Rows of storage tanks holding treated but still contaminated water stand near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant’s No. 3 reactor building on Feb. 4, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Japan News/Yomiuri.

When it comes to the science, the Japanese government and TEPCO say it’s on their side.

The water has already been or will be cleaned with an advanced treatment system, known as ALPS, that is capable of removing almost all radionuclides present in the water, including the really dangerous ones such as strontium and cesium.

What would be left is tritium, a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen that is considered less dangerous to human health and is routinely released into the ocean by nuclear power plants around the globe. Along with tritium would be tiny traces of carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon.

If all the treated water was released into the sea over the course of just one year – as opposed to three decades – the radiation impact for local people would be no more than one-thousandth of the exposure impact of natural radiation in Japan, said Yumiko Hata of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the release of the water is “technically feasible” and has offered to provide independent radiation monitoring to reassure the public that it would comply with international standards.

But when it comes to public trust, the Japanese government and TEPCO are on shakier ground.

Right from the first weeks of the disaster, when they were extremely slow to admit that three of the reactor cores had undergone meltdowns, there has been a tendency to downplay bad news.

For years, TEPCO claimed that the treated water stored at the plant contained only tritium, but data deep on its website showed that the treatment process had failed to remove many dangerous radionuclides.

Finally, in 2018, it was forced to acknowledge that 70% of the water is still contaminated with dangerous radioactive elements – including strontium-90, a bone-seeking radionuclide that can cause cancer – and will have to be treated again before release.

TEPCO explains the contamination by saying it rushed the treatment process after the accident because it needed to quickly reduce radiation in the water to manageable levels. Further tests show that ALPS, when carefully and repeatedly implemented, can reduce the concentration of radionuclides to well within international standards, it said.

Ryounosuke Takanori, manager of TEPCO’s global communications, admitted that some of the data on its website had not been presented “in a form that is easily understood” but said that the company was working hard to “proactively engage in communication initiatives to accurately and quickly convey information.”

Ken Buesseler,a senior marine radiochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said he would prefer to see all the water treated properly before any is released.

Radioactive elements such as cesium and strontium are many times more dangerous to human health than tritium and are many times more likely to accumulate inside fish and on the sea floor, he said.

“After you’ve cleaned it up, then make a decision on what to do,” he said. “They spent eight years without telling us about it, and now they are saying: ‘Trust us, we’re going to take care of it.’ “

In Onahama port, about 40 miles south of the wrecked nuclear power plant in northeast Japan, samples of fish from every ocean catch are analyzed for radiation. Tests routinely come back clear, although last month a solitary black rockfish was found to have cesium levels five times the national standard, the first fish to fail the test in 16 months.

Yanai of the fisheries cooperative says he does worry about releasing more tritium into the sea, but his main concern is “irrational fear from consumers” causing “reputational damage” to his produce.

Shaun Burnie, senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Germany, said that there are risks involved in releasing tritium and carbon-14 into the sea and would like to see the release delayed at least until 2035, giving more of the tritium time to decay into hydrogen.

But he ties the decision to the government’s much bigger pledge – to remove all the extremely radioactive corium from the wrecked reactors by 2041 or 2051, even though the technology to do so doesn’t yet exist, along with millions of tons of contaminated topsoil removed from local fields.

In a new report, Greenpeace calls that pledge a “delusion.”

“That’s just not going to happen, but it’s a sort of mantra,” Burnie said. “The water is a symbol. If they can get rid of it, they are meeting that commitment to remove the problem, and that’s why they’ll discharge it into the Pacific.”

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Biden administration moving to address a global compromise by Chinese and other hackers of Microsoft email servers

InternationalMar 07. 2021

By The Washington Post · Ellen Nakashima

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration is moving to address a global compromise by Chinese government-sponsored hackers of Microsoft email servers affecting at least 30,000 public and private entities in the United States alone, according to U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter.

So far, U.S. officials say there is no sign that federal agencies or major defense contractors have been hacked in the campaign that researchers believe began as far back as January, but they fear it could spiral into a crisis crippling many small and midsize businesses and state and local government agencies – those least able to afford it.

The broad, indiscriminate nature of the compromise and the difficulty in containing the infections has caused concern among officials at the White House, National Security Agency, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan issued an unusual late night tweet Thursday urging organizations using Microsoft Exchange servers to apply “ASAP” a patch the tech giant rushed out this past week to prevent new infections. On Friday, the firm added additional workarounds for companies that had not installed the first patch.

Microsoft Exchange is one of the most commonly used non-Cloud services for companies and government agencies operating their own email servers. The figure of 30,000 was first reported by blogger Brian Krebs.

The White House is looking at convening an emergency group of government agencies to address the issue, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Officials are expected to hold a meeting this coming week to consider the creation of a cyber “Unified Coordination Group,” which would review the scope and severity of the situation and determine what responses would be appropriate.

The matter arises as the Biden administration is preparing a series of measures to respond to Russia’s SolarWinds hack of federal agencies and private companies. A key component of that response will be shoring up federal cybersecurity.

Microsoft has been coordinating with the government in both investigations.

The situation is “very, very serious,” said one U.S. official.

Microsoft on Tuesday disclosed that its exchange servers had security flaws that were being exploited by a group of Chinese government hackers it dubbed “Hafnium.” The group has targeted infectious-disease researchers, law firms, universities and think tanks, among others, for data theft, Microsoft said.

State and local government agencies also have been compromised, which could be significant if agencies that handle critical local services such as policing and health services are offline, U.S. officials said.

Hafnium built hacking tools or “exploits” taking advantage of four security holes in Microsoft software to gain access to a victim’s email server. Once inside, the hackers deposited “webshell” malware – a back door – that allowed them to control the server remotely and to return later to steal data.

Of the tens of thousands of organizations that have been infected by the webshell, it’s not clear how many victims have had emails siphoned. Several “high value” targets have seen such losses, said Steven Adair, president of Volexity, a cybersecurity firm that tipped Microsoft to two of the four exploits.

Adair said his firm tracked the malicious activity back to early January, though researchers in Taiwan identified Exchange software bugs as far back as December.

For much of January and February, the Chinese theft of email seemed stealthy and targeted, Adair said. Then suddenly about a week ago, shortly before Microsoft issued its patch, the activity exploded. The hackers seemed to be dropping webshells on anyone running an Exchange server, he said. It was, he said, almost as if they suspected a patch was forthcoming. Although Microsoft issued a fix Tuesday, it does not neutralize a webshell already placed on a victim’s server, which enables the hackers to sneak back in. “So there were a significant number of organizations that are safe from new exploitation but not safe from a ticking time bomb that was left behind,” Adair said.

What’s concerning U.S. officials and cybersecurity firms alike is that more than one hacking group now appears to be taking advantage of the webshells.

There “definitely appears to be multiple Chinese [government] groups and at least one Russian-language cybercriminal group” active, said Allan Liska, intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, a cyber threat research firm.

Even U.S. government personnel are struggling to sort out which hacker groups are doing what, and so far there is no firm attribution.

“It’s like a free-for-all now,” Adair said.

Researchers who scan the Internet for the presence of the malware are finding indications that up to 250,000 servers might be infected globally, said one person familiar with the matter.

Network administrators can remove the webshell, but the real challenge is that the vast majority of victims are organizations that lack the resources of the federal government or big companies to handle the patching and incident response needed, some experts said.

Once the hackers have control of a victim’s email server, they can more easily compromise entire networks. One fear that some U.S. officials have is that criminal hackers might use that access to install ransomware on massive numbers of businesses and government agencies. That could be more disruptive to average consumers than email theft, one official said.

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How the Italian mafia is targeting Europe’s crisis recovery fund

InternationalMar 07. 2021Maurizio Vallone in Rome, on March 2, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by John Follain.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · John Follain, Alessandra Migliaccio

Criminal enterprises — like their legitimate counterparts — have suffered during the pandemic-induced economic crisis. But the Italian mafia has already laid the foundation for a massive payday.

Last year, when countries were seized by lockdowns, the mafia started infiltrating cash-starved companies in a bid to siphon money from the European Union’s recovery fund and the 1.8 trillion euros ($2.2 trillion) that will, in part, start flowing to struggling firms later this year, according to Maurizio Vallone, Italy’s top investigator on organized crime.

Criminal groups including the N’drangheta in the southern Calabria region and Cosa Nostra in Sicily have sought to gain footholds in lawful businesses that will be first in line to get EU aid, such as those in environmental and digital sectors, said Vallone of the Antimafia Investigative Directorate, which groups investigators from the main police forces.

“The mafia has been choosing the companies that are best-placed to take part in recovery fund tenders, especially in the health and infrastructure sectors where a great deal of money will be spent,” Vallone told Bloomberg at his Rome office on Tuesday. “It will try to take everything. We have to make sure they don’t get even one euro.”

And Italy is a prime target for criminals since it’s poised to be the largest recipient of EU grant money.

The new government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi is drafting a spending plan for its 209 billion-euro share of the EU funds as it struggles to shake off the worst recession since World War II. Italian firms are particularly vulnerable since a scheme for state-guaranteed bank loans has been too complex and limited to be effective, said Vallone.

As a result, companies that have shaky credit-worthiness have benefited little from state help, he said.

Mafia gangs have seized on the opportunity, with regional and national lockdowns, to reach out to small and medium-sized companies desperate for liquidity in an economy that contracted 8.9% last year.

Mafiosi typically seek to muscle in on a firm’s share capital, fund struggling businesses through usury, or exploit them through a hidden partner, Vallone said. The number of suspicious financial operations reported by the Bank of Italy increased by 7% last year to 113,000. “That makes us strongly suspect that there is organized crime interest,” he said.

The Italian national flag flies outside a shop in Rome on Jan. 26, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Alessia Pierdomenico.

The European Anti-Fraud Office, called OLAF, will screen spending plans by member states to ensure they meet control and anti-fraud requirements, and will in the future carry out investigations of its own, according to a spokeswoman. The organization will also team up with national authorities and partners including Europol.

Vallone wants tighter anti-mafia checks on public works. Under the current system, police forces assess the winner of a tender before a project begins. Under a proposal Vallone said he will send to the interior ministry later this month, anti-mafia investigators would automatically monitor money transfers as well as sub-contractors and suppliers for the duration of the project.

“The recovery fund is the priority, but this procedure should apply to all public works contracts,” Vallone said.

Stricter rules are needed also because of pressure from Brussels. “The European Commission doesn’t wait for the biblical time-spans of traditional public tenders, it wants to give the money and see the results within a reasonable period,” said Vallone.

There may well be a downside to more anti-mafia checks however. Italy, plagued by red tape, already fails to spend much of the structural funds it receives from the EU. The country had used only 30.7% of allocated funds at the end of 2019, according to an EU report, compared to 66.2% for leader Finland, and an average for the bloc of 39.6%. More controls could risk stalling recovery money too.

In the Sicilian capital Palermo, many are facing a stark choice, according to Patrizia Di Dio, head of the local, 13,000-strong branch of the Confcommercio business lobby.

“When a businessman cannot any longer support even his own family, he’ll find organized crime ready for him with its doors wide open,” Di Dio said. “If the state wants to protect the legal economy, it should make loans more accessible, and it should suspend taxes. It’s crazy and hypocritical not to help you, and to threaten you with taxes at the same time.”

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Pressure grows on Biden to end filibuster

InternationalMar 06. 2021President Joe Biden is shown at the White House in Washington on Feb. 10, 2021. Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary

By Annie Linskey, Sean Sullivan, Maria Sacchetti
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – Pressure is building on President Joe Biden, a longtime backer of traditional Washington rules, to do away with the filibuster and other procedures as Democrats press him to seize what could be a fleeting moment of power to enact his agenda.

Liberals have long pushed for sweeping changes such as expanding the Supreme Court, ending the electoral college and banning gerrymandering. But as Biden faces a critical stretch of his presidency, even moderate Democrats are urging more-immediate changes – particularly rewriting the filibuster so that at the very least fewer bills need 60 votes to pass the Senate.

Democrats increasingly worry that popular pieces of Biden’s agenda will hit a wall in the Senate, including his plans for climate change, immigration, gun control, voting rights and LGBT protections. Failing to enact them, they fear, could be a political disaster for Democrats.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a centrist, said Wednesday she wants to “get rid of the filibuster,” her toughest comments to date on the matter. By Thursday, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., announced via social media that she, too, now wants to abolish the filibuster, because “the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the filibuster has long been the enemy of progress.”

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., also a moderate, told The Washington Post he could envision the Senate changing the filibuster if bills are floundering. “We’ve got to figure out whether leadership on both sides wants to have obstruction or if they want to come together and try to get some things done,” Tester said.

For the moment, Democrats do not have the votes to fully abolish the filibuster, which allows a senator to block a bill by refusing to yield the floor unless at least 60 senators overrule the speaker. Some Democrats, such as Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), oppose repeal. (“Never!” he shouted recently at a journalist who asked.) So advocates are looking for ways to limit the filibuster instead of ending it – and hoping Biden weighs in.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., warned that if Democrats fail to pass a popular agenda because of arcane Senate rules, the party will suffer in the midterm elections. “It will be a Democratic Party Armageddon in 2022 if we sit here on our butts and say, ‘Oh, we’re sorry, we’re not as determined to get our agenda passed as Republicans were,’ ” said Merkley, who is spearheading an overhaul effort.

Republicans say such changes would create a free-for-all in the Senate and contend Democrats are threatening to toss the rules to gain an unearned political advantage.

“The same party that wants to change Senate rules when they lose a vote, pack the Supreme Court when they lose a case and throw out the electoral college every time they lose the White House now wants to forcibly rewrite 50 states’ election laws from Washington,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said recently on the Senate floor, speaking in opposition to a Democratic election bill.

He added, “Millions of American voters elected 50 Republican senators and a whole lot of House Republicans to make sure that Democrats play by the rules, not rewrite the rules.”

As the presidential campaign unfolded and the depth of many Democrats’ dissatisfaction became clear, Biden softened his vociferous opposition to changing Washington’s rules. In July, he conceded that his approach to the filibuster would “depend on how obstreperous [Republicans] become.” After resisting proposals to expand the Supreme Court, he promised a commission to look into changes of the court’s structure.

Now that Biden is president, such middle positions could be harder to sustain. Biden faces a choice, some activists say, between ruling mostly via executive fiat – which permits modest accomplishments at best – and pulling down the structural obstacles.

For now, the White House is keeping its options on the table.

“One thing that is nonnegotiable is him delivering for the American people,” said Emmy Ruiz, the White House political director. “The number-one priority here is to get this agenda, this bold agenda, passed through Congress.”

A White House official, not authorized the discuss the administration’s legislative approach and speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the “strategy is adjusting every single day,” reiterating Biden’s position that the filibuster is not sacrosanct, while the agenda is.

But with Democrats potentially losing their narrow House or Senate majorities in 2022 – a president’s party usually fares poorly in midterms – the Democrats’ window for change may be short-lived.

The vulnerability of Biden’s agenda became clear last week when a proposed minimum-wage increase ran into a procedural hurdle and was removed from his coronavirus relief package. Some Democrats, and many activists, saw that as a warning sign for the rest of Biden’s agenda.

And while Biden hopes to soon pass a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, the second-largest stimulus bill ever to go through Congress, he may struggle to repeat that feat with measures that do not fit as easily into “reconciliation,” a maneuver allowing a bill to pass the Senate with a simple majority instead of 60 votes.

Biden will have just two more opportunities to use reconciliation before the midterms, and only budget-related bills qualify. It is the Senate parliamentarian who decides whether a bill fits under reconciliation, and while her advice can be ignored, Democrats have chosen to abide by her rulings.

“It’s not an ideal procedure to get things done, but politically this is the only palatable path right now to progress on key issues,” said Ben LaBolt, an aide in the Obama administration.

Some liberals in Congress sent a letter this week to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris urging them to sidestep the parliamentarian’s decision on the minium wage, a move that has historical precedent.

“There is an institutional deference that maybe would have been fine in times past, but a defense of the status quo is inadequate to the challenges of our time,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. “We have to follow the rule of law, but we don’t have to defer to traditions and norms.”

Without such changes, Senate rules force advocates into a tortuous process of making sometimes circuitous arguments for why their bills fit reconciliation.

Kerri Talbot, deputy director of the Immigration Hub, a pro-immigrant organization, said reconciliation may be the best hope for passing a citizenship measure for at least some of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. “We think we can qualify, due to the economic impact of providing a path to citizenship,” Talbot said. “Ultimately it’s a big boon for the economy, but in the short run there are some costs involved as well.”

Advocates and 100 lawmakers have asked Biden to consider legalizing at least 5 million undocumented immigrants via budget reconciliation. Three people with detailed understanding of Senate rules, however, said it is unlikely that a broad immigration plan would pass the parliamentarian’s muster.

Immigration activists are preparing for that eventuality. “We have to understand that the ruling of the Senate parliamentarian is not the end of the story,” said Carlos Rojas Rodriguez, who was among 150 supporters and ex-staffers of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who wrote Sanders last week urging him to use reconciliation.

If the Senate parliamentarian disagrees, Rojas Rodriguez said, Democrats should overrule her.

Merkley said he is seeing steadily more receptiveness from his colleagues for ending the filibuster. In 2009 when he first joined the Senate, the push for change was “a very lonely journey,” he said, but now “there’s been a massive shift.”

Proponents are casting about for proposals that could win over the last few votes for change. For example, a current Democratic bill to overhaul elections is expected to attract no Republican support, prompting some Democrats to suggest an exception to the filibuster for civil rights and voting matters.

Biden’s climate agenda, a top priority for the party’s liberal wing and many young voters, also would probably struggle to attract 60 Senate votes, nor would it easily qualify for reconciliation. One lobbyist familiar with Biden’s plan said “the whole thing, basically,” would be unlikely to meet the reconciliation test without being “substantially redrafted.”

Some lawmakers believe that if a stack of popular bills passes the House but cannot get through the Senate, it would put critical pressure on Senate Democrats to consider revamping their system.

“The longer the Senate doesn’t function as it used to, pressure will keep building for changes that would allow overwhelmingly popular policies to move forward,” said Phil Schiliro, who headed legislative affairs in the Obama White House.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has sidestepped questions about how Biden’s agenda could make it through the currently configured Senate.

“The bottom line is we’re going to come together as a caucus and figure out a way to get the bold action that the American people demand,” Schumer said recently. “We will put bills on the floor. We’re not going to be the legislative graveyard.”

Biden is uniquely situated to push for a major change to the Senate proceedings, some Democrats say, because of his credibility as a Senate institutionalist. He served in the chamber for more than three decades and frequently speaks of it with affection.

In his previous stint in the executive branch, Biden showed flexibility. As vice president he supported the Obama administration’s push to end the filibuster on most judicial nominations, lobbying his former colleagues to make the change, said Ed Pagano, a legislative-affairs aide in the White House at the time.

But Biden is also on the record defending Senate traditions such as the parliamentarian’s rulings, saying in a 2005 floor speech that heeding them had “been the practice for 218 years.”

As for killing the filibuster – that, he warned at the time, would be “a fundamental power grab by the majority party.”

– – –

The Washington Post’s Erica Werner, Alice Crites and Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.

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Biden’s FDA takes baby steps toward limiting toxic heavy metals in commercial baby foods

InternationalMar 06. 2021

By Laura Reiley
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – In the wake of a congressional report last month that found the presence of toxic metals at high levels in many baby foods, the Biden administration Friday announced the first steps aimed at reducing arsenic, lead and other toxins in baby and toddler products.

The Food and Drug Administration said in a statement that it will identify maximum safe limits of contaminants in commercial food for babies and toddlers, finalize guidance on reducing inorganic arsenic in apple juice and publish draft guidance on setting maximum lead levels in juices.

The FDA statement also said the agency will increase inspections and testing of baby and toddler foods for heavy metals and make public the results. It will support research that identifies “additional steps that industry can take to further reduce levels,” the agency said in a statement.

The guidance marks a first step toward expanding FDA oversight over commercial baby food.

As of now, the agency has only set legal limits on inorganic arsenic in infant rice cereal.

Members of Congress and advocacy groups said they were concerned the announcement didn’t go far enough and was vague about the measures the FDA would be taking around inspections and establishing legal limits for toxins in baby food.

“I’m glad the FDA was responsive to our report and cited it as prompting their action. However, I have a couple of concerns,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), chairman of the subcommittee on economic and consumer policy that released last month’s report, told The Washington Post.

Krishnamoorthi, along with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Rep. Tony Cárdenas, D-Calif., has drafted the Baby Food Safety Act, which urges the FDA to use its existing authority to regulate toxic heavy metal content in baby food to protect infant health and safety.

“One is that there’s no timeline and there’s no clear commitment to removing toxic heavy metals from baby food,” Krishnamoorthi said. “And frankly, I’m concerned about their tone. I don’t see a sense of urgency. Perhaps they aren’t understanding the level of outrage among parents.”

Peter Lurie, the president of Center for Science in the Public Interest, said Friday’s announcement was “a more forward-looking response that we would have gotten three months ago.”

“There’s an opportunity here to take real action on a public health problem,” he said. “Pronouncements are fine. But at the end of the day the agency has to be evaluated by the final actions it takes.”

The FDA said it will ramp up the availability of consumer information and resources that underscore the importance of a varied diet: A single baby food with high levels of a metal like lead would pose less of a threat to a baby who eats a broad array of foods.

Many nutrition experts caution parents about eschewing commercial baby food entirely to make food from fruits and vegetables at home.

The FDA said toxic elements are present in the air, water and soil, and therefore unavoidable in the general food supply.

Krishnamoorthi said this is only partially true.

“[The FDA] says these heavy metals are naturally occurring in soils, but that is disingenuous. There are several other man-made sources like vitamin additives or fertilizers in soil. You can’t say baby food has to be this way,” he said.

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Korean War hero priest’s remains identified, Pentagon says

InternationalMar 06. 2021

By Michael E. Ruane
The Washington Post

The remains of Father Emil Kapaun, the Catholic priest and Korean War POW who was given the Medal of Honor posthumously in 2013, have been identified, the Pentagon said Friday.

The almost complete set of Kapaun’s remains had been exhumed from a cemetery in Hawaii where they had been buried as unknown after the 1950-1953 war, his nephew, Ray Kapaun, said Friday.

The identification was made using dental records and DNA, he said.

He said he was not sure when the exhumation took place.

But in 2019 the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began disinterring 652 sets of unknown Korean War remains at Honolulu’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific to attempt identifications.

Father Kapaun, who is also a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church, was beloved for ministering to American soldiers during the war’s fierce fighting, rescuing them under fire, and caring for them when they became POWS.

He died of illness and maltreatment on May 23, 1951, and his place of burial was lost. He was 35.

“I never envisioned we would have this day,” said Ray Kapaun, who accepted the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama in 2013. “That’s pretty incredible.”

He said he had been told the news Friday in a telephone call from an army official at Fort Knox.

“At first it was too hard to believe,” he said in a telephone interview. “It couldn’t be real . . . All of a sudden out of the blue to have it happen, it’s still kind of hard to wrap our arms around it.”

“I was way beyond flabbergasted,” he said.

Others were too, he said.

“Talking to the POWs who were in the camp with him that are still alive, and hearing their reaction at the news,” he said. “Those guys loved him dearly . . .[They] are in their late 80s, early 90s, and for them to be able to . . . witness this in their lifetime, I think that’s a miracle in itself.”

He said he is not yet sure of funeral arrangements, especially in light of the pandemic.

The family will seek “everybody’s input as to what and where, and time frame-wise,” he said. “We realize that there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to want to be involved in bringing his remains back and having the services.”

Ray Kapaun said the Army believes his uncle’s body may have been buried in the Hawaii cemetery around 1956: “He was an unknown soldier because they had no way of identifying him.”

“His remains are pretty much intact, from what they have informed us so far,” he said. “They’re about 95 percent intact.”

He said he was not sure where his uncle had been originally buried in Korea, or exactly how the body had been recovered and returned. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, which made the identification, plans to brief the family in more detail, a spokesman said.

Father Kapaun was “an American soldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who [carried] the mightiest weapon of all: the love for his brothers so powerful that he was willing to die so that they might live,” President Obama said in bestowing the nation’s highest medal for gallantry.

The son of a Czech immigrant, he had been raised on a farm near Pilsen, Kansas. He became a priest and a military chaplain and served in the closing months of World War II. He served again in Korea with the 3rd Battalion of the First Cavalry Division’s 8th Cavalry Regiment.

During a ferocious battle with Chinese forces in November, 1950, “Chaplain Kapaun calmly walked through withering enemy fire in order to provide comfort and medical aid to his comrades and rescue . . . wounded from no-man’s land,” his medal citation reads.

Surrounded by the enemy at a place called Unsan, now in North Korea, “the able-bodied men were ordered to evacuate,” the citation reads. “However, Chaplain Kapaun, fully aware of his certain capture, elected to stay behind with the wounded.”

After being captured, Father Kapaun, whose name is pronounced Ka-PAWN, knocked aside the rifle of a Chinese soldier who was about to execute Staff Sergeant Herbert Miller.

“He pushed that man’s rifle aside and he picked me up,” Miller said in 2013. And for a time Father Kapaun carried him on his back.

The American prisoners were marched 80 miles in frigid weather to a POW camp. Temperatures were often below freezing. The prisoners were put on a starvation diet and perished in droves.

But the priest worked to care for them. He stole food from the Chinese to feed them. He traded his watch for a blanket, and cut up the blanket to make socks for his comrades’ frozen feet.

But then his health began to fail. He reportedly developed pneumonia. The prison guards ordered him to go to a “hospital,” his buddies recalled in 2013. The Americans termed it the dying room, and protested. But the guards insisted.

“They wanted volunteers to carry him up there,” fellow prisoner Robert Wood remembered. “I was one of those who carried him up there.”

Ray Kapaun said: “I really do see this as a miracle. Just for this to happen. And at a time now when something good really needs to happen. It’s pretty special to say the least.”

– – –

The Washington Post’s Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this story.