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New York snow enters record books as city starts digging out

InternationalFeb 03. 2021A food delivery worker rides a bicycle during a snowstorm in New York on Feb. 1, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jeenah Moon

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Brian K. Sullivan

The nor’easter that paralyzed New York and blanketed the East and Midwest with heavy snow will edge its way along the coast as a blast of Arctic air sweeps behind it, sending temperatures tumbling across the central U.S.

New York’s Central Park received 19.3 inches (49 centimeters) since Sunday, which makes the storm the city’s ninth heaviest since 1869, said Rob Carolan, owner of Hometown Forecast Services Inc. The bulk of the snow fell Monday, setting a record for the date, according to the National Weather Service.

“The setup was perfect for the tri-state area to get buried,” said Carolan, who provides forecasts for Bloomberg Radio. “The radar looked like a fire hose coming off the Atlantic.”

The storm closed covid vaccination sites across the region and tied up road and rail traffic, with trains and subways being suspended in New York on Monday. While school buildings were closed, many students were still required to log on for remote learning.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, declared a state of emergency in 44 counties, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, D, enacted a travel ban in the city. More than 3,100 flights in the U.S. have been canceled since Sunday, according to Flight Aware, an airline tracking service.

There will be some light snowfall Tuesday, “but it will be more of a digging out and cleaning up,” Cuomo said on 1010 WINS radio.

With the worst of the storm over in the Mid-Atlantic, Metro North trains resumed regular service, while the Long Island Rail Road is operating on a weekend schedule. Amtrak is operating on a modified schedule. New York schools are still closed through Tuesday, with students learning from home. New York subways began operating above ground at 5 a.m.

New York has ordered all vaccine sites to honor appointments. “It will be honored, and that is a state order,” Cuomo said Tuesday.

The storm will linger off the East Coast with snow showers continuing across large cities along the Interstate 95 corridor, but the heaviest amounts will fall in interior New York and New England, said Lara Pagano, a meteorologist with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. The highest total from the storm so far was Nazareth, Penn., about 80 miles (129 kilometers) west of New York, which received 31 inches.

Along the Massachusetts coast, Boston’s Logan International Airport got 1.2 inches, while suburbs just to the north and west got between 17 to 20 inches, Carolan said.

As the snow heads off to Canada, frigid, Arctic air is set to rip into the Great Plains and Midwest, sending temperatures 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit (6 to 11 Celsius), or more, below normal later this week, Pagano said. Lows will reach 3 degrees Fahrenheit in Milwaukee Friday and 6 in Chicago. Minneapolis will be minus 2.By early next week, some of that cold will arrive in the East, she said.

Throughout the season, winter has been relatively mild across the U.S. with few major snowstorms and above-normal temperatures. Meteorologists have been predicting a blast of cold after a sudden stratospheric warming event occurred over the Arctic earlier this year, which usually precedes a breakdown of the polar vortex and allows frigid air to spill southward into Asia, Europe and North America.

The cold could mean temperatures dropping 5 to 8 degrees below normal across the eastern half of the U.S. from Feb. 7 to 16, according to Matt Rogers, president of the Commodity Weather Group LLC. That will drive up energy demand, and possibly shore up natural gas prices. “A significant pattern change favoring a two-week period of very cold air appears,” said Jim Rouiller, lead meteorologist with the Energy Weather Group. “The full wrath of winter arrives in the East in a week.”

But the cold will likely prove short-lived, with temperatures becoming milder again in March, he added.

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GameStop shares tumble 60% as broader market swells

InternationalFeb 03. 2021

By The Washington Post · Hamza Shaban, Hannah Denham

GameStop losses piled up, with shares tumbling 60%, Tuesday while the broader market got a bounce from promising corporate earnings and ongoing coronavirus stimulus talks.

The video game retailer’s improbable rise – shares jumped 400% last week – was sparked by individual traders and goaded on by a Reddit forum and other online trading communities who wanted to defy the hedge funds that had bet that the stock would lose value. The pushback shook the institutional powers of Wall Street, provoking fresh scrutiny of the financial services industry and a new ecosystem of social-media-powered retail stock trading.

The party is winding down: GameStop closed Tuesday at $90.21, meaning it’s lost 70% of its value this week.

U.S. stocks climbed in anticipation of robust earnings reports from Amazon and Alphabet and continued to claw back from a chaotic January. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up Tuesday nearly 476 points, or nearly 1.6%, at 30,687.81. The S&P 500 climbed more than 52 points, or nearly 1.4%, to 3,826.31, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq added 209 points, or nearly 1.6%, to settle at 13,612.78.

The broader market seems to have moved past the collective “shaking in the boots” about the systemic risks fueling the frenzied trading of GameStop and other shorted stocks, said Michael Mussio, president of FBB Capital Partners. He noted investors’ hopeful attitudes about vaccine distribution and corporate earnings from Amazon, Google and Chipotle, companies he called “growth drivers of the economy.”

Other assets and securities that had attracted intense investor interest in recent days, including AMC Entertainment, and BlackBerry, also lost ground Tuesday, sliding 41%, 21% and nearly 9%, respectively. Some posters on the Reddit message board WallStreetBets blamed those declines on the brokerage firms that have placed restrictions on buying shares of certain shorted companies.

Silver also retreated, falling more than 9.6%, a day after retail investors powered up the price of the precious metal more than 7%. Some investors appeared to adapt their GameStop playbook to the commodity, while others within the WallStreetBets community warned against the investment as a distraction that would benefit hedge fund managers.

Mussio expressed doubts last week that the rally propelling GameStop and AMC would be long; now he says it will run its course soon.

“There’s certainly a sentiment of buying GameStop is my way of sticking it to the man and that’s fine, but that’s maybe not the best investment strategy,” he said. “The sheer volume, the price action, would lead us to believe it’s not just individual investors but institutions moving around that money, as well.”

But many WallStreetBets investors are determined to hold on to their GameStop shares and positions in other shorted companies that have largely tumbled since last week’s rally.

Jake Graham, 25, a mobile diesel technician in Lubbock, Texas, started investing to help pay off his student loans. When he first joined the subreddit in July, he was hesitant to follow the advice of investor members – but when the GameStop rally started in January, he realized there was merit to the online forum’s predictions.

Graham now holds nearly 47 shares of GameStop and seven shares of AMC, which he said he plans to hold on to for as long as he can despite today’s declines.

During the 2008 financial crisis, “you see videos of Wall Street just up in their buildings and laughing at people protesting. Billions of dollars were lost, and they didn’t care. They were sipping their champagne and laughing,” he said, explaining why it is worth it to him to see how long retail investors can prevail. “I’m not that worried now.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, the popular trading platform Robinhood maintained a list of five restricted stocks: GameStop, AMC, Nokia, Naked and Express. The app limits customers who already own those brands in sufficient numbers from purchasing more, and it bars new customers from buying those stocks above a certain number of shares.

Robinhood has played a central role in the Wall Street drama as a key facilitator for an army of retail trailers and, conversely, for acting as a chokepoint in the middle of the speculative frenzy. Like other stock trading apps, Robinhood temporarily froze customers’ ability to buy GameStop and other highly sought-after shares, prompting a wave of selling and a vocal backlash from customers, lawmakers and business leaders.

The company has since announced that it has taken in $3.4 billion in investments to secure its own financials. And the trading app, in a flurry of crisis management public relations, has stated in tweets and blog posts that it limited stock buying in volatile securities to ensure that it met rules on capital requirements.

On Tuesday, Robinhood issued a statement calling for financial regulators to allow for real-time settlement of U.S. equities, meaning the brokerage firm could settle investor trades immediately rather than two days later.

“Last week we saw the impact the two-day trade settlement period has on investors and ultimately the entire American financial system. Clearinghouse deposit requirements skyrocketed overnight. People were unable to buy some of the securities they wanted. Investors were angry and concerned, an unintended byproduct of the antiquated settlement process,” the company said in a blog post. “The existing two-day period to settle trades exposes investors and the industry to unnecessary risk and is ripe for change.”

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Biden urges Senate Democrats to go big on his relief package, warns against smaller plan

InternationalFeb 03. 2021White House press secretary Jen Psaki participates in a briefing at the White House on Feb 1, 2021, in Washington. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.

By The Washington Post · Erica Werner, Jeff Stein, Seung Min Kim

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden urged Senate Democrats on Tuesday to go big on coronavirus relief, making an aggressive case in favor of his $1.9 trillion rescue package as Democrats took the first steps to advance the legislation.

Biden’s comments, on a private lunchtime call with the Senate Democratic caucus, were confirmed by several people familiar with his remarks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were private.

Biden addressed Senate Democrats a day after meeting with a group of Republican senators who are pushing a much narrower, $618 billion bill.

The president made clear to Senate Democrats that he viewed a proposal of that size as inadequate and that the risks of going small outweighed the risks of going big, the people said. Press secretary Jen Psaki emphasized in a press briefing shortly thereafter that the White House stood by the $1.9 trillion top-line figure of its plan.

The Senate took an initial vote Tuesday to advance a budget bill that would pave the way to pass Biden’s relief package with a simple majority in the Senate, leaving Republicans out if necessary. The procedural vote to advance to debate on the budget bill was 50-49, with all Democrats voting in favor and one Republican not voting.

The Senate is evenly split between the two parties, with Democrats in the majority because Vice President Harris can break ties.

“President Biden spoke about the need for Congress to act boldly and quickly. He was very strong in emphasizing the need for a big, bold package. He said that he told Senate Republicans that the $600 billion that they proposed was way too small,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters after the conversation with the president.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also joined the call and emphasized the need for a robust relief package at an unsettled moment for the economy, which has begun shedding more jobs – and for the pandemic, as new coronavirus variants emerge.

“I think it is his belief, it is Secretary Yellen’s belief, it is our belief, that if we did a package that small, we’d be mired in the covid crisis for years,” Schumer said of the GOP plan.

In the House, Democrats will also take an initial procedural vote Tuesday evening to move forward on the budget resolution setting up party-line passage of the coronavirus relief bill in the Senate.

On the call with Senate Democrats, Biden walked through the various elements of his plan, which includes $1,400 stimulus checks, extended unemployment aid, increased child tax credits, and hundreds of billions of dollars for schools, vaccinations, the health-care system and more.

The president joined the call with Senate Democrats by phone, leaving it without taking questions. He cautioned against demands for overly “targeting” the aid in the package, as Republicans and some Democrats have suggested, giving an example of “nurses and pipe fitters” who are in the middle class but still might be in need of assistance.

Biden also spoke of the need to learn the lessons of previous recessions, when Congress didn’t approve enough relief. As vice president under President Barack Obama a decade ago, Biden was involved in crafting a $787 billion relief bill to help the country climb out of the Great Recession. In retrospect, many Democrats and economists say the country would have recovered faster had they passed a larger relief package, but at the time, Republicans balked at a bigger figure.

Biden also spoke during the call about the many people still hurting in the nation, particularly women. He acknowledged Democrats’ majority is small but said they will succeed together, according to the people familiar with the call.

“The president’s commitment is to urgently deliver relief to the American people, and that’s what he’s conveyed in every meeting he’s had or engagement he’s had with Democrats and Republicans,” Psaki said.

Psaki emphasized, as did congressional Democrats, that proceeding along the “budget reconciliation” route did not preclude Republican support.

Democrats said they are open to Republican ideas but not to watering down Biden’s proposal, a point Psaki has also made.

Multiple Republicans, however, argued that proceeding via reconciliation would undercut Biden’s campaign claims that he would govern as a bipartisan unifier.

“It’s not a good signal that [Schumer] is adopting a take-it-or-leave-it approach right after his president delivers an inaugural address based on unity,” said Sen. Todd C. Young, R-Ind., who was among the Republicans who met with Biden at the White House on Monday evening.

Republicans used the partisan budget reconciliation process after President Donald Trump took office to attempt unsuccessfully to overturn the Affordable Care Act and to pass a massive tax cut bill.

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U.S. stocks rally as day-trading frenzy collapses

InternationalFeb 03. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Rita Nazareth, Claire Ballentine

Stocks were poised for their biggest rally in three months as the trading frenzy that fueled a surge in heavily shorted shares crumbled. Investors also sifted through a batch of corporate earnings ahead of results from giants Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.

All major groups in the S&P 500 rose, with financial, industrial and retail companies leading gains on Tuesday. Twenty-seven out of the 30 blue chips in the Dow Jones industrial average advanced. United Parcel Service Inc. climbed as the courier reported a surge in profit, while Exxon Mobil Corp. was up on a pledge to safeguard dividends following its first annual loss in at least 40 years. Meanwhile, the speculative trades popular with Reddit crowds crumbled, with GameStop Corp. and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. tumbling at least 39% as silver sank from an eight-year high.

The collapse of those trades that roiled the stock market last month has coincided with a sharp reduction in short interest after bearish investors appeared to cover their positions. While some indicators show the battle between Redditors and hedge funds may not be over, analysts cited a sense of more stability and diminished concern over contagion from any retail bubble as reasons for the equity rebound.

“There’s optimism brewing underneath,” said Megan Horneman, director of portfolio strategy at Verdence Capital Advisors. “The fact that markets have cooled down a bit with the retail-trading frenzy, that’s giving a little bit of optimism. Anytime there’s more stability to markets, there’s a breath of relief of all investors.”

She also cited prospects for more fiscal stimulus as another reason for the positive mood. The Senate on Tuesday will begin a process that would let Democrats pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion proposal without Republican votes, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

As stocks continued to push higher, Bank of America Corp. strategists came out with a warning about rising bullishness, saying that a sentiment indicator is close to hitting a “sell” signal — a mark last reached shortly before the financial crisis. Meanwhile, Citigroup Inc. is growing concerned with elevated earnings expectations, noting that share prices may be ahead of themselves by about 10%.

These are the main moves in markets:

Stocks

– The S&P 500 climbed 1.7% as of 3:38 p.m. EST.

– The Stoxx Europe 600 Index increased 1.3%.

– The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 1.2%.

Currencies

– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed.

– The euro dipped 0.3% to $1.2019.

– The Japanese yen depreciated 0.2% to 105.10 per dollar.

Bonds

– The yield on 10-year Treasurys rose two basis points to 1.10%.

– Germany’s 10-year yield gained three basis points to -0.49%.

– Britain’s 10-year yield increased three basis points to 0.349%.

Commodities

– West Texas Intermediate crude climbed 2.3% to $54.78 a barrel.

– Gold sank 1.4% to $1,835.30 an ounce.

– Silver slid 8.6% to $26.55 per ounce.

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Automakers withdraw support for Trump-era emissions rule

InternationalFeb 03. 2021John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, in 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Keith Laing

Automakers have abandoned their legal fight for a Trump-era rule blocking California from setting emissions standards as the industry pushes President Joe Biden to accept a compromise with weaker fuel economy requirements than Biden helped chart almost a decade ago.

A final group of automakers said on Tuesday it is dropping legal support for the emissions rule imposed under former President Donald Trump, calling it “a gesture of good faith” meant to help “find a constructive path forward.” The withdrawal includes Fiat Chrysler parent Stellantis NV and Toyota Motor Corp. General Motors Co. and Nissan Motor Co. had already backed out after Biden’s presidential win.

The Coalition for Sustainable Automotive Regulation said in a statement it was “aligned with the Biden administration’s goals to achieve year-over-year improvements in fuel economy standards that provide meaningful climate and national energy security benefits, reduce GHG emissions and promote advanced technologies.”

The withdrawal comes as automakers try to influence the Biden administration’s rewrite of fuel-economy and tailpipe-emission standards for cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles through the 2026 model year. Hours after being sworn in, Biden gave a July 2021 deadline for the EPA and Transportation Department to decide whether to suspend, revise or rescind a Trump administration regulation that eased the standards Biden helped develop as vice president in 2012.

While automakers are pitching an industry-friendly agreement negotiated with California, environmentalists are lobbying for the revival of a tougher plan imposed by the Obama administration. The issue is shaping up to be an early test of the new president’s commitment to fighting climate change through ambitious greenhouse gas controls, even when opposed by industry.

The auto emissions initiative is just one piece of Biden’s broader climate agenda, as the president last week set in motion broad plans for pausing federal oil leasing and replacing the government’s 645,000-vehicle fleet with zero-emission models.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the leading automaker trade group, is urging Biden to adopt an emissions plan that falls “roughly midway between current standards and those of the former Obama administration.” The group argues that is the best way to quickly benefit consumers, create jobs and protect the environment.

“Our desire is to work collaboratively on a new national framework that includes California,” Alliance President John Bozzella said in an interview. “A midpoint allows us to get beyond current standards now, but also allows a shift to elements that would encourage electrification.”

Carmakers are casting the compromise approach as a possible peace plan after years of fighting about auto emissions under Trump.

Several automakers backed the Trump administration in the legal battle that could have neutered California’s long-standing right to set its own more stringent carbon-emission rules.

About two weeks after Trump lost, GM withdrew from that fight, and last week it pledged to meet California’s goal of selling only electric vehicles starting in 2035 — with an aim to make the change nationwide.

White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy embraced automakers’ legal retreat as a chance to “restart and build a sustainable future, grow domestic manufacturing and deliver clean cars for America.”

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, celebrated the legal withdrawal as “great news.”

“For over a year, I have been telling automakers that staying stuck in neutral or reverse is no longer an option,” Carper said on Twitter. “It’s time to embrace the clean cars of the future.”

In Biden’s emissions rule rewrite, the industry’s preferred model is a compromise California regulators brokered with five automakers last year to boost the average fuel economy of their fleets from 2021 levels by 3.7% annually, toward an average of almost 50 miles per gallon by 2026. That fuel economy target is estimated to translate to about 33 mpg under real-world conditions, in part because the agreement included eased limits on a technology credit program, double-counting of some electric vehicle sales and other changes over a plan brokered under former President Barack Obama.

The tougher Obama plan, developed in the shadow of the auto industry bailout, required annual stringency gains of about 5%, with the fleetwide requirement targeting almost 50 mpg in 2025. It translated to about 36 mpg under real driving conditions.

Both approaches are more stringent than the standards imposed under Trump last year, which require 1.5% annual improvements in fuel economy and target an average fleetwide fuel economy of roughly 40 mpg for 2026 model-year cars, trucks and SUVs (or about 30 mpg under real conditions).

“The California deal is certainly weaker than the Obama standards and stronger than the Trump standards,” said David Cooke, a senior vehicles analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. But “we’re in a climate crisis. A middle-of-the-road approach isn’t where we need to be.”

If the California compromise were applied to the entire auto industry, it would yield about 25% fewer emission reductions from vehicles sold through 2025 than the Obama-era alternative, according to an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Environmentalists say there’s no time to wait in setting ambitious standards that help fulfill Biden’s pledge of reaching net-zero emissions across the U.S. economy by 2050. To satisfy that goal — and allow for a turnover of the nationwide fleet beforehand — automakers need to stop selling conventional gasoline-powered vehicles by 2030, said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign.

“That will be good for consumers, it’ll be good for the environment, obviously, and it’ll be good for reducing our reliance on the oil and the countries that produce it,” Becker said. “Biden’s basically got to say, ‘All right, I know the auto companies want something a lot weaker, but I’m not going to negotiate with them.'”

On the campaign trail, Biden promised “to develop a new fuel economy standard that goes beyond what the Obama-Biden administration put in place.” Environmentalists argue that whatever happens to requirements through the 2026 model year, it’s essential Biden develop tough standards for the rest of the decade and beyond.

The Transportation Department declined to comment.

In an emailed statement, the Environmental Protection Agency pledged to “follow the science and the law” as it reviews agency actions under Trump “to ensure that they protect public health and the environment.”

Automakers have gone back and forth on auto emission rules amid changes in the White House. In 2012, they embraced Obama’s rules in the wake of a federal bailout of Chrysler and General Motors Co. that resulted in critics labeling the venerable Detroit automaker as “Government Motors.”

However, four years later, after Trump’s election, automakers pressed the new administration to halt an Obama administration plan to finalize mileage rules for 2022-2025 model years ahead of schedule.

That history should weigh heavily on Biden, Becker said.

“How do you negotiate with someone who repudiated the last deal you negotiated with them?” Becker said. “Biden has to look at them with a clear eye and say ‘I’ve got to do what is right for the country and right for the climate.’ “

Automakers have a different perspective after working with different administrations that embraced competing priorities.

“Our hope was that we would have had the federal agencies working together with everybody,” Bozzella said. “We have an opportunity to do that now.”

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Rohingya refugees worry that Myanmar’s coup will only prolong their plight

InternationalFeb 03. 2021

By The Washington Post · Miriam Berger

Tensions are high in Myanmar after the military ousted the elected government and put the country’s top civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, back under house arrest on Sunday.

The developments are also being watched with particular alarm across the border in Bangladesh, where more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims have sought refuge since 2017 after fleeing a military-led crackdown on their communities in Myanmar.

Among the Rohingya, there is trepidation that a Myanmar led by the military would be worse than the ousted civilian-led government, Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organization United Kingdom, told The Washington Post.

“This military is very brutal, and Rohingya worry that the military may commit more violence against Rohingya,” Khin said. “We worry more may flee.”

Until Sunday, the past decade was one of a rocky transition to democracy in Myanmar. The military junta, installed in 1962, began ceding power and in 2016 formed an uneasy alliance with Suu Kyi, whom it had held under house arrest for 15 years.

But alongside these political changes came a violent military-led campaign against the Rohingya in 2017, which United Nation investigators concluded in 2018 had “genocidal intent.” The military rejected the findings, claiming instead that it has faced a Rohingya insurgency.

Kaamil Ahmed, a journalist previously based in Bangladesh who is writing a history of Rohingya refugees, said the United States and others in the international community had initially sought to tread softly around majority-Buddhist Myanmar’s treatment of the majority-Muslim Rohingya to protect what they hoped would be the country’s democratic transition.

That calculus, he said, could change in the wake of the coup.

“If that facade (of a democratic transition) has been destroyed, then there’s a question about whether the international community, and especially the new Biden administration, is going to be more forthright,” Ahmed said.

“The Rohingya are begging for a more serious international intervention, one that actually acknowledges what is happening,” he continued. “It hasn’t come, it seems, because they have seemed so invested in a democratic transition in Myanmar. And now the question is: Is that going to change?”

In recent years, Suu Kyi – who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle for democracy in Myanmar – began to lose her global standing as she became a public defender of the military’s campaigns.

In 2019, Suu Kyi appeared before the International Court of Justice to answer questions about the 2017 razing of Rohingya communities, during which she refused to even say the word “Rohingya” and defended the government against accusations of genocide. She has also appeared to support the military’s claim that members of the long-persecuted minority are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

But rather than gloating at Suu Kyi’s fall, Ahmed said, many Rohingya are feeling further disappointment that conditions in Myanmar are not improving.

That sentiment is clashing with messaging from Bangladesh, which has been ramping up pressure on Rohingya refugees to return to Myanmar.

More than 1 million Rohingya live in overcrowded refugee camps in the town of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. They are forbidden from opening schools, and economic and mental and physical health conditions in the camps continue to worsen amid the coronavirus pandemic. The massive influx of people in 2017 was the largest yet in the waves of Rohingya who have crossed into Bangladesh since 1978 to escape spikes in persecution at home. Since the 1990s, Bangladesh has periodically forced some Rohingya to return to Myanmar, though others kept coming.

Bangladesh has long warned that it can’t handle the refugees on its own. In December, it began implementing a strategy first floated in 2015: relocating Rohingya to the remote Bhasan Char island in the Bay of Bengal, despite complaints from human rights groups that the island is ill-suited to host people and that relocations are being conducted without informed consent.

On Saturday, the government sent its fourth group of Rohingya – numbering about 1,460 – to the island, where it has built the infrastructure to accommodate about 100,000 people.

None of this bodes well for the Rohingya, Ahmed said.

“In terms of the Rohingya, there’s been no real international action,” he said. “There’s been no pressure to make sure Myanmar creates safer conditions.”

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Biden administration declares ‘coup’ in Myanmar, triggering review of U.S. aid

InternationalFeb 03. 2021

By The Washington Post · John Hudson

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration concluded Tuesday that the military seizure of power in Myanmar and detainment of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi constituted a military coup d’etat, triggering a review of U.S. assistance to the country, according to State Department officials.

The legal determination represents the strongest move President Joe Biden has taken since the military rolled through Myanmar’s capital on Monday, rounding up elected leaders of the National League for Democracy and cutting off phone lines and the Internet.

“We have denounced in the strongest possible terms Burma’s military leaders for seeking to reject the will of the people,” said a senior State Department official on a call with reporters, using another name for the country. “This assessment triggers certain restrictions on foreign assistance to the government of Burma, as it should, and in addition we will undertake a broader review of our assistance programs to ensure that they align with recent events.”

The coup unseated a fragile civilian government following elections in November and posed a challenge for Biden, who has pledged to return the United States to a leadership role in condemning anti-democratic actions worldwide.

On Monday, the president issued a statement saying the reversal of democratic gains in Myanmar, a major foreign policy project of the Obama administration, would “necessitate an immediate review of our sanction laws and authorities.”

“In a democracy, force should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election,” he said.

Biden warned that the United States was “taking note” of who was standing up for the people of Myanmar as democratic nations around the world denounced the military seizure. Chinese state media have deployed euphemisms for the putsch, calling it a “major cabinet reshuffle.”

U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive policy issue, said the determination would not impact humanitarian assistance, such as the millions of dollars that goes to assisting the country’s persecuted Rohingya Muslims. The officials did not provide a dollar figure for how much U.S. assistance is at stake.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday that he had spoken to Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the coup and expressed support for sanctions.

McConnell credited the new administration for its bipartisan effort and outreach to Congress after the conversations Monday.

“This is a military coup and an attack on democracy, plain and simple,” McConnell, a longtime champion of democracy in Myanmar, said in remarks on the Senate floor. “There are two paths before Burma. It can continue to grow into a modern democratic country, connected to the global economy, or remain a corrupt, impoverished authoritarian backwater in the shadow of the People’s Republic of China.”

Monday’s seizure was the culmination of weeks of political tensions as the military and its proxy political party had been alleging widespread fraud in the November vote, which saw a landslide election victory for Suu Kyi’s party. The international community and Myanmar’s election commission have dismissed the military’s fraud claims as baseless.

The military has declared a state of emergency for a year and said it would hold fresh elections after that.

On Tuesday, Suu Kyi was still under house arrest in Naypyidaw. Suu Kyi’s ministers, also detained in the military takeover, were slowly being released, replaced by former generals and army loyalists.

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China helps European ally Serbia get ahead on vaccines

InternationalFeb 03. 2021Health care workers outside vaccination booths in the Belgrade Fair exhibition center on Jan. 19, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Oliver Bunic

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Misha Savic, Andrea Dudik

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic puts his country’s status as continental Europe’s front-runner in getting vaccines into people down to one thing: looking east as well as west.

The Balkan country may look like an unlikely success story as the neighboring European Union gets mired in a fiasco over vaccinations. Yet Serbia’s history of balancing its geopolitical interests is paying off at a critical time.

Serbia has been an important bridge for China to gain a foothold in Europe, while the country is also a traditional ally of Russia and is aspiring to join the EU. Those relationships have allowed it to diversify vaccine sources and inoculate a bigger proportion of its population than any other nation in Europe after the U.K. Serbia has injected 6.8% of its 7 million people, more than twice the ratio in the EU.

Most of the 1.1 million doses imported by the government in Belgrade so far have come from China’s state-backed Sinopharm. Vucic says his refusal to join a chorus of leaders criticizing China at a security conference in Germany helped him establish good relations with Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

“I was the only one who didn’t accuse China of anything so we had a brotherly meeting-the foreign minister and me-and since then the Chinese support began for us, concerning the coronavirus and everything else,” Vucic said in a televised address to the nation last week.

The speedy rollout of injections to combat covid-19 relative to the EU underscores the tension across the continent, and also the potential geopolitical consequences in its most volatile region. Already, the Serbian approach has its followers within the EU: neighboring Hungary became the first member of the bloc to approve shots made by Russia and China.

The Sinopharm is vaccine delivered at Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade, Serbia, on Jan. 16, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Oliver Bunic

Serbia’s goal is to join the EU, though with an electorate already divided over membership, the pandemic risks pushing the country into the orbit of rival powers. Meanwhile, Belgrade has promised vaccine donations to Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, exposing the divisions again in former Yugoslavia that fueled the bloody wars of the 1990s.

The EU has pledged to give six prospective members in the western Balkans-including Serbia- $85 million (70 million euros) to buy covid shots, but deliveries are facing delays. Instead of waiting for the EU’s help, Belgrade secured vaccine from China, Russia and the U.S. directly.

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the problems Europe is having with rolling out vaccine programs before a lunch with Vucic in Paris on Monday. “I would have wished that France, Europe could have been more present on your side on the topic of vaccines,” Macron told Vucic and a group of reporters. “We Europeans must be even more efficient on this.”

The former information minister to the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, Vucic called in favors when the covid-19 crunch began, securing ventilators and protective equipment in the early stages of the contagion. He then ordered vaccines from three suppliers: Sinopharm, Russia’s Gamaleya and Pfizer-BioNTech.

Details on the Chinese and Russian vaccines are less transparent than the western ones, though health authorities in Serbia have sought to assure citizens that all the shots in use are safe and effective.

A health care worker carries boxes of the Sinopharm vaccine in the Belgrade Fair exhibition center on Jan. 19, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Oliver Bunic

A week ago, Vucic said he met with China’s ambassador and “literally begged her,” for more deliveries. “Knowing President Xi, I believe that before May or June we’ll receive significant quantities of new vaccines from China.” Serbia is also now looking to start local production of the Russian vaccine.

The Serb leader controls the government and has tightened his grip on power in 2020 elections with a landslide victory, amid a boycott by some opposition parties that accuse him of autocracy. His pitch to voters, though, includes his ability to forge relationships across the geopolitical spectrum, with little regard to the feathers he might ruffle along the way.

In June, Vucic drew condemnation from pro-EU politicians for kissing the Chinese flag when an airplane delivered medical gear from Beijing to Belgrade. At the time he described the promise of solidarity from the EU, by far the biggest contributor of aid and investment to Serbia, as “a fairytale on paper.”

Providing vaccines to Serbia gives an important geopolitical win for China as it faces up to a less fractious and more Sino-skeptic West under U.S. President Joe Biden. In recent years, China has focused investment on infrastructure in the Balkans through its Belt and Road Initiative, including a rail link between Belgrade and Budapest in Hungary.

There is a perception of China being more prepared to help than the EU, said Faris Kocan, a foreign policy researcher at the University of Ljubljana. “It started with mask diplomacy and the narrative continues with vaccines, despite the fact that Balkan nations are strategically dependent on EU,” he said.

Serbia started to vaccinate on Dec. 24, days before the EU. It has contracts for 6.5 million vaccines, but the global scramble for jabs is hurting confidence that the deals will be honored, Vucic said. No vaccines have come through the multinational Covax initiative, which the Balkan state also joined early on.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel held crisis talks on Monday with pharmaceutical executives and European Commission officials as part of efforts to speed up the stuttering vaccination push. The EU’s 27 states collectively have inoculated 2.9% of the population compared with 14.7% in the U.K. and 10% in the U.S., according to Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker.

“People in the EU are good people, but luckily I had enough experience and knowledge to assume that it would turn out like this,” Vucic said. “This is a war for people’s lives but also for the future of every country.”

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Merkel says all Germans to be offered vaccine by end of summer

InternationalFeb 03. 2021Chancellor Angela Merkel

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Arne Delfs, Raymond Colitt

Chancellor Angela Merkel promised all Germans a first shot of Covid-19 vaccine by the end of September, as long as drugmakers stick to their delivery commitments.

Even if new shots aren’t approved, Europe’s largest economy will have sufficient supplies despite earlier delays, the German leader said late Monday in Berlin after crisis talks with pharmaceutical executives, cabinet ministers, the country’s 16 state premiers and European Commission officials.

“There will be no shortage of money or commitment” to meet the target, she said, adding that current production plans don’t allow for a more aggressive rollout.

Health Minister Jens Spahn warned of “tough weeks of shortage in this first quarter and into April” and said that throwing cash at the problem would not make much of a difference at this stage of the program.

“Money, which we would make available very rapidly, is not the limiting factor,” Spahn said in an interview with ARD television after the talks. “There will be an appreciable increase in the amount of vaccine only in the second quarter.”

Merkel has come under fire after pushing for the European Union to take the lead on vaccine purchasing, prompting criticism that delegating responsibility to Brussels slowed down national inoculation programs.

Germany has vaccinated about 3 out of every 100 people, compared with 10 in the U.S. and almost 15 in the U.K., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. While Britain and America began immunizing several weeks earlier thanks to quicker approval, Germany’s rollout has been hampered by supply issues.

Some relief is on the way. Bayer AG agreed on Monday to produce CureVac NV’s experimental shots. While the move won’t have an immediate effect, it’s at least some good news after a week of chaos surrounding Europe’s program.

Bayer’s production effort extends its current pact with CureVac — a German startup that got investment from Merkel’s government last year — on regulatory clearance and global distribution. Delivery will start at the end of the year.

The effort follows commitments from fellow European pharma giants Sanofi and Novartis AG to put their manufacturing capacities behind scaling up Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s Covid-19 injection, as authorities push for more capacity to ease the crisis.

“Maybe other countries and regions get vaccinated more quickly, but that doesn’t help us,” said Bavarian Premier Markus Soeder, a leading contender to succeed Merkel after September elections, adding that the next six months will be a “stress test” for the German people.

While the country’s contagion rate has been declining, it is still nearly double the level that the government has said would allow it to ease curbs. The measures, which have been gradually tightened since early November, include closing schools, non-essential stores and limiting movement in hard-hit areas until at least mid-February.

The video call in Berlin was held amid growing pressure on Merkel over the stumbling vaccine rollout.

The Social Democrats, her junior coalition partner, suggested that the government may need to take stronger action to ensure there are enough supplies, a step Spahn dismissed, saying companies are already cooperating.

If the government can’t ensure adequate vaccine supply, then an alternative strategy must be found, Carsten Schneider, a deputy head of the SPD caucus in parliament, said Monday on Twitter. “This includes the use of all available production capacity and patents,” he said. Authorities have all but ruled out forced licensing.

Tensions flared after AstraZeneca Plc announced on Jan. 22 that problems at a plant in Belgium meant deliveries this quarter would be significantly curtailed.

The episode deteriorated into a bruising blame game that pitted the 27-nation EU against the pharmaceutical industry, and triggered fears about a wave of vaccine nationalism that could hinder efforts to fight the pandemic and delay economic recoveries.

Merkel showed understanding for drugmakers, saying that a shortage of materials such as lipid nanoparticles is holding back production. Meanwhile, new variants add urgency to the rampup.

“If we have a mutation that the vaccine doesn’t work against, we will have to start all over again,” she said.

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Capt. Tom Moore dies of covid. The 100-year-old raised millions for Britain’s NHS.

InternationalFeb 03. 2021Capt. Sir Tom Moore

By The Washington Post · Jennifer Hassan, William Booth

LONDON – Capt. Sir Tom Moore, the centarian who raised $45 million for Britain’s National Health Service by shuffling laps across his garden with the aid of a walker during the nationwide coronavirus lockdown last year, has died at the age of 100, his family announced Tuesday.

The medal-bedecked veteran, who was knighted last year by Queen Elizabeth II for his jaw-dropping charitable campaign, had spent the past few weeks being treated for pneumonia and tested positive for the coronavirus last week.

Moore was not believed to have been vaccinated against the virus because of the medication he was receiving for the pneumonia, British media reported.

“Captain Tom,” as he was known to all, stole the hearts of the English, who saw in him a can-do, big-hearted living link to yesteryear, the embodiment of the “keep calm and carry on” spirit that got the Brits through the Blitz in the early days of World War II.

During his slow-motion fundraising marathon, he would urge his patrons to always remember, “Tomorrow will be a good day.”

Moore was also a willing performer and a great quote for the newspapers and TV cameras.

“One small soul like me won’t make much difference,” he said in his first television interview. But that didn’t prove to be so.

The morning he was to be knighted by the queen at Windsor Castle, Moore wrote on his Twitter account, “Ready and raring to go for what is a very special day.”

A few hours later, he joked with a camera crew he would not, alas, kneel before the queen – “because if I did I’ll never get up again.”

His family said they were grateful to be with him at the hospital at the end. In Britain, as elsewhere, coronavirus patients have tended to be isolated from their families and support networks, to limit the spread of the virus.

“The last year of our father’s life was nothing short of remarkable,” the Moore family wrote in a statement. “He was rejuvenated and experienced things he’d only ever dreamed of.”

They also thanked the NHS: “They have been unfalteringly professional, kind and compassionate and have given us many more years with him than we ever would have imagined.”

It is a myth that the British are a nation of stiff-upper lips. They embraced Captain Tom as they embrace nostalgia. He appeared on the scene right when needed most, as the country – alongside the rest of the world – faced a scary new virus that shuttered shops, schools and pubs. The highest death toll from the pandemic was Moore’s generation.

“At times of crisis, a nation needs hope and heroes,” the BBC reported.

The Queen was one of the first to publicly mourn his death.

“Her Majesty very much enjoyed meeting Captain Sir Tom and his family at Windsor last year. Her thoughts and those of the Royal Family are with them,” the royal family’s official Twitter account tweeted.

Prince William, her grandson, earlier called Captain Tom “a one-man fundraising machine.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Moore “was a hero in the truest sense of the word. In the dark days of the Second World War, he fought for freedom, and in the face of the country’s deepest postwar crisis, he united us all, he cheered us all up, and he embodied the triumph of the human spirit.”

Downing Street lowered its flag to half-mast.

The NHS applauded the veteran for his contribution.

Some have pointed out that Moore’s private campaign was so important because the health service had been starved for public funds over the past decade. At the outset of the pandemic, hospitals faced a crippling lack of supplies. Some health workers wore trash bags, because there wasn’t enough personal protective equipment to go around.

“They’re all being so brave. Every day, they’re putting themselves in danger of this unseen enemy that we’ve got at the moment,” Moore said of doctors and nurses in an interview with Sky News Australia last year.

Moore served as a young officer in 146th Royal Armoured Corps, first in India and then Burma, joining what the BBC called “the bruised and bloodied forgotten army, which was suffering from disease and low morale, fighting in the world’s least hospitable terrain, with impenetrable jungle, poisonous snakes, and hot lashing rain for six months of every year.”

The broadcaster reported, “Much of the fighting was done hand-to-hand, with no quarter given on either side.”

Moore survived the war, served in British peacetime army, retired, and then worked as a salesman for a roofing company.

His garden odyssey – and unexpected rise to stardom – began in April, when he sought to raise 1,000 pounds (about $1,370) for the NHS by walking his 82-foot long garden path back and forth 100 times, using his walker for support.

He wanted to complete the journey, which he broke down into short ambles, ahead of his 100th birthday on April 30.

As public interest in his fundraiser grew, so did the pot of donations.

Just 24 hours after Moore started walking, he had raised the equivalent of $8,750. As funds poured in, Moore’s fundraising page crashed repeatedly.

He completed his final lap two weeks ahead of schedule – an event that was live-streamed by the BBC as the figure reached $15 million. Afterward, donations continued to climb.

Moore was treated on his 100th birthday with a Royal Air Force flyby above his home in Bedfordshire, 50 miles north of London, as street art of his face began appearing around the country.

Children and fans sent him more than 150,000 birthday cards and a tribute flashed on the big screen in Piccadilly Circus.