Protection International (PI), a non-profit organisation dedicated to the protection of human-rights defenders, found that 87.9 per cent of students fighting for democracy have faced some form of intimidation, especially from their teachers.
Some students and members of their family have even faced threats from officials.
On Thursday, PI and members of the student-led pro-democracy movement, held an event titled “Who should be protected by the government when the youth decide to protect their rights?” at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand in Bangkok.
At the event, PI member Pranom Somwong said most students who tried to fight for their political rights had been threatened in some way or the other – facing mental abuse from teachers in school or being followed home by police officers.
She also said that at least five youngsters, below the age of 18, have been charged for violating the emergency decree and sedition, while at least one 18-year-old faces lese majeste charges.
Pranom also pointed out that Thailand has been a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child for 28 years now. “Yet, what are the Thai government and UNICEF doing to fulfil their duties in protecting children from intimidation?” she asked.
Kunthida Rungruengkiat from the Progressive Movement said students’ rights began being violated in school and by officials as soon as they decided to fight for their rights and present their political views. In some cases, strangers were seen taking their photographs in school, which should be the safest place.
Kunthida said the government should take Thailand’s Child Protection Act seriously, adding that organising political activities is not illegal. It is a right ensured by the Constitution, she added.
She also reminded schools that the Education Ministry has written to them, saying students have the right to express themselves freely.
Laponpat Wangpaisit from the Bad Student group said that more than 1,000 intimidation cases have been reported by students over the past five or six months.
He said these cases are a reflection of the government’s inefficiency in addressing problems, adding that the authorities have, so far, not responded to any of the demands made by the Bad Student group.
The Trump administration has added prominent Chinese semiconductor and drone manufacturers to an export blacklist, continuing to exert pressure on the country in the final weeks of the Trump presidency.
The Commerce Department said it has placed Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., or SMIC, drone maker DJI; and dozens of other Chinese companies and universities on the Entity List, which bans the export of U.S. technology to the entities unless the exporter receives a government license.
The sanction follows “evidence of activities between SMIC and entities of concern in the Chinese military industrial complex,” Commerce said in a statement.
“We will not allow advanced U.S. technology to help build the military of an increasingly belligerent adversary,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said about SMIC in a statement. “Between SMIC’s relationships of concern with the military industrial complex, China’s aggressive application of military civil fusion mandates and state-directed subsidies, SMIC perfectly illustrates the risks of China’s leverage of U.S. technology to support its military modernization.”
The Commerce Department said it was adding DJI for enabling high-tech surveillance in China, which the agency called a human-rights abuse.
The additions also include several construction companies, including China Communications Construction Company, for helping China militarize and claim disputed territory in the South China Sea.
Commerce also added to the list several universities, in Beijing, Nanjing and Tianjin, for actions including trade-secret theft or “acquiring and attempting to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of programs for the People’s Liberation Army.”
The sanction shows that cutting trade ties with China remains a top priority for the Trump administration’s many China hawks, who view the country’s growing tech and military might with increasing alarm. Similar concerns have also taken root in Congress, among both Republicans and Democrats, and could continue during a Biden administration.
The Entity List has become a favorite Trump administration tool to punish China and now includes more than 300 Chinese entities.
The Commerce Department, which maintains the list, has previously used it against Chinese telecom company Huawei and against Chinese entities engaged in alleged human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang region.
Officials at SMIC and DJI, and at China’s embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t respond immediately to requests for comment. SMIC has previously denied supporting China’s military.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much U.S. technology DJI uses to make its drones. The Shenzhen-based company is among the world’s biggest drone manufacturers.
The Trump administration already began restricting exports to SMIC in September by notifying some U.S. companies that they would need a license to export to the chip maker. Inclusion on the Entity List is a broader sanction.
Founded in 2000 in Shanghai, SMIC ranks among the top five semiconductor manufacturers in the world, according to a report from the United States International Trade Commission, or USITC.
Industry experts say that SMIC’s technology lags behind that of chip manufacturers in Taiwan and the United States but that Beijing is pouring billions into the industry to help SMIC and other Chinese companies catch up.
SMIC has enjoyed generous government financial support, including low-interest loans, tax breaks and investments to help build manufacturing facilities, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris said in a report last year.
Commerce said that the export ban will apply to technology needed to produce advanced semiconductors with silicon transistors sized at 10 nanometers or less. There are one billion nanometers in a meter.
Chip-industry experts say SMIC and other Chinese companies are not yet able to make such advanced semiconductors, and would for now need software and equipment from the U.S. and other Western countries to reach that capability.
SMIC started as a private company, but state ownership has steadily grown over time, to more than 45 percent of SMIC stock as of 2018, according to the OECD report.
SMIC’s shares used to trade on the New York Stock Exchange, but the company removed its stock from the NYSE last year. The shares now trade on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.
SMIC’s stock, held by some Western investors, fell 5% in Hong Kong trading on Friday.
The additions to the list also include some lesser known Chinese companies, such as NucTech, which makes luggage- and cargo-screening equipment. The Trump administration said it had determined that “NucTech’s lower performing equipment impair U.S. efforts to counter illicit international trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials.”
The administration also added several Russian entities, including OOO Sovtest Comp and Cosmos Complect, to the list, saying they appear to have used a front company to acquire “sensitive electronic components” for use in Russia, without obtaining required licenses.
By The Washington Post · Michael Birnbaum, Christopher Rowland, Quentin Ariès
The European Union is paying less money than the United States for a range of coronavirus vaccines, including the Pfizer-BioNTech inoculation being rolled out across the country, according to a Washington Post comparison of the breakdowns.
The costs to the EU had been confidential until a Belgian official tweeted – and then deleted – a list late Thursday.
Comparing that list with U.S. calculations by Bernstein Research, an analysis and investment firm, it appears that the 27-nation union has a 24% discount on the Pfizer vaccine, paying $14.76 per dose relative to $19.50 in the United States. Some of the difference may reflect that the EU subsidized that vaccine’s development and the cost of shipping the European-made shots across the Atlantic.
According to the Belgian document, the bloc will pay 45 percent less than the United States for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine currently under development. But it will pay 20 percent more than the United States for the Moderna vaccine, which is expected to be approved for U.S. use on Friday. Both of those vaccines were funded partly by the U.S. government as part of Operation Warp Speed, an effort to expedite their development. The AstraZeneca-Oxford team received $1.2 billion, and Moderna got $4.1 billion.
As in the United States, European countries generally plan to make the vaccines free for their citizens.
The per-dose prices of the vaccines are lower than most brand-name drugs, but the hundreds of millions of doses required to vaccinate entire populations will drive up costs significantly for individual countries. Disparities between the higher prices in the United States and Europe in overall drug prices have long driven outrage in Congress.
Asked about the price differences between the United States and Europe, Pfizer noted that the EU coronavirus vaccine purchase, 200 million doses, was double that of the United States.
“Pfizer and BioNTech are using a tiered pricing formula based on volume and delivery dates,” Pfizer said in a statement. “The agreement with the European Commission for the supply of 200m doses, and an option to request an additional 100m, represents the largest initial order of our candidate vaccine to date.”
It said it would not disclose further details.
“AstraZeneca is providing the vaccine at no profit during the pandemic and the price per dose varies depending on the supply chain. We are unable to comment on specific agreements,” the company said in a statement. The company has previously said it expected its vaccine to cost between $3 and $5 a dose, based on the cost of production. It was not clear why the Belgian figure was so much lower.
The U.S. Pfizer order has already been the subject of frustration, since Pfizer urged Operation Warp Speed over the summer to purchase double what the United States ultimately decided to order. By the time U.S. buyers asked for more doses earlier this month, the availability had been snapped up elsewhere – including by Europe.
Operation Warp Speed said that it had negotiated extensively with each drug manufacturer.
“Based on the significantly varying levels of developmental funding, distribution costs, and other contract terms, we are confident we negotiated the best possible price for the American taxpayer,”‘ the initiative said in a statement. It noted that the price of Pfizer’s vaccine included distribution across the United States and territories, including charter flights from manufacturing flights in Europe.
Most vaccines currently under development require two doses, although Johnson & Johnson’s – $10 in the United States and $8.50 in Europe – is a single shot.
The two vaccines that are first in line for approval – Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – are more expensive than others partly because they are more expensive to make, the result of a never-before-used approach that primes the immune system to defeat the coronavirus.
The EU’s finance arm offered a $122 million loan to BioNTech in June to help develop the vaccine, followed by an additional $458 million from the German government in September.
The other vaccine prices noted on the EU list were $9.30 for the one under development by Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline, an 11 percent discount on the U.S. cost, and $12.30 for the one under development by CureVac, for which the United States has not signed contracts.
The EU has been secretive about the prices it negotiated for its 2 billion doses of various vaccines, drawing fire from transparency advocates who say the public and policymakers have a right to know how much their governments are paying for the inoculations.
The EU negotiated as a bloc, but most other countries, including the United States, are negotiating individual contracts with pharmaceutical companies. The confidentiality clauses presumably benefit the manufacturers, since they make it easier to vary the prices from country to country.
A spokesman for the European Commission, which negotiated the contracts for the vaccines on behalf of EU members, declined to comment about the pricing on Friday, other than to say disclosure was a breach of confidentiality clauses of the contracts.
The Belgian official, State Secretary for Budget Eva De Bleeker, posted the table of Belgium’s costs for vaccines on Twitter on Thursday, then deleted it shortly afterward. Because the EU has negotiated collectively for vaccines on behalf of its members, the same prices apply across all of its 27 nations.
A spokesman for De Bleeker confirmed the authenticity of the tweet, and said that it came after a Thursday evening discussion in the Belgian Parliament and opposition charges that there was no money to pay for the vaccines in the country’s 2021 budget.
“The communication team posted the tweet to close the discussion,” said Bavo De Mol, the spokesman. “We wanted to be as transparent as possible, but maybe we were a bit too transparent.”
The breach was first reported by HLN, a Belgian newspaper. Late Friday, Belgian media noted there was at least one error in the document – the number of doses of CureVac that the country planned to purchase was incorrect – but said that the prices per dose appeared to be accurate.
Drug pricing is linked to a number of factors, including volume discounts and other specific promises made by governments when they sign the contracts. Some governments have agreed to limit the liability drug manufacturers will face if side effects arise from the vaccines, for instance. In February, the Trump administration offered vaccine manufacturers protection from lawsuits until 2024.
Europe has spread its bets relatively evenly among six vaccines, reserving 200 million to 300 million doses of all of them except the one produced by Moderna, of which it purchased 80 million. A few countries, including Germany and Hungary, have purchased additional vaccines on the side.
The European Medicines Agency is likely to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Monday, with the vaccine expected to roll out across the EU the final week of this month.
The EU vaccines will be shared equally across the European Union based on each country’s population size.
A multilateral effort to develop and distribute vaccines has secured almost 2 billion doses, potentially allowing some vulnerable groups in participating countries to get vaccinated in the first half of next year, the World Health Organization said Friday.
The announcement came in an end-of-year update on the Covax Facility, a plan to ensure that low- and middle-income countries are not cut out of a vaccine race that has seen rich countries snap up the majority of early doses, leaving the rest of the world to wait.
At a news conference on Friday, officials from the WHO, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, touted progress toward reversing that trend, at least a little, announcing deals with AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson.
Officials from Canada and France said they were working to develop and fund a mechanism for rich countries to eventually share surplus vaccine doses through Covax, though they did not offer details on when that might start.
“The arrival of vaccines is giving all of us a glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday. “But we will only truly end the pandemic if we end it everywhere at the same time, which means it’s essential to vaccinate some people in all countries, rather than all people in some countries.”
Tedros cast the update as good news for an initiative that has struggled to secure funding and support from big players including the United States, which has declined to participate.
But his upbeat tone belied growing concern that hoarding by rich countries will leave much of the world without an adequate vaccine supply.
In recent weeks, as the United States, Britain and Canada have cheered the rollout of domestic vaccination campaigns, other countries have scrambled to secure doses of as-yet-unproven candidates.
By mid-November, wealthy nations had reserved 51 percent of various vaccine doses even though they are home to only 14 percent of the world’s population, according to a new study published by two Johns Hopkins researchers in the BMJ, a journal published by the British Medical Association.
An earlier study by researchers at Duke University estimated that people in low-income countries could be waiting for a coronavirus vaccine until 2024.
Covax on Friday announced new deals with drug companies, including an advance purchase agreement with AstraZeneca for 170 million doses and a memorandum of understanding for 500 million doses from Johnson & Johnson.
These deals will build on existing agreements with India’s Serum Institute for 200 million doses, plus options for up to 900 million doses more of either the AstraZeneca or Novavax candidates, as well as a statement of intent for 200 million doses from Sanofi/GSK, according to the WHO.
The U.N. health agency said Friday that at least 1.3 billion donor-funded doses will be made available to 92 relatively poor countries by the end of 2021.
But the figures are estimates. The WHO noted that vaccines are still being evaluated. As it waits for results, the agency will “continue developing” its vaccine portfolio, it said.
In the news conference, Canadian and French officials sketched out plans to share surplus doses through Covax, but details are still scarce.
Karina Gould, Canada’s minister for international development, pledged Canadian money and support for a mechanism to donate or exchange doses. The plan is “not about slowing anyone down, but speeding everyone up,” she said.
Pressed on when Canada will start sharing and whether Canada will vaccinate every Canadian before sharing with others, Gould declined to lay out a specific timeline. Canada, she said, is moving “one day at a time.”
Stéphanie Seydoux, France’s minister for global health, said her country will start sharing “as early as possible” and encouraged other wealthy countries to do the same.
All told, more than 190 countries, representing a large share of the world’s population, have signed on to participate in Covax.
It is seen as one of the only ways that low-income countries will be able to source vaccines. But questions about funding and supply persist.
“We still need more doses, and we still need more money,” Seth Berkley, chief executive of Gavi, said Friday. “But we have a clear path to securing what we need to end the acute stage of this pandemic.”
Up to 7 feet of snow slams Japan, stranding 1,000 motorists
InternationalDec 19. 2020Vehicles are stranded on the Kan-Etsu Expressway at 8 a.m. on Friday near the Yamato rest area in Minami-Uonuma, Niigata Prefecture. MUST CREDIT: Japan News-Yomiuri
By The Washington Post · Matthew Cappucci
While parts of the Northeast U.S. were getting buried by more than three feet (or around a meter) of snow earlier this week, the high terrain of Japan dealt with about twice that much. Extreme snowfall totaling seven feet (or about 2 meters) in spots snarled travel and buried roadways, trapping more than 1,000 motorists on a clogged highway overnight Thursday.
Drivers were encouraged to remain in their vehicles during the debacle, some forced to melt snow as a means of drinking water.
Several all-time snowfall records had been set as of Friday, 7.1 feet (2.2 meters) falling on the city of Fujiwara in three days’ time. Fujiwara is a community in Gunma Prefecture, a mountain region of central Honshu northwest of Tokyo. A number of ski resorts are located nearby, having experienced a significant accumulation of snow.
Nearly 70 inches (178 centimeters) of Fujiwara’s snow accumulated in just 48 hours, breaking the previous record of 57 inches (145 centimeters) set in 2010.
A record 72-hour December snowfall also occurred in nearby Tsunan, where 5.7 feet (1.9 meters) came down. Elsewhere along the spine of the Japanese Alps and Echigo Mountains, a broad 4 to 6 feet (1.2 to 1.8 meters) of snow fell, establishing a number of records.
At least 1,000 cars were stranded Thursday on the Kan-Etsu Expressway, which connects Tokyo with Nigata. Some vehicles had been stuck as early as Wednesday night. The traffic jam peaked in severity on Thursday night according to CNN Japan, the chain reaction of halted vehicles spanning nearly ten miles.
By then, snow was falling fast and furious, with conditions continuing to deteriorate as heavy bands of snow pivoted in from the northwest. Impressive snowfall rates, likely topping two inches (5 centimeters) per hour, accompanied the most fierce bands.
The episode was caused by “ocean-effect snow,” similar in dynamics to lake-effect precipitation that frequents the shores of the Great Lakes. A frigid air mass blowing from the northwest over much warmer waters, in this case between 55 and 60 degrees (12.8 to 15.6 Celsius), allowed heat and moisture from the Sea of Japan to be transported inland in the form of heavy snow.
Japan’s high terrain helped focus moisture too, concentrating it on the upslope, or windward side of the mountains. That meant snow could fall for days at a time unimpeded, the wintry blast maintained so long as the wind fetch remained from the northwest.
Japan’s climate routinely favors hefty snowfall in the mountains. Arctic wintertime cold fronts from Siberia surge south across northeast China and the Korean Peninsula, arriving in Japan after passing over the adjacent sea. The Sea of Japan is kept mild by the Kuroshio Current, akin to the Gulf Stream; a branch of it, called the Tshushima Current, meanders west of the Japanese island chain.
At least 600 vehicles remained stuck early Friday according to Japanese broadcaster NHK News; they were all freed late Friday local time.
Meanwhile, another 15 to 30 inches (38 to 76 centimeters) of snow could be on the way for hard-hit areas finally beginning to dig out as the ocean effect kicks in once again this weekend. The Japanese Meteorological Agency has issued warnings for heavy snow and avalanche advisories, anticipating an additional “traffic hindrance due to snowfall.”
Debate over the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending powers has ensnared frantic stimulus negotiations around a roughly $900 billion relief bill for the U.S. economy, and could have long-lasting implications for the central bank itself.
The fight centers on the Fed’s extraordinary actions to prevent an economic collapse. Back in March, the Federal Reserve moved quickly to slash interest rates, flood the financial markets and boost bond purchases. While Congress has struggled for months to extend federal aid programs, the Fed has stuck with its slate of emergency lending programs, and had no intention of winding them down before the recovery was complete.
Some Republicans now want to pare back the Fed’s reach as part of a stimulus deal, wary that the Fed may use programs set up through the earlier stimulus effort, the Cares Act, to become something more akin to a lender of “first resort” instead of “last resort,” as Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., put it Thursday. By contrast, Democrats are concerned Republicans are slashing the Fed’s broader authority, which has been a stabilizing force for the economy, just weeks before the Biden administration takes over.
The Fed faced similar existential threats in the years after the 2008 financial crisis and recession, and lawmakers eventually did reshape the central bank’s oversight over the financial system to guard against another downturn. But now, the Fed is embroiled in a new battle over its powers and independence, just as the recovery is backsliding and the pandemic escalates into a wintertime surge. Jobless claims for the unemployed are rising again after trending downward, and retail sales slipped in November, a month that historically kicks off a strong holiday shopping season.
“What the current [Republican] proposal on the table appears to be is something that goes well beyond the Cares Act,” said Bharat Ramamurti, a Democratic member of the Congressional Oversight Commission, which focuses on the recovery efforts of the Fed and Treasury Department. “This proposal isn’t just, ‘let’s go back to the world as it existed the day before the Cares Act.’ It’s actually a significant reduction of the authorities that the Treasury and Fed had before the Cares Act.”
On Friday, Democratic lawmakers firmly rejected Toomey’s proposal, saying that the call to curb Fed powers is thwarting a relief bill, as well as threatening the Fed’s independence. With lawmakers likely to seek unanimous consensus on a stimulus vote, Toomey’s plan for the Fed programs, which on Thursday he called “the most important thing to me,” could hold up negotiations headed into the weekend.
“These authorities should be maintained to allow for the Federal Reserve to act to prevent hardship to families across the country,” Senator Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said in a statement. “If ever there is a time to put politics aside and do the right thing, it should be in the middle of a pandemic and corresponding economic crisis.”
Toomey defended his position Friday afternoon and emphasized that the emergency lending programs that received Cares Act money were always intended to close out at the end of the year.
“The language Senate Republicans are advocating for affects a very narrow universe of lending facilities and is emphatically not a broad overhaul of the Federal Reserve’s emergency lending authority,” Toomey said.
The coronavirus pandemic spurred the Fed into one of its most active years ever. In the pandemic’s early days, the Fed reached far beyond its playbook from the Great Recession in ways that economists say prevented an even deeper recession. As the coronavirus spread beyond China and U.S. stocks plunged into the red, the Fed quickly slashed interest rates to zero in March. A sprawling set of programs to flood the markets and boost bond purchases further helped reinvigorate the financial system. Plus, the Fed also rolled out loan programs to struggling businesses and local governments.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly said the slate of emergency lending programs propped up in the spring were not meant to be permanent.
“When the time comes, after the crisis has passed, we will put these emergency tools back in the box,” Powell said at a news conference Wednesday.
The Fed’s lending programs for businesses and local governments have not been blemish-free. Considering how much money was set aside, the Main Street lending program and municipal lending programs haven’t been well utilized, with critics saying the loans carry onerous requirements. Some Republicans have also bristled at Powell’s repeated calls on Congress to pass a stimulus bill that can fill the economy’s remaining gaps, although Powell stops short of making specific suggestions for what should go into legislation.
The Fed’s vast response has attracted some criticism. Some Republicans argue the Fed is venturing beyond its mandate, which strives for maximum employment and stable prices. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Toomey said the Fed shouldn’t be engaging “in fiscal policy, social policy or allocating credit,” and instead should leave those decisions to elected leaders on Capitol Hill.
Meanwhile, Democrats have pushed the Fed in the opposite direction. Many wanted to widen the Fed’s lending programs so they could help more businesses and local governments on the brink. Liberal policymakers also want the Fed to put more focus on racial inequality and climate issues, arguing they pose risks to economic growth.
The Fed is one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world, and much of its reputation rests on its independence from the White House. The chair cannot be fired by the president over policy differences – a question which came up when Powell was on the receiving end of President Donald Trump’s routine attacks. Fed governors are unelected officials, subject to Senate confirmation, and can fill terms of up to 14 years.
But a highly-partisan climate in Washington, mixed with the Fed’s large footprint, have made for a fraught combination.
Brian Gardner, chief Washington policy strategist at Stifel Financial Corp, said there’s “always this give and take about Fed independence,” with the facilities emerging as the latest flash point.
“I think there are a lot of Republicans saying, ‘wait a second, what’s going on here?'” Gardner said. “This is a way to send a message to the Fed about who’s in charge.”
Tensions over the Fed’s lending programs ramped up last month when Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced the programs would wind down at the end of 2020 and requested that the Fed return hundreds of billions of dollars that went unspent. The move was met with a rare rebuke from the Fed and widespread disagreement from Democrats, who say the facilities are an important backstop and could have had more reach.
There’s agreement from both parties that some of the programs’ unused money could be put to more direct use. But the larger debate about the Fed’s own authority emerged when Toomey, the incoming leader of the Senate Banking Committee, said he is also pushing for a bill that prevents the expiring programs, or anything remotely similar to them, from being created in the future. For example, once the Main Street lending program expires, Toomey warned against a “Main Street lending program 2.”
Toomey insisted the Fed’s emergency lending powers “remain on the books” and that the door would still be open for Congress to approve entirely different programs “if in the future, some dire emergency occurs.”
“We’re not changing the role of the Fed at all,” Toomey said. “We’re saying these programs were meant to be temporary, and they’re going to be temporary.”
That argument was soundly rejected by Democrats, many of whom say Toomey’s proposal goes far beyond the nuts and bolts of a coronavirus relief bill. Democrats said the move cuts into lending powers the Fed had well before the Cares Act and handicaps the central bank’s ability to combat future crises.
“What’s happening here is a rewriting of the Fed’s emergency powers at the last minute, without any hearing, without any debate of what the implications are,” Ramamurti said.
Democrats argue that Toomey’s plan takes away any chance for the Biden administration to revamp the programs.
In a statement Friday, Brian Deese, Biden’s pick for director of the National Economic Council, said the stimulus package shouldn’t “include unnecessary provisions that would hamper the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve’s ability to fight economic crises.”
“Undermining that authority could mean less lending to Main Street businesses, higher unemployment, and greater economic pain across the nation. Congress’s good faith effort to deliver immediate relief should not be delayed by provisions that could put our future financial stability at risk,” Deese said.
Democrats lawmakers also said Toomey is using the Fed as a political instrument in the final days of the lame duck session.
“It’s no surprise that Republicans are drawing a line in the sand over their ability to sabotage the economy, and tie the Biden administration’s hands,” Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee said in a statement.
Toomey disputed the criticism, saying the Cares Act programs were always meant to be temporary, and that he’s held this view for months.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Vlad Savov, Konrad Krasuski, Jason Schreier
Sony has removed CD Projekt SA’s Cyberpunk 2077 from its PlayStation Store and is offering full refunds, taking unusual steps to appease customers furious about bugs plaguing one of the year’s most highly anticipated gaming blockbusters.
The radical move to pull the game “till further notice” came after the console version of Cyberpunk 2077 debuted Dec. 10, following several delays, to reviews calling out problems and an online outcry from players frustrated with its poor performance.
CD Projekt shares dropped as much as 20% in Warsaw at the start of Friday’s trading, erasing this year’s gains.
Warsaw-based developer CD Projekt — best known for 2015’s The Witcher 3, part of a franchise that was turned into a successful Netflix Inc. series — has offered refunds to any disappointed players, but Sony is going a step further by entirely removing the game from its store. Cyberpunk features Hollywood star Keanu Reeves as an in-game character and has used the actor as its most visible ambassador in the buildup to its release.
CD Projekt, whose shares have plunged 40% since Dec. 4, confirmed Sony’s decision in a regulatory statement. The studio said it was “working hard” to bring its game back to the PlayStation store and that it had discussions with Sony regarding a full refund for all gamers seeking one.
It said that “all copies, whether digital or physical, will continue to receive support and updates” to help fix the game’s teething problems. Its shares traded 15% lower at 261.8 zloty at 10:43 a.m. in Warsaw.
Trigon analyst Kacper Kopron said that Sony’s decision is one of “worst scenarios” for the company as PlayStation represents two-thirds of the console market. He expects that the move may trim estimates for Cyberpunk sales by 30% to 40%.
Erste Group analyst Emil Poplawski cut his recommendation on CD Projekt’s shares to reduce from buy, setting a target price of 280.5 zloty. Analysts at MBank and VTB Capital expect the game to be restored to PlayStation’s store after larger fixes in early 2021.
On Monday, the developers posted a message on Twitter saying they “should have paid more attention to making it play better on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.” But the company had not cleared its offer of a refund with console manufacturers Sony or Microsoft Corp., both of which have stringent refund policies.
This week, many players who requested refunds found themselves out of luck. Sony said it was working to resolve issues with accessing the refund.
CD Projekt Chief Executive Officer Adam Kicinski was cited as saying by PAP news agency that the gaming studio isn’t currently holding talks with Microsoft about removing Cyberpunk from its Xbox store.
It’s rare for any title to be removed from stores so soon after release. Previous examples include Square Enix Holdings’s Final Fantasy XIV, which was taken offline for an overhaul following its disastrous 2010 launch, and Amazon.com’s Crucible, yanked from PC stores earlier this year and subsequently canceled.
Cyberpunk’s developers faced intense public pressure to get the game out this year, rising to the level of death threats, as Senior Game Designer Andrzej Zawadzki tweeted in October. Six-day work weeks became the norm in the final months leading up to the eventual release, breaking with previous pledges from CD Projekt leaders that the company would avoid imposing a so-called crunch to hurry a game into existence through overtime.
The company has said it’s continuing work to rectify the issues players are encountering in Cyberpunk 2077 — and its prior blockbuster, The Witcher 3, improved drastically after its release thanks to downloadable patches.
Russia hack confronts Trump with decision that echoes Obama’s
InternationalDec 19. 2020The Kremlin in Moscow on Dec. 11, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrey Rudakov.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Nick Wadhams
A massive hack on the federal government presents President Donald Trump with the same choice Barack Obama faced in the waning days of his tenure: whether to impose sanctions on Russia, and how severe to make them. So far, Trump has shown little willingness to impose costs.
Confronted with evidence that Vladimir Putin’s government orchestrated cyberattacks aimed at interfering with the 2016 election, Obama levied sanctions against Russia’s intelligence services and expelled 35 diplomats.
Now, it’s Trump’s turn to decide whether to call out and punish the Kremlin, as Obama did, or go easy on the Russian president and leave it to President-elect Joe Biden to formulate a response to a hack so serious it prompted National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien to cut short an overseas trip and return to oversee daily crisis meetings at the White House.
Government agencies and hundreds of Fortune 500 companies are still assessing the damage done by the cyberattack, which involved code embedded in updates for a widely used network-management software made by SolarWinds Corp.
Unlike in 2016, the latest attack didn’t involve election interference, but there’s little doubt it was a serious strike. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Thursday called it a “grave risk” to federal, state and local governments, as well as critical infrastructure and the private sector. SolarWinds said 18,000 customers downloaded the tampered software update.
Security experts familiar with the hack said that even if evidence is still being gathered, it’s important to come out with a swift condemnation and set about taking measures to establish some sort of deterrence.
“The one thing you can say is the Trump administration has basically given the Russians a green light by not calling them out,” said James Lewis, director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “That’s what you want to watch for: Does the Trump administration take any action even if it’s just symbolic? And so far the answer is no.”
Although Obama has been criticized for reacting too slowly to the Russian election meddling, the sanctions he eventually imposed sparked one of the most notorious episodes of the Trump era: the decision by Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, to privately urge Russia not to respond to Obama’s sanctions. Trump last month pardoned Flynn after he was convicted of lying about the conversations he had with Russia’s ambassador on the matter.
Trump and many of his top aides have repeatedly tried to shift the spotlight to China as America’s biggest national security threat, sometimes downplaying Russian actions in comparison. Ending his presidency by going after Russia would contradict that strategy.
According to one person familiar with the president’s thinking, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, Trump has never let go of the belief that he could leverage personal ties with President Putin to improve relations with Russia. That would make it much harder for his staff to discuss punishment for fear that Trump would reject it out of hand.
Issues of cybersecurity seem to be particularly fraught for Trump’s aides. In his 2017 book “Fear,” Bob Woodward recounts an episode when Trump’s homeland security adviser at the time, Tom Bossert, tried to approach the president.
“I want to watch the Masters,” Woodward says Trump told Bossert, referring to the annual golf tournament. “You and your cyber…are going to get me in a war – with all your cyber sh_t.”
In an opinion piece in the New York Times on Thursday, Bossert suggested an idea that’s likely to find a better reception from the Biden team than Trump’s. He said the U.S. must call out Russia but also work with allied nations to pressure Russia.
Although Trump has yet to say anything about the hack, Biden echoed Bossert’s argument in a statement Thursday, vowing to united with allies and impose “substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks.” He promised to make cybersecurity a “top priority at every level of government.”
There are many ways for Trump’s administration to respond — new sanctions on Russia’s intelligence services, for example. Yet one challenge officials face is that such actions, as the current episode proves, clearly have failed to deter Russia in the past.
Another issue that Trump — and later Biden — will have to confront is that no one knows the true extent of the hack and what the hackers will do with the information they gleaned. Snooping on an adversary’s networks is something countries routinely do to each other and, as brazen as the hack may be, might provoke only a moderate response, in keeping with what past administrations have done.
But if the hackers use the breach for more nefarious ends — shutting down electrical grids, for example, or wiping out people’s bank accounts or exposing sensitive information publicly — that could provoke a more serious response.
“Sanctions are probably the most politically expedient option,” said Lauren Zabierek, executive director of the Cyber Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “That’s probably the minimum that we can expect out of this from this administration, but I honestly don’t know what they’re going to do especially given their response to previous Russian actions.”
Indeed, top advisers including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo have played down the hack. In a recent interview, Pompeo portrayed it as more of the same from Russia.
“The Russian efforts to use cyber capabilities against us here in the United States is something that’s been consistent certainly for – goodness, I guess I was in Congress six years and now four years in the administration,” Pompeo said on the Ben Shapiro Show.
Given that Russia is unlikely to be deterred, experts argue that the best result will have to be a fundamental rethinking of cyber issues, something that will require new money and more time than the Trump team has left before Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
“We’ve been talking about this for 25 years, and we’re not there,” said Christopher Painter, who was the State Department coordinator for cyber issues before Trump shut down his office in 2017.
“The way you do that is you make this whole area much more of a mainstream national security priority and not treat it as this little boutique-y tech issue, which I think in large part it has been relegated to,” Painter said.
Pandemic is starting to hit North American meat plants again
InternationalDec 19. 2020The Cargill Inc. meat plant in Chambly, Quebec, on May 11, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Christinne Muschi.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Isis Almeida, Michael Hirtzer
Meat packers across North America are bracing for a resurgence of coronavirus cases, trying to avoid the shutdowns that left supermarket shelves empty earlier in the pandemic.
Cargill Inc. has temporarily idled one of its beef plants in Canada after some employees tested positive. JBS, the world’s top meat producer, sent thousands of vulnerable U.S. workers home on paid leave, while Sanderson Farms Inc. said it’s now facing higher absenteeism at its plants than earlier in the pandemic.
Producers of everything from beef to chicken are looking to prevent the sort of disruption that shut several plants during the spring, curbing meat supplies when consumers were stocking up their fridges. Executives now say companies are better prepared, having spent millions of dollars to reconfigure factories, implement social distancing and distribute the protective equipment workers need to stay safe while keeping the food supply chain running. A labor union executive warns that efforts to keep plants running comes at a cost, with extra hours taking a physical toll on workers.
“I don’t expect to see the same issues,” Jon Nash, head of protein for Cargill in North America, said in an interview. “Generally speaking, our industry is better prepared to handle the challenges. We know what we are dealing with.”
“We know a lot more than we ever did and I think our food supply chain is resilient to the point we will be OK,” he said.
Closely-held Cargill, the world’s largest agricultural commodities trader, said Thursday it was temporarily shutting down its beef processing plant in Ontario due to “an abundance of caution as our local workforce deals with the community-wide impacts of covid-19.”
“This is not just a Cargill spread, but community-wide spread in Guelph,” about 56 miles (90 kilometers) west of Toronto, said April Nelson, a spokeswoman for the company.
Earlier this month, JBS said it had sent more than 5,000 workers home in the U.S. since coronavirus cases began to accelerate in October. Joe Sanderson, chief executive officer of the third-largest U.S. chicken producer, said infections are rising among its workers as cases increase in Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, the Carolinas and Louisiana.
“We’re still running and we’re still running at our capacity, but there have been more instances of absentees now than we had all summer or back in the spring,” he said at an earnings call Thursday. “It’s becoming more of a challenge for us right now than it has been since this pandemic started.”
The increase in cases across rural North America highlights the challenges meat packers face in preventing the virus from entering their facilities and spreading among the workforce. More than 50,000 meatpacking workers in the U.S. have tested positive for the virus and more than 260 have died, according to data from the Food and Environment Reporting Network.
Meat packers have spent millions installing plexiglass dividers, expanding locker and cafeteria areas, providing masks and face shields. Foster Farms, a chicken producer in California, said it’s testing workers twice a week and has also removed at-risk employees from its factories.
Tyson spent $540 million to adapt its U.S. facilities in the 2020 fiscal year, adding temperature scanners, workstation dividers and social distance monitors, the company said in a statement earlier this month. It’s testing thousands of employees every week, including ones that don’t present any symptoms, a Tyson spokesman said, adding that the company has appointed a chief medical officer and hired 200 additional nurses.
JBS invested more than $200 million in health and safety measures and over $160 million to pay higher wages, according to a company spokesman. The company has also staggered start times and breaks to promote social distancing, installed UV germicidal air sanitation and plasma bipolar ionization technologies to neutralize potential viruses in the air, and instituted temperature checks.
“Smithfield has invested more than $700 million in extensive measures aimed at Covid-19 prevention,” a company spokesperson said.
People are working more extra hours and Saturdays, and since the lines can’t go the same speed with fewer people, what used to take about 16 hours now takes 20, according to Mark Lauritsen, director of food processing, packing and manufacturing at the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents 1.3 million workers in the U.S. and Canada. “All those extra hours is going to take its toll eventually,” he said.
Some contracts have caps on hours, and for others, the union is pushing employers to guarantee days off to make sure toll on their bodies is not too severe, he said.
Cargill is still running its plants in the mid to high 90s% of capacity as it has been able to compensate for localized issues by increasing output at other facilities, Nash said. The company has also changed its product mix to adapt to the tight labor availability and a switch to serving more retailers as restaurants shut down.
Consumers may now find bigger packages at supermarkets, with ground beef being a case in point, Nash said. Cargill is also making more in-bone products, he said. JBS also said earlier this month that it was simplifying its product mix and that the more labor-intensive processing jobs such as removing bones from pork hams or beef loins had been delayed as workers focus on essential tasks.
“Could we have issues where we may have to slow down in some spots as an industry? Potentially,” Nash said. “For us, if we get to a point where we can’t run a part of our facility or a facility safely or with the same food safety controls in place, we will shut it down.”
The U.S. meat industry wants its workers to be among the top priority for vaccines once health-care workers and people in long-term care facilities get shots, the North American Meat Institute said earlier this month. Joe Sanderson has pledged to take the vaccine on video and broadcast to factories to incentivize workers to be inoculated as well.
“We’re providing flu shots for everybody and we are preparing hopefully to give Covid vaccinations when that becomes available, we think in March or April,” Sanderson said.
Bank of Russia warns on inflation risks as it holds rates
InternationalDec 19. 2020A Russian national flag flies above the headquarters of Bank Rossii, Russia’s central bank, in Moscow, on .Oct., 11, 2016… MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Anya Andrianova
The Bank of Russia warned growing risks of higher inflation may leave no room for further monetary easing after it kept the key rate unchanged at a third consecutive policy meeting.
The key rate was kept at 4.25% on Friday, the lowest level on record, after 200 basis points of cuts earlier this year. The central bank left the door open to further monetary easing, but altered the language in the statement to suggest there may not be any further reductions. Russian government bonds fell for the first time in four days.
“We continue to talk about space for easing, but probably not as confidently as before,” Governor Elvira Nabiullina said at a news briefing following the rates decision. “There is lots of uncertainty now about the outlook for the economy and inflation.”
Inflation has become a political issue, with President Vladimir Putin last week ordering the government to take urgent measures to reduce prices of key staples. The central bank raised its forecast for year-end inflation to 4.6%-4.9% from its previous forecast in October of 3.9%-4.2%. The estimate for the end of next year was kept at 3.5%-4%.
“With headline inflation surging toward 5%, the central bank had little choice but to introduce some hawkish undertones into its statement,” said Tatiana Orlova, an analyst at Emerginomics in London. “Still, there is no hint that they could start considering rate hikes if inflation continues to rise.”
The central bank said pro-inflationary factors are lasting longer than expected, but monetary policy will still remain accommodative for all of next year. A handful of economists had suggested that the bank may consider a rate increase if inflation continues to climb.
Measures to control food prices aren’t likely to have a full impact this month, Nabiullina said, adding that price controls shouldn’t be implemented before the government has tried out other economic measures to curb volatility.
The jump in inflation was partly caused by a nearly 16% slump in the ruble this year, which has fed through into consumer prices. The currency has appreciated in the past two months, but slumped with other emerging-market currencies on Friday due to a drop in oil prices and reports of a Russian hacking campaign in the U.S.
The hawkish tone dimmed expectations for a cut in the months ahead and 10-year government bonds, also known as OFZs, fell for the first time in four days, lifting the yield three basis points to 5.83%.
“A lot was already priced into OFZs, but given the harsh rhetoric, the pressure continues,” said Iskander Lutsko, a strategist at ITI Capital in Moscow.
Vehicles are stranded on the Kan-Etsu Expressway at 8 a.m. on Friday near the Yamato rest area in Minami-Uonuma, Niigata Prefecture. MUST CREDIT: Japan News-Yomiuri 
The Kremlin in Moscow on Dec. 11, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrey Rudakov. 
The Cargill Inc. meat plant in Chambly, Quebec, on May 11, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Christinne Muschi. 
A Russian national flag flies above the headquarters of Bank Rossii, Russia’s central bank, in Moscow, on .Oct., 11, 2016… MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr. 
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