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Biden says race bias plain in handling of White mob

InternationalJan 08. 2021President-elect Joe Biden speaks in Wilmington, Del., on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021. “Totally unacceptable,” he said. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman

By The Washington Post · Annie Linskey, Chelsea Janes, Amy B Wang

President-elect Joe Biden on Thursday denounced what he described as an unequal justice system reflected in the lenient response to the mostly White rioters who assaulted the U.S. Capitol this week, suggesting a stark contrast with the treatment of racial justice demonstrators across the country last summer.

“You can’t tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesters yesterday they wouldn’t have been treated very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” Biden said in Wilmington, before beginning to hammer his fist against the lectern. “We all know that is true. And it is totally unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. The American people saw it in plain view.”

In some of his most pointed remarks to date on racial inequity, a topic he sometimes struggles to discuss despite his support from many Black voters, Biden pledged that the disparities would be addressed as he announced his Justice Department leadership team, including federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland as attorney general.

A central goal of his presidency, Biden said, would be to restore the department’s independence and reputation after four years of politicization under President Donald Trump, noting that he had chosen people with years of experience at the agency.

“I want to be clear to those who lead this department who you will serve – you won’t work for me,” Biden said. “You are not the president or the vice president’s lawyer. Their loyalty is not to me. It’s to the law, the Constitution, the people of this nation.”

Biden’s condemnation of racial injustice came after a year when police killings and street protests brought the issue vividly to the fore. Black activists have long cited a difference in the police handling of Black and White protesters, and the relatively hands-off treatment of Wednesday’s mob reinforced that impression for many.

Biden on Thursday related that his granddaughter Finnegan had sent him a photo of law enforcement officers lined up grimly at the Lincoln Memorial during a Black Lives Matter protest, highlighting a contrast with the handling of the Capitol mob, a disparity that many online commenters pointed out.

Biden takes control over the government in just two weeks, and he faces the additional complication of dealing with a Congress and a country reeling from Wednesday’s violence. Though some Republicans voiced disgust in the hours after rioters were cleared from the House and Senate chambers, the culture of division that led to the assault has been festering for years and is unlikely to dissipate quickly.

The events also hardened anti-GOP views among leaders of Biden’s own party – with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., now calling for Trump to be removed from office.

As he walked into the Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Biden brushed off a question from a reporter about whether he supports invoking the 25th Amendment to end Trump’s term. Standing onstage later, he referred to the question, saying, “I’m not going to speak to that today.”

Biden did make a point of connecting Trump’s long history of divisive rhetoric to the White rioters trashing the Capitol, at least one of them hoisting a Confederate flag.

“I wish we could say we couldn’t see it coming, but that isn’t true. We could see it coming,” Biden said. “For the past four years, we’ve had a president who’s made contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, for rule of law, clear.”

It was an unusually harsh denunciation of an outgoing president by his successor. With less than two weeks remaining until Biden’s inauguration, the hostility between Trump and Biden is increasingly evident, as Trump continues to claim baselessly that he won the election.

With Thursday’s nominations, Biden has nearly finished filling out his Cabinet. In addition to Garland, his Justice Department team will include Lisa Monaco as deputy attorney general, longtime civil rights advocate Vanita Gupta as the department’s No. 3, and Kristen Clarke as head of its civil rights division. All face Senate confirmation.

Biden and his allies stressed that Garland, Monaco and Gupta have deep experience combating domestic terrorism and systemic racism, remarks that came as some lawmakers were calling for Wednesday’s riot to be classified as terrorism.

Garland spoke about his experience prosecuting in the Oklahoma City bombing case. Biden noted that Monaco helped coordinate the federal investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing and that Gupta was part of the investigation into racial disparities in the police department in Ferguson, Mo., after the killing of a Black man by police led to widespread unrest.

Also Thursday, a person familiar with the matter said Biden has tapped Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo to be commerce secretary and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to be labor secretary.

In the fraught atmosphere after Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol, some leaders in the Democratic coalition wondered whether Biden’s pledge to be a “unifier” was enough, and whether they could or should come together with a Republican Party that for four years has supported Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and dubious actions.

“The posture here is going to have to shift from compromise and negotiation to setting the tone and setting the path,” said Alicia Garza, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement. “This is complicated, because Biden really was selected in a lot of ways as a caretaker president.”

The moment also laid bare nuanced differences in how Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris view racial and social strife. In brief remarks Wednesday, Biden said the scenes at the Capitol “do not represent who we are” as a country, a sentiment he has regularly repeated.

Harris put it differently Thursday, saying, “We know we should be better than this,” suggesting that violence and racism are not an aberration but a tangible part of the country’s makeup that needs to be conquered.

“Sadly, yesterday was a big old mirror,” said Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist with ties to Biden’s team. “Biden is trying to call to our better angels. Perhaps what he could say is, ‘This doesn’t have to be who we are.’ “

During the presidential primary, Harris sometimes voiced frustration at questions about whether Trump was a racist or white supremacist, saying such queries sidestepped deeper questions about the country.

“I will not take part in a conversation that simplifies this issue,” Harris said at one point. “It happened before this guy was in the White House, it will continue after this guy was in this White House. He is certainly fanning the flames of hate; there’s no question about that. But if we’re going to have this conversation, let’s have it in a meaningful way.”

Harris, a former prosecutor, also took a more explicit stance than many of her fellow Democratic candidates in suggesting that Trump should face legal consequences for his actions, suggesting months before he was impeached that some form of penalty was warranted. Biden was less willing to call for impeachment or other consequences.

“I’ve seen prosecution of cases on much less evidence,” Harris said after the publication of special counsel Robert Mueller III’s report, arguing that it provided enough evidence for charges of obstruction of justice against Trump.

More broadly, the question of disparate legal consequences for different individuals and groups has become a heated topic in the riot’s aftermath. Former first lady Michelle Obama was among those weighing in Thursday.

“There’s one question I just can’t shake: What if these rioters had looked like the folks who go to Ebenezer Baptist Church every Sunday?” she wrote, referring to a prominent Black church in Atlanta. “What would have been different? I think we all know the answer.”

Amid the swirling discussion of justice, race and equality, Biden’s choice of Garland as attorney general has not been welcomed by leading civil rights groups, which had hoped he would pick an attorney general with a stronger record on racial justice.

About a month ago, Biden and Harris had met with the heads of seven civil rights organizations, and they pushed him to choose an attorney general – preferably a person of color – with a clear track record of fighting for civil rights.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a Biden confidant, said Thursday that he was disappointed in the selection of Garland and wanted to meet with the nominee. Sharpton said he was unclear on where Garland stood on some questions, such as whether it should be illegal for police to turn off their body cameras, as many civil rights activists want.

“Where will Garland stand on that? At least to me, I’m not clear at all where his divisions are,” Sharpton said. “I call on Garland to meet with civil rights leadership.”

By contrast, Sharpton said he was well acquainted with the rest of Biden’s nominees – including Gupta and Clarke – and hoped they would prioritize reviving the Justice Department’s civil rights division and aggressively protecting voting rights.

“I want to hear from them that they are going to investigate to the fullest degree of the law the attempted coup d’etat yesterday,” Sharpton said.

Biden has been careful to avoid talking about prosecuting the current president. But on Thursday, he offered harsh word on that front, too.

“Our president is not above the law,” Biden said. “Justice serves the people. It doesn’t protect the powerful. Justice is blind.”

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Fresh details emerge about woman’s shooting by Capitol Police

InternationalJan 08. 2021Melody Black cries on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021, at a memorial for Ashli Babbitt outside the Capitol, where she was shot and killed in a riot the day before. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Matt McClain

By The Washington Post · Justin Jouvenal, Carol D. Leonnig

WASHINGTON – Shortly after a mob breached the Capitol on Wednesday, some in the group penetrated all the way to the Speaker’s Lobby, the hallway outside the House chamber, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the incident.

The rioters tried to break through the lobby’s elaborate glass and wood doors, which had been hastily barricaded with chairs and other furniture, the officials said. Ashli Babbitt, wearing a Trump flag as a cape, tried to climb through a smashed glass pane in one of the doors.

In the chaotic scene, a U.S. Capitol Police officer in a suit and surgical mask pointed a gun in her direction and fired a single shot, the officials said. Babbitt, a 35-year-old California native and Air Force veteran, was struck in the neck and later died. The two officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because an investigation is ongoing, said she was unarmed.

It was unclear whether the officer, who works in the division that guards the House chamber, could see that, directly behind Babbitt and the cluster of trespassers with her, were other officers, with rifles in hand and in tactical gear, the officials said. They said a Capitol Hill staffer tried to help Babbitt after she fell.

During a day of rioting inside the Capitol that left offices vandalized and smoke wafting through hallways, the shooting was the most violent moment amid hours of unrest by a mob that overran security.

The circumstances surrounding the incident became clearer Thursday, as did the life of Babbitt, an ardent Trump supporter who traveled across the country from her home in the San Diego area to take part in the mayhem. Babbitt on Twitter referenced QAnon conspiracy theories and pushed baseless assertions that the November election was stolen from President Donald Trump.

“Nothing will stop us….they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours….dark to light!” Babbitt tweeted the day before she died.

The Capitol Police announced Thursday that the officer involved in Babbitt’s killing had been placed on administrative leave as the department and District of Columbia police investigate the shooting. D.C. police probe all police shootings that occur in the city, even on federal grounds.

“The violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was unlike any I have ever experienced in my 30 years in law enforcement here in Washington, D.C.,” Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said in a statement that came hours before it was announced he would resign later this month.

The statement was the first Capitol Police had made since the rioting. The statement did not say when the name of the officer involved in the shooting would be released, and a spokeswoman for the department declined to answer additional questions. Capitol Police do not have body-worn cameras.

House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, Sund’s boss, also stepped down after sharp criticism of the handling of the violence at the Capitol.

D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee did not offer additional details about the shooting at a news conference Thursday. Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for D.C., said his office is investigating.

“This is a tragic incident, and I send my condolences to the victim’s family and friends,” Contee said.

John Sullivan, a liberal activist, said in an interview broadcast on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that rioters were using flagpoles and other items to smash glass windows in the Capitol shortly before the shooting. Sullivan said Babbitt tried to make it through one of the windows in the barricaded doors into a part of the Capitol that had not been breached when the officer with the gun came out of a doorway.

“The second that she climbed through the window, she got shot right in the neck area, fell backwards,” Sullivan said in the interview. “I just remember the sense of shock and sorrow that somebody just died and did not need to die.”

In videos posted on social media, the Capitol Police officer is seen using a doorway as cover before he opens fire.

Babbitt is seen falling from the window frame to the floor as she is surrounded by Trump supporters and law enforcement officers with guns. In one video, officers shout at rioters to get back so Babbitt can be treated as she lies, sprawled out.

Timothy McEntee, Babbitt’s ex-husband, said she owned a pool-cleaning business and was outspoken. She listed herself as a libertarian on Twitter.

In one video posted to Twitter, Babbitt talks about liberal politicians and what she viewed as the negative impact of immigration on the U.S. economy. In another tweet, she called for Vice President Mike Pence to resign and to be prosecuted for treason, presumably for not being supportive enough of Trump’s calls to overturn the election.

“She’s a small-business owner in California and felt (much like others) that she was being wronged,” McEntee wrote in a text message.

In the days before the shooting, Babbitt retweeted a number of messages from demonstrators headed to D.C. for the protests on Wednesday. One read: “It will be 1776 all over again…. only bigger and better.”

McEntee said Babbitt loved the United States. She served on active duty for four years, with nearly six years in the Air National Guard, according to her service record provided to The Washington Post. Her last active-duty position was akin to a base police officer. She served in Iraq at least once.

Experts on police shootings said it will require more investigation to determine whether the shooting was justified. Joseph Giacalone, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a retired New York City Police Department detective sergeant, said the chaotic nature of the incident will make a probe tricky.

“It’s going to be a very difficult justification investigation for sure,” Giacalone said. “You have a situation where the entire Capitol building is overrun and officers are severely outnumbered. Did he fear for his life?”

Ron Martinelli, a forensic criminologist and retired police officer, said that it was too soon to come to a conclusion about the shooting, but that it appeared “problematic.” He said the fact that Babbitt was crawling through a window pane was not reason enough to open fire.

“Entry alone does not constitute an imminent threat to apply deadly force,” Martinelli said.

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Pelosi demands Trump’s removal through 25th Amendment, threatens impeachment

InternationalJan 08. 2021

By The Washington Post · Felicia Sonmez, Colby Itkowitz, Mike DeBonis, Marisa Iati

WASHINGTON – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Thursday joined Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/09656dd0-da94-45f4-b17f-6ee113b9fe26?ptvads=block&playthrough=false

“By inciting sedition as he did yesterday he must be removed for office. While there’s only 13 days left any day could be a horror show for America,” Pelosi told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Trump “invited an armed insurrection against the United States of America,” Pelosi said Thursday, a day after a pro-Trump mob incited by the president stormed the Capitol, vandalizing the building and forcing lawmakers to be evacuated.

Pelosi left open the possibility of impeaching Trump a second time.

Under the 25th Amendment, the president can be removed from office by the vice president plus a majority of the Cabinet, or by the vice president and a body established by Congress, if they determine that he “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

It would be an extraordinary step before the end of Trump’s term on Jan. 20.

Meanwhile, Pelosi called on Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to step down over criticism of his staff’s handling of the insurrection, and she said House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving had submitted his resignation.

Pelosi praised the actions of individual Capitol Police officers, but she said there was a failure of leaders who had not contacted her after the attack on the Capitol.

“Many of our Capitol Police just acted so bravely and with such concern for the staff, for the members, for the Capitol, for the Capitol of the United States, many of them, and they deserve our gratitude,” Pelosi said Thursday. “But there was a failure of leadership at the top of the Capitol Police. And I think Mr. Sund, he hasn’t even called us since this had, you know, [occurred], so I had made him aware that I would be saying that we’re calling for his resignation now.”

Sund has been the chief of the Capitol Police since 2019. Irving has been the House Sergeant of Arms since 2012.

Earlier, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called on Senate Sergeant of Arms Michael Stenger to resign.

Pelosi said there also needs to be a full review of the security failures at the executive branch level, such as the FBI’s intelligence, and how long it took the Pentagon to mobilize the National Guard.

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Chinese censorship invades the U.S. via WeChat

InternationalJan 08. 2021Zhou Fengsuo’s colleague, Ouyang Ruoyu, left, has also had his posts censored on the app WeChat and supports a U.S. ban. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Bryan Anselm.

By The Washington Post · Jeanne Whalen

NEWARK, N.J. – Zhou Fengsuo, a leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, hoped to leave Chinese censorship behind when he fled to the United States and became a U.S. citizen. But Chinese censors have caught up with him, through the social-networking service WeChat.

The mobile app, born in China and used by Mandarin speakers around the globe, has long blocked Zhou’s friends in China from seeing the political posts he shares from the WeChat account he created in the United States, Zhou says. Then about a year ago, the problem got worse, he says – friends with both U.S. and Chinese accounts said they couldn’t see his timeline posts, whether the material was political or mundane.

On a recent morning at Zhou’s third-floor walk-up apartment, he and his colleague, Ouyang Ruoyu, took out their phones to demonstrate the blockade. On Zhou’s phone, his recent WeChat posts were visible – pictures of fall foliage in the Catskills, a message celebrating the memory of the dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. But viewed from the U.S.-registered account on Ouyang’s phone, the space beneath Zhou’s profile photo was an empty white screen.

Two of Zhou’s other friends living in the United States, also using accounts created in the United States, said they couldn’t see Zhou’s posts either.

Seeing this kind of censorship leak into the United States is why Zhou says he supports the Trump administration’s push to ban WeChat.

“WeChat is a prison. It’s a gulag,” said Zhou, who runs the nonprofit group Humanitarian China. “For the United States, it’s a Trojan horse to influence society at every level. . . . That’s why it must be banned here.”

A dozen WeChat users in the United States and Canada shared censorship stories with The Washington Post, ticking off cases of messages that they sent from their North American phones disappearing before reaching friends – at times when those friends were also located in the United States and Canada. Some users also spoke about being unable to log into their accounts after sharing information critical of China.

Several of these users said they, too, support the White House’s aim of banning the app. Others said they don’t support a ban, but want the United States to pressure WeChat’s owner, the Chinese tech giant Tencent, to stop censoring content.

“Sue it, punish it, fine it,” said Yang Jianli, a survivor of the Tiananmen Square massacre who now runs a nonprofit organization in Washington. The group, Citizen Power Initiatives for China, is attempting to organize a class-action lawsuit against Tencent, recruiting U.S.-based plaintiffs who have experienced censorship or other problems on WeChat.

In an emailed statement, Tencent spokesman Sean Durkin said the company “operates in a complex regulatory environment, both in China and elsewhere.”

A “core” tenet of the global company, he said, “is that we comply with local laws and regulations in the markets where we operate.”

WeChat has millions of users in the United States, who use it to keep in touch with family in China, where most Western communication apps, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram, are banned. WeChat is known as Weixin inside China, where it is an enormously popular tool for connecting with friends, ordering food, reading news and shopping online.

Durkin said Tencent considers WeChat and Weixin to be “sister apps” that are “separate but interoperable,” with “each addressing different users groups and offering different content and features,” as well as being subject to “different regulatory environments.”

The Trump administration tried to ban WeChat from U.S. app stores in September, saying it posed threats to national security because it collects “vast swaths” of data on Americans and other users, and offers the Chinese Communist Party an avenue for censoring or distorting information.

But in September, a federal judge in San Francisco temporarily halted the ban in response to a lawsuit from WeChat users in the United States, saying the plaintiffs had raised “serious questions” about a ban harming their First Amendment rights.

“Certainly the government’s overarching national-security interest is significant. But on this record – while the government has established that China’s activities raise significant national security concerns – it has put in scant little evidence that its effective ban of WeChat for all U.S. users addresses those concerns,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler wrote in a Sept. 19 order granting a preliminary injunction while the case proceeds.

One of the plaintiffs, Elaine Peng, a U.S. citizen in California who runs a nonprofit providing mental health care, told the court that she relies on WeChat to communicate with elderly Chinese American patients and their families. “Since many of the Chinese community members we serve are not fluent in English, WeChat is the only online tool that they rely on,” Peng said in a declaration filed in court. WeChat has 2.3 million weekly active users in the U.S., according to analytics provider App Annie.

An appeals-court hearing is scheduled for Jan. 14 to consider the government’s motion to lift the preliminary injunction. President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team didn’t respond to a request for comment on the ban effort.

George Shen, a Chinese American technology executive in the Boston area, said he understands the judge’s concerns, but thinks the court should consider that WeChat “restricts freedom, rights and speech in this country.”

Shen said he has experienced censorship several times on the WeChat accounts he created in the United States. First, a photo he posted of Liu, the late dissident who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 while serving a prison sentence for “inciting subversion,” was deleted from his timeline, Shen said. Then months later, in March 2019, his account was blocked with no explanation – Shen couldn’t log in for about a year. Soon after he created an online petition, calling for Tencent to “stop illegal censorship . . . or face sanctions.”

Shen created two additional U.S. accounts, and used them in June 2019 to share photos of Hong Kongers commemorating the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. “Both accounts, within a couple of hours, were immediately blocked,” he said, adding that he was unable to log in for a week or two.

Eventually he regained access to all of his accounts, but now nothing he shares from his original account – not even mundane, nonpolitical information – is visible to his friends in China, said Shen, who wrote a blog post recommending ways to avoid WeChat when communicating with people in China.

Chinese authorities require Tencent to heavily censor the app inside China. Posts about Chinese politics – and many other topics – disappear when they are sent to or from a China-registered account. Chinese authorities have used the app to monitor political dissidents and other critics, some of whom have been detained by police or sentenced to prison for their communications.

That censorship doesn’t remain in China, however. If a Chinese student or worker moves abroad and continues using an account created in China, the censorship will remain, according to Jeffrey Knockel, a research associate at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which studies information technology and human rights.

“Even if you move to the U.S. and switch your account to a U.S. number and U.S. device, you are still under Chinese political censorship,” he said, adding that many people like to keep their Chinese accounts to retain their contact lists and digital-payment details.

Tencent spokesman Durkin confirmed that an account created in China will always be treated as a Chinese Weixin account, even if the user moves abroad and accesses it from an overseas device.

“If a WeChat user sends a message to a friend using Weixin, China law applies to the Weixin user and certain content may be blocked,” he said in his emailed statement.

In a 2016 report, Citizen Lab said the number of users potentially affected by this cross-border censorship was “vast,” including “students studying abroad, tourists, business travelers, academics attending international conferences, and anyone who has recently emigrated out of China.”

Knockel said Citizen Lab hasn’t documented any automated political censorship of communications traveling only between WeChat accounts created outside of China. But Zhou’s case shows that some U.S.-registered accounts are indeed blocked for other U.S.-registered users. Durkin declined to comment on Zhou or other individual cases.

Earlier this year, Citizen Lab researchers reported another disturbing phenomenon: WeChat was subjecting overseas accounts to surveillance to train algorithms used to censor information in China.

“We show that files and images shared by WeChat users with accounts outside of China are subject to political surveillance, and this content is used to train and build up the censorship system that WeChat uses to censor China-registered users,” Citizen Lab researchers wrote.

If the United States had stronger data protection laws, Tencent might have had to disclose this surveillance to users, Knockel said. “If that sort of transparency were necessary and people understood the risks of using the app, then maybe we wouldn’t have to worry about whether to ban it,” he said.

Asked about the report, Tencent said: “With regard to the suggestion that we engage in content surveillance of international users, we can confirm that all content shared among international users of WeChat is private.”

Zhou left China for the United States in 1995, after serving a prison sentence for his leadership role in the Tiananmen protests. He went to business school at the University of Chicago, spent 19 years working in finance and then gave up gainful employment to work for Humanitarian China, which he co-founded in 2007 to provide aid to families of political prisoners in China.

He said he created a WeChat account in the United States about six years ago. It was a useful way to contact people back home, but he experienced censorship early on, hearing from friends in China that they couldn’t see his political posts.

Then about a year ago, friends with U.S. accounts started telling him they couldn’t see his timeline. His colleague at Humanitarian China, Ouyang Ruoyu, has two accounts – one that he created in China and another that he created after moving to the United States because Tencent kept suspending his Chinese account over his criticism of China, he said. On both accounts, Zhou’s timeline is blank, Ouyang demonstrated for The Post, toggling between his accounts on his U.S. phone.

Ouyang came to the United States as an asylum seeker in 2019, after running into trouble with Chinese authorities over his and his father, Ouyang Yi’s, political activism, he said. He kept using the WeChat account he created in China, logging into it via a username and password on his U.S. phone, because he wanted to keep in touch with his contact list. But at times his friends can’t see what he’s sharing.

In early December, Ouyang wrote a post on his Chinese account expressing support for Zhang Zhan, a Chinese journalist sentenced to four years in prison for her coverage of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. On Ouyang’s phone, the post successfully appeared on the timeline of his Chinese account.

But several days later, a friend in China said he couldn’t see the message. And when Ouyang logged into his own U.S. account to check whether he could see the post on his Chinese account, he couldn’t.

“I just read ‘1984.’ There is a sign, ‘Big Brother is watching you.’ That is what I feel,” Ouyang said about WeChat, adding that he supports a U.S. ban.

Jiabao “Jack” Ji, a Chinese law student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, also maintains two WeChat accounts. He mostly uses his original account, which he registered in China, but he also created one in the United States.

Ji said he treats the censorship almost like a game, drumming up new ways to try to trick the WeChat algorithms that block content.

In summer 2019, when Ji was trying to share photos on his Chinese account of the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, his posts weren’t visible to others.

“If you want to post a picture of a kid in Hong Kong who got shot by police, the algorithm doesn’t allow you to,” he said. “You have to do a lot of tweaking to un-censor it.”

From his Madison apartment, he found a workaround, realizing that the photos would be visible if he posted them upside down. Later, when that technique stopped working, he started using Photoshop to draw random yellow lines on sensitive pictures, which allowed the photos to escape censorship.

Ji said he continues using WeChat “for sheer convenience,” to keep in touch with Chinese friends. He said human rights activists in China often use the encrypted messaging app Signal, one of the few Western apps that isn’t blocked, or Telegram, another encrypted app that Chinese users can access through a virtual private network.

But “if you want to connect to normal people in China, you have to have a WeChat account,” Ji said.

Asked about the proposed ban, Ji initially said he supported it, because it would force Chinese speakers to find a different communication tool that the Chinese authorities have less ability to control. Later, he said he had “mixed feelings” because as a libertarian, he has concerns about the U.S. government using its power to ban a messaging tool.

A short drive from Princeton, N.J., Teng Biao and his family have grown accustomed to grappling with WeChat censorship.

Early last year, Teng opened his U.S.-registered account to praise Li Wenliang, a Chinese doctor silenced by authorities for sounding an early alarm about coronavirus. But Teng’s family member, who lives under the same New Jersey roof, couldn’t see the post on his China-registered account, which he logs into on his U.S. phone.

And when Teng’s wife, Lynn Wang, tried to post an item to her China-registered WeChat timeline in December, she had to delete several politically sensitive words and names before anyone could see the item.

Teng, a dissident who fled China after clashing with the authorities over his human rights work, said he often censors himself on WeChat, avoiding political posts and mostly sticking to personal photos and news so his friends back home “might know I am still alive.”

He agrees that banning WeChat would “bring a lot of inconvenience” to Chinese speakers. But ultimately Teng said he supports the idea.

“I think WeChat should be banned because it is a censorship tool and also a propaganda and misinformation tool,” he said. “WeChat is controlled by the Chinese authorities. It’s not like another Twitter or Facebook.”

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Canada’s international trade slows in sign of weakening recovery

InternationalJan 08. 2021Containers at the Port of Vancouver in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Nov. 27, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Jennifer Gauthier.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Shelly Hagan, Theophilos Argitis

Canada’s merchandise trade deficit remained at historically elevated levels in November, as exports and imports slowed amid a weakening global recovery.

Exports of goods increased by just 0.5% in November, after jumping 2.2% in October and 1% in September, Statistics Canada said in Ottawa. Imports fell for the first time since May, dropping 0.3% in a sign of sluggish demand at home.

That leaves total trade stalled at about 98.5% of pre-pandemic levels just as the nation’s economy entered what many economists warn may be another contraction in December and possibly the first three months of 2021. In addition to slowing global growth, exports have been hampered by a stronger Canadian dollar, with the so-called loonie gaining more than 4% against the U.S. dollar over the past three months.

“The Bank of Canada will be concerned with how much of a headwind the loonie’s appreciation is to the competitiveness of the country’s exports,” Royce Mendes, an economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said in a report to investors.

The country’s trade deficit was C$3.3 billion ($2.6 billion) in November, from a revised C$3.7 billion in October, Statistics Canada reported Thursday in Ottawa. Economists had predicted a gap of C$3.5, according to the median of 11 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey.

Canada is on track to post a record merchandise trade deficit in 2020, with the cumulative gap already at C$33.4 billion in the first 11 months of the year. That’s largely because the collapse in exports earlier this year outpaced the drop in imports amid weakness in key sectors like oil. Imports, meanwhile, have recovered more quickly during the recovery.

The end result is exports are still below pre-pandemic levels while imports have fully rebounded.

However, services trade, near balance for the first time on record, is fully offsetting the deterioration in Canada’s merchandise trade balance. Until the pandemic, Canada had run massive deficits in services trade, largely due to foreign travel.

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U.S. services gauge strengthened unexpectedly in December

InternationalJan 08. 2021Workers unload a forklift in front of a HD Supply Holdings store in Hayward, Calif., on Nov. 16, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Katia Dmitrieva

Growth at U.S. service providers unexpectedly accelerated in December as gains in business activity and new orders helped offset a decline in a measure of employment.

The Institute for Supply Management’s services index rose to 57.2 during the month from 55.9 in November, according to data released Thursday. The December figure exceeded all economists’ forecasts in a Bloomberg survey which had a median projection of 54.5. Readings above 50 indicate expansion.

The pickup in growth at companies that make up the biggest part of the economy is surprising given the increase in coronavirus cases and tighter business restrictions in some states. At the same time, the employment gauge contracted for the first time in four months, showing the ongoing drag in the job market from the pandemic.

“Respondents’ comments are mixed about business conditions and the economy,” Anthony Nieves, chair of the ISM’s Business Survey Committee, said in a statement. “Various local- and state-level Covid-19 shutdowns continue to negatively impact companies and industries.”

Fourteen service industries reported growth in December, led by management companies and support services, wholesalers, retailers and health care providers. The accommodation and food services industry, along with entertainment and recreation sector, contracted.

The ISM’s employment measure fell to 48.2 after showing growth the previous three months. Figures Wednesday showed payrolls at service providers declined in December, led by retail and hospitality firms. The government’s jobs report on Friday is projected to show payrolls increased 50,000 last month, the weakest since the employment rebound began in May.

The supply managers group’s index of broad service-related business activity, which parallels its factory production gauge, increased to 59.4 after consecutive declines. An index of new orders rose to 58.5 from 57.2.

The group’s gauge of prices paid by service providers eased to 64.8 from 66.1, indicating costs were rising at a slightly slower pace during the month.

Aside from faster growth in business activity and orders, the overall index was bolstered by a jump in the supplier deliveries gauge. Similar to manufacturers, lead times at service providers may have lengthened because of pandemic-related disruptions to supply chains.

Other figures showed inventories expanded by the most since June, while a measure of export orders reached a six-month high.

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Elon Musk surpasses Jeff Bezos as world’s richest person

InternationalJan 08. 2021Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and chief executive officer of Tesla, speaks during a discussion at the Satellite 2020 Conference in Washington, D.C., on March 9, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Andrew Harrer.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Devon Pendleton, Dana Hull

Elon Musk, the outspoken entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, is now the richest person on the planet.

A 4.8% rally in the electric carmaker’s share price Thursday boosted Musk past Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world’s 500 wealthiest people.

The South Africa-born engineer’s net worth was $188.5 billion at 10:15 a.m. in New York, $1.5 billion more than Bezos, who has held the top spot since October 2017. As chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, Musk is also a rival to Bezos, owner of Blue Origin, in the private space race.

The milestone caps an extraordinary 12 months for Musk. Over the past year his net worth soared by more than $150 billion in possibly the fastest bout of wealth creation in history. Fueling his rise was an unprecedented rally in Tesla’s share price, which surged 743% last year on the back of consistent profits, inclusion in the S&P 500 Index and enthusiasm from Wall Street and retail investors alike.

The jump in Tesla’s stock price further inflates a valuation light-years apart from other automakers on numerous metrics. Tesla produced just over half-a-million cars last year, a fraction of the output of Ford Motor and General Motors. The company is poised for further near-term gains as Democrats captured both Georgia Senate seats and handed control of Congress to the party that’s advocated for quicker adoption of electric vehicles.

Musk, 49, has benefited from Tesla’s stratospheric rise in more than one way. In addition to his 20% stake in the automaker, he’s sitting on about $42 billion of unrealized paper gains on vested stock options. Those securities come from two grants he received in 2012 and 2018, the latter of which was the largest pay deal ever struck between a CEO and a corporate board.

Despite his astronomical gains, Musk has said he has little interest in material things and has few assets outside his stakes in Tesla and SpaceX. He told Axel Springer in an interview last month that the main purpose of his wealth is to accelerate humanity’s evolution into a spacefaring civilization.

“I want to be able to contribute as much as possible to the city on Mars,” Musk said. “That means just a lot of capital.”

The world’s 500 richest people added a record $1.8 trillion to their combined net worth last year, equivalent to a 31% increase. The gains were disproportionately at the top, where five individuals hold fortunes in excess of $100 billion and another 20 are worth at least $50 billion.

Less than a week into the new year the rankings have already been upended by extraordinary rallies. China’s Zhong Shanshan has vaulted past Warren Buffett to claim the sixth slot after shares of his bottled-water company surged, adding $15.2 billion to his fortune.

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U.S. initial jobless claims remain elevated heading into 2021

InternationalJan 08. 2021A worker removes chairs from the outdoor dining tent of a restaurant in New York. Photographer: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Reade Pickert

Applications for U.S. state unemployment benefits were little changed at elevated levels in the final week of 2020, indicating the labor market remains battered with the pandemic dragging on.

Initial jobless claims in regular state programs fell by 3,000 to 787,000 in the week ended Jan. 2, Labor Department data showed Thursday. On an unadjusted basis, the figure rose by 77,400.

Continuing claims for state programs — a rough approximation of the number of people receiving those benefits — declined by 126,000 to 5.07 million in the week ended Dec. 26. A Bloomberg survey of economists had called for 800,000 initial state claims and 5.2 million continuing claims on an adjusted basis.

The data tend to be more volatile around holiday weeks such as those containing Christmas and New Year’s Day.

While initial claims dropped for a third consecutive week, the figures underscore a labor-market rebound that remains fragile, with Friday’s jobs report forecast to show a sharp slowdown in December hiring. The surge in covid-19 cases sparked a wave of renewed restrictions on businesses and activity, spurring businesses to cut jobs.

Other indicators pointed to a slowing employment recovery in December. ADP Research Institute data show company payrolls fell by 123,000 and figures from Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed 77,030 job cuts, a 134.5% increase from a year earlier.

“The current wave of infections is weighing on activity,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase, told Bloomberg Television Thursday. “What we are seeing, I think pretty clearly, is a notable deceleration in the labor market over the last several weeks.”

U.S. stocks opened higher and 10-year Treasury yields rose following the report, as investors focused on the prospect for more economic stimulus and the likelihood that calm will prevail as Joe Biden takes the presidency following Wednesday’s violence at the U.S. Capitol.

The recently signed $900 billion pandemic aid package will provide some relief for workers and businesses in the wait for widespread vaccinations. The law extended jobless benefits for millions of Americans poised to lose that financial support at the end of 2020. It also provided an additional $300 per week in unemployment aid through mid-March.

One of the programs set to expire, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, saw 161,460 initial claims last week, a decline of almost half from the prior week. The program provides jobless benefits to those not typically eligible like the self-employed and gig workers. There were 8.38 million continued weeks claimed for PUA in the week ended Dec. 19, down slightly from the prior week.

In the same week, there were 4.52 million continuing claims for Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which provides extended jobless benefits for those who have exhausted their regular state benefits. Like PUA, the federal program was set to expire at the end of 2020 without congressional action. The number of Americans who are considered long-term unemployed was at a seven-year high of nearly 4 million in November.

The increase in unadjusted state initial claims reflected jumps in Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Virginia, Texas and Georgia. Filings in Illinois fell by more than half, to about 48,000 after four weeks of posting more than 100,000 claims a week.

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Global food prices at six-year high are set to keep on climbing

InternationalJan 08. 2021A buyer inspects a green apple as he stands beside crates of fresh produce in the fruit and vegetable section of Rungis wholesale food market in Rungis, France, on Jan. 15, 2015. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Marlene Awaad.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Agnieszka de Sousa, Megan Durisin

Global food prices reached a six-year high in December and are likely to keep rising into 2021, adding to pressure on household budgets while hunger surges around the world.

A United Nations gauge of food prices has jumped 18% since May, as adverse weather, government measures to safeguard supplies and robust demand helped fuel rallies across agricultural commodities from grains to palm oil. Prices will likely climb further, the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization said.

The spike threatens to push up broader inflation, making it harder for central banks to provide more stimulus to shore up economies, while stirring memories of food-price crises a decade ago. It’s bad news for consumers whose incomes have been hurt by the covid-19 crisis, and adds to concerns about global food security that’s being affected by conflicts and weather shocks.

That’s especially true for the poorest countries having to contend with limited social safety nets and purchasing power, according to the FAO.

“We do at this point see more factors pushing up global food prices,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the FAO. “Food inflation is a reality. While people have lost income, they are as we speak going through a tremendously difficult hardship.”

Corn and soy futures rallied to six-year highs as drought threatens crops in South America at a time of surging Chinese demand, while palm oil — used in about half of all supermarket goods — is near a 10-year high. Protectionist measures are also propping up markets, with Argentinian farmers planning a protest strike after the government suspended corn-export licenses, while wheat giant Russia will curb grain exports from mid-February to tame food inflation.

Commodities priced in dollars — often seen as a hedge against inflation — should remain supported as the greenback falls further this year, Abbassian said. Plus, an economic recovery in some parts of the world will probably fuel consumer spending and food demand, with weather risks and export restrictions from some grain suppliers aiding prices in the short term, he said.

Weather concerns, government intervention and strong exports to China could push agricultural markets higher this year, according to Rabobank International. Soy prices have become expensive enough that the world will need to ration demand, Joe Stone, head of crop merchant Cargill Inc.’s agriculture supply chain and corporate trading, said this week.

The FAO’s food price index has risen for the past seven months, with annual prices capping the highest average in three years. Still, costs remain well below peaks in 2008 and 2011, when soaring prices caused political and economic instability around the world and grain-export bans tightened supply.

“Commodity price inflation is very real, but we’re still nothing like a decade ago,” said Tim Benton, research director in emerging risks at Chatham House in London. “I am reasonably confident that it’s not going to lead to big things as per a decade ago. But still, Covid has the potential to upset things in terms of flows of goods, in terms of access to labor.”

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India’s GDP set to drop 7.7%, biggest contraction since 1952

InternationalJan 08. 2021

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Vrishti Beniwal

India’s economy is set for its biggest annual contraction in records going back to 1952 as the rapid spread of coronavirus cases and measures to contain them hurt businesses and households.

Gross domestic product will shrink 7.7% in the financial year ending March 2021, the statistics ministry said in its first advance estimate published on Thursday. That’s steeper than a 7.5% drop forecast by the Reserve Bank of India, as well as economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

The estimates may undergo sharp revisions due to disruptions caused by steps to contain the pandemic, said the statistics office, which had suspended data collection coinciding with a nationwide lockdown.

The rupee declined 0.3% at close in Mumbai on Thursday before the data was published, while sovereign bonds were little changed.

Despite one of the strictest coronavirus lockdowns, India is now home to the world’s second-highest virus infections — which at more than 10.4 million has kept the government from fully reopening the economy. The contraction in the nation’s GDP will also be the first since 1980, when the economy shrank 5.2%, and is set to be the worst slump in Asia after Philippines’ estimated 8.5%-9.5% drop.

But unlike the Southeast Asian economy, which is expected to extend the decline for a second straight year in 2021, economists forecast India to bounce back strongly in the next financial year starting April 1, helped by a string of fiscal and monetary steps. For now, the country is in a recession after two straight quarters of contraction in GDP.

“While weak global growth and a sudden volteface on domestic pandemic control are key short term risks, over the medium term, easier financial conditions, stronger global demand and accelerated vaccinations could lead to an economic upcycle in 2021,” Sonal Varma and Aurodeep Nandi, economists at Nomura Holdings in Singapore, wrote before the data was released.

India this month granted emergency approval for the vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, paving the way to begin inoculations of its population of about 1.3 billion.

Calls are growing for the innoculation drive to be complemented by more support from fiscal and monetary policy makers. While Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is due to present the government’s annual budget on Feb. 1, the RBI’s Monetary Policy Committee will decide on interest rates later that week.