AFP

Biden heads west to talk environment, economy ahead of midterms

13 Oct 2022

US President Joe Biden traveled to Colorado Wednesday at the start of a three-state swing through the American West to promote his record with less than a month to go before the crucial midterm elections.

Biden’s first stop was at Camp Hale, a former US Army World War II training ground in the Rocky Mountains.

Sporting his signature aviator sunglasses, he designated the site as a national monument in honor of its military history, the local Native American community and the area’s natural beauty.

Protection of the site, where the 10th Mountain Division trained for conditions in the mountains of Italy, has been a long-standing goal of Democratic Party leaders in the state.

The move, which raises hope for significant tourism benefits, fulfills a request by Democratic Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, who is seeking reelection in November — a vital seat for the Democrats’ hopes of retaining control of the Senate.

“He came to the White House and he said, ‘I told you what I need.’ And I said I’ll do it. You know why? I was worried he’d never leave the damn White House,” Biden joked during the ceremony.

“In my first year in office, I have protected more lands and waters than any American presidents since John (Fitzgerald) Kennedy” in the 1960s, Biden said, accusing his predecessor Donald Trump of having “rolled back protections.”

“We’re investing billions of dollars to protect our iconic outdoors, preserve our historic sites, and addressing the devastating effects of climate change,” he added.

Some of those funds, linked to a broad program of environmental investments and social spending passed by Congress this summer, will be used to address the region’s drought problems.

– Campaign ramping up –

A month before the midterms, Biden is increasing his travels to promote his record in office, hoping it will boost his party’s chances.

After Colorado, the president will head to California and Oregon to push his cost of living and infrastructure reforms.

The 79-year-old Democrat will also take part in fundraising efforts, a vital part of US politics.

A Democratic Party spokesperson recently said that “thanks in a large part to engagement from President Biden,” the party has raised $107 million so far in 2022, a record for this point in the year. 

Since January, Biden has participated in 12 fundraising events.

US political commentators have, however, pointed out that this tour will not take the president to Arizona and Nevada, the two western states that promise to be key Senate battlegrounds.

US citizen sent back to Iran prison after father released

13 Oct 2022

A US citizen on temporary release from prison in Iran was taken back into custody Wednesday, his family said, in what Washington called a “tremendous setback” after hopes for his permanent freedom.

Siamak Namazi, 51, was returned to Tehran’s Evin prison, a day before the seventh anniversary of his detention on espionage charges which he denies.

He was temporarily released a week ago when his father, 85-year-old Baquer Namazi, was permitted to leave the country for medical care.

The younger Namazi’s furlough from prison had also been extended on Saturday for three more days.

“I was genuinely hopeful for the first time that my father’s departure was the beginning of a new, less painful chapter in the struggle to make our family whole again. But Siamak’s return to Evin has shattered that hope,” his brother Babak Namazi said in a statement.

“Iran has proven the humanitarian gesture of letting my father go remains the exception and does not represent a changed reality.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the end of Siamek’s furlough “comes as a tremendous setback.”

Also pointing to two other US citizens detained in Iran, Price told reporters: “We are working to do everything we can to advance the prospects for their release and for their safe return to their families just as soon as we can.”

The Namazi family says that espionage accusations are absurd and that Siamak had been questioned over past associations with US think tanks. His father, a former UNICEF official, was detained in February 2016 after flying in to help his son.

Baquer Namazi was allowed to leave for Oman and then to the United Arab Emirates where has been examined at the Cleveland Clinic over an artery blockage.

All the US citizens known to be detained in Iran are of Iranian origin. Tehran does not recognize dual nationality and has had no diplomatic relations with the United States since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

President Joe Biden’s administration has vowed the release of US citizens amid separate, slow-moving negotiations on reviving a 2015 nuclear accord with Iran.

G7, IMF vow to support Ukraine after Russia strikes

13 Oct 2022

The G7 and IMF pledged their steadfast financial support to Ukraine on Wednesday as the country reels from Russian missile strikes and needs billions of dollars in monthly aid.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared by video link to urge more aid at a finance ministers gathering in Washington for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, just days after Russia’s missile salvo on Kyiv and other cities.

“We can see that Russian terror attacks can be intensified,” Zelensky said through an interpreter to the meeting dedicated to supporting Ukraine.

“So we need to intensify our collaboration for assistance in a symmetric way to rebuild what was destroyed and to guarantee the financial stability of our state,” he said, adding that Kyiv faces a $38 billion budget hole next year.

IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said Ukraine’s financing needs in 2023 will range between $3 billion and $4 billion a month.

She said that at the request of Zelensky, the IMF would create the Ukraine Economic Forum to share information and clarify the country’s financing needs.

“We are moving with you in the direction of a strong Ukraine,” she said.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said meeting Ukraine’s needs “will require a unified and coordinated effort.”

“But together, the G7, the international financial institutions, and all of Ukraine’s partners can help Ukraine win this war and rebuild to become the prosperous and secure democracy that the Ukrainian people have fought so hard for,” she said.

The United States has provided $65 billion in aid, including military equipment to Kyiv since February.

– ‘Stand with Ukraine’ –

Earlier, Yellen and other finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies held their own talks about Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We urge Russia to immediately end its unjust and brutal war,” they said in a statement.

“The G7 will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes and remain strongly committed to supporting Ukraine’s urgent short-term financing needs,” the statement added.

The G7 also discussed its efforts to impose a price cap on Russia oil in a bid to deny the country a key source of funding for its war and contain soaring energy prices.

The group — which includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — said it had made “significant progress on all key aspects” of the proposal, but they did not give any details.

The G7 welcomed Australia’s addition to the coalition. One of the challenges the G7 faces is rallying countries around the world behind the idea of a price cap.

– Putin warning –

Hours earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at the proposal, which the United States has pushed and the EU supports pending details from the G7. 

“With their cavalier decisions, some Western politicians are destroying the global market economy and are in fact posing a threat to the well-being of billions of people,” Putin told an energy forum in Moscow.

Moscow has warned that it would cut off oil supplies to countries that impose such a cap.

Officials have yet to say at what level the cap would be set, but they have said that it would remain above the cost of production so that Russia would still have an incentive to supply importing countries.

US growth slowdown 'required' to beat inflation: Fed minutes

13 Oct 2022

A slowdown of economic growth and the US job market will be “required” to bring down inflation, the Federal Reserve said in notes released Wednesday, adding that prices remain “unacceptably high.”

Fed officials also said inflation has “not yet responded” to increased interest rates, according to minutes of the US central bank’s September meeting, and that “a significant reduction in inflation would likely lag that of aggregate demand.”

In September, the Fed’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) increased the key interest rate by 0.75 percentage point for the third consecutive time, continuing its forceful action to tamp down inflation, which has surged to the highest level in 40 years.

On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden admitted there was a chance the country could suffer a “slight” recession, when asked about fears for the economy amid gloomy growth projections.

But some of the Fed officials cited in the minutes also noted that “it would be important to calibrate the pace of further policy tightening with the aim of mitigating the risk of significant adverse effects on the economic outlook.”

Several of the officials added that “the cost of taking too little action to bring down inflation likely outweighed the cost of taking too much action.”

Participants also noted their strong “commitment to returning inflation to the committee’s two percent objective.”

The Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, showed the annual pace of price increases slowed slightly in August.

Another measure of price increases, the CPI index, will be published Thursday morning for the month of September. 

World's first space tourist plans new flight to Moon with SpaceX

14 Oct 2022

Dennis Tito, an American entrepreneur who in 2001 became the first person to pay for their own space voyage, said Wednesday he plans to fly with his wife Akiko on a future SpaceX mission around the Moon.

The voyage will take place after Elon Musk’s company has finished developing its prototype Starship rocket and has flown a first commercial flight that will include Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.

“Since my first human spaceflight I continue to be passionate about space, and the possibilities it has for all humanity, which leads me to this mission” Tito, 82, told reporters on a call Wednesday. 

The weeklong mission would see Starship fly within 125 miles of the lunar surface before returning home.

Tito did not disclose how much he and Akiko had paid for their tickets, but said ten more seats remain open for others to sign up.

Maezawa, on the other hand, has chartered all the seats on his mission called “dearMoon,” set to fly no sooner than 2023 but likely much later.

In 2001, Tito paid $20 million to fly on a Russian rocket to the International Space Station, heralding the era of space tourism.

An aeronautics and astronautics engineer by training, Tito worked for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s, before founding the investment management firm Wilshire Associates in 1972.

Japanese born Akiko, a systems engineer who later moved to the finance industry and relocated to New York in 1995, added: “I want people to know that they can do whatever they set their mind to. 

“It’s never too late, no matter your age, race or gender.”

It’s unclear when SpaceX will commence commercial missions with Starship — a giant rocket that the company hopes to one day use to colonize Mars.

Musk has promised the rocket will complete its first orbital test this year, and a version of Starship has already been selected to be used as a lander for NASA’s Artemis missions to return humans to the Moon.

Aarti Matthews, director of Starship crew and cargo, said SpaceX envisaged the commercial missions as a step towards airline-like space operations.

Copyright or copycat?: Supreme Court hears Andy Warhol art case

12 Oct 2022

The nine justices of the US Supreme Court took on the role of art critics on Wednesday as they grappled with whether a photographer should be compensated for a picture she took of Prince used in a work by Andy Warhol.

In a lighter vein than in most cases before the court, arguments were sprinkled with eclectic pop culture references ranging from hit TV show “Mork & Mindy” to hip hop group 2 Live Crew to Stanley Kubrick’s horror film “The Shining.”

Justice Clarence Thomas volunteered at one point that he was a fan of Prince in the 1980s while Chief Justice John Roberts displayed a familiarity with Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian.

The case, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, could have far-reaching implications for US copyright law and the art world.

“The stakes for artistic expression in this case are high,” said Roman Martinez, a lawyer for the Foundation, which was set up after Warhol’s death in 1987.

“It would make it illegal for artists, museums, galleries and collectors to display, sell profit from, maybe even possess, a significant quantity of works,” Martinez said. “It would also chill the creation of new art.”

The case stems from a black-and-white picture taken of Prince in 1981 by celebrity photographer Lynn Goldsmith.

In 1984, as Prince’s “Purple Rain” album was taking off, Vanity Fair asked Warhol to create an image to accompany a story on the musician in the magazine.

Warhol used one of Goldsmith’s photographs to produce a silk screen print image of Prince with a purple face in the familiar brightly colored style the artist made famous with his portraits of Marilyn Monroe.

Goldsmith received credit and was paid $400 for the rights for one-time use.

After Prince died in 2016, the Foundation licensed another image of the musician made by Warhol from the Goldsmith photo to Vanity Fair publisher Conde Nast.

Conde Nast paid the Foundation a $10,250 licensing fee.

Goldsmith did not receive anything and is claiming her copyright on the original photo was infringed.

– ‘At the mercy of copycats’ –

The Foundation argued in court that Warhol’s work was “transformative” — an original piece infused with a new meaning or message — and was permitted under what is known as the “fair use” doctrine in copyright law.

Lisa Blatt, a lawyer for Goldsmith, disagreed.

“Warhol got the picture in 1984 because Miss Goldsmith was paid and credited,” Blatt said.

The Foundation, she said, is claiming that “Warhol is a creative genius who imbued other people’s art with his own distinctive style.

“But (Steven) Spielberg did the same for films and Jimi Hendrix for music,” Blatt said. “Those giants still needed licenses.”

The Foundation is arguing that “adding new meaning is a good enough reason to copy for free,” she said. “But that test would decimate the art of photography by destroying the incentive to create the art in the first place.

“Copyrights will be at the mercy of copycats.”

Several justices appeared bemused about being thrust into the role of art critics.

“How is a court to determine the purpose or meaning, the message or meaning of works of art like a photograph or a painting,” asked Justice Samuel Alito. “There can be a lot of dispute about what the meaning of the message is.

“Do you call art critics as experts?”

“I think you could just look at the two works and figure out what you think, as a judge,” Martinez replied.

The Foundation lawyer added that a ruling in favor of Goldsmith would have “dramatic spillover consequences, not just for the Prince Series, but for all sorts of works in modern art that incorporate preexisting images.”

The Supreme Court heard the case after two lower courts issued split decisions — one in favor of the Foundation, the other in favor of Goldsmith.

The justices will issue their ruling by June 30.

Brain cells in dish learn to play video game

13 Oct 2022

Neuroscientists have shown that lab-grown brain cells can learn to play the classic video game Pong, and could be capable of “intelligent and sentient behavior.”

Brett Kagan, who led a study published in the journal Neuron Wednesday, told AFP his findings open the door to a new type of research into biological information processors, complementing normal digital computers.

“What machines can’t do is learn things very quickly — if you need a machine learning algorithm to learn something, it requires thousands of data samples,” he explained.

“But if you ask a human, or train a dog, a dog can learn a trick in two or three tries.”

Kagan, chief scientific officer at Melbourne-based Cortical Labs, set out to answer whether there is a way to harness the inherent intelligence of neurons.

Kagan and colleagues took mice cells from embryonic brains, and derived human neurons from adult stem cells.

They then grew them on top of microelectrode arrays that could read their activity and stimulate them. The experiments involved a cluster of around 800,000 neurons, roughly the size of a bumblebee brain.

In the game, a signal was sent from the left or right of the array to indicate where the ball was located, and “DishBrain,” as the researchers called it, fired back signals to move the paddle, in a simplified, opponent-free version of Pong.

– ‘Sentient, but not conscious’ – 

One of the major hurdles was figuring out how to “teach” the neurons.

In the past, it has been proposed to give them a shot of the “feel good” hormone dopamine to reward a correct action — but that was difficult to achieve in a time-sensitive way.

Instead, the team relied on a theory called the “free energy principle” that was coined by the paper’s senior author Karl Friston, which says cells are hardwired to minimize unpredictability in their environments.

When the neurons succeeded in making the paddle hit the ball, they received “predictable” electrical signals. But when they missed, they were sent randomized, or “unpredictable” signals.

“The only thing that the neurons could do is actually get better at trying to hit the ball to keep their world controllable and predictable,” said Kagan.

DishBrain’s performance isn’t up to AI (artificial intelligence) or human standards, but “the fact we see any significant learning is really just evidence of how robust neurons are at processing information and adapting to their environment,” he added.

The team believes DishBrain is sentient — which they defined as being able to sense and respond to sensory information in a dynamic way — but drew the line at calling it “conscious,” which implies awareness of being.

DishBrain also tried out another task — the dinosaur game that appears in Google Chrome when no internet connection is found — and the preliminary results were encouraging, said Kagan.

For their next steps, the team plans to test how DishBrain’s intelligence is affected by medicines and alcohol — though Kagan himself is most excited by the future possibilities of biological computers based on this discovery.

“We compare it to the first transistor,” he said, the building block of modern electronics invented in 1947, which eventually led to today’s powerful digital computers.

“This is robustly conducted, interesting neuroscience,” said Tara Spires-Jones of the Centre for Discovery Brain Science at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study.

“Don’t worry, while these dishes of neurons can change their responses based on stimulation, they are not SciFi style intelligence in a dish, these are simple (albeit interesting and scientifically important) circuit responses.”

Germany forecasts 2023 recession as energy crisis bites

13 Oct 2022

Germany will sink into recession next year and inflation will soar, the government forecast Wednesday, as Europe’s top economy battles skyrocketing energy prices following Russia’s gas shutdown.

The official predictions were the latest warning that Germany’s economy, which was just getting back on its feet after the pandemic, is set to shrink in 2023 due to the fallout of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Unveiling the government’s latest forecasts of 0.4 percent economic contraction and seven percent inflation for 2023, Economy Minister Robert Habeck painted a dark picture of a “serious energy crisis”. 

It “threatens to become an economic and social crisis”, he warned — but insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin will “fail in this attempt to destabilise the basic economic and political order”. 

Putin “will also fail on the battlefield in Ukraine”, he added. 

Moscow’s move to cut off gas supplies to Europe amid tensions over Ukraine has triggered an energy crisis across the continent, with consumers and businesses facing high prices as winter approaches.

Germany has been particularly hard hit, as 55 percent of its gas supplies came from Moscow prior to the Ukraine conflict.

The soaring energy costs are expected to send inflation to eight percent in 2022 and seven percent in 2023, the government forecast.

Nevertheless, Germany’s economy is still set to register growth of 1.4 percent in 2022, according to the government forecasts, after having enjoyed a post-pandemic rebound earlier in the year.

But it will then shrink in 2023, with the economy ministry saying the “central reason” for the downgrade from forecasts earlier this year was “the halt to Russian gas supplies”.

High energy prices are acting as “a brake on industrial production — above all in energy-intensive sectors”. The economy will return to growth with expansion of 2.3 percent in 2024, according to the forecasts. 

– Energy price cap –

The government recently unveiled a 200-billion-euro ($194-billion) fund to shield consumers and businesses from surging prices, which includes a cap on energy costs.

Without the cap, consumer prices would be much higher in 2023, the forecasts said.

Forecasts by leading economic institutes late last month showed inflation coming in at 8.4 percent for the year as a whole in 2022 — and climbing further to 8.8 percent in 2023.

Warnings are mounting that global growth will slow further next year due to myriad crises, with the IMF this week downgrading its 2023 global GDP growth forecast.

It forecast that Germany, along with Italy, will become the first advanced economies to contract in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Signs are rapidly multiplying of Germany’s escalating economic crisis. 

Last week, official figures showed that industrial production — the pillar of the German economy — produced 0.8 percent less in August compared with the previous month, with energy-intensive industries badly impacted. 

Inflation meanwhile hit a 70-year high of 10 percent in September. 

The European Central Bank has started aggressively tightening monetary policy to bring inflation under control, lifting rates a historic 75 basis points last month, but some are worried the move adds to recession risks.

Berlin has been scrambling to find alternative energy sources, accelerating the construction of infrastructure to import gas from further afield, and is preparing to keep two nuclear plants running longer than initially anticipated.

Despite the crisis, Habeck sought to strike a positive note about efforts to find new partners to supply energy.

“We are making very good progress in loosening the grip of Russian energy imports,” he said. 

Jury deliberates death penalty for Florida school shooter

12 Oct 2022

A jury began deliberations on Wednesday over the fate of Nikolas Cruz, who shot and killed 17 people at a Florida high school in 2018, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty.

Cruz, now 24, pleaded guilty last year to the Valentine’s Day murder of 14 students and three staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, a small city north of Miami.

The 12 person jury — seven men and five women — must decide between the death penalty, which would require a unanimous vote, and life in prison with no possibility of parole.

On Tuesday, prosecutors and Cruz’s defense team gave their closing arguments after a three-month trial, during which the jury saw graphic footage of the attack.

The lead prosecutor, Michael Satz, argued that Cruz should receive the death penalty as the shooting had been a “systematic massacre” planned months in advance.

Satz recounted the day of the attack in harrowing detail as Cruz kept his eyes down, and closed by reciting the names of the 17 people who died.

Melisa McNeill, a lawyer for Cruz, urged the jurors to show compassion for a troubled young man who was born with fetal alcohol stress disorder to a mother who struggled with homelessness, alcoholism and drug addiction, before he was adopted.

“He was doomed from the womb and in a civilized, humane society, do we kill brain-damaged, mentally ill, broken people?” McNeill asked in her closing statement. “Do we? I hope not.”

On February 14, 2018, the then-19-year-old Cruz walked into school carrying a high-powered semiautomatic rifle. He had been expelled a year earlier for disciplinary reasons.

In a matter of nine minutes, he killed 17 people and wounded over a dozen more.

Cruz fled by mixing in with people frantically escaping the gory scene, but was arrested by police shortly after as he walked along the street.

The shooting stunned the nation and reignited debate on gun control, since Cruz had legally purchased the gun he used.

Despite massive gun reform momentum prompted by the shooting, no significant national reforms were passed, and gun sales have continued to rise.

There have been more mass shootings, including one in May that left 19 young children and two adults dead at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.

After the latest shootings, Congress did pass legislation to increase funding for school security and mental health care.

Peru villagers accuse government of ignoring harm from mining

14 Oct 2022

Andean villagers in Peru told an inter-American rights court on Wednesday about how their health has suffered for decades due to environmental damage caused by a mining company extracting heavy metals in their midst.

The community of La Oroya accuses the government in Lima of having allowed the Doe Run Peru company, owned by US group Renco, to pollute at will while turning a blind eye to their fate.

“The State was like a father who ignored us,” 74-year-old villager Rosa Amaro told the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the first day of a hearing against the Peruvian government.

She was one of several residents to recount the effects of decades of exposure to heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and arsenic.

Watchdogs say La Oroya, a town of 30,000 some 185 kilometers (115 miles) east of Lima, is one of the world’s most polluted cities because of smelters refining lead, zinc, gold and copper in the area.

Amaro told the court, sitting this week in the Uruguayan capital Montevideo, that she witnessed the hills surrounding her town become bare over time because “the plants would not grow.”

Through tears, she testified of residents struggling with burning throats and eyes, headaches and difficulty breathing.

Others told of tumors, muscular problems and infertility blamed on pollution from the smelters.

Amaro, who headed a local lobby group in La Oroya, said she was forced in 2017 to leave the town where she had lived all her life due to threats from the relatives of mine workers worried about their jobs if Doe Run were brought to account.

The plaintiffs claim the state also failed to investigate threats and harassment against them.

– ‘Compromised its obligation’ –

La Oroya residents sued the Peruvian government and obtained a partially favorable ruling in 2006 from the Constitutional Court, which ordered protective measures.

Last year the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which investigates suspected violations of human rights, said those measures were never implemented.

The commission found that the State had failed to regulate and oversee the behavior of the mining company and “compromised its obligation to guarantee human rights.”

It referred the matter to the court now sitting in Montevideo to determine reparations.

“My health is already destroyed. All I want is for future generations to be in good health,” plaintiff Yolanda Zurita, 63, told the court on Wednesday of her expectations from the process.

Doe Run Peru, which has operated in La Oroya since 1997, declared bankruptcy in 2009. 

Under a credit agreement, the company was handed to its miner employees who want to reopen the abandoned smelter.

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