US Business

A prominent Republican senator introduced a bill on Tuesday that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy in all 50 US states.

The proposed legislation, which has no chance of passage in the Democratic-held Senate, came under immediate fire from the White House and Democratic lawmakers.

Abortion rights have been in the spotlight since the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to the procedure in June, leaving the decision on whether to allow it to individual states.

The bill proposed by Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, would make abortion illegal after 15 weeks nationally except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

Graham, an ally of former president Donald Trump, said such a law would “get America at a federal level that is fairly consistent with the rest of the world.”

Graham’s bill would leave in place, however, the even more severe restrictions on abortion enacted in about a dozen conservative states since the Supreme Court decision.

But it would restrict abortion in a number of Democratic-led states in which the procedure is currently allowed after 15 weeks.

Abortion rights have become a hot-button issue ahead of November’s mid-term elections and Graham’s move is an apparent attempt to strike a middle ground and quell a potential backlash against the Republican Party over its hardline anti-abortion stance.

Graham had previously said abortion should be decided by the states, and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told CNN on Tuesday that most Republican members of the body believed it should still be regulated at the state level.

Democrats, who have been using the abortion issue to mobilize voters in November, immediately condemned Graham’s bill.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it would “strip away women’s rights in all 50 states” and was “wildly out of step with what Americans believe.”

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, said that “if Republicans get the chance, they will work to pass laws even more draconian than this bill — just like the bans they have enacted in states like Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.”

Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko told the US Congress Tuesday that the platform ignored his security concerns, with his testimony coming as company shareholders greenlit Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover deal.

The shareholder decision clears the way for the contract to close, even as billionaire Musk tries to exit it. Twitter has sued him to force it through, but analysts said testimony by Zatko, the social network’s former security chief, will put more pressure on the company as it heads to court next month.

“I’m here today because Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators and even its own board of directors,” Zatko, a hacker widely known as “Mudge”, told the hearing.

He said that, during his time as head of security for the platform from late 2020 until his dismissal in January this year, he tried alerting management to grave vulnerabilities to hacking or data theft — but to no avail.

“They don’t know what data they have, where it lives, or where it came from. And so, unsurprisingly, they can’t protect it,” Zatko said during his opening remarks to the Judiciary Committee.

“Employees then have to have too much access (…) it doesn’t matter who has the keys if you don’t have any locks on the doors.”

Zatko testified that he brought concrete evidence of problems to the executive team and “repeatedly sounded the alarm”.

“To put it bluntly, Twitter leadership ignored its engineers because key parts of leadership lacked competency to understand the scope of the problem,” he said.

“But more importantly, their executive incentives led them to prioritize profits over security.”

Twitter has dismissed 51-year-old Zatko’s complaint as being without merit.

But revelations of his whistleblower report in the US press in August were perfectly timed for Tesla chief Musk, who has used it as part of his justification for abandoning his unsolicited $44 buyout bid.

– ‘Elephant in the room’ –

In his report, Zatko directly refers to questions asked by Musk about bot accounts on Twitter, saying the company’s tools and teams for finding such accounts are insufficient.

Musk has listed bot accounts as among the reasons to justify his walking away from the deal. Twitter is suing to force him to complete the buyout, with a trial set to go ahead on October 17.

Zatko’s testimony “puts more pressure on Twitter camp ahead of Musk/Twitter trial,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told AFP.

“The Twitter shareholders approving this deal was a no brainer but now the major challenge begins with the Musk trial,” he said.

“The elephant in the room is the Zatko situation which could be an albatross for the Twitter camp and throw this deal off track.”

If Twitter prevails at trial, the judge could order the Tesla chief to pay billions of dollars to the company, or even complete the purchase.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal declined to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, citing the Musk litigation, Senator Chuck Grassley said.

Zatko insisted he had not made his revelations “out of spite or to harm Twitter.”

“Far from that, I continue to believe in the mission of the company,” he told Tuesday’s hearing.

Musk, himself an avid Twitter user, did not comment immediately on the hearing — but tweeted a popcorn emoji as Zatko spoke, suggesting he was watching the proceedings closely.

Russia said Tuesday it was carrying out “massive strikes” across the Ukrainian frontline and accused Ukrainian soldiers of abusing civilians in territories recaptured in a dramatic counter-offensive.

Moscow’s retaliation came after it was forced to pull back its troops from swathes of the northeast, particularly in the Kharkiv region, following Kyiv’s lightning assault to wrest back terrain.

The territorial shifts marked one of Russia’s biggest setbacks since its troops were repelled from Kyiv in the earliest days of the nearly seven-month-long war, yet Moscow signalled it was no closer to agreeing to a negotiated peace.

“Air, rocket and artillery forces are carrying out massive strikes on units of the Ukrainian armed forces in all operational directions,” the Russian defence ministry said in its daily briefing on the conflict.

“High-precision” strikes have also been launched on Ukrainian positions around Sloviansk and Konstantinovka in the eastern Donetsk region, it added.

The Kremlin accused Kyiv’s army of abusing civilians in territory it had recaptured.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said that in the Kharkiv region, reports were emerging of “outrageous” treatment of civilians.

“There are a lot of punitive measures… people are being tortured, people are being mistreated and so on,” Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Russia’s allegations came after Ukrainian authorities claimed to have found four bodies of civilians with “signs of torture” in the recaptured eastern village of Zaliznychne.

Moscow also pushed back on Tuesday against what it called growing “bias” at United Nations’ human rights bodies, a day after a top UN official condemned Moscow’s “intimidation” of people in Russia opposed to its war in Ukraine.

– ‘Too early to tell’ –

Residents reported that Russian troops had killed villagers, the regional prosecutor’s office said, announcing a war crime probe.

Ukrainian forces launched their counter-offensive in early September, seemingly catching Russia’s military off guard. 

Images posted by the Ukrainian military showed crates of munitions and military hardware scattered across territory abandoned by Russian forces.

Around the northeastern town of Balakliya, AFP journalists saw evidence of fierce battles, with buildings destroyed or damaged and streets mostly deserted.

By Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine’s forces have retaken a total of 6,000 square kilometres (2,320 square miles) from Russian control.

In the northeast, dozens of areas including the cities of Izyum, Kupiansk and Balakliya have been retaken, Ukraine said.

Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region have since September 6 reclaimed more than 300 settlements and areas home to around 150,000 people, said deputy foreign affairs minister Ganna Maliar.  

Ukraine has also claimed significant gains in the southern Kherson region, where the Ukrainian army also said it had recaptured 500 square kilometres.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assessed that the Ukrainians had made “significant progress”, due to their resilience as well as US support.

“It’s too early to tell exactly where this is going. The Russians maintain very significant forces in Ukraine as well as equipment and arms and munitions. 

“They continue to use it indiscriminately against not just the Ukrainian armed forces but civilians and civilian infrastructure as we’ve seen,” Blinken said on Monday.

– ‘Turned the tide’ –

A US think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, tweeted: “Ukraine has turned the tide in its favour, but the current counter-offensive will not end the war.” 

Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov told French daily Le Monde in a Monday interview that the war has entered a new phase with the help of Western weapons.

Kyiv nonetheless ramped up its calls for Western allies to rush more sophisticated weapons to help in its fight. 

“Weapons, weapons, weapons have been on our agenda since spring. I am grateful to partners who have answered our call: Ukraine’s battlefield successes are our shared ones,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

But Germany was once again under the spotlight for failing to deliver Leopard battle tanks that Kyiv is seeking.

“Not a single rational argument on why these weapons cannot be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses,” said Kuleba, after Chancellor Olaf Scholz dodged a question on the issue on Monday, saying only that Germany would not “go-it-alone” on weapons deliveries.

In a phone call, the German leader urged Putin to “come to a diplomatic solution as quickly as possible, based on a ceasefire, a complete withdrawal of Russian forces and respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Ukraine”.

Away from the battlefield, Ukraine’s allies were grappling with an energy crisis after Russia curtailed deliveries to the bloc. 

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin appealed for EU unity in the face of Russian “blackmail” over energy supplies, and for more sanctions on Moscow.

Seeking emergency measures to bring down soaring energy prices, the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, called an extraordinary meeting on September 30. 

Respected in cybersecurity circles, former Twitter security chief Peiter “Mudge” Zatko is a wild card in Elon Musk’s legal gambit to break a $44 billion deal to buy the social network.

Zatko’s whistleblower complaint of “extreme, egregious deficiencies” in Twitter defenses against hackers plays into Musk’s quest to convince a judge that he was duped when he foisted his unsolicited offer on the company.

While testifying before members of US Congress on Tuesday, Zatko said his worries about possible harm to Twitter users and national security prompted him to come forward.

“I did not make my whistleblower disclosures out of spite or to harm Twitter,” Zatko said.

“Far from that. I continue to believe in the mission of the company.”

Twitter has dismissed 51-year-old Zatko’s complaint as being without merit, and vowed to show it did nothing wrong at an October trial in a Delaware court.

If the court focuses on the fact that the world’s richest man declined to do fact gathering typically associated with big-money mergers, Zatko’s allegations could wind up being moot.

Zatko first testified before Congress 24 years ago, when he was a long-haired hacker determined to warn about the perils of poorly protected government computer systems.

This time, he was called on to provide details about his accusations that Twitter hid flaws in its security as well as its fight against accounts run by spammers or software instead of genuine users.

He told the hearing that Twitter’s security failures threaten both national security and the privacy of users — but that the company’s leadership has refused to make tough but necessary changes, prioritizing profits over safety. 

Musk has listed the number of inauthentic accounts on Twitter as among reasons to justify walking away from the buyout deal he made in April.

“Once both parties step into court it’s a high risk/high reward scenario for both parties with the major X variable now being the Zatko whistleblower claims,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors.

“We continue to view the Zatko situation as a Pandora’s Box scenario for Twitter.”

If Twitter prevails at trial, the judge could order the Tesla chief to pay billions of dollars to the company, or even complete the purchase.

– ‘Big problems’ –

“If  Mudge says Twitter has cybersecurity problems, Twitter has big problems,” said Vectra cybersecurity firm chief technology officer Aaron Turner, who says he has known Zatko since the 1980s.

A son of scientists, Zatko grew up in the US states of Alabama and Pennsylvania, his passions including music and software.

In 1996, he joined a hacker collective called L0pht. He and other members of the group testified before Congress two years later.

“It was the first time the U.S. government publicly referenced ‘hackers’ in a positive context,” Zatko said in a 2019 tweet marking an anniversary of the testimony.

Zatko has done stints at Google and online payment services company Stripe, and also at Pentagon research arm DARPA.

Twitter founder and former chief Jack Dorsey recruited Zatko in July 2020 after a spectacular hack of the accounts of celebrities and political figures including Barack Obama, Musk and Kim Kardashian.

US President Joe Biden’s team offered Zatko a position as White House security director early last year but he declined the job, believing he had work left to do at Twitter, his attorneys said.

-House of cards? –

Twitter fired Zatko in January, citing “ineffective leadership and poor performance.”

Zatko’s lawyers have rejected Twitter’s claim, contending instead that he was terminated after a clash with top executives who refused to acknowledge his concerns about platform security.

“Mr Zatko put his career on the line because of his concerns about Twitter users, the public and the company’s shareholders,” his attorneys said.

Andrew Hay, director of operations at the Lares cybersecurity consulting firm, said “those in the industry who know Mudge know that his intentions have historically been honorable, non-partisan, and designed to benefit the world.”

Zatko’s whistleblower complaint, filed just days after Twitter agreed to give him a multi-million dollar severance package, is not necessarily evidence that the company misrepresented user numbers, according to analysts.

Musk’s lawyers will “try to prove that Twitter tried to sell him a house of cards,” but security flaws would have to be “really serious,” said University  of California, Berkeley law school professor Adam Badawi.

A wildfire raging out of control in Oregon grew in size Tuesday as residents faced evacuation orders and worsening air quality as multiple blazes scorch the US West.

Dozens of active fires in California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and other western states have ravaged more than 1,200 square miles (3,100 square kilometers), highlighting the devastating effects of a two-decade-plus drought that has left the region parched.

Dense smoke blanketed towns in southwestern Oregon including the popular outdoor tourism gateway of Bend, as the Cedar Creek fire has now consumed 92,548 acres (37,450 hectares) — more than twice the size of the US capital Washington — with zero percent containment as of Tuesday, according to the Oregon State Fire Marshal.

Evacuations were ordered for Lane and Deschutes counties, although some of the orders have been eased amid cooler temperatures and gentler winds. More than 2,000 homes remained under threat, authorities said.

The inferno — which began back in early August — has turned skies an eerie orange, as more than 1,200 firefighters and other personnel converge on the steep mountainous terrain, much of it in US national forest land and hard to reach.

“Smoke continues to create unhealthy air quality, which will likely continue for several more days,” the state fire marshal’s office said in a statement.

Similar air quality alerts have been issued in Idaho and Washington due to fires in those states.

Scientists say the long-term drought has been worsened by human-made climate change.

Much of the countryside is parched, creating conditions for hot, fast and destructive wildfires.

An even larger blaze, the Double Creek Fire, was burning in northeastern Oregon where it has consumed 155,300 acres.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), more than 90 fires were currently burning across seven western states.

The Mosquito Fire, California’s current largest blaze, has now swept through nearly 50,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, with several small nearby towns evacuated.

Firefighters south of Los Angeles were also working to contain the major Fairview fire, which has claimed two lives.

A Connecticut jury on Tuesday began weighing how much in damages prominent far-right US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay for claiming the massacre of 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax.

Jones, founder of the website InfoWars and host of a popular radio show, has been found liable in multiple defamation lawsuits brought by parents of the victims of the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

The 48-year-old Jones claimed for years on his show that the Sandy Hook shooting was “staged” by gun control activists and the parents were “crisis actors,” but has since acknowledged it was “100 percent real.”

A Texas jury ordered Jones last month to pay nearly $50 million in damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was killed by a 20-year-old gunman at Sandy Hook.

A jury in Waterbury, Connecticut, less than 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Newtown, is now deciding on the amount of damages to be awarded in a separate case brought by relatives of other victims.

“Hold Alex Jones accountable for what he did in the minutes, the hours, days, months and the years after the worst thing that ever happened to this community,” Chris Mattei, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in opening arguments to the six-person jury.

“When you speak at the end of this case with your verdict, you’ll be speaking on behalf of the community,” Mattei told the jury.

“Unless you stop a bully, the bully will never stop himself,” he said. “And when it comes to stopping Alex Jones that will be the most important work that you do here.”

Jones, who was not present for opening arguments on Tuesday, has been a vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump.

Trump appeared frequently on Jones’ radio show during his 2016 White House campaign and the InfoWars founder was in Washington when supporters of the then-president stormed Congress in a bid to prevent certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

Jones is also under scrutiny for his participation in the January 6, 2021 assault.

InfoWars declared bankruptcy in April and another company owned by Jones, Free Speech Systems, also recently filed for bankruptcy.

Stock markets hit reverse while the dollar shot higher Tuesday after data showed that US inflation slowed less than expected.

Annual consumer price inflation (CPI) slowed slightly in August to 8.3 percent from 8.5 percent in July, the Labor Department said in a highly anticipated report that the Federal Reserve is watching closely.

However, CPI rose 0.1 percent on a monthly comparison in August, after holding flat in July, according to government data Tuesday, a disappointing result amid widespread expectations that inflation would fall in the month.

The dollar, which had fallen against its major rivals in anticipation of a significant slowdown in US inflation lessening pressure on the Fed to continue aggressively raising interest rates, shot higher.

“Both headline and core US CPI were substantially hotter than expected in August,” said market analyst Jay Zhao-Murray at Monex.

He said this was “leading currency and fixed income markets to embark on a swift and dramatic reversal from recent price action, where traders and investors had largely positioned themselves for a softer inflation print”.

He pointed to core inflation that excludes volatile energy and food prices, which is what Fed policymakers pay particular attention to. This rose by 0.6 percentage points month-on-month, compared to a 0.3-point gain in July.

While markets were already largely pricing in another 75-basis-point interest rate hike by the Fed at its next gathering, there had been hopes that passing the inflation peak would allow the Fed to relent.

However, the inflation figures were “hotter than expected in August and put a chill on some of the peak inflation/peak hawkishness/soft landing chatter”, said analyst Patrick O’Hare at Briefing.com.

Stocks, which had rebounded in recent days on hopes that a peak in inflation would allow a rapid end to hawkish rate hikes and thus avoid a recession and attain a “soft” landing of the economy, abruptly turned lower.

Gains in Europe swiftly turned to losses and Wall Street plunged.

In late-morning trading, the Dow was down 2.7 percent while the S&P 500 slumped 3.1 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite tumbled 4.1 percent.

Fed boss Jerome Powell has indicated the rate increases would continue until inflation is tamed.

Zhao-Murray said market expectations regarding the Fed’s next rate hike had hardened following the inflation data.

While some were forecasting the possibility the Fed would drop to a half-percentage-point hike, now a 0.75-point increase is seen as the floor and some are forecasting a one-point hike. 

Market analyst Michael Hewson said Tuesday’s core inflation figures mean more aggressive rate hikes will be needed to tame rising prices.

“While the narrative of peak inflation may well be still valid, getting it down from these levels is likely to be a much tougher battle,” he said.

Inflation has soared around the globe this year owing to sky-high energy and food bills.

This has been caused to a large extent by supply constraints after economies reopened from pandemic lockdowns and in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The dollar has soared as the Federal Reserve moved earlier and more aggressively than other central banks to raise interest rates and contain inflation.

– Key figures at around 1530 GMT –

New York – Dow: DOWN 2.7 percent at 31,506.03 points

EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 1.7 percent at 3,586.18

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 1.2 percent at 7,385.86 (close)

Frankfurt – DAX: DOWN 1.6 percent at 13,188.95 (close)

Paris – CAC 40: DOWN 1.4 percent at 6,245.69 (close)

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 0.3 percent at 28,614.63 (close)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.2 percent at 19,326.86 (close)

Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.1 percent at 3,263.80 (close)

Euro/dollar: DOWN at $1.0006 from $1.0120

Pound/dollar: DOWN at $1.1524 from $1.1680 

Euro/pound: UP at 86.81 pence from 86.64 pence 

Dollar/yen: UP at 144.23 yen from 142.82 yen  

Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 1.1 percent at $92.97 per barrel

West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 0.7 percent at $87.13 per barrel

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