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Chevron Gets U.S. License to Pump Oil in Venezuela Again

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WASHINGTON—The U.S. said it would allow

Chevron Corp.

CVX -0.29%

to resume pumping oil from its Venezuelan oil fields after President Nicolás Maduro’s government and an opposition coalition agreed to implement an estimated $3 billion humanitarian relief program and continue dialogue in Mexico City on efforts to hold free and fair elections.

Following the Norwegian-brokered agreement signed in Mexico City, the Biden administration granted a license to Chevron that allows the California-based oil company to return to its oil fields in joint ventures with the Venezuela national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela SA. The new license, granted by the Treasury Department, permits Chevron to pump Venezuelan oil for the first time in years.

Biden administration officials said the license prohibits PdVSA from receiving profits from Chevron’s oil sales. The officials said the U.S. is prepared to revoke or amend the license, which will be in effect for six months, at any time if Venezuela doesn’t negotiate in good faith.

Venezuela produces some 700,000 barrels of oil a day, compared with more than 3 million in the 1990s.



Photo:

Isaac Urrutia/Reuters

“If Maduro again tries to use these negotiations to buy time to further consolidate his criminal dictatorship, the United States and our international partners must snap back the full force of our sanctions,” said Sen.

Robert Menendez

(D., N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The U.S. policy shift could signal an opening for other oil companies to resume their business in Venezuela two years after the Trump administration clamped down on Chevron and other companies’ activities there as part of a maximum-pressure campaign meant to oust the government led by Mr. Maduro. The Treasury Department action didn’t say how non-U.S. oil companies might re-engage with Venezuela.

Venezuela produces some 700,000 barrels of oil a day, compared with more than 3 million barrels a day in the 1990s. Some analysts said Venezuela could hit 1 million barrels a day in the medium term, a modest increment reflecting the dilapidated state of the country’s state-led oil industry.

Some Republican lawmakers criticized the Biden administration’s decision to clear the way for Chevron to pump more oil in Venezuela. “The Biden administration should allow American energy producers to unleash DOMESTIC production instead of begging dictators for oil,” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) wrote on Twitter.

Biden administration officials said the decision to issue the license wasn’t a response to oil prices, which have been a major concern for President Biden and his top advisers in recent months as they seek to tackle inflation. “This is about the regime taking the steps needed to support the restoration of democracy in Venezuela,” one of the officials said.

The Wall Street Journal reported in October that the Biden administration was preparing to scale down sanctions on Venezuela’s regime to allow Chevron to resume pumping oil there.

Jorge Rodriguez led the Venezuelan delegation to the talks in Mexico City, where an agreement was signed.



Photo:

Henry Romero/Reuters

Under the new license, profits from the sale of oil will go toward repaying hundreds of millions of dollars in debt owed to Chevron by PdVSA, administration officials said. The U.S. will require that Chevron report details of its financial operations to ensure transparency, they said.

Chevron spokesman Ray Fohr said the new license allows the company to commercialize the oil currently being produced at its joint-venture assets. He said the company will conduct its business in compliance within the current framework.

The license prohibits Chevron from paying taxes and royalties to the Venezuelan government, which surprised some experts. They had been expecting that direct revenue would encourage PdVSA to reroute oil cargoes away from obscure export channels, mostly to Chinese buyers at a steep discount, which Venezuela has relied on for years to skirt sanctions.

“If this is the case, Maduro doesn’t have significant incentives to allow that many cargoes of Chevron to go out,” said

Francisco Monaldi,

director of the Latin America Energy Program at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Sending oil to China, even at a heavy discount, would be better for Caracas than only paying debt to Chevron, he said.

The limited scope of the Chevron license is seen as a way to ensure that Mr. Maduro stays the course on negotiations. “Rather than fully opening the door for Venezuelan oil to flow to the U.S. market immediately, what the license proposes is a normalization path that is likely contingent on concessions from the Maduro regime on the political and human-rights front,” said

Luisa Palacios,

senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy.

The license allows Venezuelan oil back into the U.S., historically its largest market, but only if the oil from the PdVSA-Chevron joint ventures is first sold to Chevron and doesn’t authorize exports from the ventures “to any jurisdiction other than the United States,” which appears to restrict PdVSA’s own share of the sales to the U.S. market, said Mr. Monaldi.

The license prohibits transactions involving goods and services from Iran, a U.S.-sanctioned oil producer that has helped Venezuela overcome sanctions in recent years. It blocks dealings with Venezuelan entities owned or controlled by Western-sanctioned Russia, which has played a role in Venezuela’s oil industry.

Jorge Rodriguez,

the head of Venezuela’s Congress as well as the government’s delegation to the Mexico City talks, declined to comment on the issuance of the Chevron license.

Freddy Guevara,

a member of the opposition coalition’s delegation, said the estimated $3 billion in frozen funds intended for humanitarian relief and infrastructure projects in Venezuela would be administered by the United Nations. He cautioned that it would take time to implement the program fully. “It begins now, but the time period is up to three years,” he said.

The Venezuelan state funds frozen in overseas banks by sanctions are expected to be used to alleviate the country’s health, food and electric-power crises in part by building infrastructure for electricity and water-treatment needs. “Not one dollar will go to the vaults of the regime,” Mr. Guevara said.

Chevron plans to restore lost output as it performs maintenance and other essential work, but it won’t attempt major work that would require new investments in the country’s oil fields until debts of $4.2 billion are repaid. That could take about two to three years depending on oil-market conditions, according to people familiar with the matter.

PdVSA owes Chevron and other joint-venture partners their shares of more than two years of revenue from oil sales, after the 2020 U.S. sanctions barred the Venezuelan company from paying its partners, one of the people said. The license would allow Chevron to collect its share of dividends from its joint ventures such as Petropiar, in which Chevron is a 30% partner.

Analysts said the new agreement raises expectations that will take time and work to fulfill. “Ensuring the success of talks won’t be easy, but it’s clear that offering gradual sanctions relief like this in order to incentivize agreements is the only way forward. It’s a Champagne-popping moment for the negotiators, but much more work remains to be done,” said Geoff Ramsey, Venezuela director at the Washington Office on Latin America.

—José de Córdoba and Ginette Gonzalez contributed to this article.

Write to Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com and Andrew Restuccia at andrew.restuccia@wsj.com

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US

Walmart shooter left ‘death note,’ bought gun day of killing

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CHESAPEAKE, Va. — The Walmart supervisor who shot and killed six co-workers in Virginia left behind what he called a “death note” on his phone that apologized for what he was about to do while simultaneously blaming others for mocking him.

“Sorry everyone but I did not plan this I promise things just fell in place like I was led by the Satan,” Andre Bing wrote on a note that was left on his phone, Chesapeake Police said Friday.

Police also said the gun, a 9 mm handgun, was legally purchased on the morning of the shooting and that Bing had no criminal record.

The note was redacted slightly to eliminate names of specific people he mentioned.

He claimed he was “harassed by idiots with low intelligence and a lack of wisdom” and said he was pushed to the brink by a perception his phone was hacked.

He wrote, “My only wish would have been to start over from scratch and that my parents would have paid closer attention to my social deficit.” Bing died at the scene of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Coworkers of Bing who survived the shooting said he was difficult and known for being hostile with employees. One survivor said Bing seemed to target people and fired at some victims after they were already hit.

Jessica Wilczewski said workers were gathered in a store break room to begin their overnight shift late Tuesday when Bing, a team leader, entered and opened fire. While another witness has described Bing as shooting wildly, Wilczewski said she observed him target certain people.

“The way he was acting — he was going hunting,” Wilczewski told The Associated Press on Thursday. “The way he was looking at people’s faces and the way he did what he did, he was picking people out.”

She said she observed him shoot at people who were already on the ground.

“What I do know is that he made sure who he wanted dead, was dead,” she said. “He went back and shot dead bodies that were already dead. To make sure.”

Wilczewski said she had only worked at the store for five days and didn’t know with whom Bing got along or had problems. She said being a new employee may have been the reason she was spared.

She said that after the shooting started, a co-worker sitting next to her pulled her under the table to hide. She said that at one point, Bing told her to get out from under the table. But when he saw who she was, he told her, “Jessie, go home.” She said she slowly got up and then ran out of the store.

Former coworkers and residents of Chesapeake, a city of about 250,000 people near Virginia’s coast, have been struggling to make sense of the rampage.

Bing’s death note rambles at times through 11 paragraphs, with references to nontraditional cancer treatments and songwriting. He blanches at a comparison to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, saying “I would have never killed anyone who entered my home.”

And he longs for a wife but says he didn’t deserve one.

“I was actually one of the most loving people in the world if you would get to know me,” he wrote.

Some who worked with Bing, 31, said he had a reputation for being an aggressive, if not hostile, supervisor who once admitted to having “anger issues.” But he also could make people laugh and seemed to be dealing with the typical stresses at work that many people endure.

“I don’t think he had many people to fall back on in his personal life,” said Nathan Sinclair, who worked at the Walmart for nearly a year before leaving earlier this month.

During chats among coworkers, “We would be like ‘work is consuming my life.’ And (Bing) would be like, ‘Yeah, I don’t have a social life anyway,’” Sinclair recalled Thursday.

Sinclair said he and Bing did not get along. Bing was known for being “verbally hostile” to employees and wasn’t particularly well-liked, Sinclair said. But there were times when Bing was made fun of and not necessarily treated fairly.

Police have identified the victims as Brian Pendleton, 38; Kellie Pyle, 52; Lorenzo Gamble, 43; and Randy Blevins, 70, who were all from Chesapeake; and Tyneka Johnson, 22, of nearby Portsmouth. The dead also included a 16-year-old boy whose name was withheld because of his age, police said.

A Walmart spokesperson confirmed in an email that all of the victims worked for the company.

Two others who were shot remained hospitalized, police said Friday. One is still in critical condition, and the other is in fair to improving condition.

Another Walmart employee, Briana Tyler, has said Bing appeared to fire at random.

“He was just shooting all throughout the room. It didn’t matter who he hit,” Tyler told the AP Wednesday.

Six people also were wounded in the shooting, which happened just after 10 p.m. as shoppers were stocking up ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Police said they believe about 50 people were in the store at the time.

Bing was identified as an overnight team leader who had been a Walmart employee since 2010. Police said he had one handgun and several magazines of ammunition.

Tyler said the overnight stocking team of 15 to 20 people had just gathered in the break room to go over the morning plan. Another team leader had begun speaking when Bing entered the room and opened fire, Tyler and Wiczewski said.

Tyler, who started working at Walmart two months ago and had worked with Bing just a night earlier, said she never had a negative encounter with him, but others told her he was “the manager to look out for.” She said Bing had a history of writing up people for no reason.

The attack was the second major shooting in Virginia this month. Three University of Virginia football players were fatally shot on a bus Nov. 13 as they returned from a field trip. Two other students were wounded.

The Walmart shooting also comes days after a person opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado — killing five and wounding 17. Tuesday night’s shooting brought back memories of another attack at a Walmart in 2019, when a gunman killed 23 at a store in El Paso, Texas.

Wilczewski, who survived Tuesday’s shooting in Virginia, said she tried but could not bring herself to visit a memorial in the store’s parking lot Wednesday.

“I wrote a letter and I wanted to put it out there,” she said. “I wrote to the ones I watched die. And I said that I’m sorry I wasn’t louder. I’m sorry you couldn’t feel my touch. But you weren’t alone.”

———

Barakat reported from Falls Church, Virginia. Associated Press writers Denise Lavoie in Chesapeake and news researchers Rhonda Shafner and Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

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Business

Twitter Exodus Hits Teams Tasked With Regulatory, Content Issues Globally

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Elon Musk’s

move to purge Twitter Inc. employees who don’t embrace his vision has led to a wave of departures among policy and safety-issue staffers around the globe, sparking questions from regulators in key jurisdictions about the site’s continued compliance efforts.

Scrutiny has been particularly close in Europe, where officials have in recent years assumed a greater role in regulating big tech companies.

Staff departures in recent days include dozens of people spread across units such as government policy, legal affairs and Twitter’s “trust and safety” division, which is responsible for functions like drafting content-moderation rules, according to current and former employees, postings on social media and emails sent to work addresses of people who had worked at Twitter that recently bounced back. They have left from hubs including Dublin, Singapore and San Francisco.

Many of the departures follow Mr. Musk’s ultimatum late last week that staffers pledge to work long hours and be “extremely hardcore” or take a buyout. Hundreds or more employees declined to commit to what Mr. Musk has called Twitter 2.0 and were locked out of company systems. That comes after layoffs in early November that cut roughly half of the company’s staff.

Twitter conducted another round of job cuts affecting engineers late Wednesday, before the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., people familiar with the matter said. The exact scope couldn’t be immediately learned, though some of the people estimated dozens of employees were let go.

Twitter sent fired engineers an email saying their code wasn’t satisfactory and offering four weeks of severance, some of the people said. Some other engineers received an email warning them to improve their performance to keep their jobs, the people said.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission said this week it was asking Twitter whether it still had sufficient staff to assure compliance with the European Union’s privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The company last week told the Irish data regulator that it did, but is still reviewing the impact of the staff departures, a spokesman for the Irish regulator said.

He said Twitter has appointed an interim chief data protection officer, an obligation under the GDPR, after the departure of Damien Kieran, who had served in the role but left shortly after the first round of layoffs.

In France, meanwhile, the country’s communications regulator said it sent a letter last Friday asking that Twitter explain by this week whether it has sufficient personnel on staff to moderate hate speech deemed illegal under French law—under which Twitter could face legal orders and fines.

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The staff departures come as Twitter holds talks with the EU about the bloc’s new social-media law, dubbed the Digital Services Act, which will apply tougher rules on bigger platforms like Twitter by the middle of next year.

Didier Reynders,

the EU’s justice commissioner, is slated to attend a previously scheduled meeting with Twitter executives in Ireland on Thursday. He plans to ask about the company’s ability to comply with the law and to meet its commitments on data protection and tackling online hate speech, according to an EU official familiar with the trip.

Věra Jourová, a vice president of the EU’s executive arm, said she was concerned about reports of the firing of vast amounts of Twitter staff in Europe. “European laws continue to apply to Twitter, regardless of who is the owner,” she said.

Mr. Musk has said that he would follow the laws of the countries where Twitter operates and that it “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape.”

Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Late Wednesday, Mr. Musk tweeted that the number of views of tweets he described as “hate speech” had fallen below levels seen before a spike in such views in late October.
“Congrats to the Twitter team!” Mr. Musk wrote. 

Some of the people who either departed or declined to sign on to Twitter 2.0 appear to include Sinead McSweeney, the company’s Ireland-based vice president of global policy and philanthropy, who led government relations and compliance initiatives with regulations worldwide, as well as the two remaining staffers in Twitter’s Brussels office.

Ms. McSweeney and the two Brussels employees declined to comment, but emails to their work addresses started bouncing back undeliverable in recent days according to checks by The Wall Street Journal. Four other Brussels-based employees were earlier this month told they were being laid off, according to social-media posts and people familiar with the matter.

Twenty Air Street, London, the home of Twitter’s U.K. office.



Photo:

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Damien Viel, Twitter’s country manager for France, was also among a wave of staffers who posted publicly this week that they had left the company. He declined to comment when reached by the Journal.

At least some of the departures occurred in teams that reported to

Yoel Roth,

Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, who resigned earlier this month. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Mr. Roth said he resigned because Mr. Musk made it clear that he alone would make decisions on policy and the platform’s rules and that he had little use for those at the company who were advising him on those issues.

The team included Ilana Rosenzweig, who worked as Twitter’s senior director and head of international trust and safety. She has left the company, according to her LinkedIn profile. Based in Singapore, Ms. Rosenzweig led Twitter’s trust and safety teams across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, along with Japan and other Asia-Pacific countries, according to her profile.

“I decided not to agree to Twitter 2.0,” Keith Yet, a Twitter trust and safety worker based in Singapore, wrote on LinkedIn on Monday. Mr. Yet worked on child sexual exploitation issues and handling legal escalations from Japan and other countries, according to his LinkedIn profile. Attempts to reach Ms. Rosenzweig and Mr. Yet were unsuccessful.

The departures come amid a wave of new tech regulation, particularly in Europe. The Digital Services Act, which will by the middle of next year require tech companies like Twitter with more than 45 million users in the EU to maintain robust systems for removing content that European national governments deem to be illegal. 

The layoff announcements just keep coming. As interest rates continue to climb and earnings slump, WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains why we can expect to see a bigger wave of layoffs in the near future. Illustration: Elizabeth Smelov

The act also requires these companies to reduce risks associated with content that regulators consider harmful or hateful. It mandates regular outside audits of the companies’ processes and threatens noncompliance fines of up to 6% of a company’s annual revenue.

Political leaders had warned that Mr. Musk’s Twitter would have to comply with EU rules. “In Europe, the bird will fly by our rules,” tweeted the EU’s commissioner for the internal market,

Thierry Breton,

hours after Mr. Musk completed his Twitter deal in late October tweeting, “the bird is free.”

A spokesman for the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said this week that it had active contacts with the company regarding the regulation and tackling disinformation and illegal hate speech, but declined to comment on the substance of Twitter’s compliance plans.

Activists and researchers are also concerned that the departures could undermine Twitter’s ability to block state-backed information operations aimed at spreading propaganda and harassing adversaries. The wave of departures “raises questions about how Twitter will moderate tweets and comments in a professional and neutral manner,” said Patrick Poon, an activist turned scholar at Japan’s Meiji University, who analyzes free speech.

—Liza Lin, Alexa Corse and Sarah E. Needleman contributed to this article.

Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com, Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com and Newley Purnell at newley.purnell@wsj.com

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US

GOP Gains College-Educated and Minority Voters in Slim House Pickup

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In making modest gains in House seats this year, Republicans drew more support from minority and college-educated voters than in other recent elections, chipping away at important pillars of the Democratic coalition in ways that could better position the party for the next election.

Republicans narrowed the Democratic advantage among Latino voters, Black voters and white women with college degrees—important components of the Democratic voter pool—according to AP VoteCast, a large survey of midterm participants. GOP House candidates won a majority of white women in the nation’s suburbs, a swing group that helped power the Democratic Party to its House majority in 2018 and backed President Biden in 2020.

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“The numbers indicate that our party has been more successful than we previously knew in getting voters of color moving to the GOP,’’ said Neil Newhouse, a veteran pollster who led polling for several GOP presidential nominees. “Ever since I got involved in politics more than 40 years ago, that’s been a long-term goal of the party.”

The voter shifts helped Republicans win a majority of House votes nationally, preliminary results show, but weren’t strong enough to bring the party substantial gains in House seats. Republicans have so far lost a net of one seat in the Senate, with the final tally to be decided in Georgia’s runoff election next month. Still, the gain among these groups “tells me that Republicans are potentially well-positioned to win a national election, if we can replicate this,’’ Mr. Newhouse said.

House members-elect following a group photo on the Capitol steps a week after the midterm vote.



Photo:

Leah Millis/Reuters

Ruy Teixeira, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said the shift among Latino voters was particularly noteworthy and extends a move toward the GOP that was a feature of the last two presidential elections. “They lost quite a bit among Latinos, and the swing was significant,” he said.

Many caveats apply in drawing lessons from a midterm election. Far fewer voters participate than in a presidential contest. The voter shifts detected by AP VoteCast varied widely by state and by whether an election had the potential to restrict legalized abortion. Voters’ choices this year might have been driven more by their views of former President

Donald Trump

and of candidates who copied his style of politics, than by their views of the two parties. Mr. Trump is now a declared candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.

The AP VoteCast survey, which included more than 94,000 midterm voters nationwide, found a number of significant shifts in voter preferences:

—Latino voters favored Democratic House candidates by 17 percentage points—giving 56% support to Democrats and 39% to Republicans—a far slimmer lead than the 28-point edge that helped President Biden win in 2020 or the 34-point Democratic advantage in the last midterm elections, in 2018.

—Black voters gave 14% of their support to GOP House candidates, compared with 8% in the elections of two and four years ago.

—White women with college degrees, who had backed Democrats by 19 points in the last midterms and by 21 points in the 2020 presidential election, tipped toward Democrats by a far narrower 6 points this year.

—Republicans won an outright majority of white women in the suburbs, carrying the group by 6 percentage points. Suburban white women had backed Mr. Biden by 5 points, and Democratic House candidates in 2018 by 7 points. Female voters overall, who account for over half the electorate, favored Democrats by a single percentage point, down from 12 points and 15 points in the last two elections, respectively.

Some Democrats cautioned that little could be read into results from a midterm election with special conditions. The fate of legalized abortion was a pressing issue in some states, which helped Democratic candidates, and was less salient in others.

“I’m skeptical, because it wasn’t a national presidential election, and because you have such differences state by state,’’ said Elaine Kamarck, a veteran of the Clinton administration White House who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Analysts said that more data were needed to better understand what the variations among voter groups from state to state meant to the election outcomes. Some early clues suggest that the Latino voter shift boosted the GOP vote share in some House races, even if the shift didn’t produce a victory.

In some Latino-rich House districts in California, Democratic candidates won their elections with far smaller vote margins than the party produced two years earlier. Rep.

Norma Torres

of Southern California, for example, won by 12 points in preliminary results in a district that Mr. Biden carried by 28 points.

Republicans cut into Democratic margins in two heavily Latino House districts in South Texas. Democratic Rep.

Vicente Gonzalez

won re-election by 8 points in a district that Mr. Biden had carried by 15 points, while Republican Monica De La Cruz won in a newly created district by 9 points, which Mr. Trump had carried by 3 points.

In a third South Texas House district, Democratic Rep.

Henry Cuellar

won re-election by a larger margin than Mr. Biden won in 2020.

Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democratic-aligned firm that focuses on Latino voters, said the Hispanic vote varied significantly by state.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D., Texas) celebrating a victory that had a slimmer margin than President Biden’s in 2020.



Photo:

Denise Cathey/Associated Press

“Florida was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats across the board. But it is especially true among Latino voters,’’ he said. Republicans won a majority of the Hispanic vote for the first time since 2006, Mr. Odio said. Republicans carried heavily Latino Miami-Dade County, the state’s largest, “something that was unthinkable in the Obama era,’’ he said.

Republicans boosted their share of voters who don’t have a four-year college degree. They also dominated among white voters in rural areas and small towns, winning a commanding 70% of those voters—producing an advantage of about 40 points—compared with leads of about 30 points two years and four years ago.

The AP VoteCast survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and Fox News.

Write to Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com and Anthony DeBarros at Anthony.Debarros@wsj.com

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Health

Marijuana May Hurt Smokers More than Cigarettes Alone

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Marijuana might do more damage to smokers than cigarettes alone.

A study published Tuesday in the journal Radiology demonstrated higher rates of conditions including emphysema and airway inflammation among people who smoke marijuana than among nonsmokers and people who smoked only tobacco. Nearly half of the 56 marijuana smokers whose chest scans were reviewed for the study had mucus plugging their airways, a condition that was less common among the other 90 participants who didn’t smoke marijuana.

“There is a public perception that marijuana is safe and people think that it’s safer than cigarettes,” said Giselle Revah, a radiologist who helped conduct the study at the Ottawa Hospital in Ontario. “This study raises concerns that might not be true.”

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One-fifth of Canadians over 15 years old reported using marijuana in the past three months, according to a 2020 survey of some 16,000 people conducted by Canada’s national statistical office. About 18% of Americans reported using marijuana at least once in 2020 in the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey of Drug Use and Health, including about one in three young adults age 18 to 25. The surveys didn’t ask how marijuana was consumed. About one-fourth of people over 12 years old believed there was great harm from smoking marijuana once or twice a week, according to the survey.

Previous studies have found that marijuana is more likely than tobacco to be smoked unfiltered and that smokers tend to inhale more smoke and hold it in their lungs longer. Bong smoke contains tiny pollutants that can linger indoors for up to 12 hours, a study published in March in JAMA Network Open showed.

Among the 56 marijuana smokers in the Ottawa study, 50 also smoked tobacco. The tobacco-only smokers were patients whose chest scans were performed as part of a high-risk lung-cancer screening program that included people age 50 and above who had smoked for several years.

Marijuana’s illicit status long discouraged substantial research into the long-term effects of its use, said Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, who wasn’t involved in the study. Inhaling any heated substance can irritate airways, among other health dangers, he said.

“There could be an additive effect if you smoke cigarettes as well as marijuana,” Dr. Rizzo said.

The study authors found bronchial thickening in 64% of marijuana smokers versus 42% of tobacco-only smokers and a condition that leads to excess mucus buildup in 23% of marijuana smokers versus 6% of tobacco-only smokers.

Age-matched marijuana smokers had higher rates of emphysema (93%) than tobacco-only smokers (67%), and the emphysema, which appears in imaging as small holes in lung tissue, was more prevalent in the marijuana smokers, the study found.

Write to Julie Wernau at julie.wernau@wsj.com

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World

Iran issues first known death sentence linked to recent protests

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A demonstration of solidarity with Iranian protesters at the Brandenburg Gate in Germany.

Christoph Soeder | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

As Iran enters its eighth week of public unrest following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, the country’s Revolutionary Court issued its first known death sentence on Sunday over participation in the anti-regime protests.

According to the judiciary’s website Mizan Online, the unidentified accused set a government building on fire, and was sentenced on the charge of “disturbing public order and comfort, community and colluding to commit a crime against national security.”

Jail terms ranging from five to 10 years have been handed down to five other individuals, the ruling stated, on charges of national security and public order violations.

The rulings are subject to appeal, and further details of the case will not be published until the final verdict.

At least 326 people have been killed in one of the largest sustained challenges to Iran’s regime since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to Norway-based nongovernmental organization Iran Human Rights.

Iranian demonstrators take to the streets of the capital Tehran during a protest for Mahsa Amini on Sept. 21, days after she died in police custody.

Afp | Getty Images

The use of capital punishment is a new instrument in the government’s toolbox to squash antigovernment demonstrations.

An estimated 14,000 people have been arrested and detained since the protests started almost two months ago, according to the United Nations. About 1,000 people in Tehran were charged for their alleged involvement in the unrest.

Prior to Sunday, people involved in the protests were charged with crimes carrying the death penalty, namely “waging war against God,” and “corruption on earth.”

“We urge Iranian authorities to stop using the death penalty as a tool to squash protests,” the U.N. said in a statement, reiterating the organization’s call to release protesters.

Ramin Forouzandeh, an Iranian PhD candidate based in Toronto, told CNBC that while he believes lawmakers have the “‘desire’ to hang every protester,” they fear that doing so will ignite more serious waves of protests.

“I think they are testing their limits. I can say with confidence that if the protests calm down, they will start hanging the prisoners and double down on repression.”

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Entertainment

Women’s stories show Weinstein’s predatory power

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A prosecutor at Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial told jurors Tuesday (local time) that the accusers will tell uncannily similar testimonies as young aspiring women cornered in hotel rooms by a man who was the definition of Hollywood power.

Harvey Weinstein. (Source: Associated Press)

“Each of these women came forward independent of each other, and none of them knew one another,” Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson said during his opening statement at Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial.

The 70-year-old former movie mogul, already serving a 23-year sentence in New York, is charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault in California.

The defence countered in its opening statement that the incidents either did not happen or were consensual sex that the women redefined in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein, prosecutor Thompson said, lorded his status as “the most powerful man in Hollywood” over them, talking about the female A-list actors whose careers he had made before growing aggressive.

Thompson played a video presentation with composite photos of the women who will testify and quotes from prior testimonials. Most were aspiring actors. One was an aspiring screenwriter who thought she was going to pitch him a script.

All will testify that Weinstein ignored clear signs that they did not consent, the prosecutor said, including “their shaking bodies, their crying, their backing away from him, their saying ‘no.'” Thompson said that four women whom Weinstein is not charged with assaulting in the case will also testify about what he did to them to demonstrate his propensity for such acts.

Weinstein’s attorney Mark Werksman told jurors that what Weinstein did with the women was considered acceptable, “transactional” behaviour in Hollywood, where young women were seeking roles and other advantages by having sex with the powerful movie magnate.

“You’ll learn that in Hollywood, sex was a commodity,” Werksman said.

The accusers Weinstein is charged with assaulting are expected to be identified only as Jane Doe in court, but they include Jennifer Siebel Newsom, an actor and documentary filmmaker who is married to California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Harvey Weinstein in court on October 4, 2022. (Source: Associated Press)

Siebel Newsom had not yet met Newsom and was an aspiring actor in 2005 when, according to his indictment, Weinstein raped her at a Beverly Hills Hotel.

Without using her name, both sides said she would testify. Werksman called her a “very prominent citizen of California”.

“She’s made herself a prominent victim in the #MeToo movement,” he added, “otherwise she’d be just another bimbo who slept with Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in Hollywood.”

In a statement, Elizabeth Fegen, who represents Siebel Newsom and two other Weinstein accusers, called the comments “despicable, desperate, dishonest”.

“The defence is callously engaging in misogynistic name-calling and victim-shaming – but survivors will not be deterred,” she added.

Werksman said Siebel Newsom and many other women in the case had contact, and even initiated dealings, with Weinstein in the years after the encounters, often referring to him affectionately.

In an attempt to head off this strategy, Thompson told jurors that they would hear from a psychologist who will dispel rape myths. Key among them is the idea that a sexual assault victim would not have further contact with their assailant.

Werksman said that Weinstein’s consensual acts were transformed in October 2017 with “the asteroid called the #MeToo movement”.

“He became the smouldering, radioactive centre of it,” Werksman said. “He is Hollywood’s Chernobyl.”

Harvey Weinstein arrives at a Manhattan courthouse. (Source: Associated Press)

He said that there was suddenly “a new word” for the women, “victim”.

Siebel Newsom’s identity was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, and her attorney has said that she is among the women Weinstein is charged with sexually assaulting who will testify.

The first of Weinstein’s accusers to testify, a model and actor who was living and working in Italy when she met him at a film festival in Los Angeles in 2013, said she was stunned to find him knocking at the door of her hotel room after interacting with him briefly earlier that evening.

She said she was more confused than frightened at first, so she let Weinstein in, but he grew more aggressive. She said he eventually forced her to perform oral sex.

“I was crying, choking,” said the woman.

She grew increasingly emotional on the stand until she was sobbing so much that she could no longer speak.

With the court day near an end, Judge Lisa Lench called for a recess until Wednesday morning (local time), when she’ll return to the stand.

At the beginning of the day, Weinstein was wheeled into court wearing a suit and climbed into a seat next to his attorneys.

Confusion arose when Thompson during his opening statement made no mention of one accuser who had been set to testify as recently as last week. Weinstein was indicted on 11 counts overall, four of which involved the woman who was not mentioned. The district attorney’s office did not address why the woman was not referenced.

Outside court, Weinstein’s attorney said no charges had been dismissed.

“The people left her out of their presentation, so I didn’t mention her,” he said. “It’s a glaring absence, though, in their presentation.”

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US

GOP holds big leads on key economic issues ahead of the November elections, CNBC survey shows

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U.S. President Joe Biden holds a video conference event with electric battery industry grant winners, related to recent infrastructure initiatives, from the White House in Washington, October 19, 2022.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

The third-quarter CNBC All-America Economic Survey finds some modest improvements in economic attitudes and in President Joe Biden’s approval ratings across the country, but Americans still harbor mostly negative views on the economy and give the GOP double-digit leads on key economic and financial issues ahead of the November elections.

Biden’s overall approval rating improved 10 points from the July survey with 46% approving and 50% disapproving. Approval of Biden’s handling of the economy also rose 10 points, with 40% approving and 56% disapproving. While they were the president’s best numbers since 2021, the improvement came largely from increased Democratic support. Approval by independents on the economy remained unchanged from the prior poll at just 25%.

CNBC All-America Economic Survey

Americans’ views on the current state of the economy rose 5 points from the prior survey, yet still remain at a low level. Only 16% say the economy is excellent or good, up from 11% in July; 83% call the economy fair or poor, the third straight survey where the percentage has been above 80.

On the outlook, 27% expect the economy to improve in the next year, up from 22% in July, with 45% expecting it to get worse, down from 52% in July. The 45% who believe the economy will worsen is the third most pessimistic result in the 14-year history of the survey, eclipsed only by the surveys in July and a year ago.

Republicans have a 2-point advantage, 48%-46%, on party preference to control Congress. That’s a toss-up with the poll’s +/-3.5% margin for error, but Democrats have typically had substantial leads in this question when they have picked up congressional seats. The gap is the same as the prior survey, which came in at 44%-42%.

The poll of 800 registered voters nationwide was conducted Oct. 13-16 by Hart Research, who served as the Democratic pollsters, and Public Opinion Strategies, the Republican pollsters.

GOP lead

Republicans have a double-digit lead on the questions of which party would do a better job bringing down inflation, handling taxes, dealing with deficits and creating jobs. CNBC’s Democratic and Republican pollsters agree the economic numbers look similar to 2014 when the GOP retained the House and took control of the Senate.

CNBC All-America Economic Survey

“We tested a number of economic issues and Republicans just kind of ran the table, all except for on the cost of health care,” said Micah Roberts, partner at Public Opinion Strategies. “If this election were just about the economy, which we know it’s not, but if it were just about the economy, this would be a complete shellacking.”

Specifically, on the issue of which party is best to control inflation, Republicans have a 15-point lead, 42-27%; they lead 40-29% on dealing with taxes; 36% to 25% on reducing the deficit; and 43 -33% on creating jobs. Democrats have a 4-point lead, 42% to 38%, on “looking out for the middle class,” but that’s down from a 12-point margin they enjoyed in 2018. They have a commanding 44-28% margin on which party is best to reduce health-care costs.

“The way things are moving overall and the way things look, it’s definitely more of an uphill climb for Democrats and maybe slightly slanted downwards for Republicans,” said Jay Campbell, partner at Hart Research.

The poll also found:

  • 43% of American say higher interest rates have had a negative effect on their personal financial situation; 47% say they’ve been hurt by the stock market decline; and 77% say inflation has set them back financially.
  • Just 32% believe their home price will increase in the next year, the lowest level since the Covid pandemic began; 23% believe their home price will decline in the next year, the highest level since 2011.
  • Views on the stock market remain depressed — just a point above the worst levels ever recorded in the survey — with just 28% saying it’s a good time to invest in the stock market.
  • 68% think the U.S. will soon be in a recession, including 9% who believe we are already in a recession.
  • The one bit of good economic news: 41% believe their wages will rise in the next year, the highest level since the pandemic.
  • Inflation ranks as the No. 1 concern for all Americans combined, but there are substantial differences by party. “Threats to democracy” is the No. 1 issues for Democrats, and “immigration and border security” is tops for Republicans, a point ahead of inflation. For independents, inflation is the leading concern and little else registers. Crime is the No. 3 issue for GOP voters, while abortion and climate change are tied for third among Democrats. For the moment, the war in Ukraine and jobs and unemployment are not seen as top issues by either party or independents.
  • Americans have less confidence in the Federal Reserve than they do Republicans or Democrats in Congress. Just 15% of the public say they have confidence in the Fed, compared with 22% for Republicans and 21% for Democrats in Congress.
  •  A 53% majority say the Fed’s efforts to reduce inflation by raising interest rates will succeed. But when asked what’s more important when it comes to the central bank’s dual mandate — jobs or inflation — Americans are split. 47% say it’s more important to protect jobs than fight inflation and 43% say the inflation fight should take precedence.

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Business

Social Security COLA will be 8.7% in 2023, highest increase in 40 years

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Azmanjaka | E+ | Getty Images

Amid record high inflation, Social Security beneficiaries will get an 8.7% increase to their benefits in 2023, the highest increase in 40 years.

The Social Security Administration announced the change on Thursday. It will result in a benefit increase of more than $140 more per month on average starting in January.

The average Social Security retiree benefit will increase $146 per month, to $1,827 in 2023, from $1,681 in 2022.

The Senior Citizens League, a non-partisan senior group, had estimated last month that the COLA could be 8.7% next year. 

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The confirmed 8.7% bump to benefits tops the 5.9% increase beneficiaries saw in 2022, which at the time was the highest in four decades.

The last time the cost-of-living adjustment was higher was in 1981, when the increase was 11.2%.

Next year’s record increase comes as beneficiaries have struggled with increasing prices this year.

“The COLAs really are about people treading water; they’re not increases in benefits,” said Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“They’re more trying to provide inflation protection so that people can maintain their standard of living,” Adcock said.

How much your Social Security check may be

Beneficiaries can expect to see the 2023 COLA in their benefit checks starting in January.

But starting in December, you may be able to see notices online from the Social Security Administration that state just how much your checks will be next year.

Two factors — Medicare Part B premiums and taxes — may influence the size of your benefit checks.

The standard Medicare Part B premium will be $5.20 lower next year — to $164.90, down from $170.10. Those payments are often deducted directly from Social Security benefit checks.

“That will mean that beneficiaries will be able to keep pretty much all or most of their COLA increase,” Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst at The Senior Citizens League, told CNBC.com this week.

That may vary if you have money withheld from your monthly checks for taxes.

To gauge just how much more money you may see next year, take your net Social Security benefit and add in your Medicare premium and multiply that by the 2023 COLA.

“That will give you a good idea what your raise will be,” said Joe Elsasser, an Omaha, Nebraska-based certified financial planner and founder and president of Covisum, a provider of Social Security claiming software.

How the COLA is tied to inflation

The COLA applies to about 70 million Social Security and Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries.

The change is based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W.

The Social Security Administration calculates the annual COLA by measuring the change in the CPI-W from the third quarter of the preceding year to the third quarter of the current year.

Benefits do not necessarily go up every year. While there was a record 5.8% increase in 2009, the following two years had 0% increases.

“For seniors, because they spend so much on health care, those years were difficult,” Adcock said.

A similar pattern may happen if the economy goes into a recession, according to Johnson.

What the COLA means if you haven’t claimed benefits yet

If you decide to claim Social Security benefits, you will get access to the record-high COLA.

But you will also have access to it if you wait to start your benefit checks at a later date, according to Elsasser.

If you’re 62 now and don’t claim, your benefit is adjusted by every COLA until you do.

The amount of the COLA really should not influence claiming.

Joe Elsasser

CFP and president of Covisum

What’s more, delaying benefits can increase the size of your monthly checks. Experts generally recommend most people wait as long as possible, until age 70, due to the fact that benefits increase 8% per year from your full retirement age (typically 66 or 67) to 70. To be sure, whether that strategy is ideal may vary based on other factors, such as your personal health situation and marital status.

“The amount of the COLA really should not influence claiming,” Elsasser said. “It doesn’t hurt you or help you as far as when you claim, because you’re going to get it either way.”

How a record-high increase may impact Social Security’s funds

Social Security’s trust funds can pay full benefits through 2035, the Social Security Board of Trustees said in June.

At that time, the program will be able to pay 80% of benefits, the board projects.

Tetra Images | Tetra Images | Getty Images

The historic high COLA in 2023 could accelerate the depletion of the trust funds to at least one calendar year earlier, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Higher wages may prompt workers to contribute more payroll taxes into the program, which may help offset that. In 2023, maximum taxable earnings will increase to $160,200, up from $147,000 this year.

What could happen to future benefit increases

While 2023 marks a record high COLA, beneficiaries should be prepared for future years where increases are not as high.

If inflation subsides, the size of COLAs will also go down.

Whether the CPI-W is the best measure for the annual increases is up for debate. Some tout the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, or CPI-E, as a better measure for the costs seniors pay. Multiple Democratic congressional bills have called for changing the annual increases to that measure.

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Technology

Phasmophobia ‘Sex Pest’ Kicked From Official Discord Server

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Image: Kinetic Games

An admin on the official Discord servers for Kinetic Games’ extremely popular indie horror game Phasmophobia was recently removed after a Twitter user issued a public condemnation of the studio for not keeping its community safe from sexual harassment and racism.

Last week, Twitter user @CrownedCollider posted a thread in which they alleged problematic behavior by one of Phasmophobia’s Discord admins, “Charcoal Salamander.” The accusations, backed with Discord screenshot receipts, concern inappropriately shared nudes and outright racist behavior. While the developer’s lead artist, CJ, initially responded skeptically in a private DM and seemed reluctant to act, two days later they issued an apology tweet stating that Charcoal Salamander had been removed from the server. Yesterday, Kinetic Games tweeted its own statement detailing issues with the admin in question, which go back to the beginning of the year.

Kotaku has reached out to Kinetic Games for comment.

According to Kinetic Games’ statement, Charcoal Salamander had been accused of sexual harassment on January 25 of this year, specifically sharing nude images and broaching several “on-the-line” topics. At the time, Kinetic Games was content with Charcoal Salamander’s response, believing that the images had been shared publicly elsewhere on Discord.

@CrownedCoIIider’s initial call-out tweet last week was met with dismissal by Kinetic Games lead artist CJ via Twitter DMs. In shared screenshots of the conversation, CJ disagreed with the nature of sharing nude images, dismissed it as essentially boys being boys, and claimed that this alone wasn’t a punishable offense.

A day later, @CrownedCoIIider shared videos of a private conversation with Charcoal Salamander, in which the former Discord admin can be seen making racist comments. Following this, CJ issued their apology, suggesting that their dismissal of the inappropriateness of what is arguably revenge porn was taken out of context.

Per their statements, the artist CJ pledged to “not let a situation like this happen again,” and Kinetic Games said it “will do better.”



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