WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – U.S. senators slammed Live Nation Entertainment’s lack of transparency and inability to block bot purchases of tickets on Tuesday, in a hearing called after a major fiasco involving ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s upcoming concert tour.
Live Nation Entertainment Inc (LYV.N) subsidiary Ticketmaster, which has been unpopular with fans for years, has drawn fresh heat from U.S. lawmakers over how it handled ticket sales last fall for Swift’s “Eras” tour, her first in five years. Experts say Ticketmaster commands more than 70% market share of primary ticket services for major U.S. concert venues.
“We apologize to the fans, we apologize to Ms. Swift, we need to do better and we will do better,” Joe Berchtold, who is president and chief financial officer of Live Nation, told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
“In hindsight there are several things we could have done better – including staggering the sales over a longer period of time and doing a better job setting fan expectations for getting tickets,” Berchtold said.
Republican Senator Mike Lee said in an opening statement that the Ticketmaster debacle highlighted the importance of considering whether “new legislation or perhaps just better enforcement of existing laws might be needed to protect the American people.”
LACK OF COMPETITION
Senators slammed Berchtold for Live Nation’s fee structure and inability to deal with bots which bulk buy tickets and resell them at inflated prices.
“There isn’t transparency when no one knows who sets the fees,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said, responding to Berchtold’s claim that Live Nation fees fluctuate based on “ratings.”
Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn called Live Nation’s bot problem “unbelievable,” pointing out that much smaller companies are able to limit bad actors in their systems.
“You ought to be able to get some good advice from people and figure it out,” she said.
[1/2] Taylor Swift arrives at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, U.S., August 28, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
“I’m not against big per se, but I am against dumb,” Republican Senator John Kennedy said, referring to Live Nation’s dominance in the ticket sales market. “The way your company handled ticket sales for Ms. Swift was a debacle, and whoever in your company was in charge of that should be fired.
“If you care about the consumer, cut the price! Cut out the bots! Cut out the middle people and if you really care about the consumer, give the consumer a break!”
Jack Groetzinger, cofounder of ticket sales platform SeatGeek, testified that the process of buying tickets is “antiquated and ripe for innovation” and called for the breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which merged in 2010.
“As long as Live Nation remains both the dominant concert promoter and ticketer of major venues in the U.S., the industry will continue to lack competition and struggle,” he told lawmakers.
Ticketmaster has argued that the bots used by scalpers were behind the Taylor Swift debacle, and Berchtold asked for more help in fighting the bots that buy tickets for resale.
Other witnesses include Jerry Mickelson, president of JAM Productions, who has been among critics of Ticketmaster.
In November, Ticketmaster canceled a planned ticket sale to the general public for Swift’s tour after more than 3.5 billion requests from fans, bots and scalpers overwhelmed its website.
Senator Klobuchar, who heads the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, has said the issues that cropped up in November were not new and potentially stemmed from consolidation in the ticketing industry.
In November, Ticketmaster denied any anticompetitive practices and noted it remained under a consent decree with the Justice Department following its 2010 merger with Live Nation, adding that there was no “evidence of systemic violations of the consent decree.”
A previous Ticketmaster dispute with the Justice Department culminated in a December 2019 settlement extending the consent agreement into 2025.
Reporting by Diane Bartz, Moira Warburton and David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Diane Bartz
Thomson Reuters
Focused on U.S. antitrust as well as corporate regulation and legislation, with experience involving covering war in Bosnia, elections in Mexico and Nicaragua, as well as stories from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Nigeria and Peru.
J&J falls on sales warning; GE down on weak profit view
Microsoft to report quarterly earnings after market close
Indexes: Dow up 0.18%, S&P 500 off 0.13%, Nasdaq down 0.25%
NEW YORK, Jan 24 (Reuters) – Wall Street was mixed on Tuesday as a raft of mixed earnings took some wind out of the sails of the recent rally.
The session got off to an rocky start, as a spate of NYSE-listed stocks were halted at the opening bell due to an apparent technical glitch, which caused initial price confusion and prompted an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
More than 80 stocks were affected by the glitch, which caused wide swings in opening prices in stocks, including Walmart Inc (WMT.N) and Nike Inc (NKE.N).
“It looks like NYSE got on it real early,” said Joseph Sroka, chief investment officer at NovaPoint in Atlanta. “Now they’re trying to determine what opening trade prices were.”
“Everyone involved in trade settlements is going to have a long day today.”
All three indexes sputtered near the starting line, with little apparent momentum in either direction.
Fourth quarter earnings season is in full swing, with 72 of the companies in the S&P 500 having reported. Of those, 65% have beaten consensus, just a hair below the 66% long-term average, according to Refinitiv.
On aggregate, analysts now expect S&P 500 earnings 2.9% below the year-ago quarter, down from the 1.6% year-on-year decline seen on Jan. 1, per Refinitiv.
“Earnings don’t make a bull or bear case for the market yet, but there’s an anxiousness among investors to be long when the Fed is done raising rates,” Sroka added. “We’re hitting a ramp in the earnings cycle, and by next week we’ll have a lot more information on the direction of the market.”
Economic data showed shallower-than-expected contraction in the manufacturing and services sector in the first weeks of the year, suggesting that the Federal Reserve’s restrictive interest rates are dampening demand.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 60.69 points, or 0.18%, to 33,690.25, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 5.36 points, or 0.13%, to 4,014.45 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 28.39 points, or 0.25%, to 11,336.03.
Among the 11 major sectors of the S&P 500, industrials was down the most.
Intercontinental Exchange Inc (ICE.N), owner of the New York Stock Exchange, dropped 2.5% as SEC investigators searched for the cause of Tuesday’s opening bell confusion.
Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) shares dipped 1.8% after the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Google for abusing its dominance of the digital advertising business.
Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ.N) profit guidance came in above analyst expectations. Even so, its stock softened 0.3%.
Industrial conglomerates 3M Co (MMM.N) and General Electric Co (GE.N) both provided underwhelming forward guidance due to inflationary headwinds.
3M’s shares were off 5.1% while General Electric’s were modestly lower.
Aerospace/defense companies Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) and Raytheon Technologies Corp (RTX.N) were a study in contrasts, with the former issuing a disappointing profit forecast and the latter beating estimates on solid travel demand.
Lockheed Martin and Raytheon were up 1.5% and 2.5%, respectively.
Railroad operator Union Pacific Corp missed profit estimates as labor shortages and severe weather delayed shipments. Its shares shed 2.7%.
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) is due to report after the bell.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.16-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.06-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 27 new 52-week highs and 10 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 69 new highs and 21 new lows.
Reporting by Stephen Culp; Additional reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Aurora Ellis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
NEW DELHI, Jan 24 (Reuters) – A top Indian university cut off power and internet supply on campus on Tuesday before a screening by its students’ union of a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India has dismissed as propaganda, broadcaster NDTV reported.
The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in the capital New Delhi had threatened disciplinary action if the documentary was screened, saying the move might disturb peace and harmony on campus.
Modi’s government has labelled the documentary, which questioned his leadership during deadly riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, as a “propaganda piece”, blocked its airing and also barred sharing of any clips via social media in India.
Modi was chief minister of the western state during the violence in which more than 2,000 people were killed, most of them Muslims.
The students’ union of the JNU, long seen as a bastion of left-wing politics, was to screen the documentary, “India: The Modi Question”, at 9 p.m. (1530 GMT).
A person present with students inside campus said the documentary was now being watched on mobile phones through links shared over Telegram and Vimeo (VMEO.O) after the power went out.
“There are about 300 people streaming the documentary now in campus on their phones since the power went out about half an hour before the screening,” the person, who did not wish to be identified, told Reuters.
Footage from inside the campus showed some students huddled together and watching the film on a laptop propped up on a chair.
The JNU media coordinator did not comment when asked about reports of internet outage and a power cut inside the campus. A source in the administration said a fault in the power line caused outages in faculty residences and other facilities and the issue was being looked into.
The university administration earlier said it had not given permission for the documentary screening.
“This is to emphasise that such an unauthorised activity may disturb peace and harmony of the university campus,” it said.
“The concerned students/individuals are firmly advised to cancel the proposed programme immediately, failing which a strict disciplinary action may be initiated as per the university rules.”
Union president Aishe Ghosh had asked students via Twitter to attend the screening, describing it as having been “‘banned’ by an ‘elected government’ of the largest ‘democracy'”.
Ghosh did not respond to phone calls and a message after reports emerged of a power outage in campus.
Police vigilance was ramped up following a request from campus, police said.
The documentary was also screened at some campuses in the Communist-ruled southern state of Kerala, The Hindu newspaper reported.
India’s home ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the government’s plans if the film is shown at JNU and in Kerala.
The 2002 Gujarat violence erupted after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire, killing 59. Crowds later rampaged through Muslim neighbourhoods. In 2017, 11 men were jailed for life for setting the train ablaze.
Modi has denied accusations that he did not do enough to stop the riots and was exonerated in 2012 following an inquiry overseen by the Supreme Court. Another petition questioning his exoneration was dismissed last year.
Last week, the BBC said the documentary was “rigorously researched” and involved a wide range of voices and opinions, including responses from people in Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly, Shivam Patel and Rupam Jain; additional reporting by Krishn Kaushik; Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 24 (Reuters) – Paranoid? The domino downfall of FTX and other crypto custodians is enough to make the most trusting investor grab their bitcoin and shove it under the mattress.
Indeed, holders big and small are taking “self-custody” of their funds, moving them from crypto exchanges and trading platforms to personal digital wallets.
In a sign of this shift among retail investors, the number of bitcoin held in smaller wallets – those with under 10 bitcoin – rose to 3.35 million as of Jan. 11, up 23% from the 2.72 million held a year ago, according to data from CoinMetrics.
As a percentage of total bitcoin supply, wallet addresses holding under 10 bitcoin now own 17.4%, up from 14.4% a year ago.
“A lot of this really depends on how frequently you’re trading,” said Joshua Peck, founder of hedge fund TrueCode Capital. “If you’re just going buy and hold for the next 10 years, then it’s probably worth making the investment and learning how to custody your assets really, really well.”
The stampede has been turbocharged by the FTX scandal and other crypto collapses, with large investors leading the way.
The 7-day average of daily movement of funds from centralized exchanges to personal wallets jumped to a six-month high of $1.3 billion in mid-November, at the time of FTX collapse, according to data from Chainalysis.
Big investors with transfers of above $100,000 were responsible for those flows, the data showed.
Reuters Graphics
WHERE ARE MY KEYS?
Not your keys, not your coins.
This mantra among early crypto enthusiasts, cautioning that access to your funds is paramount, regularly trended online last year as finance platforms dropped like flies.
Self-custody’s no walk in the park, though.
Wallets can range from “hot” ones connected to the internet or “cold” ones in offline hardware devices, although the latter typically don’t appeal to first-time investors, who often buy crypto on big exchanges.
The multi-level security can often be cumbersome and expensive process for a small-time investor, and there’s always the challenge of guarding keeping your encryption key – a string of data similar to a password – without losing or forgetting it.
Meanwhile, hardware wallets can fail, or be stolen.
“It’s very challenging, because you have to keep track of your keys, you have to back those keys up,” said Peck at TrueCode Capital, adding: “I’ll tell you it’s a very challenging prospect of doing self custody for a multi-million-dollar portfolio of crypto.”
Institutional investors are also turning to regulated custodians – specialized companies that can hold funds in cold storage – as many traditional finance firms would not legally be able to “self-custody” investors’ assets.
One such firm, BitGo, which provides custodian services custody for institutional investors and traders, said it saw a 25% increase in onboarding inquiries in December versus the month before from those looking to move their funds from exchanges, plus a 20% jump in assets under custody.
David Wells, CEO of Enclave Markets, said trading platforms were extremely cautious of the risks of storing the investors’ assets with a third party.
“A comment that stuck with me was ‘investors will forgive us for losing some of their money through our trading strategies, because that’s what they sign up for, what they’re not going to forgive us is for being poor custodians’.”
Reporting by Medha Singh and Lisa Pauline Mattackal in Bengaluru; Editing by Pravin Char
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.
Activist investor Elliott Management takes stake in Salesforce
Chips on track for biggest daily gain since Nov
Indexes up: Dow 0.98%, S&P 1.41%, Nasdaq 2.09%,
NEW YORK, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Wall Street surged on Monday, led higher by technology stocks as investors embarked on an earnings-heavy week with a renewed enthusiasm for market leading momentum stocks that were battered last year.
All three major stock indexes extended Friday’s rally, gaining momentum as the day progressed. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was out front, boosted by a 4.9% jump in semiconductor shares (.SOX).
“This is a remarkable rally in many of the names that did badly last year,” said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield, Connecticut. “No one wants to be watching from the sideline with a bunch a cash as the market gets away from them.”
The session marks a calm before the storm in a week jam-packed with high profile earnings reports and back-end loaded with crucial economic data.
Investors are all but certain the Federal Reserve implement a bite-sized interest rate hike next week even as the U.S. central bank remains committed to taming the hottest inflationary cycle in decades.
Financial markets have priced in a 99.8% likelihood of a 25 basis point hike to the Fed funds target rate at the conclusion of its two-day monetary policy meeting next Wednesday, according to CME’s FedWatch tool.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 328.17 points, or 0.98%, to 33,703.66, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 55.93 points, or 1.41%, to 4,028.54 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 232.84 points, or 2.09%, to 11,373.28.
All 11 major sectors in the S&P 500 were higher, with tech (.SPLRCT) up the most, jumping 2.8%.
Fourth-quarter reporting season has shifted into overdrive, with 57 of the companies in the S&P 500 having posted results. Of those, 63% have delivered better than expected earnings, according to Refinitiv.
Analysts now see S&P 500 fourth quarter earnings, on aggregate, dropping 3% year-on-year, nearly twice as steep as the 1.6% annual drop seen at the beginning of the year, per Refinitiv.
This week, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Tesla Inc , along with a spate of heavy-hitting industrials including Boeing CO (BA.N), 3M Co (MMM.N), Union Pacific Corp (UNP.N) Dow Inc (DOW.N), Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N), are expected to post quarterly results.
Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) surged 7.8% as Chief Executive Elon Musk took the stand in his fraud trial related to a tweet saying he had backing to take the electric automaker private.
Baker Hughes Co (BKR.O) missed quarterly profit estimates due to inflation pressures and ongoing disruptions due to Russia’s war on Ukraine. The oilfield services company’s shares were off 0.9%.
Cloud-based software firm Salesforce Inc (CRM.N) jumped 3.1% following news that activist investor Elliot Management Corp has taken a multi-billion dollar stake in the company.
Spotify Technology SA (SPOT.N) joined the growing list of tech-related companies to announce impending job cuts, shedding 6% of its workforce as rising interest rates and the looming possibility of recession continue to pressure growth stocks. The music streaming company’s shares rose 2.1%.
On the economic front, the Commerce Department is expected to unveil its initial “advance” take on fourth-quarter GDP in Thursday, which analysts expect to land at 2.5%.
On Friday, the wide-ranging personal consumption expenditures (PCE) report is due to shed light on consumer spending, income growth, and crucially, inflation.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 3.53-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.95-to-1 ratio favored advancers.
The S&P 500 posted 11 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 66 new highs and 14 new lows.
Reporting by Stephen Culp; Additional reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru
Editing by Marguerita Choy
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 23 (Reuters) – Spotify Technology SA (SPOT.N) said on Monday it plans to cut 6% of its workforce and would take a related charge of up to nearly $50 million, adding to the massive layoffs in the technology sector in preparation for a possible recession.
The tech industry is facing a demand downturn after two years of pandemic-powered growth during which it had hired aggressively. That has led firms from Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) to Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) to shed thousands of jobs.
“Over the last few months we’ve made a considerable effort to rein in costs, but it simply hasn’t been enough,” Chief Executive Daniel Elk said in a blog post announcing the roughly 600 job cuts.
“I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” he added, echoing a sentiment voiced by other tech bosses in recent months.
Spotify’s operating expenditure grew at twice the speed of its revenue last year as the audio-streaming company aggressively poured money into its podcast business, which is more attractive for advertisers due to higher engagement levels.
Reuters Graphics
At the same time, businesses pulled back on ad spending on the platform, mirroring a trend seen at Meta and Google parent Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O), as rapid interest rate hikes and the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war pressured the economy.
The company, whose shares rose 5.8% to $103.55, is now restructuring itself in a bid to cut costs and adjust to the deteriorating economic picture.
It said Dawn Ostroff, the head of content and advertising, was leaving after an over four-year stint at the company. Ostroff helped shape Spotify’s podcast business and guided it through backlash around Joe Rogan’s show for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19.
The company said it is appointing Alex Norström, head of the freemium business, and research and development boss Gustav Söderström as co-presidents.
Spotify had about 9,800 full-time employees as of Sept. 30.
($1 = 0.9196 euros)
Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Shailesh Kuber
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
MUMBAI, Jan 22 (Reuters) – India has blocked the airing of a BBC documentary which questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership during the 2002 Gujarat riots, saying that even sharing of any clips via social media is barred.
Directions to block the clips from being shared have been issued using emergency powers available to the government under the country’s information technology rules, said Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the government, on his Twitter handle on Saturday.
While the BBC has not aired the documentary in India, the video was uploaded on some YouTube channels, Gupta said.
The government has issued orders to Twitter to block over 50 tweets linking to the video of the documentary and YouTube has been instructed to block any uploads of the video, Gupta said. Both YouTube and Twitter have complied with the directions, he added.
Modi was the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat when it was gripped by communal riots that left more than 1,000 people dead, by government count – most of them Muslims. The violence erupted after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire, killing 59.
Human rights activists estimate at least double that number died in the rioting.
Modi denied accusations that he failed to stop the rioting. A special investigation team appointed by the Supreme Court to investigate the role of Modi and others in the violence said in a 541-page report in 2012 it could find no evidence to prosecute the then chief minister.
Modi was later named the head of his party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which he led to power in general elections in 2014 and then in 2019.
Last week, a spokesperson for India’s foreign ministry termed the BBC documentary a “propaganda piece” meant to push a “discredited narrative”.
Reporting by Ira Dugal; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
MEXICO CITY, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Just after sunset on Thursday, February 10th, two men in a white Dodge Ram pickup pulled up in front of Heber Lopez Vasquez’s small radio studio in southern Mexico. One man got out, walked inside and shot the 42-year-old journalist dead. Lopez’s 12-year-old son Oscar, the only person with him, hid, Lopez’s brother told Reuters.
Lopez was one of 13 Mexican journalists killed in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based rights group. It was the deadliest year on record for journalists in Mexico, now the most dangerous country for reporters in the world outside the war in Ukraine, where CPJ says 15 reporters were killed last year.
A day earlier, Lopez–who ran two online news sites in the southern Oaxaca state–had published a story on Facebook accusing local politician Arminda Espinosa Cartas of corruption related to her re-election efforts.
As he lay dead, a nearby patrol car responded to an emergency call, intercepted the pickup and arrested the two men. One of them, it later emerged, was the brother of Espinosa, the politician in Lopez’s story.
Espinosa has not been charged in connection with Lopez’s killing. She did not respond to multiple requests for comment and Reuters could not find any previous comment she made about her role in corruption or on Lopez’s story.
Her brother and the other man remain detained but have yet to be tried. Their lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“I already stopped covering drug trafficking and corruption and Heber’s death still scares me,” said Hiram Moreno, a veteran Oaxacan journalist who was shot three times in 2019, sustaining injuries in the leg and back, after writing about drug deals by local crime groups. His assailant was never identified. “You cannot count on the government. Self-censorship is the only thing that will keep you safe.”
It is a pattern of fear and intimidation playing out across Mexico, as years of violence and impunity have created what academics call “silence zones” where killing and corruption go unchecked and undocumented.
“In silence zones people don’t get access to basic information to conduct their lives,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “They don’t know who to vote for because there are no corruption investigations. They don’t know which areas are violent, what they can say and not say, so they stay silent.”
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about attacks on the media.
Since the start of Mexico’s drug war in 2006, 133 reporters have been killed for motives related to their work, CPJ determined, and another 13 for undetermined reasons. In that time Mexico has registered over 360,000 homicides.
Aggression against journalists has spread in recent years to previously less hostile areas–such as Oaxaca and Chiapas–threatening to turn more parts of Mexico into information dead zones, say rights groups like Reporters Without Borders and 10 local journalists.
Lopez was the second journalist since mid-2021 to be murdered in Salina Cruz, a Pacific port in Oaxaca. It nestles in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a skinny stretch of land connecting the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific that has become a landing spot for precursor chemicals to make fentanyl and meth, according to three security analysts and a DEA source.
Lopez’s last story, one of several he wrote about Espinosa, covered the politician’s alleged efforts to get a company constructing a breakwater in Salina Cruz’s port to threaten workers to cast their vote for her re-election or else be fired.
The infrastructure was a part of the Interoceanic Corridor–one of Lopez Obrador’s flagship development projects in southern Mexico.
Jose Ignacio Martinez, a crime reporter in the isthmus, and nine of Lopez’s fellow journalists say since his murder they are more afraid to publish stories delving into the corridor project, drug trafficking and state collusion with organized crime.
One outlet Reuters spoke to, which asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said it had done an investigation on the corridor, but did not feel safe to publish after Lopez’s death.
Lopez Obrador’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment about corruption accusations related to the corridor.
THE MECHANISM
In 2012 the government established the Mechanism for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Journalists.
[1/4] Marilu Sanchez holds a framed picture of her late husband Gustavo Sanchez, a journalist killed by assailants while riding his motorcycle with his son, at her home in Morro de Mazatan, in Oaxaca state, Mexico, October 18, 2022. REUTERS/Jorge Luis Plata
Known simply as the Mechanism, the body provides journalists with protections such as panic buttons, surveillance equipment, home police watch, armed guards and relocation. Since 2017, nine Mechanism-protected reporters have been murdered, CPJ found.
Journalists and activists may request protection from the Mechanism, which evaluates their case along with a group of human rights defenders, journalists and representatives of nonprofits, as well as officials from various government agencies that make up a governing board. Not all those who request protection receive it, based on the analysis.
At present there are 1,600 people enrolled in the Mechanism, including 500 journalists.
One of those killed was Gustavo Sanchez, a journalist shot at close range in June 2021 by two motorcycle-riding hitmen. Sanchez, who had written critical articles about politicians and criminal groups, enrolled in the Mechanism for a third time after surviving an assassination attempt in 2020. Protection never arrived.
Oaxaca’s prosecutor at the time said Sanchez’s coverage of local elections would be a primary line of investigation into his murder. No one has been charged in the case.
Sanchez’s killing triggered Mexico’s human rights commission to produce a 100-page investigation into authorities’ failings. Evidence “revealed omissions, delays, negligence and breach of duties by at least 15 public servants,” said the report.
Enrique Irazoque, head of the Interior Ministry’s department for the Defense of Human Rights, said the Mechanism accepted the findings, but highlighted the role local authorities played in the protection lag.
Fifteen people within government and civil society told Reuters the Mechanism is under-resourced given the scope of the problem. Irazoque agreed, though he noted its staff of 40 increased last year to a staff of 70. Its 2023 budget increased to around $28.8 million from $20 million in 2022.
In addition to the shortage of funding, Irazoque said that local authorities, state governments and courts need to do more, but there was a lack of political will.
“The Mechanism is absorbing all the problems, but the issues are not federal, they are local,” he said in an interview with Reuters.
More convictions are what Irazoque believes are most needed, saying the lack of legal repercussions for public officials encourages corruption.
Impunity for journalist killings hovers around 89%, a 2021 report from the Interior Ministry, which oversees the Mechanism, showed. Local public servants were the biggest source of violence against journalists, ahead of organized crime, the report found.
“You would think the biggest enemy would be armed groups and organized crime,” said journalist Patricia Mayorga, who fled Mexico after investigating corruption. “But really it’s the ties between those groups and the state officials that are the problem.”
Many Mexican journalists killed worked for small, independent, digital outlets that sometimes only published on Facebook, noted Irazoque, saying their stories dug deep into local political issues.
Mexico’s National Association of Mayors (ANAC) and its National Conference of Governors (CONAGO) did not respond to requests for comment about the role of state and local governments in journalist killings or allegations of corrupt ties to crime groups.
President Lopez Obrador frequently pillories the press, calling out reporters critical of his administration and holding a weekly segment in his daily news conference dedicated to the “lies of the week.” He condemns the murders, while accusing adversaries of talking up the violence to discredit him.
Irazoque says he has no evidence the president’s verbal attacks have led to violence against journalists. Lopez Obrador’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
“What type of life is this?,” journalist Rodolfo Montes said, eyeing security footage from inside his home where the Mechanism, in which he first enrolled in 2017, had installed cameras with eyes on the garage, street and entryway.
Years earlier, a cartel rolled a bullet under the door as a threat, and he has been on edge ever since. An entire archive box of threats spread over a decade sat in the corner. Looking down at his phone after a cartel threatened his 24-year-old daughter just a few days before, he said, “I’m living, but I’m dead, you know?”
Reuters Graphics
Editing by Claudia Parsons and Dave Graham; Additional reporting by Pepe Cortes in Oaxaca
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 20 (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors have seized nearly $700 million in assets from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in January, largely in the form of Robinhood stock, according to a Friday court filing.
Bankman-Fried, who has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to pay debts incurred by his crypto-focused hedge fund, has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. He is scheduled to face trial in October.
The Department of Justice revealed the seizure of Robinhood shares earlier this month, but it provided a more complete list of seized assets Friday, including cash held at various banks and assets deposited at crypto exchange Binance.
The ownership of the seized Robinhood shares, valued at about $525 million, has been the subject of disputes between Bankman-Fried, FTX, and bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi.
The most recent asset seizure reported by the DOJ took place on Thursday, when prosecutors seized $94.5 million in cash from an account at Silvergate Bank which was associated with FTX Digital Markets, FTX’s subsidiary in the Bahamas. The DOJ seized more than $7 million from other Silvergate accounts associated with Bankman-Fried and FTX.
The DOJ previously seized nearly $50 million from an FTX Digital Markets account at Moonstone Bank, a small bank in Washington state.
DOJ also said that assets in three Binance accounts associated with Bankman-Fried were subject to criminal forfeiture, but did not provide an estimate of the value in those accounts.
Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) cloud services division said Friday it plans to invest another $35 billion by 2040 to expand data centers in Virginia.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) said the new investment will create 1,000 jobs. Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin said AWS will establish multiple data center campuses across Virginia.
In 2021, AWS said from 2011 to 2020 it had invested $35 billion in data centers located in northern Virginia and had 3,500 full time employees at its data centers in the state.
Pending approval by state lawmakers, Virginia is developing a new “Mega Data Center Incentive Program,” which would allow the company to receive up to a 15-year extension of Data Center Sales and Use tax exemptions on equipment and software.
AWS also will be eligible to receive a state grant of up to $140 million “for site and infrastructure improvements, workforce development, and other project-related costs.”
Amazon shares closed up 3.8% Friday.
Amazon in 2018 after a long contest announced northern Virginia would be home to its second headquarters known as “HQ2” and eventually employ more than 25,000 employees. As of April, Amazon said its headcount assigned to the site was around 5,000.
Youngkin has faced some criticism for withdrawing from a competition to attract a new Ford Motor (F.N) battery plant expected to be built with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) (300750.SZ), the world’s largest battery producer.
Youngkin defended his decision Friday, telling Bloomberg News that he looks “forward to bringing a great company there. It won’t be one that uses kind of a Trojan-horse relationship with the Chinese Communist Party in order to gain.”
A spokesperson for Youngkin has said that “while Ford is an iconic American company, it became clear that this proposal would serve as a front for the Chinese Communist party.”
Ford declined to comment on Youngkin’s decision to withdraw.
In July, Ford said it plans to localize 40 GWh of battery capacity in North America starting in 2026. It also announced CATL would provide battery packs for Mustang Mach-E models for North America starting in 2023 and would discuss cooperation for batteries in Ford vehicles around the world.
“Our talks with CATL continue – and we have nothing new to announce on either front,” Ford said.
Michigan is also a candidate for the Ford battery plant, sources said, and a decision could be made in the coming weeks.
Reporting by David Shepardson and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Himani Sarkar
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
