Update (10:21ET): Apple shares rise 82bps – market widely ignores DigiTimes’ report on weaker shipment expectations for 5G iPhones.
* * *
A paywalled DigiTimes report said Apple shipment estimates for mmWave-enabled 5G iPhones could be significantly lower than expected. Sources familiar with Apple’s supply chain partners said suppliers ‘are less optimistic about shipments’ for the new 5G iPhone.
Apple is expected to launch its 5G iPhone later this year, but its supply chain partners are now much less optimistic about shipments for the new devices that reportedly will support mmWave in 2020. – DigiTimes
Apparently, sources said 2020 5G iPhone 12 shipments could be halved, from 30-40 million to just 15-20 million, as it appears the virus-induced downturn in the economy has resulted in the Cupertino-based company to believe consumers aren’t willing to splurge $1,000+ for a new phone this year.
5G iPhone shipments may be much weaker than expected in 2020, say sources: Shipments of mmWave-enabled 5G iPhones slated for launch later this year are estimated to reach only 15-20 million units in 2020 compared to a previous supply chain estimate of 30-40 million units, intensifying competition among Apple’s suppliers of FC-AiP substrates for the new phones, according to industry sources. – DigiTimes
Consumers have been decimated by the virus-induced downtown, comes at the worst possible time for Apple – mostly because it plans to debut its first-ever 5G iPhone this fall.
We noted days ago, a quarter of all personal income in the US comes from the government – tens of millions of Americans are out of work, many have insurmountable debts and no savings – and don’t have the ability to purchase $1,000+ iPhones this year.
Apple shares are down about 50bps in premarket trading on Tuesday.
To sum up, the DigiTimes report suggests Apple has placed little confidence in the broke American consumer to purchase its new 5G iPhones – perhaps, the product launch should be delayed until consumers financially recover.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3iimaLp Tyler Durden
The U.S. Supreme Court has handed another blow to backhanded attempts at abolishing abortion by making clinics comply with ridiculous and unnecessary regulations.
In a 5-4 decision released Monday, the court struck down a Louisiana law (Act 620) saying doctors who perform abortions must have “active admitting privileges at a hospital . . . located not further than thirty miles from the location at which the abortion is performed or induced.” If enforced, it would have left Louisiana with just one abortion clinic statewide.
In the consolidated cases before SCOTUS, “five abortion clinics and four abortion providers challenged Act 620 before it was to take effect, alleging that it was unconstitutional because (among other things) it imposed an undue burden on the right of their patients to obtain an abortion,” states the Court’s summary of the case.
Previously, a U.S. District Court had declared the admitting-privileges law unconstitutional, “finding, among other things, that the law offers no significant health benefit; that conditions on admitting privileges common to hospitals throughout the State have made and will continue to make it impossible for abortion providers to obtain conforming privileges for reasons that have nothing to do with the State’s asserted interests in promoting women’s health and safety; and that this inability places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking an abortion,” states the summary.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling. The Supreme Court has now reversed the 5th Circuit’s decision.
Voting to strike down the law were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, with Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas dissenting.
Justice Breyer notes in the majority’s opinion that the Louisiana law “is almost word-for-word identical to Texas’ admitting-privileges law,” which SCOTUS struck down in 2016.
“There was one notable difference between the two abortion rulings,” notesReason‘s Damon Root. “This time around, Chief Justice Roberts sided with the Court’s Democratic appointees and voted to strike down the state regulation. What changed?”
In his concurring opinion, Roberts answers that question:
I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided. The question today however is not whether Whole Woman’s Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case. […] Stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.
Oregon measure to legalize psilocybin moves forward. An Oregon measure to legalize hallucinogenic mushrooms for psychiatric use has enough signatures to get on the ballot in November, its backers said yesterday. “Chief petitioners of Oregon Psilocybin Therapy Initiative, or Initiative Petition #34, Sheri and Tom Eckert, said Monday during a Zoom press conference that the campaign has gathered 164,782 signatures,” reports The Oregonian. “The campaign believes they will know for sure by mid-July.” The cities of Denver, Colorado, and Oakland, California, have recently decriminalized psilocybin, but “Oregon would be the first state to legalize the substance, which is currently a Schedule I drug,” the paper notes.
FREE MARKETS
More states start reversing reopening. New Jersey and Arizona join Florida, Texas, and California in calling a halt on letting businesses start operating again after the COVID-19 lockdowns. From New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy:
UPDATE: INDOOR DINING WILL NO LONGER RESUME ON THURSDAY.
We had planned to loosen restrictions this week. However, after #COVID19 spikes in other states driven by, in part, the return of indoor dining, we have decided to postpone indoor dining indefinitely.
Meanwhile, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said Monday that his state would hit pause on phasing in more reopening plans, ban organized gatherings of more than 50 people, and close gyms, bars, and a range of other businesses that had briefly been open.
QUICK HITS
• Scientists aren’t sure what to make of a mutation in the new coronavirus that now accounts for the majority of cases. “The mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but a growing number of scientists worry that it has made the virus more contagious,” reportsThe Washington Post.
• Another person has been killed, and a 14-year-old boy wounded, in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupatied Protest (CHOP) zone. This is the third fatal shooting in CHOP, and it comes about a week after Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said the city would disband it.
• Reddit is canceling more than 2,000 subject-specific communities (a.k.a. subreddits)—including one about President Donald Trump and one about the popular lefty podcast Chapo Trap House—for allegedly violating the site’s content policies.
• The video streaming service Twitch has temporarily suspended the president’s account. “In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed,” spokesperson Brielle Villablanca said.
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The U.S. Supreme Court has handed another blow to backhanded attempts at abolishing abortion by making clinics comply with ridiculous and unnecessary regulations.
In a 5-4 decision released Monday, the court struck down a Louisiana law (Act 620) saying doctors who perform abortions must have “active admitting privileges at a hospital . . . located not further than thirty miles from the location at which the abortion is performed or induced.” If enforced, it would have left Louisiana with just one abortion clinic statewide.
In the consolidated cases before SCOTUS, “five abortion clinics and four abortion providers challenged Act 620 before it was to take effect, alleging that it was unconstitutional because (among other things) it imposed an undue burden on the right of their patients to obtain an abortion,” states the Court’s summary of the case.
Previously, a U.S. District Court had declared the admitting-privileges law unconstitutional, “finding, among other things, that the law offers no significant health benefit; that conditions on admitting privileges common to hospitals throughout the State have made and will continue to make it impossible for abortion providers to obtain conforming privileges for reasons that have nothing to do with the State’s asserted interests in promoting women’s health and safety; and that this inability places a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking an abortion,” states the summary.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed the district court’s ruling. The Supreme Court has now reversed the 5th Circuit’s decision.
Voting to strike down the law were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, with Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas dissenting.
Justice Breyer notes in the majority’s opinion that the Louisiana law “is almost word-for-word identical to Texas’ admitting-privileges law,” which SCOTUS struck down in 2016.
“There was one notable difference between the two abortion rulings,” notesReason‘s Damon Root. “This time around, Chief Justice Roberts sided with the Court’s Democratic appointees and voted to strike down the state regulation. What changed?”
In his concurring opinion, Roberts answers that question:
I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided. The question today however is not whether Whole Woman’s Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case. […] Stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike. The Louisiana law imposes a burden on access to abortion just as severe as that imposed by the Texas law, for the same reasons. Therefore Louisiana’s law cannot stand under our precedents.
Oregon measure to legalize psilocybin moves forward. An Oregon measure to legalize hallucinogenic mushrooms for psychiatric use has enough signatures to get on the ballot in November, its backers said yesterday. “Chief petitioners of Oregon Psilocybin Therapy Initiative, or Initiative Petition #34, Sheri and Tom Eckert, said Monday during a Zoom press conference that the campaign has gathered 164,782 signatures,” reports The Oregonian. “The campaign believes they will know for sure by mid-July.” The cities of Denver, Colorado, and Oakland, California, have recently decriminalized psilocybin, but “Oregon would be the first state to legalize the substance, which is currently a Schedule I drug,” the paper notes.
FREE MARKETS
More states start reversing reopening. New Jersey and Arizona join Florida, Texas, and California in calling a halt on letting businesses start operating again after the COVID-19 lockdowns. From New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy:
UPDATE: INDOOR DINING WILL NO LONGER RESUME ON THURSDAY.
We had planned to loosen restrictions this week. However, after #COVID19 spikes in other states driven by, in part, the return of indoor dining, we have decided to postpone indoor dining indefinitely.
Meanwhile, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said Monday that his state would hit pause on phasing in more reopening plans, ban organized gatherings of more than 50 people, and close gyms, bars, and a range of other businesses that had briefly been open.
QUICK HITS
• Scientists aren’t sure what to make of a mutation in the new coronavirus that now accounts for the majority of cases. “The mutation doesn’t appear to make people sicker, but a growing number of scientists worry that it has made the virus more contagious,” reportsThe Washington Post.
• Another person has been killed, and a 14-year-old boy wounded, in Seattle’s Capitol Hill Occupatied Protest (CHOP) zone. This is the third fatal shooting in CHOP, and it comes about a week after Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan said the city would disband it.
• Reddit is canceling more than 2,000 subject-specific communities (a.k.a. subreddits)—including one about President Donald Trump and one about the popular lefty podcast Chapo Trap House—for allegedly violating the site’s content policies.
• The video streaming service Twitch has temporarily suspended the president’s account. “In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed,” spokesperson Brielle Villablanca said.
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In the early hours of March 18, 2019, Hazel McGary’s cellmate woke up to find her on the floor.
This was all too common. McGary, an inmate at FCI Aliceville, a federal women’s prison in Alabama, had been having escalating health problems, including falling out of bed. Her cellmate had been taking care of her, escorting her in a wheelchair to and from the prison’s medical center several times a week, where McGary had been waging a monthslong battle with indifferent prison officials to prove she was seriously ill.
Something different happened that morning, though, when staffers took McGary to the prison’s medical services. She didn’t come back.
Hazel McGary is one of three inmates identified by Reason who have died from alleged medical neglect since 2018 at FCI Aliceville. Numerous current and former inmates, as well as their families, say in interviews, desperate letters, and lawsuits, that women inside Aliceville face disastrous delays in medical care. They describe monthslong waits for doctor appointments and routine procedures, skepticism and retaliation from staff, and terrible pain and fear.
The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) listed the cause of death in all three cases as “natural causes,” according to public records obtained by Reason. That classification, while technically correct, erases the culpability of the agency. It’s like claiming a man accidentally drowned after you refused to throw him a life preserver.
But the agency doesn’t want to talk about what happened. When asked for more information, the BOP public affairs office said the agency “does not disclose the details of an inmate’s death.” The FCI Aliceville public information officer did not return multiple requests for comment. Reason has been waiting for more than a year for additional Freedom of Information Act records concerning these incidents.
None of these women was ever sentenced to death. But in Aliceville, that’s effectively the sentence they received—for nothing more than the crime of being sick.
Although the severity of their offenses is irrelevant to their constitutional rights, all three were serving sentences for nonviolent crimes. Under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment,the government had a legal obligation to provide basic necessities to them, including health care. This requirement is ostensibly what separates our enlightened justice system from the sadism of the past.
Their deaths are a reminder that the barbarism the Constitution intended to forbid never really disappeared and is still with us today. They also point toward the need, at the very least, for stronger independent oversight of the BOP’s medical services. At most, they raise the question of whether these women and other offenders should be sent to prison at all, given the U.S. government’s inability to meet the Eighth Amendment’s low bar.
Beyond abstract principles, each one of these women had families who loved them. McGary’s daughters, Kentiesha and Apolonia Kimble, had been calling the prison for months trying to get help for their mother.
“They ain’t do nothing,” Kentiesha tells Reason. “They laughed at her. They said she was faking. They told us she was too young to be having a heart attack.”
‘We called the jail. They were hanging up in our face.’
Hazel McGary
Prior to her death, McGary had been going to Aliceville’s medical center several times a week, complaining of chest pain, fatigue, and shortness of breath, according to an account written by Aliceville inmate Cheryl Singleton and sent to Strickland Webster, LLC, an Atlanta law firm. Singleton wrote that McGary’s vitals consistently showed “extremely high blood pressure,” but medical staff kept telling her to come back later.
One doesn’t simply stroll in to see a doctor or a nurse in federal prison. Inmates must ask a corrections officer for an appointment as the officer walks by at “sick call” every morning. If you miss it for whatever reason, tough luck. You have to wait until the next morning, unless you’re quite literally dying. Inmates put on the sick call list then go to a waiting room and wait, often for hours.
“Sometimes at sick call, you don’t get seen until 2 o’clock in the afternoon,” says Caroline Trude-Rede, a former inmate at FMC Carswell, a federal prison hospital for women in Texas.
Singleton wrote that McGary’s health problems started after a two-week stint in the “special housing unit” or SHU, a sanitized term for solitary confinement, where she experienced panic attacks, shortness of breath, and chest pains.
Her health began to seriously deteriorate in January 2019, according to Singleton’s account. McGary began suffering from severe fatigue, which was exacerbated by her being housed on an upper floor, requiring her to climb stairs to go to and from her cell.
By February, she was mostly confined to a wheelchair and could barely stand. McGary’s daughters say they were sending money to her cellmate, Crystal Green, to escort their mother to and from meals, showers, and her increasingly frequent trips to Aliceville’s medical services. But both McGary’s daughters and Singleton say she was turned away time and time again.
“I called Washington, I called the mayor’s office, I called region [BOP’s Southeast Regional Office]. Nobody could help us,” Kimble says. “We called the jail. They were hanging up in our face.”
Finally, on the morning of March 18, 2019, Green woke up to find McGary on the floor.
“Why didn’t you call my name like you usually do?” Green asked, according to Singleton’s account.
McGary said she tried as loud as she could. Green pressed the medical emergency button, and five minutes later the staff came to take McGary away.
“They took her to medical, and that was the last time Green saw Hazel alive,” Singleton wrote.
McGary’s daughters say they didn’t receive a call from the prison about their mother until around 4 p.m., hours after she had died. “We were sitting around not even knowing our momma was dead,” Kimble says.
The daughters say an autopsy determined that McGary died of a blood clot that traveled from her leg to her heart. McGary’s daughters also say the prison never sent them their mother’s personal belongings, which they assume were destroyed.
The most disturbing part of reading the pleas for help from inmates at Aliceville is that many of them can plainly see what’s coming, but they’re powerless to stop it.
On March 9, 2019, a little more than a week before her roommate would wake up to find her on the floor of her cell, McGary sent a letter to the lawyers at Strickland Webster begging for help. The letter describes McGary’s months of futile trips to the prison’s medical services, the “heat rush” she felt in her chest every time she had to climb stairs, her suspicions that her medical records were being altered or destroyed, and staff’s open contempt for her. The letter says that when she finally managed to get a meeting with officials from the BOP’s regional headquarters, they tried to blame her heart problems on drug use or syphilis.
“I have been told for over eight months I am scheduled for a visit to the cardiologist,” McGary wrote. “Still have not made it there yet. The warden and the region are useless. They send us through all of these long, drawn-out procedures. By the time [they’re done] we will be home or dead.”
Nine days after she sent that letter, her latter prediction came true. She was 49 years old.
‘Y’all, they killed her, they killed her’
Rosemary Ofume (center) with her two sons.
Almost a year to the day before Hazel McGary’s death, another family received a heartbreaking call from Aliceville federal prison. Rosemary Ofume, 59, died on March 21, 2018.
Ofume had only been transferred to the prison earlier that month. According to her family and a civil rights lawsuit filed this March, she became seriously ill after having an adverse reaction to an unnecessary tuberculosis test that she was coerced into taking.
The lawsuit says Ofume “vocally objected to being administered this test on the grounds that she had been given the test twice before and her doctor warned her not to let anyone give her that test again due to hypersensitivity concerns.”
Ofumen’s health declined dramatically between March 15 and 19. She had a bad cough, and Grant Iriele, one of her sons, says attorneys who visited her at Aliceville told him that her skin had taken a sickly dark gray, dark blue color—a sign of cyanosis, which is caused by oxygen-depleted blood.
The lawsuit claims medical staff at Aliceville “were well aware of Rosemary’s suffering and serious medical need because when she was at the clinic [they] belittled her, turned her away, refused to diagnose her or otherwise provide her with medical care.”
Lorri Jackson-Brown was incarcerated at Aliceville until this May. She says she witnessed four inmates suffer fatal medical neglect at the prison during her stint there, including Ofume, McGary, and Doris Nelson, whose case is discussed further below. (The fourth case, not discussed in this story, is former Aliceville inmate Jean Cox. In 2017, A federal judge granted compassionate release to Cox, at the request of the BOP, after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Reason has been unable to learn more about that case.)
“When I met Ms. Rosemary, somebody was wheeling her out [of the prison’s medical center], and she was in tears,” Jackson-Brown says. “I knew the girl that was pushing her. I asked what’s wrong with her. She said, ‘They won’t even see her. This lady is sick, she’s spitting up blood.'”
Throughout her sickness, Ofume was in frequent contact with her children.
“I spoke to my mother the night before, and I remember pleading with her to get something to eat,” Iriele says. “She was saying that it was hard for her to make it to get something to eat because she felt so weak and drained.”
At the time, Iriele and the rest of his family thought she just had a bad cold. But the next morning, the prison called to deliver the news that she had died.
According to the lawsuit, which relies on eyewitness accounts from other inmates, Ofume was having severe breathing problems. Her cellmate pressed the emergency button to try to summon help, but the corrections officer who responded told her to fill out paperwork and wait for the next sick call. The roommate went to try and get medication. When she came back, Ofume’s condition was worse, and the roommate hit the button again, only to be dismissed by corrections officers, again. The third time her roommate hit the emergency button, a different officer took the situation seriously, but by that time it was too late. Ofume was unresponsive.
“They locked us down that morning, and we knew something was wrong because we saw them running to her building,” Jackson-Brown recalls. “That same girl who was pushing her came out later crying. She said, ‘Y’all, they killed her, they killed her.'”
Iriele says that when his family asked for his mother’s body to be sent to them so that an independent autopsy could be performed, the BOP told them that it would not be released for two months.
The lawsuit says the BOP relented under pressure, and an independent autopsy found that Ofume died of pulmonary embolisms—small blood clots in her lungs.
The Mayo Clinic notes that pulmonary embolisms are fatal in about one-third of untreated cases, but “when the condition is diagnosed and treated promptly, however, that number drops dramatically.”
Iriele believes Aliceville is trying to cover up its mistakes. Portions of her medical records turned over by the BOP are missing or sloppy, the lawsuit says. His mother was also a meticulous note-taker, but Iriele says that when her journal was returned to the family along with her other belongings, several pages had been torn out from around the date when she received the tuberculosis test.
The most infuriating part, he says, has been what details he has learned from other Aliceville inmates.
“Her roommate kept pulling the alarm to get people’s attention, and they kept turning it off and callously telling [the roommate] to take her to the sick bay when it opened, which is not their protocol for when someone is in danger,” Iriele says. “They saw that she was unwell, and they couldn’t care less.”
‘I stay in pain and medical’s not doing anything for me. They won’t do anything.’
Last year, three months after McGary’s death, another inmate died.
Doris Nelson’s sentencing documents show a federal judge recommended to the BOP in 2015 that she serve her sentence at a federal prison in Dublin, California, due to health issues. Instead, she ended up in Aliceville, where she taught classes for other inmates.
“She taught classes with me,” Jackson-Brown says. “Very nice lady, I loved Mrs. Nelson. One day I just happened to look up, and she’s in a wheelchair.”
Jackson-Brown asked her what was wrong, and she says Nelson told her she felt flushed and couldn’t walk: “She said, ‘I stay in pain and medical’s not doing anything for me. They won’t do anything. I don’t know what’s going on with me.”
One day, Nelson delivered some startling news.
“She said, ‘Do you know now these fools want to tell me they think I have cancer, and I’ve had it for a long period of time?'” Jackson-Brown remembers. “She said, ‘Who does that? Now all of a sudden you want to let me know I’ve got cancer?'”
“I told her to meet me at the library on a Saturday,” Jackson continued. “Two days later she was dead.”
Nelson, 60, died at Aliceville on June 14, 2019.
“There was an ongoing struggle to get her diagnostic treatments,” an attorney for Nelson’s family told the Spokane, Washington, newspaper Spokesman-Review after her death. “She was in terrible pain and when I know more, I’ll advise the family.”
‘I’m lucky to be alive.’
Some former inmates say they barely escaped Aliceville with their lives. Holly Frantzen, 49, says she was fit and healthy when she first arrived at the prison in 2019. The only medication she was on was Effexor, an antidepressant.
Extended-release Effexor is only supposed to be ingested via capsule, according to the Mayo Clinic, which notes that one of the less-common side effects is rapid and irregular heartbeat.
However, Frantzen says Aliceville staff abruptly began pouring it out of the capsule and giving it to her in a cup, either dry or suspended in water.
Frantzen says she complained that the crushed pills were making her feel strange, but she was ignored. Worse, she says the prison forgot to refill her prescription, leaving her without medication for three days, which is also not recommended because of severe withdrawal symptoms. Frantzen’s prescription was finally refilled, and she was given another crushed dose in the pill line that evening.
She doesn’t fully remember what happened the next morning, June 4, 2019.
“I guess I got up and woke my bunkie early in the morning and told her my arms and chest hurt, and I was real hot,” Frantzen writes in an email. “The guard opened the doors, my bunkie went and got me some ice water, and I stiffened up and fell over. My heart stopped.”
Frantzen says a staffer eventually resuscitated her via CPR, but she remained in a coma for about two weeks. The BOP never informed her family, according to Frantzen and her father, Weldon Wyckoff.
“We were emailing every day, and all of a sudden the emails stopped,” Wyckoff says. “I didn’t know what was going on for about a week. Ten days later I got a letter from one of the people she was incarcerated with that told me what happened.”
Wyckoff says the BOP has a moral responsibility to inform families. “Just because people are incarcerated doesn’t mean that they don’t have meaning,” he says.
Frantzen was transferred to FMC Carswell and now has a defibrillator in her heart.
“They would just brush you off and tell you to go buy Tylenol at the commissary,” Frantzen writes of her time in Aliceville. “It was awful really. They did not even call my family and let them know I was in a coma … So now here I am with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] about meds and medical staff. I am lucky to be alive.”
‘What these people did is inhuman.’
“It’s so traumatic that I don’t think I want to relive it, because what these people did is inhuman,” a former Aliceville inmate says in an interview with Reason.
The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, was incarcerated at Aliceville for four months between late winter2013 and spring 2014. Now in her mid-30s, she says she suffered unbearable uterine pain and bleeding, and that prison staff and doctors repeatedly tried to coerce her into having a hysterectomy.
Before she arrived in the federal prison system, she says a doctor had prescribed her birth control to manage pain and bleeding from a previous surgery for ovarian cysts that resulted in one of her ovaries and one of her fallopian tubes being removed. But once inside prison, she was taken off birth control, and soon she began experiencing excruciating pain and heavy bleeding.
“I was going to lose my mind, I was so in pain,” she says.
The woman says at one point a physician assistant at Aliceville performed a vaginal exam on her using forceps. However, all she could cajole out of the prison staff for her pain and bleeding was extra-strength Tylenol with codeine.
She was only transported to a local hospital to see a doctor, she says, after her family enlisted then-U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat who represented Florida, to contact the prison on her behalf.
Inmates and their families often try to recruit their representatives in Congress to press the BOP into action, with mixed results. For example, Reasonreported in 2018 that Rep. Rob Wittman (R–Va.) contacted the BOP three times on behalf of the family of Frederick Turner, a nonviolent drug offender who was sent to a violent, gang-ridden federal penitentiary where he feared for his life. Turner’s requests for transfer were denied, and he was later found dead in his cell.
When the woman was finally taken to a local hospital, she says the doctor and prison officials tried to pressure her several times into having her remaining ovary removed. When she refused to consent to the surgery, she says she was retaliated against. She was put in the SHU and had her wheelchair, which she used when the pain became too intense, taken away.
“I’m a black woman with an accent who committed a crime, and to them I have no right to think that I should have kids or should want to procreate,” she says.
After several months of refusing to consent to surgery, she says she was abruptly transferred to FMC Carswell, where she saw “stomach-wrenching” medical neglect, including one woman who died of kidney disease.
“She could barely walk, her hair was falling off, she looked like a zombie, and surely enough, she died,” the former inmate says. “Her family did apply for compassionate release. They never released her. They let her die in prison.”
After she was eventually released from federal prison, the woman had a successful surgery to remove a cyst from her remaining ovary, but she says she still has long-term issues stemming from her incarceration.
“I still wake up at 5, 5:30 every day,” she says. “If I don’t get off my bed, I still hear them knocking on my door. I know I have PTSD.”
‘She belongs to the BOP.’
A mother of another current Aliceville inmate who wished to keep her daughter’s name anonymous to avoid retaliation says her daughter has been waiting for a routine surgery since last July.
“She was told by one person there at the health services administration that until she was throwing up blood every day, they weren’t going to do anything for her,” the mother says.
The delays, uncertainty, and fear weigh heavily on family members of incarcerated people.
“If they took her to the hospital, or something horrible happened, I’m not even going to know until it’s all over, because in an emergency situation, they don’t contact me,” the mother says. “In their eyes, she’s really no longer my daughter. She belongs to the BOP.”
Meanwhile, the women at Aliceville wait. One current Aliceville inmate says she is confined to a wheelchair because of ongoing medical neglect at the prison.
“I used to walk, and after medical neglect I am now in a wheelchair 24/7, 365!” Aliceville inmate Kerstin Jones writes in an email. “I was also witness to three inmate deaths here.”
Jones says she ended up in a wheelchair after suffering a grand mal seizure and a mild stroke. She also also says it took Aliceville officials nine months to send her out for an MRI, then another eight months to see a neurologist.
“What upsets me is the fact that they told me here that there was nothing wrong with me,” Jones writes. “They tell people that excuse all the time, and that’s how they die here.”
“We have women that have been told they have a short time to live, and they still will not do anything for them medically,” Jackson-Brown wrote in an email before her release. “One woman has only 13 percent of her heart working, and they don’t do anything for her. One woman has severe lupus, and they get her half the treatment that she needs. The list can go on and on.”
In her last letter to the Atlanta law firm, McGary mentioned an inmate with lupus as well.
“These medical experts have a lady here with lupus,” she wrote. “They have been altering her results back and forward. She’s been on a catheter for over four months. And they won’t send her to the nearest medical facility. These people here tell us to not hit the panic button unless our bunkies are dying […] Our lives here are in harm’s way.”
Since COVID-19 began sweeping through the federal prison system in late March, Frantzen and other inmates have been petitioning wardens and federal judges to grant them compassionate release. Frantzen filed a court petition on May 18, seeking compassionate release, arguing that, as a survivor of sudden cardiac arrest, she was at elevated risk for complications and death if she contracted COVID-19. A federal judge denied her petition a day after it was filed.
‘The level of a constitutional violation’
It’s not just inmates, though, who have found Aliceville’s health care dangerously deficient. Last July, a federal judge granted Aliceville inmate Angela Beck’s petition for compassionate release after finding that Beck had suffered “grossly inadequate” delays in treatment for aggressive breast cancer while incarcerated.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles ruled, over the opposition of federal prosecutors and the BOP, that Beck’s “invasive cancer and the abysmal health care Bureau of Prisons has provided qualify as ‘extraordinary and compelling reasons’ warranting a reduction in her sentence to time served.”
According to Eagles’ order, Aliceville officials made Beck wait two months for imaging after she first found lumps in her left breast. Then she had to wait eight months for a biopsy, which confirmed the cancer, and two more months for surgery. By that time, the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes, requiring a radical mastectomy. Five more months passed before Beck’s first appointment with an oncologist, who determined that it was too late to begin chemotherapy at that point.
Eagles wrote that the neglect Beck suffered “likely reached the level of a constitutional violation,” and that if she remained in BOP custody, she would continue to face “a substantial likelihood of substandard medical care for her life-threatening disease.”
Such orders are rare, though, and court dockets around the country are stuffed with similar claims.
Another Aliceville inmate, Terri Mollica, filed a petition for compassionate release in March, citing Beck’s case. According to a federal judge’s ruling on her petition, Mollica has an untreated uterine fibroid that weighs roughly 15 pounds and “causes ‘visible protrusions’ from Ms. Mollica’s abdomen and causes her pain, uterine bleeding, anemia, infection, and fevers.” She has been waiting in pain for nearly four years for outside treatment since an Aliceville physician first diagnosed the fibroid in 2016.
However, despite finding that Mollica’s condition was “undoubtedly a very painful burden,” U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre ruled that Mollica had not proven she was at risk of death and that she wasn’t debilitated “to the extent that she cannot care for herself.” Bowdre recommended that Mollica file an Eighth Amendment lawsuit.
‘Deliberate indifference’
Maria Morris, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) National Prison Project, says that, while prisoners are guaranteed health care under the Eighth Amendment, the standard of care is fairly minimal. Under current Supreme Court precedent, an inmate challenging inadequate healthcare must show “deliberate indifference” by officials.
“I choose to believe that there are some prisons and jails that are doing a reasonably good job,” Morris says. “That said, at the ones that I have looked at—and I’m often caused to look at them due to complaints—it’s abysmal.”
Morris says that in the prisons and jails she investigates she often finds officials generate paperwork to give the illusion of care, while doing little to actually address medical issues.
“There are a shocking number of incidents in the health care systems that I’ve looked at where problems are acknowledged and then essentially ignored. Sometimes that can go on for weeks or months or even years.”
“You see a complete lack of interest in resolving problems,” she continues. “You see people who have a serious problem one day, and then the next day it’s completely fine, according to the paperwork. Then the next day someone else is saying everything is terrible. You see people dying of bedsores.”
That’s not hyperbole. The ACLU has been in litigation with the Arizona Department of Corrections since 2012 over its healthcare services or lack thereof. Courthouse News, a news outlet that covers legal news around the country, summarizing a report by an independent doctor who toured one Arizona prison, described it as “an understaffed system in which an inmate died with infected lesions swarmed by flies, a man who ate his own feces was never seen by a psychiatrist, and a woman swallowed razor blades while allegedly under constant watch.”
Crystal Munoz was incarcerated at FMC Carswell, the federal prison hospital for women in Texas, for eight years, until President Donald Trump granted her clemency this February. She says she saw three women there die from negligence.
In one instance, she says she was sitting in sick call when she saw a woman pushing another inmate in a wheelchair. The two were banging on the door, begging for someone to look at the woman in the wheelchair, but they were repeatedly told to sit back down.
“After about three times, she pushed the lady in the wheelchair to the restroom, which was just right around the wall from where we were sitting, and [the woman in the wheelchair] fell over and died of a heart attack.”
“Had the staff paid attention in that moment instead of telling them to get away from the door and go sit down—you know, basically wait their turn—then the lady would still be alive.”
The Fort Worth Weekly newspaper published investigations in 2007 and again in 2012 detailing suspect deaths and abysmal medical care at Carswell.
The newspaper reported that in one case, “an ant infestation, in a ward for paralyzed and wheelchair-bound women, was so bad that ants were found swarming over—and in one case, inside—the women’s bodies.”
Although the BOP declined to comment on McGary, Ofume, or Nelson’s deaths, a spokesperson sent Reason a statement copied from a page on the BOP’s website about its health care services, which says the agency “has trained medical personnel at all of our correctional institutions and these institutions provide essential medical, dental, and mental health (psychiatric) services in a manner consistent with accepted community standards for a correctional environment. The BOP uses licensed and credentialed health care providers in its ambulatory care units, which are supported by community consultants and specialists.”
An Unanswered Question
This story could have been written about any number of prisons or jails. Medical neglect of incarcerated people is a problem across the country on federal, state, and local levels. It’s a national disgrace—the kind people prefer to ignore. Prison officials downplay or hide the scope of it, there is a high bar for inmates trying to bring Eighth Amendment lawsuits challenging prison conditions, and the public by and large pays little attention to what happens behind prison walls.
Inmates know all this, but they send emails and letters anyway, like messages in bottles, hoping they will drift by chance to someone who can do something about it.
Last year on March 18, the day that Hazel McGary died, another woman at Aliceville sent an email to her mother, who in turn sent it to FAMM, a criminal justice advocacy group. FAMM passed the message along to Reason, which led to this investigation.
“Today the fourth person died since I have been here,” the inmate, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, wrote. “She died in medical at around 1 p.m. after sitting in medical complaining of chest pains since 8 a.m., waiting to be seen. My friend from my unit was in medical with her and described the lack of concern shown to this poor woman. Her family I pray learns the truth of how she died, in the hallway slumped over in a wheelchair, until she fell out into the floor dying, laying there with no one rushing over to assist her—praying for an ambulance that never came.”
“My friend told me that that lady today in medical kept saying, ‘I am going to die, I am going to die,'” the message continued. “And she did … but did she have to?”
That’s a question Reason has been asking for the last year, and a question the BOP appears to have no interest in answering.
Zuri Davis contributed to this story.
Note: Written accounts from inmates in this story have been edited for clarity and style.
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The closure of Los Angelesbeaches over July 4 weekend was ordered by county officials Monday “to prevent dangerous crowding,” as confirmed cases of COVID-19 continue to rise.
The county’s public health department said in a statement that beaches will be off limits to the public from July 3 through July 6 at 5 a.m. to prevent the transmission of “deadly COVID-19,” the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Fireworks displays in the county will also be prohibited over the July 4th holiday weekend, the department announced.
“During the holiday weekend, beaches will be totally closed to all recreational activities. Beach parking lots will be closed as well,” the statement read.
The news came as LA county reported more than 2,900 additional cases of the CCP virus on Monday, marking “the single largest one-day case count since the pandemic began,” the department said.
“Data show increases in people testing positive for the virus and increases in hospitalizations as a result,” it said. “Projections by the Department of Health Services show a marked increase in hospitalizations in the coming weeks, which could cause a surge in our healthcare system.”
Barbara Ferrer, the county’s director of public health, said in a statement that closing the beaches and prohibiting fireworks displays during such an “important” summer holiday was an “incredibly difficult decision to make.”
“But it’s the responsible decision to protect public health and protect our residents from a deadly virus,” Ferrer said. “The Fourth of July holiday weekend typically means large crowds and gatherings to celebrate, a recipe for increased transmission of COVID-19.”
In other parts of California state meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the closure of bars in counties that have seen a surge in cases of COVID-19.
A sign in place since mid-March announces the temporary closures of restaurants, nightclubs, gyms, and entertainment venues at LA Live in Los Angeles on May 7, 2020. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
In a statement on Sunday, Newsom said seven counties must close their bars. He also recommended that eight other counties in the most populous U.S. state close their bars, as he urged Californians to “remain vigilant” against the virus.
“Due to the rising spread of #COVID19, CA is ordering bars to close in Fresno, Imperial, Kern, Kings, Los Angeles, San Joaquin, and Tulare, while recommending they close in Contra Costa, Riverside, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Stanislaus, & Ventura,” Newsom said on Twitter.
“COVID-19 is still circulating in California, and in some parts of the state, growing stronger,” he said in a statement.
“That’s why it is critical we take this step.”
Los Angeles County remains the epicenter of the outbreak in the state—making up roughly more than half of new transmissions in California.
According to Fox News, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has said he will not be enforcing the order to shut beaches over the holiday weekend, saying that he had not been consulted prior to the announcement.
“We were not consulted on the beach closure, and will only assist our beach cities in closing parking lots and traffic enforcement on PCH,” Villanueva told Fox 11.
“In regards to enforcing the beach closure, we will not be enforcing it because we are ‘Care First, Jail Last.’”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Vx5dD6 Tyler Durden
Australia’s 2nd-Largest State Imposes 1-Month Lockdown As COVID-19 Infections Spike: Live Updates Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/30/2020 – 09:05
Arizona Gov Doug Ducey last night announced plans for a month-long rollback of the state’s economic reopening, closing bars, restaurants, movie theaters, water parks and other venues, while pushing back the first day of school in the state until Aug. 17. Hours later, on the other side of the world, the leaders of Australia’s second-most-populous state, Victoria, ordered 36 suburbs surrounding Melbourne, the country’s second biggest city, to try and stop a cluster that has emerged over the past couple of weeks.
Australia never had a huge COVID-19 problem (the biggest outbreak before this incident in Victoria was caused by the “Ruby Princess” and the decision to allow infected passengers to disembark without any real scrutiny. Yet, weeks after its neighbor, New Zealand, declared the outbreak over, the country is seeing its worst outbreak yet.
Beginning at midnight on Wednesday (local time), the first suburb-specific stay-at-home order will come into effect for 320,000 people, according to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who spoke at a news conference on Tuesday. For four weeks, residents in the suburbs will be seeing a return to lockdown conditions: They must stay home unless traveling for work, school, healthcare, exercise or food. Restaurants are back to takeout only just weeks after the reopening. Local leaders described the move as a devastating setback for the local economy.
Most of Australia has reported zero or low single-digit daily increases in COVID-19 infections for weeks, Victoria has experienced double-digit increases for each of the previous 14 days, bringing Australia’s national daily totals back toward their highs. Victoria reported 64 new cases on Tuesday, down from the previous day’s 75 new cases.
More lockdown news from overnight: Nevada Governor announced the state won’t hesitate to reimpose restrictions if state-wide trends don’t improve. Georgia Governor Kemp extended his state’s public health emergency until Aug. 11, while LA Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a ‘hard pause’ on cinema reopenings for the largest theater market in the US.
As the number of new cases reported daily accelerates around the world, global cases have reached 10,278,458, according to JHU, while the worldwide death toll has hit 504,936. Elsewhere in Asia, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday unveiled plans to extend a plan to provide free grain to more than 800 million Indians until the end of November as the battle against the virus has left India’s economy in tatters. Though its daily number of new cases is off its highs, the numbers its seeing are still well above the peaks from just a couple of weeks ago. On Tuesday India reported 18,522 new cases, down from the 19,459 recorded the prior day, bringing the country’s total to 566,840. The country reported 418 new deaths, bringing the total to 16,893 deaths.
Indian PM Narendra Modi said Tuesday that while the country’s COVID-19 death rate is “under control,” the country’s outbreak has reached a “critical juncture.”
“People are becoming careless,” he said, adding, “we need to call out the violators.”
Back in East Asia, South Korea confirmed 43 new cases, up from 42 a day ago, as total infections reach 12,800 with 282 deaths, while in Japan, Tokyo has found more than 50 new cases for the fifth day running, TV Asahi reported.
China reports 19 new coronavirus cases, up from 12 a day earlier. Of the new infections, seven were in Beijing, which has been battling a fresh outbreak. China also reported four new asymptomatic patients, who tested positive for COVID-19 but showed no symptoms.
Yesterday, US states recorded fewer than 40k new cases for the first time in a week.
States reported ~36k new cases today. States typically report the fewest cases on Mondays (red in the chart) because of a weekend lag effect.
For example, Arizona reported 600 cases today after four straight days over 3000 cases. pic.twitter.com/PUMWCzmlnI
— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) June 29, 2020
And deaths remain at or close to their lowest levels from March.
There were 332 reported deaths today. The 7-day average in deaths remains about unchanged.
Why are deaths falling or holding steady while cases rise?
— The COVID Tracking Project (@COVID19Tracking) June 29, 2020
Following a move to rollback California’s economic reopening by closing bars and other venues, LA has joined a growing group of cities around the country that are planning to close their beaches for the July 4 weekend.
BREAKING: All L.A. County beaches ordered CLOSED for 4th of July weekend 7/3 through 7/6. This new order makes it illegal to trespass at these locations and is punishable by law to include, but not limited to, a $1000 fine. @FOXLA
Following a handful of vaccine-trial updates out of China, British media reported that a global trial designed to test whether the anti-malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can prevent infection with COVID-19 will soon re-start after being approved by regulators.
Finally, the US isn’t on a “safe list” of destinations for non-essential travel due to be released by EU members later on Tuesday as the bloc unveils guidelines for leisure and business travel beyond its borders. For the past few days, a steady stream of leaks has claimed that the EU would exclude travelers from the US for the remainder of the summer, at least.
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Despite National Lockdown & Sales Collapse, US Home Prices Accelerated For 9th Straight Month In April Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/30/2020 – 09:04
While recent home sales data has rebounded stunningly, Case-Shiller’s home-price appreciation index was expected to show signs of slowing in April (always lagged) – the peak of the lockdowns across the states… but it didn’t.
Somehow, whether through smoothing or seasonal adjustments, the 20-City Composite home price index accelerated at +3.98% YoY (up from March’s revised 3.91% and better than the expected 3.80% rise)
Source: Bloomberg
Despite a MoM disappointment (+0.33% vs +0.5%), home prices have accelerated for 9 straight months.
Phoenix, Seattle, Minneapolis reported highest year-over-year gains among 19 cities surveyed (Detroit excluded for month due to virus-related reporting delays).
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3eKKhju Tyler Durden
Rabobank: “We Have Entered An Important New Phase” Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/30/2020 – 08:55
Submitted by Michael Every of Rabobank
New Deals
End of June; end of Q2; end of H1; and the end of unrest in Hong Kong – or the end of Hong Kong as Hong Kong, depending on what you read. Lots of things for markets to ponder today against a backdrop of equities once again soaring and yet bond yields staying low: while the US 10-year is at 0.63% at time of writing, up 1bp, and vs. a 2020 low of 0.54%, the US 5-year is at its lowest ever at 0.28%.
In the US, Fed Chair Powell yesterday released the prepared comments to be used in his joint testimony –with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin– to Congress today. In them he noted: “We have entered an important new phase and have done so sooner than expected,” yet mentions “extraordinary uncertainty” over the outlook. On that note, it’s unclear if the “new phase” refers to the economic rebound or the virus second wave. (I joke: he refers to the economy, but underlines there is no true recovery without getting Covid under control. Even then, perhaps not: AirBnB’s CEO has just made some extremely gloomy comments on the outlook for the global travel industry, for example: “I will go on record to say that travel will never, ever go back to the way it was pre-Covid: it just won’t.”)
The Capitol Hill questions for Powell and Mnuchin today are obviously going to revolve around what happens next: specifically, how much more fiscally, and on what? With US unemployment support about to end in weeks, part of that answer would appear to be a no-brainer. Yet look at some of the US headlines today and so is the apparent push for a US troop escalation in Afghanistan in order to fight Russia. Regardless of where the stimulus goes, markets will want to see signs that more is coming. Soon. That’s true everywhere: UK PM Boris Johnson, who also wants to taper furlough support in weeks, is now trying to ape FDR rather than Churchill, declaring a British “New Deal” – which critics allege does not offer a great deal of new money. Let’s see if he can get the economy to take off as Leicester is locked down (again).
Meanwhile, the phrase “We have entered an important new phase and have done so sooner than expected” also applies to Hong Kong, where Beijing this morning passed the new national security law for it, which will be effective from tomorrow – when a mass public protest in defiance is possible. It would be nice to give you some details of the law – but we have as few as Hong Kong CEO Carrie Lam. All that is known at this stage is that the legislation will incur life imprisonment for certain transgressions; and that just before the law was passed the US formally revoked Hong Kong’s special status. Moreover:
China has threatened to revoke visas for US officials wanting to visit Hong Kong, mirroring US restrictions on Chinese officials in the US – to which Secretary of State Pompeo has tweeted: “We will not be deterred from taking action to respond”;
Hong Kong political activist Joshua Wong, among others, has just tweeted he has withdrawn from pro-democracy political group Demosisto; and
Chinese imports of soybeans from Brazil were up 41% y/y to 8.86m tonnes in May while from the US they were down 50% y/y to 491K tonnes. Seasonal patterns play a role, but a whole lot of buying from the US is needed in H2 to keep on track with the phase one trade deal.
Of course, this is all being entirely shrugged off in Hong Kong markets. Indeed, China just announced the partial relaxation of capital controls between it and the mainland to try to boost its role as a financial hub. Specifically, HK can now offer wealth management services to rich mainlanders in the Pearl River Delta –those who lacked the initiative to get their gains into it anyway– which means CNY inflows, perhaps. Hong Kongers will be able to buy (opaque) financial products sold by Chinese banks meaning, if people bite, HKD (hence USD) flowing north. None of this answers questions about how HK will cope with no USD flowing *in* and/or USD flowing out, should US sanctions be imposed. As noted, this is being shrugged off “because it would be too damaging for the US”. Recall the same being said about US tariffs on China, and on Chinese action on Hong Kong?
Or Brexit, where face-to-face talks have begun in Brussels. Expect much talk of “level-playing fields” and fish.
“We have entered an important new phase and have done so sooner than expected” also applies to India-China, where both sides continue to escalate at various points along their long border. Trade relations are suffering further too as 59 Chinese apps are banned as “prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India”. For his part, the Global Times editor is doing his usual exacerbatory job, tweeting: “Well, even if Chinese people want to boycott Indian products, they can’t really find many Indian goods. Indian friends, you need to have some things that are more important than nationalism.” And *that* is why the Indian press says not only does India not want in to the RCEP trade deal, but that it does not want to be reliant on China at all.
Which means more lifting for the Chinese domestic market – where data remain mixed. The June PMIs show a mixed bag. Manufacturing was 50.9, up m/m and slightly above consensus. New orders were 51.4 (again up), as were new export orders, albeit at a weak 42.6; but inventories at 46.8 were down, and so was employment at 49.1. The non-manufacturing PMI was 54.4 (also up), but while employment at 48.7 was higher on the month it still means jobs are being shed.
Japanese data today also underline the depth of the Q2 downturn: industrial production came in at -8.4% m/m vs -5.9% consensus and -25.9% y/y. Likewise, ANZ NZ business confidence was still -34.4 in June vs. -41.8 in May despite the virus having been beaten locally; and Aussie private-sector credit dropped 0.1% m/m in May vs a flat consensus and was 3.2% y/y, down from 3.6%, which will not help propel growth ahead.
In short, the month, quarter, and half-year all end with the virus mostly rampant and the economy mostly being propped up by fiscal stimulus we mostly aren’t guaranteed to see extended with new deals, as all the while geopolitics getting decidedly uglier. Yet markets are relying on their own unique take on the economy – and their take-away from central banks.
Oh, and a Great White shark warning has been issued for Cape Cod. Because we apparently needed more The-Mayor-of-Amity-saying-“Those beaches will be open for this weekend” memes.
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Royal Dutch Shell To Write Down Up To $22 Billion After COVID Hit Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/30/2020 – 08:40
Royal Dutch Shell published its second-quarter 2020 outlook Tuesday morning, warning that it would write down up to $22 billion worth of assets and revise its long-term energy price outlook.
This is an update to the second quarter 2020 outlook provided in the first quarter results announcement on April 30, 2020. The impacts presented here may vary from the actual results and are subject to finalisation of the second quarter 2020 results.
Unless otherwise indicated, presented post-tax earnings impacts relate to earnings on a current cost of supplies basis, attributable to shareholders, excluding identified items.
In addition, given the impact of COVID-19 and the ongoing challenging commodity price environment, Shell continues to adapt to ensure the business remains resilient. In light of this, Shell is announcing today a revised long-term commodity price and margin outlook, which is expected to result in non-cash impairments in the second quarter results. Details of the outlook and impairments are provided in the later part of this document. – Shell second quarter 2020 update
The Anglo-Dutch company warned about severe virus-related impacts and the ongoing deterioration in demand for energy products and price slump, which has resulted in post-tax impairment charges of about $15 billion to $22 billion in the quarter.
Based on these reviews, aggregate post-tax impairment charges in the range of $15 to $22 billion are expected in the second quarter. Impairment charges are reported as identified items and no cash impact is expected in the second quarter. Indicative breakdown per segment is as follows:
Integrated Gas $8 – $9 billion, primarily in Australia including a partial impairment of the QGC and Prelude asset values
Upstream $4 – $6 billion, largely in Brazil and North America Shales
Oil Products $3 – $7 billion across the refining portfolio
– Shell second quarter 2020 update
Given the commodity bust and global economic downturn – Shell provides a revised outlook for spot Brent and NatGas:
Henry Hub: $1.75/MMBtu (2020), $2.5/MMBtu (2021 and 2022), 2.75/MMBtu (2023) and long-term $3.0/MMBtu (real terms 2020)
Shell shares trading on the Eurex Exchange is down 2.54% on Tuesday following the news of the write-down.
Credit Suisse analyst Thomas Adolff said the company’s write-down in the second quarter was already expected given market conditions. Adolff called the update a “wake up call.”
“While revised volume guidance looks weak in absolute terms, it was in fact better than previous guidance for 2Q,” he wrote.
Bloomberg Intelligence noted:
“However, better operational performance when prices are low and tax effects go against you does not, unfortunately, get you very far,” Bloomberg Intelligence says Shell’s forecast for asset impairments confirms BI’s view of a “historically weak quarter.”
RBC Capital Markets said the update in the second quarter is “much better” than the guidance provided at the end of April:
“Lower refining-margin assumptions over time were a bigger surprise than lower near-term price deck for oil and gas,” analyst Biraj Borkhataria wrote.
Brent crude August futures show prices have stalled in the 43-39 range for the last 20 sessions.
We noted last week that much of the “recent optimism in oil markets has left many analysts scratching their heads, with no real fundamental reason for the shift in sentiment.”
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83 Tons Of Fake Gold Bars: Gold Market Rocked By Massive China Counterfeiting Scandal Tyler Durden
Tue, 06/30/2020 – 08:24
Over the years, we have periodicallyreported of the occasional gold bar discovered as counterfeit in Manhattan’s Diamond District which instead of containing the yellow precious metal would be filled with gold-plated tungsten or in some cases copper. The news would spark a brief wave of outrage, prompting physical gold holders to run ultrasound spot checks of their inventory, at which point interest would wane and why not: buyer, after all, beware in gold as in every other market, and if someone is spending thousands to buy fake gold, well that’s Darwinism in action.
Yet one market which seemed stubbornly immune to any counterfeiting was that of physical gold in China, which was odd considering that over the past decade China had emerged as the world’s biggest counterfeiter of various, mostly industrial metals used to secure bank loans, better known as “ghost collateral“, and which adding insult to injury, would frequently be rehypothecated meaning often several banks would have claims to the same (fake) asset.
All that is about to change with the discovery of what may be one of the biggest gold counterfeiting scandal in recent history. And yes, not only does it involve China, but it emerges from a city that has become synonymous for all that is scandalous about China: Wuhan itself.
With that preamble in mind, we introduce readers to Wuhan Kingold Jewelry Inc., a company which as the name implies was founded and operates out of Wuhan, and which describes itself on its website as “A Company with a Golden future.”
In retrospect, it probably meant “copper” future, because as a remarkable expose by Caixin has found, more than a dozen Chinese financial institutions, mainly trust companies (i.e., shadow banks) loaned 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) over the past five years to Wuhan Kingold Jewelry with pure gold as collateral and insurance policies to cover any losses. There was just one problem: the “gold” turned out to be gold-plated copper.
Some more background: Kingold – whose name was probably stolen from Kinross Gold, one of the world’s largest gold miners – is the largest privately owned gold processor in central China’s Hubei province. Its shares are listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York (although its current market cap of just $10MM is a far cry from its all time highs hit when the company IPOed on the Nasdaq around 2010) . The company is led by Chairman Jia Zhihong, an intimidating ex-military man who is the controlling shareholder.
What could go wrong?
Well, apparently everything as at least some of 83 tons of gold bars used as loan collateral turned out to be nothing but gilded copper. That has left lenders holding the bag for the remaining 16 billion yuan of loans outstanding against the bogus bars. And as Caixin adds, the loans were covered by 30 billion yuan of property insurance policies issued by state insurer PICC Property and Casualty and various other smaller insurers.
The fake gold came to light in February when Dongguan Trust (one of those infamous Chinese shadow banks) set out to liquidate Kingold collateral to cover defaulted debts. As the report continues, in late 2019 Kingold failed to repay investors in several trust products. To its shock, Dongguan Trust said it discovered that the gleaming gold bars were actually gilded copper alloy.
The news sent shockwaves through Kingold’s creditors. China Minsheng Trust – another shadow banking company and one of Kingold’s largest creditors – obtained a court order to test collateral before Kingold’s debts came due. On May 22, the test result returned saying the bars sealed in Minsheng Trust’s coffers are also copper alloy.
And with authorities investigating how this happened, Kingold chief Jia flatly denies that anything is wrong with the collateral his company put up. Well, what else could he say…
As Caxin notes, the Kingold counterfeiting case echoes China’s largest gold-loan fraud case, unfolding since 2016 in the northwest Shaanxi province and neighboring Hunan, where regulators found adulterated gold bars in 19 lenders’ coffers backing 19 billion yuan of loans, or about USD $2.5 billion. In that case, a lender seeking to melt gold collateral found black tungsten plate in the middle of the bars.
In the case of Kingold, the company said it took out loans against gold to supplement its cash holdings, support business operations and expand gold reserves, according to public records. It then appears to have decided to apply a gold-layer to tons of copper and pretend it was money-good gold collateral. And even more shocking, for years nobody checked the authenticity of the pledged collateral!
In 2018, the company beat a number of competitors in bidding to buy a controlling stake in state-owned auto parts maker Tri-Ring Group. Kingold offered 7 billion yuan in cash for 99.97% of Tri-Ring. The Hubei government cited the deal as a model of so-called mixed-ownership reform, which seeks to invite private shareholders into state-owned enterprises. But Kingold has faced problems taking over Tri-Ring’s assets amid a series of corruption probes and disputes involving Tri-Ring.
After obtaining the test results, Minsheng Trust executive said the company asked Jia whether the company fabricated the gold bars: “He flatly denied it and said it was because some of the gold the company acquired in early days had low purity,” the executive said. In a telephone interview with Caixin in early June, Jia denied that the gold pledged by his company was faked.
“How could it be fake if insurance companies agreed to cover it?” he said and refused to comment further. Well, the answer is simple: the insurance companies were in on the scam, but that’s a story for another day.
In early June, Minsheng Trust, Dongguan Trust and a smaller creditor Chang’An Trust filed lawsuits against Kingold and demanded that PICC P&C cover their losses. PICC P&C declined to comment to Caixin on the matter but said the case is in judicial procedure. A source from PICC P&C told Caixin that the claim procedure should be initiated by Kingold as the insured party rather than financial institutions as beneficiaries. Kingold hasn’t made a claim, the Caixin source said.
In total, Kingold pledge tens of thousands of kilograms of gold to no less than 14 creditors amounting to just under 20 billion yuan.
Caixin learned that the Hubei provincial government set up a special task force to oversee the matter and that the public security department launched an investigation. The Shanghai Gold Exchange, a gold industry self-regulatory organization, disqualified Kingold as a member as of last week.
Following Dongguan Trust and Minsheng Trust, two other Kingold creditors also tested pledged gold bars and found they were fake, Caixin learned. A Dongguan Trust employee said his company reported the case to police Feb. 27, the day after the testing result was delivered, and demanded 1.3 billion yuan of compensation from PICC P&C’s Hubei branch.
Meanwhile, Kingold defaulted on 1.8 billion yuan of loans from Dongguan Trust with an additional 1.6 billion yuan due in July.
The 83 tons of purportedly pure gold stored in creditors’ coffers by Kingold as of June, backing the 16 billion yuan of loans, would be equivalent to 22% of China’s annual gold production and 4.2% of the state gold reserve as of 2019.
In short, more than 4% of China’s official gold reserves may be fake. And this assume that no other Chinese gold producers and jewelry makers are engaging in similar fraud (spoiler alert: they are.)
* * *
Founded in 2002 by Jia, Kingold was previously a gold factory in Hubei affiliated with the People’s Bank of China that was split off from the central bank during a restructuring. With businesses ranging from gold jewelry design, manufacturing and trading, Kingold is one of China’s largest gold jewelry manufacturers, according to the company website.
The company debuted on Nasdaq in 2010. The stock currently trades around $1 apiece, giving Kingold a market value of $12 million, down 70% from a year ago. A company financial report showed that Kingold had $3.3 billion of total assets as of the end of September 2019, with liabilities of $2.4 billion.
Jia, now 59, served in the military in Wuhan and Guangzhou and spent six years living in Hong Kong. He once managed gold mines owned by the People’s Liberation Army, which means he likely has connections all the way to the very top.
Jia Zhihong
“Jia is tall and strong,” one financial industry source familiar with Jia told Caixin. “He’s an imposing figure and speaks loudly. He is bold, reckless and eloquent, always making you feel he knows better than you.”
Several trust company sources said Jia is well connected in Hubei – the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic – which may explain Kingold’s surprise victory in the Tri-Ring deal. But a financial industry source in Hubei said Jia’s business is not as solid as it may appear.
“We knew for years that he doesn’t have much gold ― all he has is copper,” said the source, who declined to be named.
Local financial institutions in Hubei have avoided doing business with Kingold, but they don’t want to offend him publicly, the source said. Why? Because of his extnesive connections with the Chinese army.
“Almost none of Hubei’s local trust companies and banks has been involved in (Kingold’s) financing,” he said.
That explains why most of Kingold’s creditors are from outside Hubei. Caixin learned from regulatory sources that Minsheng Trust is the largest creditor of Kingold with nearly 4.1 billion yuan of outstanding loans, followed by Hengfeng Bank’s 3.9 billion yuan, Dongguan Trust’s 3.4 billion yuan, Anxin Trust & Investment Co.’s 1.9 billion yuan and Sichuan Trust Co.’s 1.8 billion yuan.
But wait, counterfeiting gold is just the tip of the company’s fraud iceberg: several industry sources told Caixin that the institutions were willing to offer loans to Kingold because Jia promised to help them dispose of bad loans.
Hengfeng Bank is the only commercial bank involved in the Kingold affair. The bank in 2017 provided an 8 billion yuan loan to Kingold, which in return agreed to help the bank write off 500 million yuan of bad loans, bank sources said. Kingold repaid half of the debts in 2018. But the loan issuance involved many irregularities as access to the pledged gold and testing procedures was controlled by Kingold, one Hengfeng employee said.
The loan was pushed forward by Song Hao, former head of Hengfeng’s Yantai branch. Song was placed under graft investigation in March 2018 in connection with the bank’s disgraced former Chairman Cai Guohua, whose downfall led to a major revamp in the bank’s management. In 2019, Hengfeng’s new management sued Kingold for the unpaid loans and moved to dispose the collateral. But a test of the gold bars found they are “all copper,” the bank source said.
It is still unclear whether the collateral was faked in the first place or replaced afterward. Sources from Minsheng Trust and Dongguan Trust confirmed that the collateral was examined by third-party testing institutions and strictly monitored by representatives from Kingold, lenders and insurers during the process of delivery.
“I still can’t understand which part went wrong,” a Minsheng Trust source said. Bank records showed that the vault where the collateral was stored was never opened, the source told Caixin.
The falling dominos
Public records showed that Kingold’s first gold-backed borrowing can be traced back to 2013, when it reached an agreement for 200 million yuan of loans from Chang’An Trust, with 1,000 kilograms of gold pledged. The two-year loan was to fund a property project in Wuhan and was repaid on time. Before this, Kingold’s financing mainly came from bank loans with property and equipment as collateral.
It appears that one way or another, the company realized that it could fabricate gold ownership and receive money in exchange for what were basically worthless copper bricks painted as gold; and thanks to Jia’s military connections nobody would ask any other questions.
As a result, starting in 2015, Kingold rapidly increased its reliance on gold-backed borrowing and started working with PICC P&C to cover the loans. In 2016, Kingold borrowed 11 billion yuan, nearly 16 times higher than the previous year’s figure. Its debt-to asset ratio surged to 87.5% from 43.4%, according to a company financial report. That year, Kingold pledged 54.7 tons of gold for loans, 7.5 times higher than the previous year.
It is now safe to assume that most of that gold never existed.
A person close to Jia said the surge of borrowing was partly due to Kingold’s pursuit of Tri-Ring. In 2016, the Hubei provincial government announced a plan to sell Tri-Ring stakes to private investors as a major revamp of the Hubei government-controlled auto parts manufacturer.
In 2018, Kingold was selected as the investor in a deal worth 7 billion yuan. According to the investment plan, Kingold’s purchase of Tri-Ring was part of a strategy to expand into the hydrogen fuel cell business, which is obviously a “logical” fit for a company involved in gold jewelry. Sources close to the deal said Kingold was attracted by Tri-Ring for its rich holding of industrial land that could be converted for commercial development.
Yes, at the very bottom of the fraud we finally get to the one true and endless Chinese asset bubble: real estate.
A Dongguan Trust investment document showed that Tri-Ring owns land blocks in Wuhan and Shenzhen that are worth nearly 40 billion yuan.
The deal drew immediate controversy as some rival bidders questioned the transparency of the bidding process and Kingold’s qualifications.
And here things get even crazier: according to Kingold’s financial reports, the company had only 100 million yuan of net assets in 2016 and 2 billion yuan in 2017, sparking doubts over its capacity to pay for the deal. Despite the fuss, Kingold paid 2.8 billion yuan for the first installment shortly after the announcement of the deal. The second installment of 2.4 billion yuan was paid several months later with funds raised from Dongguan Trust.
In December, Tri-Ring completed its business registration change, marking completion of Kingold’s takeover. However, the new owner has since faced troubles mobilizing Tri-Ring’s assets because of a series of corruption probes surrounding the auto parts maker since early 2019 that brought down Tri-Ring’s former chairman. As Caixin the notes, a majority of Tri-Ring’s assets were frozen amid the investigation and subsequent debt disputes, limiting Jia’s access to the assets.
The fraud is finally exposed
Hobbled by the Tri-Ring deal, which cost billions of yuan but has yet to make any return, Jia’s capital chain was eventually broken when Hengfeng Bank pushed for repayment, triggering a series of events that brought the fake gold to light, said a person close to the matter. Insurers’ involvement was key to the success of Kingold’s gold-backed loan deals. The insurance policies provided by leading state-owned insurers like PICC P&C were a major factor defusing lenders’ risk concerns, several trust company sources said.
“Without the insurance coverage from PICC P&C, (we) wouldn’t issue loans to Kingold as the collateral can only be tested through random picked samples,” one person told Caixin.
PICC P&C’s Hubei branch provided coverage for most of Kingold’s loans, Caixin learned. All the policies will expire by October. As of June 11, 60 policies were still valid or involved in lawsuits.
PICC P&C faces multiple lawsuits filed by Kingold’s creditors demanding compensation. But a PICC P&C spokesperson said the policies cover only collateral losses caused by accident, disasters, robbery and theft. Not fraud, and certainly not losses when the collateral never even existed!
Whose fault
Wang Guangming, a lawyer at Dacheng Law Offices, said the key issue is what happened to the pledged gold and which party was aware of the falsification. If Kingold faked the gold bars and both the insurers and creditors were unaware, the insurers should compensate the lenders and sue Kingold for insurance fraud, Wang said. Insurers are also responsible to compensate if they knew of Kingold’s scam but creditors didn’t, Wang said.
If Kingold and creditors were both aware of the fake collateral, insurers could terminate the policies and sue the parties for fraud. But if insurers were also involved in the scam, then all the contracts are invalid and every party should assume their own legal responsibilities, Wang said.
A financial regulatory official told Caixin that previous investigations of loan fraud cases involving fake gold pledges found there was often collusion between borrowers and financial institutions.
Earlier this year, PICC P&C removed its Hubei branch party head and general manager Liu Fangming. Sources said staff members involved in business with Kingold were also dismissed. PICC P&C said Liu’s removal was due to internal management issues. It didn’t answer Caixin’s question about whether Liu was involved in the Kingold scandal.
PICC P&C’s Hubei branch provided insurance for most of Kingold’s gold-backed loans.
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The above story is shocking in exposing just how multi-faceted fraud is in China: capitalizing on pre-existing cronyism and connections with China’s powerful army, the founder of Kingold was allowed to basically do anything he wanted, no questions asked, including counterfeiting over 83 tons of gold bars to get billions in funds to participate in China’s housing bubble, only for a series of unexpected events to unwind the frauds one after another and expose the type of sordid scandal that is at the heart of most Chinese “enterprises” and business ventures.
As for the gold, yes – several billion in gold bars never existed and yet resulted in a cascade of subsequent cash flow events allowing tens of billions in funds to be released, “benefiting” not only founder Jia, but China’s broader economy. Which is, needless to say, terrifying: because whereas just after the financial crisis China was engaged in building ghost cities, everyone knew these were a symbol of demand that would never materialize, even if the cities themselves did exist. However, it now appears that a major part of China’s subsequent economic boom has been predicated on tens of billions in hard assets – such as gold – which simply do not exist.
As for what this means for the price of gold… well, Kingold is certainly not the only Chinese company engaging in such blatant fraud, and the consequences are clear: once Chinese creditors or insurance companies start testing the “collateral” they have received in exchange for tens of billions in loans and discover, to their “amazement”, that instead of gold they are proud owners of tungsten or copper, they have two choices: reveal the fraud, risking tremendous adverse consequences and/or prison time, or quietly buy up all the gold needed to literally fill the void from years of gold counterfeiting.
Something tells us option two will be far more palatable to China’s kleptoculture where one domino cold trigger a collapse of the entire financial system. What happens next: a panicked scramble to procure physical gold, one which even our friends at the BIS will be powerless to stop from sending the price of the precious metal to all time highs.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3ibEENx Tyler Durden
