Key Dates In The Carlos Ghosn Saga

Features

September 30th, 5:28am

Asharq Al-Awsat

Former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn is a fugitive in Lebanon ANWAR AMRO via AFP

From his shock detention to an audacious escape from Japan, the rollercoaster saga of former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn has grabbed headlines around the world. As Japanese prosecutors seek a two-year jail sentence for Ghosn's aide Greg Kelly, here are the key dates to know: Ghosn and his aide Greg Kelly are arrested on suspicion of financial misconduct on November 19, after arriving in Tokyo on separate private planes. They are accused of devising a scheme to under-report the salary of Ghosn, then Nissan chief and head of an alliance between Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors. The pair deny wrongdoing. Ghosn is swiftly removed from his role at all three firms in a stunning fall from grace for one of the world's best-known businessmen. Ghosn and Kelly are charged with under-reporting Ghosn's salary between 2010 and 2015, then rearrested on allegations of under-reporting up to 2018. In December, Ghosn is arrested again on fresh allegations that he transferred losses from personal financial investments to Nissan. His detention -- in conditions far removed from his flashy lifestyle -- is extended, according to AFP. Ghosn attends his first court hearing in January, insisting the accusations are "meritless and unsubstantiated". His first bail request is denied, and two new charges of financial misconduct are filed against him. The tycoon tells AFP from prison that his detention would "not be normal in any other democracy". In March, the court approves Ghosn's third request for bail, set at one billion yen ($9 million). Ghosn is rearrested in a dawn raid of his Tokyo apartment in April. Authorities hit him with a charge of aggravated breach of trust, alleging he siphoned money for personal ends from cash transferred from Nissan to a dealership in Oman. The court grants Ghosn a second bail, but he is banned from leaving Japan and requires court permission to see his wife. Nissan CEO Hiroto Saikawa resigns amid allegations that he also padded his salary. He denies wrongdoing but apologizes. Meanwhile, Ghosn and Nissan are accused by US securities regulators of hiding more than $140 million in his expected retirement income from investors. Ghosn gives authorities the slip -- hiding in an audio equipment case to flee on a private plane to Lebanon, which has no extradition treaty with Japan. A week later, Ghosn says Nissan colluded with prosecutors to have him arrested because he wanted to deepen the Japanese firm's alliance with Renault. He says he fled because he did not believe he would get a fair trial. Two men accused of helping Ghosn flee Japan, former US special forces member Michael Taylor and his son Peter, are extradited from the United States and go on trial in Tokyo. They apologize for their role in the escape and are sentenced to 20 months' jail time for Peter and two years for Michael. Japanese prosecutors seek a two-year jail sentence for Kelly on charges of under-reporting Ghosn's compensation, a year after the trial began in September 2020. "Kelly was behind the efforts to hide Ghosn's income," they said in their statement. "It was a role only Kelly, who had deep trust from Ghosn, could fulfil." The American lawyer denies wrongdoing. Prosecutors also demand that Nissan, on trial alongside Kelly, be fined 200 million yen ($1.8 million).

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3217911/key-dates-carlos-ghosn-saga

Norway Charges Professor with Violating Sanctions on Iran

Iran

September 30th, 5:23am

Asharq Al-Awsat

A general view of the cityscape with the new Munch Museum, also called Lambda, to the left, in the Bjorvika neighborhood in Oslo, Norway November 17, 2020. NTB SCANPIX/Cornelius Poppe via REUTERS

A German-Iranian professor at a Norwegian technical university was charged Wednesday with violating sanctions on Iran by inviting four guest researchers from the Islamic Republic and giving them access to a laboratory. A Norwegian prosecutor said the visiting researchers had access to knowledge that could be useful to Iran’s nuclear program. Norwegian broadcaster NRK reported that during the period from February 2018 to 2019 the professor, who was not identified, invited four Iranian researchers to NTNU university in Trondheim, the Scandinavian country's third largest city. The duration of the guests' stay varied. “The serious thing here is that people from Iran had access to knowledge, and this is knowledge that could be useful to Iran’s nuclear program. We do not say that it is, but it is the potential danger here that is serious,” The Associated Press quoted prosecutor Frederik Ranke as telling NRK. Ranke said the professor was charged with violating the Iran sanctions, export control regulations and Norway's data breach legislation. If found guilty, he faces up to 10 years in prison. Non-European Union member Norway has adhered to all UN Security Council resolutions on Iran’s nuclear program and has supported EU restrictive measures against Iran for a number of years. According to his Norwegian lawyer, the professor denies wrongdoing. Lawyer Brynjulf Risnes told NRK that is client has left Norway but is willing to return to stand trial. “There is nothing in the information they have received and the projects they have worked on that enables them to contribute to the nuclear industry in any way,” Risnes told NRK. PST, Norway’s domestic security agency, suspected the professor of having contributed to a data breach by giving others unauthorized access to a computer system, NRK said. The actual data breach occurred when a program — given by one of the guest researchers — was installed. He could then retrieve data, even if he was not affiliated with NTNU, according to Ranke. Bjarne Foss, head of the engineering cybernetics department at NTNU, told the university newspaper that the professor and the Iranian guest researchers "used a special lab, called the nano-mechanical lab, relatively intensively over a short period.” The paper said that one can do advanced analyses of the properties of various metal alloys, such as their strength and hardness, in the lab. After learning this, university officials contacted PST in early 2019, the Universitetsavisa said.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3217906/norway-charges-professor-violating-sanctions-iran

China’s Energy Crisis May Be the Birth Pangs of a Better Grid

Opinion

September 30th, 5:15am

David Fickling

David Fickling -

Never let a good energy crisis go to waste. That’s been the maxim of lobbies on each side of the climate debate as power prices have spiked and blackouts spread from Australia, to Texas, and the UK in recent years. Those who rightly wish to speed the transition away from fossil fuels see the failure of largely thermal-powered electricity networks as a spur to remake an energy system that’s already failing. Those who want to impede that progress see it as an opportunity to smother renewable power before it grows any bigger. That battle is now playing out in China, where a swath of provinces are contending with power rationing after the price of coal spiked. Thermal generators have switched off rather than lose money selling power at regulated tariffs, leading to production halts at aluminum smelters, textile plants, and soybean processors. In Liaoning province, a traditional industrial powerhouse east of Beijing, even traffic lights and homes have lost power for brief periods. It’s likely that the coal faction will win the first round of this fight. At bottom, the current crisis is a fuel shortage. China still has ample generation on tap, at least on paper. Its mostly coal-fired thermal power plants have been running at barely more than half capacity all year, a mild improvement on recent history but still far short of levels they’d need to make a decent return. The problem is that with strong power demand, hydroelectric dams underperforming, and the first cold snap of winter coming early, there’s simply not enough black rocks around to power their turbines. At China Shenhua Energy Co.’s Huanghua port, volumes in August were down 2 million metric tons from the same period a year earlier, a 10% decline. China Coal Energy Co.’s production was also 10% lower from a year earlier, representing a 1 million ton drop. Loadings of coal onto rail carriages, after starting the year strongly, plummeted as the summer wore on, and in July hit their seasonally lowest levels since 2017. All this at a time when electricity demand has been growing at its fastest pace in a decade. Still, the fact that an energy crisis is happening in China at all is, in its way, a positive sign. In the past, the first instinct of government would be to bail out the state-owned generators who are losing money on 1,377 yuan ($213) a ton coal and keep prices to industrial users artificially low, according to David Fishman, a manager with Lantau Group, a Hong Kong-based energy consultancy. With the travails of China Evergrande Group indicating that Beijing is turning off the money tap, that tendency is receding. Electricity price suppression is a reason that China is one of the world’s least energy-efficient major economies. Allowing costs to rise should help factories be more thrifty in their power usage. “End users have to get used to the idea they have to pay more for power,” says Fishman. For now, the quickest way to prevent the current situation escalating any further as the temperatures plummet in northern China will be to do what the price signal of that $213 coal is indicating — dig up and burn more fossil fuels. The governor of Jilin province, one of those hit by the cuts, made exactly that appeal on Monday. That will have knock-on effects around a globe that’s fighting for every scrap of hydrocarbons right now, with Brent crude above $80 a barrel and UK natural gas above 2 pounds a therm. Given how rapidly the world needs to be reducing carbon-intensive energy over the coming decade, that likely shift is grim news. Yet there’s a silver lining that will be easy to overlook in the coming months: What the world is short of is ultimately not coal and gas, but energy. In the short term, fossil fuels are likely to be the quickest ways to bridge the power gap — but in the long term, the market is going to seek the cheapest alternative. Almost everywhere in China and around the world, that is now renewable. The most striking sign of where this is heading can be seen in the way that the economic planners at the National Development and Reform Commission are rethinking their rules on the power industry. For the past five years, this has been guided by the so-called “dual control” system — hard targets issued to provinces to limit energy consumption and increase energy efficiency. Despite good intentions, those controls have failed to incentivize sufficient renewable generation. That may be changing. In revised guidance on the rules issued earlier this month, renewable power will be exempt from the consumption caps, while major energy-hungry projects must receive approval from Beijing before going ahead. That will make it far more attractive for provinces to build extra wind and solar parks, where they’ve hitherto been held back for fear of breaking their energy consumption limits. “China is transiting from an energy intensity target to a carbon intensity target,” says Yan Qin, an energy analyst with Refinitiv, a financial data business. Energy modelers have long complained that the recent pace of renewable build-out, while astonishingly rapid, is woefully insufficient to turn the corner on emissions. China’s next five-year plan envisages building barely half of what’s needed to halt the rise in power sector emissions. The current surge in thermal power prices may be precisely the catalyst to unlock those necessary investments. Bloomberg

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3217901/david-fickling/china%E2%80%99s-energy-crisis-may-be-birth-pangs-better-grid

Britney Spears’ Father Removed as Her Guardian

Entertainment

September 30th, 5:07am

Asharq Al-Awsat

Around 100 fans gathered at the Los Angeles courthouse ahead of the ruling - AFP

Britney Spears' father was removed from his controversial role as his daughter's guardian on Wednesday by a Los Angeles judge, ending a long and bitter legal battle by the pop princess. Jamie Spears was suspended with immediate effect and replaced with a temporary conservator "in the best interests" of the singer, said Judge Brenda Penny, calling the present arrangement "untenable." "Mr Spears is ordered to turn over all the conservatorship assets," said Penny, AFP reported. Spears' father has controlled her life for the past 13 years, under a legal arrangement the 39-year-old US singer has slammed as "abusive." Wednesday's move came after a years-long campaign that played out in public, and after the emergence in the last week of two new powerful documentaries featuring allegations that Jamie Spears had bugged his daughter's phone calls. Spears' lawyer Mathew Rosengart described her father as a "cruel, toxic and abusive man." "Britney deserves to wake up tomorrow without her father as her conservator," Rosengart said. "It is what my client wants, it is what my client needs, it is what my client deserves." Dozens of supporters gathered outside the courtroom cheered and wept as news of the ruling emerged. Spears' fiance Sam Asghari took to Instagram to post "FREE BRITNEY! CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!!!!!" along with a photo of what appeared to be him handing the singer a rose. In their motion filed this week, Spears' lawyers said: "Every day that goes by with him as conservator -- every day and every hour -- is one in which he causes his daughter anguish and pain." - 'Kafka-esque nightmare' - Those claims were seemingly bolstered by a New York Times documentary released Friday that alleged Jamie Spears had surveillance devices secretly installed in his daughter's bedroom to record her conversations. "It really reminded me of somebody that was in prison," a former security firm employee told the "Controlling Britney Spears" filmmakers. The pop star's lawyers said the Times' allegations about her father showed "horrifying and unconscionable invasions of his adult daughter's privacy." Jamie Spears denies any illegal surveillance took place. Another new documentary -- Netflix's "Britney vs Spears," released on Tuesday -- claims the singer twice tried to hire her own lawyer in the early years of the conservatorship, but was denied. In July, Spears was finally successful in appointing her own lawyer -- Rosengart -- and last month, her father filed a petition for the conservatorship to be ended. The judge appointed accountant John Zabel as a temporary conservator of Spears' estate, in an arrangement she said can last until the end of the year. Jamie Spears' lawyers repeatedly objected to his suspension, disputing the Times' allegations and questioning the veracity of his daughter's testimony that the conservatorship amounted to "abuse." "There is not a shred of evidence to support suspension," said Vivian Thoreen, via video call. Jamie Spears' 13-year record as guardian had been "impeccable" and he should not be temporarily replaced but instead the entire guardianship should be terminated immediately, they argued. Rosengart insisted that this was simply a tactic and said Jamie Spears was afraid he would have to turn over "evidence of his corruption and worse." Jamie Spears' immediate suspension is "what my client Britney Spears -- who has been abused by this man not only for the past decade but since her childhood -- wants and deserves," said Rosengart. "Please hear the plea of my client" to "end this Kafka-esque nightmare," he added. - 'Never fit to serve' - Spears' representatives and fans have long accused her father of profiting from the guardianship, which was set up after a highly public 2007 breakdown when the shaven-headed star attacked a paparazzo's car at a gas station. The lawyers have said her father was "never fit to serve," citing in their petition allegations of his "reported alcoholism" and "trauma he caused his daughter since her childhood." A hearing expected to formally dissolve the conservatorship will be held on November 12.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3217896/britney-spears%E2%80%99-father-removed-her-guardian

Turkey Set to Clear Over 80,000 Mines on Iran Border

Iran

September 30th, 5:02am

Asharq Al-Awsat

Turkey Set to Clear Over 80,000 Mines on Iran Border

Turkey has started the removal of 83,000 landmines along its eastern border with Iran as part of a two-year EU-funded project, a spokesperson for the UN Development Program (UNDP) in Turkey told AFP on Wednesday. The 18.6-million-euro project, carried out in partnership with the Turkish Mine Action Center, will make 4.2 million square meters of land safe for local civilians and border management personnel. Turkey, a party since 2004 to the Ottawa Treaty which bans the use of anti-personnel landmines, agreed to phase out anti-personnel landmines and establish a humanitarian border surveillance system. The mines were put in place in eastern Turkey "between 1953 and 1996 in order to prevent illegal crossings and smuggling as well as to ensure security against the threat of the PKK", head of communications for the UNDP in Turkey, Faik Uyanik, said. In the 1990s, the Turkish army intensified the use of mines as part of its fight against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), listed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies. "Landmines have earned universal condemnation as the most inhumane tool for controlling borders," UNDP resident representative Louisa Vinton said in a statement on Tuesday. "We are so proud that UNDP Turkey is currently managing the largest de-mining project under way under United Nations auspices anywhere in the world. The large scale is testament to Turkey's strong commitment to humanitarian border management, in line with EU standards," Vinton said. In all, 175 deminers backed by 16 mine detection dogs are working in four Turkish provinces for demining operations. Some of the land cleared by the project will be open for raising livestock and farming, the main local occupations.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3217891/turkey-set-clear-over-80000-mines-iran-border

The Maps That Steer Us Wrong

Opinion

September 30th, 4:53am

Greg Bensinger

Greg Bensinger -

Too many of our digital maps are sellouts. Just like the projection maps we’re all familiar with that inaccurately depict Greenland dwarfing South America, the digital maps that orient our lives on smartphones and laptops are the result of a series of compromises or half-truths and don’t always accurately represent the world as it is. As a result, we too often misunderstand the true contours of the world and then make poor decisions based on misinformation. As our reliance on digital maps increases — for instance, with the proliferation of driverless cars — the gap between the world as it is and the world as our maps represent it risks growing ever wider. Maps have always been driven by other forces, like economic or political interests, and they represent the world as the mapmakers would like people to see it. But they can also be misused to push a certain agenda. Examples abound. Electoral maps in the United States often conflate land area with the number of voters, overstating the popularity of Republican candidates. Last year, a scary map depicting the volume of global air travel went viral when it was mistaken for a map of coronavirus infection spread. Maps purporting to show the extent of wildfires in Australia were similarly inscrutable. And Zillow and Redfin’s home pricing estimates, factoring in geographic features like school districts and walkability scores, baffle home sellers and buyers alike by being both too low and too high. Those are just recent examples. In 1988, a Soviet cartographer admitted that all publicly available maps of the country had been falsified for five decades — with rivers and towns mislabeled or removed entirely — on orders from the secret police. Today, digital cartography is a booming business, thanks to the proliferation of in-map advertising. By 2023, Google, the maker of the most popular digital map, could take in $11 billion annually from ad sales on maps primarily; directions from home to work often include references to Subway sandwich shops or Chase Bank locations. Rather than being drawn up by a group of drafters, maps today are produced by diplomats, policymakers, marketers and tech executives, who decide what data goes into maps covering everything from border disputes to wireless and broadband availability. Marketing is why those pretty pink maps showing T-Mobile’s 5G service availability around the country are largely a fantasy. Maps are most vital for the things we cannot see — from the location of undersea reefs to the strength of cell signals to traffic jams across town. An enduring image of the pandemic is that of schoolchildren huddled outside libraries and McDonald’s and Starbucks locations, desperate to find an internet signal. The lack of reliable and speedy internet service in broad areas of the nation, exposed by remote school and work, is the result of decades of underinvestment in broadband infrastructure. But maps are another culprit. Maps that tell the federal government who has access to broadband service and at what speeds are completely unreliable. The Federal Communications Commission’s official broadband map is almost wholly reliant on disclosures from broadband service companies that have an incentive to make their coverage areas appear more widespread. And they get to claim coverage of an entire census block with broadband if they reach just one residence within the area, which can cover hundreds of homes or, in some cases, thousands of square miles. “Our broadband maps are terrible,” said Jessica Rosenworcel, the agency’s acting chair. Lawmakers have allocated some $65 billion to address internet connectivity issues in the infrastructure bill wending its way toward the White House. The F.C.C. has a $20 billion fund to disburse over the next 10 years to help companies reach rural areas. But the federal government still doesn’t know precisely where the problem areas are, in large part because of the F.C.C.’s flawed mapping. The faulty maps flummoxed Dustin Ogilvie, a cybersecurity expert, who said he spent the better part of two years searching for a house to buy in suburban Chicago that could offer broadband availability and speeds as promised by the F.C.C. online. “It looks like there’s availability, and then you ask the companies, and they say there isn’t,” he said. “This system is just not designed for regular people. I don’t see how anyone can be expected to use it.” Some houses in a neighborhood had broadband internet, while adjacent homes didn’t. One company offered to extend a line some 500 feet to a house he was considering in Union, Ill., but it would cost him $87,000. Wireless coverage maps can be even harder to decipher than those for broadband. T-Mobile and AT&T use different shades of pink or blue to differentiate their 5G service from slower wireless service offerings. Splotches on Verizon’s red color-coded US maps combine its supposed nationwide 5G service with its more sluggish LTE service. The New York Times

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3217886/greg-bensinger/maps-steer-us-wrong

US Says It Won’t Normalize or Upgrade Diplomatic Ties With Syria’s Assad

Arab World

September 30th, 4:45am

Asharq Al-Awsat

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks as he meets with the Syrian cabinet in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by Sana on March 30, 2021. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

The United States has no plans to "normalize or upgrade" diplomatic relations with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and also does not encourage others to do so, a State Department spokesperson said on Wednesday. The comments came in response to Reuters questions on whether Washington was encouraging and supporting a rapprochement between Jordan and Syria after Jordan fully reopened its main border crossing with Syria on Wednesday. "The United States will not normalize or upgrade our diplomatic relations with the Assad regime nor do we encourage others to do so, given the atrocities inflicted by the Assad regime on the Syrian people," a State Department spokesperson said in an email. "Assad has regained no legitimacy in our eyes, and there is no question of the US normalizing relations with his government at this time." The United States has suspended its diplomatic presence in Syria since 2012. The Trump administration last June imposed its most sweeping sanctions ever targeting Assad and his inner circle to choke off revenue for his government in a bid to force it back to United Nations-led negotiations and broker and end to the country's decade-long war. The United Arab Emirates and Syria restored diplomatic ties in 2018. The Egyptian and Syrian foreign ministers met on Friday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, in what Egyptian media said was the first meeting at that level for about a decade. Officials in Jordan, a US ally, and Lebanon have urged Washington to ease sanctions on Syria. "We believe that stability in Syria, and the greater region, can only be achieved through a political process that represents the will of all Syrians and we are committed to working with allies, partners, and the UN to ensure that a durable political solution remains within reach," the State Department spokesperson said. Assad has recovered most of Syria but some areas remain outside his control. Turkish forces are deployed in much of the north and northwest, the last opposition stronghold, and US forces are stationed in the Kurdish-controlled east and northeast.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3217881/us-says-it-won%E2%80%99t-normalize-or-upgrade-diplomatic-ties-syria%E2%80%99s-assad