dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

''Reposting

Canada #48 >>19882880

Peter Nygard Convicted of Sexual Assault in Canada Court

Peter Nygard, the former Canadian fashion magnate, was found guilty on four counts of sexual assault in a Toronto court after several days of deliberation by a jury.

Stephanie Hughes Published Nov 12, 2023

(Bloomberg) — Peter Nygard, the former Canadian fashion magnate, was found guilty on four counts of sexual assault in a Toronto court after several days of deliberation by a jury.

The verdict, delivered Sunday morning, followed weeks of testimony from five women Nygard was accused of sexually assaulting. The women shared detailed accounts in court of how Nygard invited them to his company’s headquarters in downtown Toronto before assaulting them. The names of his accusers are protected by a court-ordered publication ban.

Nygard, 82, had faced six different criminal charges. He was found not guilty on one count of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement. The maximum sentence for sexual assault in Canada is 10 years in prison, unless the victim is under 16 years old. A date for sentencing hasn’t been set yet.

The women who made the allegations, which took place between the 1980s and mid-2000s, ranged in age from 16 to their late 20s at the time. Nygard met some of the women on trips to the Bahamas where he owned property and, according to the prosecution, used his standing in the fashion industry to lure them with promises of jobs or a tour of the lavish offices.

The first woman to take the stand was a 28-year-old actress who was living in Toronto; she met Nygard as she was returning from a yoga retreat in the Bahamas in the late 1980s.

Now 62, she described accepting a ride from the mogul back to her apartment, but instead being taken on a tour of his company’s offices. The two exchanged numbers and later met again to attend a Rolling Stones concert with friends in December 1989.

At the end of that night, he invited her to a private suite in his company’s headquarters for a drink. She became alarmed when she realized she would be unable to leave the room, which was locked with a keypad. Nygard moved to the bed, first asking her to make a sandwich and then suddenly becoming angry and berating her. He chased her around the room, tearing her clothes off before pinning her to the bed and raping her, the woman testified.

Nygard’s lawyer, Brian Greenspan, spent weeks challenging the women during cross examinations. At one point, the questioning left one of Nygard’s accusers too distraught to continue: “I just need to breathe,” she told the court as her hands shook.

The other four women also testified to alleged assaults by the former businessman. Nygard who spent several days testifying in his own defense, said he couldn’t even recall four of the five women.

Nygard was arrested in late 2020 in Winnipeg on US charges claiming he trafficked women and girls for sex over the course of 25 years. In October 2021, Nygard agreed to US extradition to face racketeering and human trafficking charges.

Nygard founded Nygard International in 1967, which grew to be one of the largest Canadian-owned sellers of women’s clothing. It filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2020.

Kai Bickle-Nygard, Nygard’s son, who has spoken out against his father, addressed the media following the verdict. “We are dealing with a systematic monster who used his business talents for evil to prey on others,” Bickle-Nygard told reporters on Sunday. “And it’s very good thing that justice was served here.”

https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/peter-nygard-convicted-of-sexual-assault-in-canada-court

>>19907768

Spoken like a /halfmind/ minion

Cyber Attack Hits Australian Ports

by Sam McKeith Reuters November 11, 2023

(Reuters) The Australian government said on Saturday that it was coordinating a response to a cybersecurity incident that forced ports operator DP World Australia to suspend operations at ports in several states.

A DP World Australia spokesperson told Reuters on Saturday that operations at impacted ports were not yet restored. A statement said the company was “working around the clock to restore normal operations safely” after the breach was detected late on Friday.

Update from Cyber Coordinator in a significant cyber incident affecting a number of Australian ports. https://t.co/5aOckYsAoc

— Clare O'Neil MP (@ClareONeilMP) November 11, 2023

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday that the government was coordinating a response.

Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator, appointed earlier this year in response to several major data breaches, was managing the official response to the incident, O’Neil said.

DP World Australia, part of Dubai’s state-owned ports giant DP World, operates four container terminals in Australia in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Western Australia’s Fremantle.

According to DP World, in the Asia Pacific region it employs more than 7,000 people and has ports and terminals in 18 locations.

https://gcaptain.com/cyber-attack-hits-australian-ports/

Shipping Shifts From Jackpot To Job Cuts After $364 Billion Boom

By Brendan Murray and Tara Patel Bloomberg November 12, 2023

Nov 12, 2023 (Bloomberg) –Consumers gearing up to buy the latest imported appliances, clothes or electronic gadgets this holiday season might want to spare a thought for the companies that will struggle to make money for the next few years hauling products across the ocean.

That’s because the container shipping industry, cast as the Grinch that spoiled Christmas over the past two years with record-high freight rates and slow deliveries, is returning to its pre-pandemic place in the corporate world: perennial underachiever Charlie Brown.

The biggest carriers posted net income totaling $364 billion in 2021 and 2022, according to figures compiled by industry veteran John McCown, after a decade of scant profits. They’ll likely drift back into the red this quarter as the rates they charge fall below costs and look to stay there for the foreseeable future.

Booms-turned-busts have been more abrupt and sensational, but rarely has an established industry so tied to the global economy lurched from historic profits to below break-even levels more directly than the shipping lines that move 80% of the world’s merchandise trade have this year. After Covid’s massive demand shock, the culprit now is too much supply.

“I’m certainly concerned about the next 24 to 36 months,” Rolf Habben Jansen, chief executive officer of Hamburg-based Hapag-Lloyd AG, said in an interview last week. “We are going to see a downturn.”

Consider the tougher times facing A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the largest publicly traded container line. According to Bloomberg Intelligence credit analyst Stephane Kovatchev, the Copenhagen-based company’s free cash flow, which reached $27 billion last year, may drop about 80% this year and could turn negative in 2024. That may weigh on the company’s bonds, he wrote in a research note on Friday.

Over the past 10 days, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and closely held CMA CGM SA of France — all top-five players that together control about one-third of the world’s container capacity — said they’re cutting costs as some fear the slump will last at least through 2024.

Some executives are urging against price wars, which contributed to a wave of consolidation and at least one major bankruptcy in the years leading up to the pandemic.

“Each actor will have to be responsible to ensure that the market remains reasonable amid rates that are relatively low,” CMA CGM Chief Financial Officer Ramon Fernandez told reporters Friday. “Price wars after a while hurt not only those who start them but everyone.”

Such concern stems from a combination of economic forces: Goods demand is returning to pre-pandemic levels just as supply is rising in the form of new, bigger ships. It can take two to three years to build a container ship, which typically operate for about 25 years. So timing their launch and retirement with the ebbs and flows of the business cycle is inherently difficult.

To manage capacity in the short term, the main tools at the carriers’ disposal are canceling individual voyages or suspending services entirely on trade lanes where demand is weak. In prolonged slumps they can also let charter contracts expire, idle some ships or sell old ones in the scrap steel market.

Kovatchev said what’s emerging is a standoff between the strong and the weak. “The bigger companies such as Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have the cash to wait and focus on cost-cutting, as opposed to aggressive capacity reductions — for now,” he said. “It all boils down to supply, demand and who will blink first.”

Of course, the flipside of shipping’s pain are lower costs for the manufacturers and retailers that own the cargo being transported, which ultimately helps central bankers tasked with bringing down still-elevated inflation across many developed economies.

“A couple years ago, it was double-digit inflation in goods prices and maybe a 4% or 5% increase in services,” said Phil Levy, chief economist at Flexport Inc., a San Francisco-based digital freight-forwarding company. “To the extent you were getting inflationary pressure from goods, or in a very tight goods market — that has disappeared.”

Companies including clothing brand Under Armour Inc. and furniture maker Lovesac Co. cited relief from lower ocean shipping expenses over the past quarter.

With inflation eating away at their paychecks, consumers are being cautious about spending and seeking cheaper ways to have parcels delivered.

“Our own data tells us that the wider economic picture may be having an influence on the services our customers opt for, with many looking for more cost-effective shipping options,” said Karen Reddington, president of FedEx Express Europe. “We expect external business conditions to be challenging in the near term, and there remains uncertainty with respect to the timing of demand recovery.”

For the container carriers, the cost of moving merchandise can’t stay this low indefinitely, because their expenses are heading in the opposite direction.

Transiting the Suez Canal from Asia next year, for instance, will be 15% costlier, the waterway’s authority said in mid-October without explanation. On the other main trade route, ships passing through the drought-stricken Panama Canal are facing long waits, surcharges, and time- and fuel-consuming detours around South America to avoid the delays.

Those costs are small compared with the $1 trillion in investment the industry faces in the coming decades to decarbonize — a shift that will require engines that run on cleaner-burning fuels and new infrastructure to produce, store and transport the alternative fuels.

The big European carriers have issued estimates for the surcharges that’ll take effect with shipping’s upcoming entry into the European Union’s Emissions Trading System in January.

At CMA CGM, one of the strategies to cushion the peaks and valleys of shipping is to diversify. The second-generation scion Rodolphe Saade, who leads the company started by his father, has used the pandemic windfall to invest in an airline, ports and logistics operations and even the media.

The Saade family is worth about $19 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That compares with $33 billion in April.

https://gcaptain.com/shipping-shifts-from-jackpot-to-job-cuts-after-364-billion-boom/