Italy's crackdown on same-sex parenting

 Even at eight years old, twins Ginevra and Emanuele Giraldi Duca, born through surrogacy in the United States and raised by their two dads in Rome, are not oblivious to Italy's clampdown on same-sex parents.

Right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni came to power six months ago vowing to combat what she calls the "LGBT lobby". In recent weeks authorities made it harder for same-sex couples to be legal parents and lawmakers proposed an anti-surrogacy law widely seen as targeting gay couples.

Ginevra was indignant when, two weeks ago, an interviewer on a TV show asked her parents whether the twins missed having a mum.

"But no! What is she on about?" Ginevra protested, watching a recording of the talk show.

"We do not need a mother to live... It is also possible to live with two fathers. We are happy, we have all the things that other children have," Emanuele told Reuters during a family interview at their home in southern Rome.

In January, the government issued orders that municipalities stop the registration of most children with same-sex parents, complicating access to schooling and medical services. The matter came to light when the centre-left mayor of Milan publicised it last month.

The measure means that in most cases only the biological parent of children raised by gay or lesbian couples can have parenting rights, leaving the other partner with no legal role.

Then in March, the ruling coalition presented a law in parliament to extend a national ban on surrogacy to couples who go abroad for the practice, with jail terms of up to two years and fines of 600,000-1 million euros ($1.09 million).

While the governing parties have a solid majority in parliament, it is unclear whether the bill will eventually pass, amid doubts about its legal grounding and warnings it would disproportionably affect same-sex couples.

Surrogacy, which is regulated and widespread in the United States and Canada but restricted in much of Europe, is illegal in Italy. Critics warn of the potential for a "poverty bias" against women who become surrogate mothers due to financial need.

Going abroad to have a baby is "an emotional rollercoaster and you also have to face the hostility of your own country" when you come back, said Cristiano Giraldi, one of the twins' fathers along with his partner Giorgio Duca.

FEWER RIGHTS

In Catholic Italy, gay marriage is illegal and same-sex couples already have fewer rights than in most of western Europe. A 2016 law allowing same-sex "civil unions" fell short of allowing LGBT partners to adopt each other's children.

A prominent lawmaker from Meloni's Brothers of Italy party has called same-sex parenting not normal, but public attitudes are more nuanced.

An Ipsos poll last month showed that while 65.4% of Italians oppose the idea of surrogacy, 45% are in favour of legal recognition for surrogate-born children versus 26% who are against.

Rainbow Families, a group representing same-sex parents in Italy, says its members are parents to around 1,500 children, but that this underestimates the national total.

Italian LGBT couples that want a baby have to go abroad as neither surrogacy, artificial insemination or adoption is available for them domestically. Heterosexual couples, on the other hand, can adopt and resort to artificial insemination.

Rainbow Families President Alessia Crocini said 90% of Italians who choose surrogacy are heterosexual couples, but they mostly do so in secret, meaning the new ban would de facto affect only gay couples who cannot hide it.

The January government order stops mayors from accepting birth certificates of foreign-born surrogate children with two fathers. It also bans certificates that name two mothers of an Italian-born baby after artificial insemination abroad.

In the absence of a national law on LGBT couples and their children, Milan and some other left-leaning cities had taken the autonomous initiative of registering them, putting biological and non-biological parents on the same legal footing.

Rome was among the cities that did not make this choice, meaning Giorgio Duca obtained legal parenting rights over Ginevra and Emanuele only after a lengthy special adoption process.

In the absence of joint recognition, non-biological parents cannot collect their children from school or request medical treatment for them without written authorisation from the legal parent.

Furthermore, if the legal parent dies or becomes seriously ill, the surviving partner has no rights over the couple's children, who risk going to foster homes or being entrusted to other relatives.

"NO DISCRIMINATION"

Family Minister Eugenia Roccella, a former pro-abortion campaigner turned Christian conservative, defended the order to mayors, which enforces a ruling from Italy's top appeals court that says children from LGBT families do not necessarily have to have two legal parents.

"There is no discrimination against (these) children" as they can still access schooling and medical services through one legal parent, Roccella told parliament last month.

Non-biological parents can still obtain parenting rights through the special stepchild adoption procedure used by Duca in Rome, but it takes years, can cost thousands of euros and involves court hearings and interviews by social services.

"The idea of having to adopt your own child is not great," said Giulia, who declined to give her surname, at an LGBT families rally in the capital in March with her female partner and their twin children.

In some places, already-registered children of same-sex families are now being erased from the records, upon the initiative of prosecutors. In Milan, procedures are ongoing against four couples.

In such cases, couples receive a notice from the police, have to go to court, pay a lawyer and face a judge. In similar cases previously, judges have routinely ruled against same-sex parents.

So far, there is no suggestion the government will back down on either the order or the new surrogacy bill, despite condemnation from the European Parliament in a resolution last week.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/italys-crackdown-same-sex-parenting-060656729.html

Collapse of FTX deprives academics of grants, stokes fears of forced repayment

 The collapse of crypto exchange FTX and its grant-making body, the FTX Future Fund, has left some researchers at top universities without the funds they were promised and others trying to repay grants before they could be ordered to.

Launched in February 2022, the FTX Future Fund was part of the FTX Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire which fell apart last year, in what U.S. prosecutors called an "epic" fraud.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have accused the FTX founder of stealing billions of dollars in customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research. He denies wrongdoing.

On Nov. 11, 2022 – the same day that FTX filed for bankruptcy – the team behind the fund announced via a blog post on an altruism forum that they had resigned and would be unlikely to honour their commitments to those awarded grants.

"We deeply regret the difficult, painful, and stressful position that many of you are now in," the post by Nick Beckstead, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Avital Balwit, Ketan Ramakrishnan and William MacAskill said.

Beckstead, Aschenbrenner, Ramakrishnan and MacAskill did not respond to multiple attempts to contact them via LinkedIn, Twitter and email for this article. Balwit declined to comment.

Representatives for FTX also declined to comment and declined to say whether the FTX Foundation is included in the bankruptcy proceedings.

PhD student Korbinian Kettnaker told Reuters he has been forced to drop out of his studies in the philosophy of computer science at Britain's University of Cambridge after his funding from FTX fell through.

The FTX Future Fund supported research into topics that "improve humanity's long-term prospects" and was funded primarily by Bankman-Fried, according to a profile of its activities published on Twitter. It aimed to spend between $100 million and $1 billion in its first year, it said, without disclosing its endowment.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/collapse-ftx-deprives-academics-grants-090323934.html

Texas abortion pill ruling could disrupt U.S. drug oversight

 A federal judge in Texas could soon order the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval of abortion pill mifepristone, a move that if allowed to stand could severely undermine the agency, health policy and legal experts said.

The closely followed case could potentially lead to a nationwide ban on mifepristone - part of a two-drug regimen that accounts for more than half of U.S. abortions - and call into question the FDA's power to regulate all drugs nationwide, they said.

It also risks leading to self-censure by the pharmaceutical industry as drugmakers embrace treatments perceived as safe investments and shy away from those that might get caught up in politically charged legal entanglements, some experts cautioned.

"This case potentially has very significant consequences for both products that are already on the market, as well as new products," said Susan Lee, a partner in Goodwin's Life Sciences group and FDA practice. "The potential implications are so much broader than just what could happen to mifepristone."

A ruling against the agency's approval of a drug over 20 years earlier would be unprecedented and could ripple through drug research and development for years, with implications for public health and access to new treatments.

Any impact on the FDA will depend on details of the judge's ruling in the case known as Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The challenge was brought by a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors seeking withdrawal of the FDA's mifepristone approval before U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, a conservative former Christian activist.

The court could order mifepristone pulled from the market while it considers a final ruling. When the case is resolved, that could become a permanent ban, though it is not clear how long that might take and any ruling is expected to be appealed.

https://news.yahoo.com/analysis-texas-abortion-pill-ruling-100446458.html

German banks hit by wave of complaints from savers

 Complaints from consumers about banks and other financial firms in Germany rose by a fifth last year, official data shows, as regulators flex their muscles to shore up trust in the sector.

BaFin, Germany's financial watchdog, has been increasing its focus on consumer protection in the wake of the collapse of Wirecard, the blue-chip payment company that folded in an accounting scandal.

It received 15,000 complaints from consumers in Europe's largest economy about their banks and other financial service providers last year, up from 12,500 in 2021 and a fourth consecutive year of sharp increases.

Gripes include long processing times for account closures, changes to terms and conditions, and shrinking branch networks, according to officials, bankers and consumer protection advocates.

The figures, reported by Reuters for the first time, will be made public in an annual report in May.

"It cannot be that financial institutions are doing well because they treat their customers badly," Chan-Jae Yoo, a BaFin official, said in an interview.

Deutsche Kreditwirtschaft, an umbrella organisation that lobbies for German finance, said German banks are "extremely stable and robust" and confidence remains "high" and "unaffected" by recent turmoil stemming from the collapse of lenders in the United States and Switzerland.

But a survey last year by YouGov showed that degree of trust in Germany's financial sector, essential for promoting wider financial stability and attracting capital to support economic growth, was below the global average, lagging the likes of Canada, Australia and major Asian markets.

Niels Nauhauser, a consumer advocate in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, has spent two decades fighting for consumer rights.

"The mere fact that consumers are increasingly asking us and seeking our advice is proof enough that they do not fully trust financial institutions," he said.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-german-banks-hit-wave-050625567

Italian drugs cartels conceal payments via Chinese shadow banks

 Drugs cartels operating in Italy are increasingly using shadow networks of unlicensed Chinese money brokers to conceal cross-border payments, according to Italian judicial and law enforcement authorities.

The development highlights how an issue that U.S. authorities have been battling in connection to Latin American narcotics groups has taken root in Europe.

In Italy, authorities are seeing an increased use of the money transfer networks, which operate without an easily traceable trail and facilitate rapid payments, seven judicial and law enforcement officials told Reuters. The transfer method involves depositing a sum with a money broker in one country while another agent in the network elsewhere in the world pays the equivalent amount to the intended recipient.

"The phenomenon is on the rise," said Italy’s national anti-mafia prosecutor, Barbara Sargenti, who coordinates investigations both domestically and abroad. In an interview at her office in Rome, Sargenti said the growing number of related investigations was due both to an increase in activity and an improved ability by authorities to detect such cases.

She added that because money is transferred outside of the banking system it makes it very difficult for authorities to identify and trace. "This kind of financial intermediation undermines the entire international anti-money laundering system,” which is based on the control and analysis of banking transactions, she said. Such measures are a key weapon in the fight against criminal gangs.

Italian authorities have announced at least six investigations involving drug gangs and the Chinese payment networks since the issue first publicly came to light about five years ago. Those probes involve alleged payments to narcotics suppliers in Latin America, Morocco and Spain, according to authorities and judicial documents reviewed by Reuters.

U.S. authorities have said Chinese “money brokers” represent one of the most worrisome new threats in their war on drugs, as a Reuters investigation in 2020 found. Earlier this year, the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Anne Milgram highlighted the issue during a Senate committee hearing, saying Mexican drug cartels were using Chinese money laundering organisations “around the world to facilitate laundering drug proceeds.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/insight-italian-drugs-cartels-conceal-110311927.html

Bank of Canada will stay put this year, rate cuts unlikely - Reuters poll

 The Bank of Canada will keep its key interest rate steady at 4.50% through 2023, according to most economists polled by Reuters, with an even smaller minority now expecting an interest rate cut by year-end than a poll taken a month ago.

Markets still expect more than 50 basis points of cuts, pricing fuelled by fears last month over stresses in the U.S. and European banking sector, despite Canada's economy and labor market performing better than expected.

In a speech last week, BoC Deputy Governor Toni Gravelle said the Canadian banking system had a well-earned international reputation for stability, suggesting policymakers are more focused on inflation and how the economy is performing.

In March, the BoC was the first major central bank to stop its aggressive hiking cycle and is on what it calls a conditional pause. So all 33 economists polled March 31-April 6 said it will hold its overnight rate at 4.50% on April 12.

A majority of forecasters, 23 of 31, said the rate would remain unchanged for the rest of 2023. Only seven expected at least one 25-basis-point rate cut by end-year, down from 13 in a survey taken about a month ago.

Derek Holt, head of capital markets economics at Scotiabank, said the fundamentals of the Canadian economy do not support current market pricing for rate cuts later this year.

"In my view, central banks are likely to set a higher bar against easing than market participants ... The plague that has driven thinking (is) that they can't possibly hike because, gosh, that might damage growth, when that's the point."

At 5.2%, inflation is still running well over twice the Bank's 2% target and is unlikely to reach the goal until at least 2025, the poll suggested, a view also shared in the latest BoC business outlook survey.

The economy, which expanded at a better-than-expected pace in January, was forecast to have grown 1.7% last quarter, significantly higher than the 0.3% contraction predicted just three months ago and the BoC's own expectation of 0.5% growth.

Quarterly growth forecasts were largely downgraded from a January survey. The economy was predicted to grow 0.7% and 1.4% this year and next, compared with 0.5% and 1.5%, respectively.

While a recent expansionary federal budget and the latest surge in oil prices are good news for the oil-exporting economy, it could make the BoC's job tougher as both risk pressuring inflation higher than the central bank wants.

Indeed, 10 of 13 economists who replied to an additional question said the bigger risk was inflation in 2023 would be higher than they expect.

Asked what was more likely from the Bank this year, 18 economists in response to a separate question were evenly split on whether it would be to hike again or cut rates.

"If momentum continues to remain strong, that could be something that pushes the BoC towards tightening again later this year," Robert Both, macro strategist at TD Securities, said.

"The current level of inflation and signs of a rebound in Q1 GDP growth are something that are going to make it very difficult for the BoC to cut in the near term."

The Canadian dollar is forecast to rise over the coming year on expectations the export-driven economy avoids a hard landing and its U.S. counterpart weakens as the rate gap with its peers stops widening, a separate Reuters survey showed.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/bank-canada-will-stay-put-this-year-rate-cuts-unlikely-2023-04-06/

Banks could begin canceling lines of business credit soon

 The growing banking crisis has small business owners concerned their lines of credit could be canceled as elevated interest rates further diminish loans in the financial sector.

Molly Day, vice president of public affairs with the National Small Business Association (NSBA), said, "These firms are justifiably concerned about the security of their finances, particularly following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank."

"They’ve been through it all before, credit lines being called in early, loans being reduced," she added. "It was a nightmare then, and it would be a nightmare again today, but unlike large businesses that can absorb financial fluctuations, small businesses are often seen as risky and have little recourse."

The economic recession from 2007 to 2009 sent shock waves through the small business sector as fewer startups were created, layoffs were implemented and commercial lending slowed.

Last week, the NSBA released a small business poll on the current state of lending in the U.S. following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). 

More than half of the respondents said they are not able to obtain adequate financing, while one-third of respondents said terms have become less favorable to their business in just the last month.

Meanwhile, 13% of the respondents said that in the last month alone, they have experienced a decrease in the account limits of their credit lines or credit cards.

Tambra Hollingsworth, owner of Southside Spectrum Pediatrics in Virginia Beach, Virginia, told FOX Business, "I was awarded start-up cost in 2022, however, it was not nearly enough to open a small pediatric medical practice."

"Since, I have been denied more credit because of insufficient revenue with a business in its infancy stage," she said. 

Small businesses have seen lending standards tighten over the last year, creating ripple effects in their ability to maintain and grow their businesses, according to the NSBA.

Austin Jones, co-founder of Daedalus Industrial, an engineering and automation company working in the tech sector, said customers in the industry "will have their access to debt constrained if the banking system continues this trajectory."

"We are very concerned," he continued. "If a tech company has their lines of credit canceled, there are significant growth impacts for firms trying to rapidly scale."

Jones said you can draw a direct line between availability of capital and opportunity to scale.

"Unexpectedly canceling lines of credit in tech would be the equivalent of pulling the emergency brake on your car driving down the interstate," he said.

What sector hit most?

Jason Premo, president and chief technology officer of Acclaim Aerospace, said, "Manufacturing will be impacted heavily due to cost of materials and labor, unlike an IT software company with much fewer people and zero raw materials."

"Small to medium businesses that are growing need working capital the most," he said. "They are paying for weekly labor and materials up front or within 30 days, spending lots of money very fast while not seeing any customer payments for six months."

Employees work on the assembly line at the Dakkota Integrated Systems manufacturing facility in Detroit on May 5, 2022. (Jeff Kowalsky / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"When recession hit in 2008, we had $1 million in credit with Wells Fargo, and they surprised us by canceling our line despite being studious customers and always being on time with payments," Premo said.

Meanwhile, the latest ADP jobs data showed that jobs in financial activities (-51,000), professional/business (-46,000), information (-7,000) and manufacturing (-30,000) lost jobs in March.

Bank crisis, rates to blame 

On Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned that the turmoil that has engulfed the financial sector in the wake of recent bank collapses is not over and will ripple throughout the economy for many years.

Last week, First Citizens Bank began acquiring assets from Silicon Valley Bank. In March, the Federal Reserve announced another 25-basis-point interest rate increase after SVB and Signature Bank collapsed, erasing billions of market value in financial stocks, while First Republic Bank struggled to stay in business even after a $30 billion lifeline from other financial institutions.

In an interview with FOX Business, SBA lending manager Paul Pickhardt said small businesses are "worried sick about the impact rising interest rates will have on their ability to operate in the face of significantly higher payments."

"When you blend higher rates with inflation worries and continued talk about recession, small businesses owners are really put in a pinch," he added.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/banks-canceling-lines-business-credit-soon