Poland's new president is positioned to make history — or rewrite it
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BBC apologises to Jenrick over suggestions he is xenophobic in Radio 4 broadcast
The BBC has apologised to Robert Jenrick after a refugee charity boss suggested the shadow justice secretary is xenophobic during Radio 4's Today programme. Mr Jenrick has accused the broadcaster of smearing 'millions of worried citizens as 'xenophobic' for their completely understandable fears'. While appearing on the radio on Wednesday, Krish Kandiah, a director of Sanctuary Foundation, claimed Mr Jenrick had increased 'fear of the stranger' among people. Mr Kandiah added: 'The technical name for this is xenophobia. 'All phobias are by definition irrational. Nevertheless, they have a huge impact. 'Over the past year, xenophobia has fuelled angry protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers, deepening divisions in our communities.' In a letter to the Conservative MP, the broadcaster's head of editorial standards Roger Mahony said the comments went 'well beyond' what is expected of its Thought For The Day segment. Mr Mahony said: 'I have concluded that, while its reflection on fear in society from a faith perspective is broadly in line with expectations of Thought For The Day, some of the language it used went beyond that. 'I have asked for the two references to xenophobia to be edited from the programme on BBC Sounds. Please accept my apology for their original inclusion.' The content has since been removed from the programme on BBC Sounds. Mr Jenrick said: 'Illegal migration is obviously fuelling crime and the public are right to be concerned about it. 'It's extremely disappointing the BBC thought it was acceptable to smear millions of worried citizens as 'xenophobic' for their completely understandable fears about undocumented men entering illegally.' A series of protests have been held outside the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, over recent weeks after an asylum seeker was accused of attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl. Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, denies the charges of sexual assault and is due to stand trial this month. In a statement, the BBC said: 'During this episode of Thought For The Day, criticism was made of recent comments by shadow secretary of state for justice Robert Jenrick, about hotels housing asylum seekers. 'While the programme's reflection on fear in society from a faith perspective was broadly in line with expectations of Thought For The Day, some of the language used went beyond that and we apologise for its inclusion. 'It has been removed from the version on BBC Sounds.'
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Trump debanking order will have limited impact on crypto, experts say
Last week, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing bank regulators to rescind guidance that could lead to 'politicised or unlawful debanking.' Crypto businesses, and even some prominent conservatives — including the president himself — have alleged they were denied or lost access to bank accounts at the behest of politically-motivated, Biden-era regulators. But last week's executive order, entitled, 'Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans,' won't do much for crypto businesses that fear they've been locked out of the traditional financial system, according to experts who spoke to DL News. That's because the order does little to root out 'reputation risk.' The term refers to regulators' ability to dissuade banks from engaging supposedly controversial customers, such as pornographers, firearms manufacturers, payday lenders, and crypto companies. Critics of the practice say that banks should only consider objective criteria, such as a customer's financial risk, when deciding whether to offer someone a checking account. Guidance documents and manuals 'This is going to make people happy who have been asking for it, but it's not clear how much good it's going to do them,' Dru Stevenson, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, told DL News. The executive order directs bank regulators to remove the use of reputation risk 'or equivalent concepts' that could result in 'politicized or unlawful debanking' from their 'guidance documents, manuals, and other materials.' But it isn't clear that examples of debanking were motivated by politics, according to Stevenson. 'It's not clear to me that they couldn't still allow for reputational risk that would apply to, say, an AI company, because that's not exactly a political issue or something that's unlawful,' he said. And reputation risk can have a downstream effect on banks' profits. 'If you have risk averse investors at one of the gigantic pension funds, or mutual funds, and they find out that Wachovia has gone gung ho about crypto, that might be a reason for them to switch to a more conservative bank,' Stevenson said. Moreover, banks were always free to ignore guidance documents and manuals according to Stevenson. As such, removing references to reputation risk from such documents will likely have little practical effect. 'If you're an agency, you can't go into court and say, 'This person violated our guidance document,'' he said. 'You have to show that they violated the statute or that they violated a codified regulation that went through notice and comment rulemaking.' Management reports Julie Hill, the dean of the University of Wyoming's law school, noted that Trump-appointed bank regulators have already said they will stop using reputation risk. While the regulators have new leadership, they are largely staffed by the same people who served under the Biden administration, Hill added. And reputation risk isn't the only tool regulators can use to pressure banks to reject certain customers. Anti-money laundering laws are one reason banks often reject customers, according to Hill. 'The vast, vast majority of suspicious activity reports don't lead to any sort of follow up, let alone any sort of enforcement,' she told DL News. Moreover, banks are not allowed to tell customers that their account was flagged for suspicious activity. 'We have a situation where banks had to file one or more SARs, and they decided it's just not worth it, we should debank, because we don't want our regulators upset with us, and it's getting expensive to file all these SARs.' Another tool at regulators' disposal: management reports. 'If a regulator suggests to a bank, 'We think this is risky, maybe you want to stop doing it' [but] it's not really that risky, banks might do it anyway,' Hill said, 'because their management rating will get downgraded and then that impacts all sorts of things, including their capital requirements.' Those ratings are also secret, according to Hill. 'Anytime you see a really broad authority with very little limit, and then also a lot of secrecy or lack of transparency about how regulators or banks implement that, you're likely to set up claims for debanking,' she said. Banks' responsibility The executive order also directs the regulators to identify financial institutions that had any 'past or current, formal or informal, policies or practices that require, encourage, or otherwise influence … politicized or unlawful debanking.' Finding examples of politically-motivated debanking could be straightforward if the orders came from federal regulators, according to Hill. 'It's a much harder thing if what you think happened is the banks, for whatever reason, just decided to debank people for political reasons, unconnected with risk or profit or whatever,' she said. 'There's a real question about how we think regulators are going to figure that out and whether we think there's any duty on the bank to voluntarily disclose it.' Whatever the effect of the executive order, both professors agreed that a new administration could reinstate the use of reputation risk unilaterally. 'It kind of highlights how unsticky changes made by the executive branch are when it comes to discretionary enforcement,' Hill said. 'This is one of those things that can change from administration to administration.' Stevenson agreed. 'If we ever get to have other presidents, the next president can just do another executive order and put it all back, like, overnight,' Stevenson said. Aleks Gilbert is DL News' New York-based DeFi correspondent. 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Exclusive-US pharma tariffs likely weeks away as Trump plans for Alaska, sources say
By Maggie Fick, Andrea Shalal and Dave Graham WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The announcement by President Donald Trump's administration of the results of a probe into pharmaceutical imports and new sector-specific U.S. tariffs likely remains weeks away, four official and industry sources said, later than initially promised as he focuses on other matters. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had said in April when the review of whether reliance on foreign drug production threatens U.S. national security was launched that he anticipated that it would conclude between mid-May and mid-June. Global pharmaceutical companies are bracing for the outcome of the investigation, which will usher in sector-specific tariffs that Trump has said could start small and eventually rise to 250%. The Republican president said as recently as last week that his plan relies on phased-in tariffs, giving drugmakers time to increase manufacturing in the United States as he pushes to alter what he says are global trade distortions in many industries. One government official in Europe and a source with knowledge of the White House process, as well as two sources at European drug firms familiar with the process, told Reuters that the report and tariffs announcement was not imminent and likely weeks away. These sources spoke on condition of anonymity. A White House spokesperson, asked about media reporting indicating that the results of the probe could be several weeks away, cautioned that such reports were pure speculation unless confirmed by the White House. The spokesperson declined to give further details about the timing of the pharma probe or one involving semiconductors. The investigation is examining pharmaceutical imports ranging from finished prescription drugs to active pharmaceutical ingredients, called APIs, and other raw materials, with the results to be disclosed in a Commerce Department report. Lutnick said last month the tariff plan that will be based on the report would be completed by the end of July. Lutnick then said on July 29 it would be two more weeks. The investigation was launched under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. While the investigation is ongoing, the pharmaceutical sector has been exempted from the sweeping tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. The United States has reached bilateral trade deals with the UK, Japan, South Korea and the European Union that promised more favorable terms for their pharma exports than those expected to be levied on the sector globally. A European government official said that an announcement before the end of August appears unlikely but cautioned that the timeline could shift depending on other developments. A source at a European drugmaker said the Trump administration is focused on the U.S.-Russia summit in Alaska on Friday and therefore no announcement is expected this week. The source familiar with the White House process said that announcement is unlikely to come this week given other priorities. That source and one other source said that they expect the Trump administration to announce the results of its national security investigation into semiconductors first, followed by the pharma announcement, putting it a few weeks away. The Section 232 provision authorizes the president to adjust imports - including imposing tariffs - if a category of goods is being imported into the United States in quantities that "threaten or impair the national security." Medical goods historically have been spared from trade wars due to the potential harm to patient access, and drugmakers have said tariffs could undercut other health policy goals outlined by the Trump administration, including lowering drug prices. U.S. tariffs on imported pharmaceutical products would mark the latest in a series of sectoral tariffs announced by the administration, following metals and cars, that some economists have predicted will drive up costs for American consumers.
