CBS News
Dockworkers at key U.S. ports threatening strike consumers could feel
Determined to thwart the automating of their jobs, about 45,000 dockworkers along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts are threatening to strike on Oct. 1, a move that would shut down ports that handle about half the nation’s cargo from ships.
The International Longshoremen’s Union is demanding significantly higher wages and a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and container movements that are used in the loading or loading of freight at 36 U.S. ports. Whenever and however the dispute is resolved, it’s likely to affect how freight moves in and out of the United States for years to come.
If a strike were resolved within a few weeks, consumers probably wouldn’t notice any major shortages of retail goods. But a strike that persists for more than a month would likely cause a shortage of some consumer products, although most holiday retail goods have already arrived from overseas.
A prolonged strike would almost certainly hurt the U.S. economy. Even a brief strike would cause disruptions. Heavier vehicular traffic would be likely at key points around the country as cargo was diverted to West Coast ports, where workers belong to a different union not involved in the strike. And once the longshoremen’s union eventually returned to work, a ship backlog would likely result. Experts say it takes four to six days to clear up every day of a port strike.
“I think everyone’s a bit nervous about it,” said Mia Ginter, director of North America ocean shipping for C.H. Robinson, a logistics firm. “The rhetoric this time with the ILA is at a level we haven’t seen before.”
Current strike waterfront
The longshoremen’s union and the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, haven’t met to negotiate since June, when the union said it suspended national talks to first complete local port agreements. No further national contract talks have been scheduled.
Harold Daggett, the union president, warned earlier this month that the longshoremen stood ready to strike once their contract expires on Sept. 30.
“We are very far apart,” Daggett said. “Mark my words, we’ll shut them down Oct. 1 if we don’t get the kind of wages we deserve.”
Top-scale port workers now earn a base pay of $39 an hour, or just over $81,000 a year. But with overtime and other benefits, some can make in excess of $200,000 annually. Neither the union nor the ports would discuss pay levels. But a 2019-2020 report by the Waterfront Commission, which oversees New York Harbor, said about a third of the longshoremen based there made $200,000 or more.
Daggett contends, though, that higher-paid longshoremen work up to 100 hours a week, most of it overtime, and sacrifice much of their family time in doing so.
The Maritime Alliance has said it’s committed to resuming talks and avoiding the first national longshoremen’s strike since 1977. It has accused the union of having already decided in advance to walk off the job.
“We need to sit down and negotiate a new agreement that avoids an unnecessary and costly strike that will be detrimental to both sides,” the alliance said in a statement.
In the case of a short-lived strike, industry experts say consumers wouldn’t likely notice shortages of store goods during the holiday shopping season. Most retailers had goods transported ahead of the usual pre-holiday shipping season, and they’re already stored in warehouses.
“It would be an inconvenience, but it’s not going to be ‘Santa’s not showing up,’ ” said Jonathan Chappell, senior managing director of transportation at Evercore ISI, an investment research firm.
Imports to ports are up 10% this year over 2023 on the East Coast and 20% on the West Coast, indicating that some freight was shipped in anticipation of a strike, said Ben Nolan, a transportation analyst with Stifel.
What’s the election got to do with it?
The longshoreman’s union, Nolan suggested, commands some leverage going into a presidential election, with memories still fresh of jammed ports and clogged supply chains that followed the pandemic recession. Unions also have drawn support this year from political candidates who have been courting the labor vote.
“If ever there was a time that labor can get what they want,” Nolan said, “it’s right now.”
If a strike were to extend beyond a month or so, spot shortages of goods could develop. Some manufacturers could run short of parts, notably in the auto and pharmaceutical industries, which generally don’t stock large parts inventories. Exports of autos and other goods that move through the East Coast also could be affected.
Most analysts don’t expect President Biden to intervene, as he and Congress did to head off a railroad strike in 2022, at least not before the Nov. 5 presidential election.
Robinson, of the logistics firm C.H. Robinson, noted that the administration can’t legally impose a contract on the dockworkers before a strike. Still, if a strike were deemed to endanger national health or safety, Ginter said, the president could, under the Taft-Hartley Act, seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period. That would suspend the strike.
But the Reuters news service says an administration official told it on Tuesday that Mr. Biden doesn’t intend to step in to head off a walkout. “We’ve never invoked Taft-Hartley to break a strike and are not considering doing so now,” Reuters quotes the official as saying. “We encourage all parties to remain at the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith.”
Analysts say the union’s initial demands included a 77% pay raise over the course of a six-year contract. Daggett, the union president, said sizable pay raises would make up for the inflation spike of the past few years.
And he said it would give workers a share of the billions the companies have earned, especially during the pandemic. Copenhagen-based Maersk, among the world’s largest container shipping companies, made more than $50 billion in profits over the past four years. Earnings, though, dropped substantially in 2023 as pandemic-era consumer demand eased and brought sky-high freight rates back down.
Automation looming large
Daggett said the union members expect to be waging their biggest fight – against the automation of job functions at ports – well into the future.
“We do not believe that robotics should take over a human being’s job,” he said. “Especially a human being that’s historically performed that job.”
As an example, he pointed to a gate that automatically processes trucks without union labor at the port in Mobile, Alabama. The gate has been in place since 2008.
The Maritime Alliance has said it offered, as part of a new contract, to keep current provisions that bar fully automated terminals and block the use of semi-automated equipment without an agreement from both sides on protecting human jobs.
Experts say it’s not altogether clear whether automation would lead to layoffs.
A 2022 study by the Economic Roundtable of Los Angeles that was funded by the West Coast dockworkers union found that automation cost 572 jobs each year in 2020 and 2021 at partially automated terminals at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.
But another study that same year by a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, that was commissioned by port operators and shippers concluded that between 2015, when Los Angeles-area ports adopted some automation, and 2021, paid hours for port union members grew 11.2%.
At the huge Port of Rotterdam, one of the world’s most automated ports, union workers pushed for early-retirement packages and work-time reductions as a means to preserve jobs. And in the end, mechanization didn’t cause significant job losses, a researcher from Erasmus University in the Netherlands found. Still, he predicted that automation could cut port jobs by 25% in the future.
U.S. ports trail their counterparts in Asia and Europe in the use of automation. Analysts note that most U.S. ports take longer to unload container ships than do those in Asia and Europe and suggest that without more automation, they could become even less competitive. Shippers might send more cargo to Mexican or Canadian ports and then on to the U.S. by rail or truck, said Eleftherios Iakovou, associate director of supply chain resilience at Texas A&M University.
He suggested that the two sides discuss the use of automation to augment the functions of human workers rather than to displace them.
Any final reckoning over automation, though, remains a long way off. For shippers to abandon U.S. ports, Mexican ports would have to become more efficient at the same time that U.S. ports became “prohibitively inefficient,” said Stifel’s Nolan.
“I do think there’s some validity to it, but it’s not a this-decade kind of issue,” he said.
In the meantime, if there is a strike, analysts say West Coast ports could pick up at least some additional freight that might be diverted from Eastern ports, especially from Asia. But they couldn’t handle it all. Neither could the U.S. rail system.
“The East Coast has grown a lot,” Nolan said. “There’s just no way to get around it.”
Dania Beach, Fla. — Scientists have moved about about 300 endangered sea corals from South Florida to the Texas Gulf Coast for research and restoration.
Nova Southeastern University and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi researchers packed up the corals Wednesday at the NSU’s Oceanographic Campus in Dania Beach. The sea creatures were then loaded onto a van, taken to a nearby airport and flown to Texas.
Researchers were taking extreme caution with the transfer of these delicate corals, NSU researcher Shane Wever said.
“The process that we’re undertaking today is a really great opportunity for us to expand the representation of the corals that we are working with and the locations where they’re stored,” Wever said. “Increasing the locations that they’re stored really acts as safeguards for us to protect them and to preserve them for the future.”
Each coral was packaged with fresh clean sea water and extra oxygen, inside a protective case and inside insulated and padded coolers and was in transport for the shortest time possible.
NSU’s marine science research facility serves as a coral reef nursery, where rescued corals are stored, processed for restoration and transplanted back into the ocean. The school has shared corals with other universities, like the University of Miami, Florida Atlantic University and Texas State University, as well as the Coral Restoration Foundation in the Florida Keys.
Despite the importance of corals, it’s easy for people living on land to forget how important things in the ocean are, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi researcher Keisha Bahr said.
David Fischer / AP
“Corals serve a lot of different purposes,” Bahr said. “First of all, they protect our coastlines, especially here in Florida, from wave energy and coastal erosion. They also supply us with a lot of the food that we get from our oceans. And they are nurseries for a lot of the organisms that come from the sea.”
Abnormally high ocean temperatures caused widespread coral bleaching in 2023, wiping out corals in the Florida Keys. Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi turned to NSU when its partners in the Keys were no longer able to provide corals for its research. Broward County was spared from the majority of the 2023 bleaching so the NSU offshore coral nursery had healthy corals to donate.
CBS News
“We’re losing corals at an alarming rate,” Bahr said. “We lost about half of our corals in last three decades. So we need to make sure that we continue to have these girls into the future.”
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi is using some of these corals to study the effects of sediment from Port Everglades on coral health. The rest will either help the university with its work creating a bleaching guide for the Caribbean or act as a genetic bank, representing nearly 100 genetically distinct Staghorn coral colonies from across South Florida’s reefs.
“We wanted to give them as many genotypes, which are genetic individuals, as we could to really act as a safeguard for these this super important species,” Wever said.
CBS News
CIA officer who drugged, photographed and sexually assaulted dozens of women gets 30 years in prison as victims stare him down
A longtime CIA officer who drugged, photographed and sexually assaulted more than two dozen women in postings around the world was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Wednesday after an emotional hearing in which victims described being deceived by a man who appeared kind, educated and part of an agency “that is supposed to protect the world from evil.”
Brian Jeffrey Raymond, with a graying beard and orange prison jumpsuit, sat dejectedly as he heard his punishment for one of the most egregious misconduct cases in the CIA’s history. It was chronicled in his own library of more than 500 images that showed him in some cases straddling and groping his nude, unconscious victims.
“It’s safe to say he’s a sexual predator,” U.S. Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said in imposing the full sentence prosecutors had requested. “You are going to have a period of time to think about this.”
Prosecutors say the 48-year-old Raymond’s assaults date to 2006 and tracked his career in Mexico, Peru and other countries, all following a similar pattern.
He would lure women he met on Tinder and other dating apps to his government-leased apartment and drug them while serving wine and snacks. Once they were unconscious, he spent hours posing their naked bodies before photographing and assaulting them. He opened their eyelids at times and stuck his fingers in their mouths.
U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Mexico
One by one, about a dozen of Raymond’s victims who were identified only by numbers in court recounted how the longtime spy upended their lives. Some said they only learned what happened after the FBI showed them the photos of being assaulted while unconscious.
“My body looks like a corpse on his bed,” one victim said of the photos. “Now I have these nightmares of seeing myself dead.”
One described suffering a nervous breakdown. Another spoke of a recurring trance that caused her to run red lights while driving. Many told how their confidence and trust in others had been shattered forever.
“I hope he is haunted by the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life,” said one of the women, who like others stared Raymond down as they walked away from the podium.
Reading from a statement, Raymond told the judge that he has spent countless hours contemplating his “downward spiral.”
“It betrayed everything I stand for and I know no apology will ever be enough,” he said. “There are no words to describe how sorry I am. That’s not who I am and yet it’s who I became.”
In October 2021, the FBI issued a notice to the public, seeking other potential victims of and additional information about Raymond, saying that some women depicted in the incriminating photos and videos remain unidentified.
In a statement Wednesday, authorities praised all the victims who came forward.
“The FBI thanks the brave women who shared information that furthered this investigation,” said
FBI Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg of the Washington Field Office. “We recognize our domestic and foreign law enforcement partners who helped bring Raymond to justice for his reprehensible crimes.”
Raymond’s sentencing comes amid a reckoning on sexual misconduct at the CIA. The Associated Press reported last week that another veteran CIA officer faces state charges in Virginia for allegedly reaching up a co-worker’s skirt and forcibly kissing her during a drunken party in the office.
Still another former CIA employee – an officer trainee – is scheduled to face a jury trial next month on charges he assaulted a woman with a scarf in a stairwell at the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. That case emboldened some two dozen women to come forward to authorities and Congress with accounts of their own of sexual assaults, unwanted touching and what they contend are the CIA’s efforts to silence them.
And yet the full extent of sexual misconduct at the CIA remains a classified secret in the name of national security, including a recent 648-page internal watchdog report that found systemic shortcomings in the agency’s handling of such complaints.
“The classified nature of the activities allowed the agency to hide a lot of things,” said Liza Mundy, author of “Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA.” The male-dominated agency, she said, has long been a refuge for egregious sexual misconduct. “For decades, men at the top had free rein.”
CIA has publicly condemned Raymond’s crimes and implemented sweeping reforms intended to keep women safe, streamline claims and more quickly discipline offenders.
Last year, the CIA announced the appointment of Dr. Taleeta Jackson, a seasoned psychologist who previously led the Sexual Assault Prevention Program at the U.S. Navy, as the new head of a dedicated sexual assault and prevention office at CIA.
“There is absolutely no excuse for Mr. Raymond’s reprehensible, appalling behavior,” the agency said Wednesday. “As this case shows, we are committed to engaging with law enforcement.”
But a veil of secrecy still surrounds the Raymond case nearly four years after his arrest. Even after Raymond pleaded guilty late last year, prosecutors have tiptoed around the exact nature of his work and declined to disclose a complete list of the countries where he assaulted women.
Still, they offered an unbridled account of Raymond’s conduct, describing him as a “serial offender” whose assaults increased over time and become “almost frenetic” during his final CIA posting in Mexico City, where he was discovered in 2020 after a naked woman screamed for help from his apartment balcony.
U.S. officials scoured Raymond’s electronic devices and began identifying the victims he had listed by name and physical characteristics, all of whom described experiencing some form of memory loss during their time with him.
One victim said Raymond seemed like a “perfect gentleman” when they met in Mexico in 2020, recalling only that they kissed. Unbeknownst to the woman, after she blacked out, he took 35 videos and close-up photos of her breasts and genitals.
“The defendant’s manipulation often resulted in women blaming themselves for losing consciousness, feeling ashamed, and apologizing to the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing. “He was more than willing to gaslight the women, often suggesting that the women drank too much and that, despite their instincts to the contrary, nothing had happened.”
Raymond, a San Diego native and former White House intern who is fluent in Spanish and Mandarin, ultimately pleaded guilty to four of 25 federal counts including sexual abuse, coercion and transportation of obscene material. As part of his sentence, the judge ordered him to pay $10,000 to each of his 28 victims.
Raymond’s attorneys had sought leniency, contending his “quasi-military” work at the CIA in the years following 9/11 became a breeding ground for the emotional callousness and “objectification of other people” that enabled his years of preying upon women.
“While he was working tirelessly at his government job, he ignored his own need for help, and over time he began to isolate himself, detach himself from human feelings and become emotionally numb,” defense attorney Howard Katzoff wrote in a court filing.
“He was an invaluable government worker, but it took its toll on him and sent him down a dark path.”
Bangkok — A 64-year-old woman was preparing to do her evening dishes at her home outside Bangkok when she felt a sharp pain in her thigh and looked down to see a huge python taking hold of her.
“I was about to scoop some water and when I sat down it bit me immediately,” Arom Arunroj told Thailand’s Thairath newspaper. “When I looked I saw the snake wrapping around me.”
The 13-to-16-foot-long python coiled itself around her torso, squeezing her down to the floor of her kitchen.
“I grabbed it by the head, but it wouldn’t release me,” she said. “It only tightened.”
Kunyakit Thanawtchaikun/AP
Pythons are non-venomous constrictors, which kill their prey by gradually squeezing the breath out of it.
Propped up against her kitchen door, she cried for help but it wasn’t until a neighbor happened to be walking by about an hour and a half later and heard her screams that authorities were called.
Responding police officer Anusorn Wongmalee told The Associated Press on Thursday that when he arrived the woman was still leaning against her door, looking exhausted and pale, with the snake coiled around her.
Police and animal control officers used a crowbar to hit the snake on the head until it released its grip and slithered away before it could be captured.
In all, Arom spent about two hours on Tuesday night in the clutches of the python before being freed.
She was treated for several bites but appeared to be otherwise unharmed in videos of her talking to Thai media shortly after the incident.
Encounters with snakes are not uncommon in Thailand, and last year 26 people were killed by venomous snake bites, according to government statistics. A total of 12,000 people were treated for venomous bites by snakes and other animals 2023.
The reticulated python is the largest snake found in Thailand and usually ranges in size from 5 to 21 feet, weighing up to about 165 pounds. They have been found as big as 33 feet long and 287 pounds.
Smaller pythons feed on small mammals such as rats, but larger snakes switch to prey such as pigs, deer and even domestic dogs and cats. Attacks on humans are not common, though do happen occasionally.
There have also been fatal attacks in Indonesia, where a woman was found inside the belly of a reticulated python that swallowed her whole in June — the fifth person to be devoured by one of the snakes in the country since 2017.
300 sea corals brought from Florida to Texas as part of effort to save the species
More Minnesota nonprofits are facing financial distress
CIA officer who drugged, photographed and sexually assaulted dozens of women gets 30 years in prison as victims stare him down
300 sea corals brought from Florida to Texas as part of effort to save the species
More Minnesota nonprofits are facing financial distress