U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denies permit for Pebble Mine in Alaska

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday rejected Pebble Limited Partnership's permit to build a mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay. Photo by Stan Shebs/Wikimedia Commons

Nov. 25 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday rejected a permit for the proposed, controversial Pebble Mine in Alaska.

The Corps' Alaska commander, Col. Damon Delarosa said that Pebble Limited Partnership's plan to deal with waste from the mine "does not comply with Clean Water Act guidelines" and that the project as proposed "is contrary to the public interest."

Delarosa said the decision was "based on all available facts and complies with existing laws and regulations," following analysis of the project and about three years of review.

The site of the proposed mine is located in a remote area in southwestern Alaska, which drains into the Bristol Bay, prompting opposition to the plan from activists and local fishing operations, as well as President Donald Trump's son, Donald Jr., and prominent Republicans.

In August, the Corps said the project -- which would be the largest gold and copper mine in North America -- has the potential to provide the creation of jobs and extraction of natural resources.

But, "as currently proposed, the project could have substantial environmental impacts within the unique Bristol Bay watershed and lacks adequate compensatory mitigation."

At the time, then-CEO Tom Collier, who since has resigned, said the company was "well into" an effort to present a mitigation plan.

Pebble said it plans to launch an appeal of Wednesday's decision within 60 days.

"One of the real tragedies of this decision is the loss of economic opportunities for people living in the area," Pebble CEO Joh Shively said. "A politically driven decision has taken away the hope that many had for a better life."

Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Wednesday's decision "speaks volumes about how bad this project is, how uniquely unacceptable it is."

"We've had to kill this project more than once and we're going to continue killing for as long as it takes to protect Bristol Bay," said Reynolds.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, also said that the Army Corps "made the correct decision."

"Pebble had to meet a high bar so that we do not trade on resource for another," he said.

Trump administration to relax rules on killing birds
By
Clyde Hughes
(0)


Birds fly on and off of a lamp post on 5th Avenue in New York City on November 30, 2018. The Trump administration is changing its interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to shield companies from regulations to protect migratory birds. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo


Nov. 27 (UPI) -- The Trump administration Friday published an analysis of the 102-year-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act that would shield companies from responsibility for "incidentally" killing birds.

The weakening of the law through the new interpretation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would likely lead to more bird deaths because energy companies, construction firms and land developers would have less incentive to take precautionary measures to protect birds, the analysis said.

"This proposed rule clarifies that the scope of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act applies only to intentional injuring or killing of birds," a statement from U.S. Fish and Wildlife said. "Conduct that results in the unintentional (incidental) injury or death of migratory birds is not prohibited under the act."

The administration had been gunning for a new interpretation of the law since 2017. In August, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni rejected efforts to change the rule.

"There is nothing in the text of the MBTA that suggests that in order to fall within its prohibition, the activity must be directed specifically at birds," Caproni said in her ruling. "Nor does the statute prohibit only intentionally killing migratory birds. And it certainly does not say that only 'some' kills are prohibited."

The new analysis suggested, though, that scaling back the rule was a "preferred alternative" to how the law is currently applied.

Attorneys general in New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Oregon, California and New Mexico, have all fought the administration in modifying the rules.

Hong Kong activist tells German paper he's doing well in prison isolation

Thu, November 26, 2020

FILE PHOTO: Pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong and Tiffany Yuen arrive at West Kowloon Magistrates's Courts to face charges related to an illegal vigil assembly commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, in Hong Kong


BERLIN (Reuters) - Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong told a German newspaper he was doing well despite being held in solitary confinement and having trouble sleeping because of bright lights after he was remanded in custody this week.

Wong, who on Monday pleaded guilty to charges of organising and inciting an unauthorised assembly near police headquarters in last year's anti-government protests, also said he does not expect a fair trial on Dec. 2.

Facing a maximum three-year jail term, Wong told Die Welt daily he was not allowed to leave his solitary cell or meet other prisoners and was forbidden to do sport.


"Because the light in the cell burns for 24 hours, it is difficult for me to sleep," Wong told the paper in written answers from prison.

"I have to cover my eyes with protective face masks to fall asleep," he wrote, adding he does not expect a fair trial and that he felt like a dissident in China.

"I have long since lost confidence in this legal system," he wrote, adding, however, that if he and other activists were convicted, the democracy movement would continue.

"I want to tell the world that the movement in Hong Kong will not come to a halt just because Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam and I are in prison," he said, adding that he saw China as a threat to world freedom.

"Universities, journalists and companies - everyone is forced to adhere to Chinese standards," said Wong.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

GRIFTED

A donor who gave $2.5 million to a pro-Trump group looking for election fraud wants his money back after disappointing results

Sinéad Baker
Fri, November 27, 2020

President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday. Erin Schaff - Pool/Getty Images

A venture capitalist who gave $2.5 million to a pro-Trump group that said it was trying to find evidence of election fraud is now looking for a refund.

A lawsuit said Fred Eshelman gave vast sums to the Texas-based True the Vote Inc. but was soon disappointed with its efforts.

True the Vote mounted suits in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin but later dropped them. It says it is nonetheless still investigating fraud allegations.

Eshelman said he pressed True the Vote for details of how it was spending his money but instead got "platitudes, and empty promises."


A venture capitalist who donated $2.5 million to a pro-Trump group trying to find evidence of fraud in the US election wants a refund after being disappointed with the group's efforts.

Fred Eshelman is suing True the Vote Inc., a monitoring organization in Houston, to reclaim the money.

The lawsuit says Eshelman sent $2 million to True the Vote on November 5, two days after Election Day.

At that point no winner had been called, but Joe Biden was by most tallies ahead of President Donald Trump, who had long claimed without evidence that the election was vulnerable to fraud.

The suit, first reported by Bloomberg, said Eshelman sent another $500,000 to True the Vote a week later, by which time media outlets including Insider had long called the election for Biden.

Business Insider also obtained a copy of Eshelman's complaint.

Eshelman is the founder of Eshelman Ventures LLC and used to be a pharmaceuticals executive, according to the company.

Trump has continued to claim the election was stolen, mounting a disjointed legal effort to challenge the result. He had still not conceded as of Friday morning.

The lawsuit said that Eshelman "regularly and repeatedly" asked for updates on how True the Vote was using his money and that he sought "specific and actionable updates" about True the Vote's "purported investigation, litigation, and communication efforts in key states."

But it said he was "consistently met with vague responses, platitudes, and empty promises of follow-up that never occurred."

The suit accuses True the Vote of breach of contract, and also "conversion," a legal concept linked to the misuse of someone else's property.

It said he asked for a refund, at which point True the Vote offered to return $1 million so long as he did not sue the group.

The suit said True the Vote promised to launch lawsuits in swing states, to gather whistleblower complaints about issues with the election, and to conduct "sophisticated data modeling and statistical analysis to identify potential illegal or fraudulent balloting."

True the Vote announced on November 17 that it was dropping lawsuits it had brought in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Eshelman's lawsuit said he was "not provided any specific update on the status or strategy behind those cases."

The group's president and founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, blamed "barriers to advancing our arguments, coupled with constraints on time."

She said the group was continuing to investigate issues in the US electoral system and argued that the lawsuits represented only a "fraction" of its work.

Business Insider has contacted True the Vote for comment. It did not respond to a request from Bloomberg.

The Trump campaign has filed its own lawsuits in battleground states, though it is yet to win any of them.

It also launched a hotline for people to share testimony about election fraud, but it ended up being overwhelmed with prank calls.

Trump said on Thursday that he would "certainly" leave the White House if Joe Biden won the Electoral College, which is scheduled to formally vote on December 14.

It was the closest he had come to conceding the election, though he later insisted via Twitter that he won.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Op-Ed: To stamp out Trumpism, the U.S. needs to deal with these six things

Ian Bassin and Justin Florence
Fri, November 27, 2020

The thin crowd on the National Mall at President Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. Other images were doctored to make the crowd seem bigger. (Associated Press)

The United States barely survived the most acute threat to its political system since the Civil War by averting a second Trump term. But Donald Trump was always just a carrier for a political virus that predated and will outlast him. As evidenced by the finding that 8 in 10 Trump voters do not think he should relinquish power, Trumpism as a political movement very much remains.

A return of Trumpism to the White House would mirror the second wave of COVID-19, which has been worse than the first. Trump 2.0 would have seen America’s openness to strongman rule — and likely be more competent at it.

To avoid that, the political virus that gave us Trump must be addressed. It is a disease with two strains, global and national.

The global strain is a wave of authoritarianism. Over the past 15 years, democracy has been in retreat around the world, with autocrats supplanting democratic governments in countries such as Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela and Poland. Across the globe, citizens are growing less committed to democracy and more open to alternatives. These trends are being driven by factors that transcend borders and include globalization, migration and new information technologies.

The United States has not been immune. Openness to the idea of military rule jumped from 1 in 16 Americans 30 years ago to 1 in 6 pre-Trump. And while some of the shift is likely attributable to global factors, this political virus also carries a uniquely American strain.

The country has become more polarized politically as liberals and conservatives segregate into different geographic areas and consume different media. Previously dominant groups who feel they are losing status in an ever-more diverse nation have captured the Republican Party, turning it into an instrument for holding power at all cost. That party, in turn, has taken advantage of unique structures of American democracy such as the electoral college and the Senate to give itself governmental powers that are out of proportion with the support the party has among voters. For example, Republicans have lost the popular vote in 7 of 8 presidential elections yet dominate the Supreme Court.

As a result of the global and national strains mixing, Trump was able to go a long way toward executing the modern autocrat’s playbook, which typically involves six things.

Spreading disinformation: Trump began doing this on Day One with petty efforts to doctor images to make his inauguration crowd seem bigger and continues this behavior today through his false claims of electoral victory.

Politicizing independent institutions: Trump sought to do this with the Department of Justice, the intelligence community, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even the U.S. Postal Service.

Delegitimizing vulnerable populations: Trump tried to do this by falsely claiming he would have won the popular vote in 2016 but for millions of “illegal votes” from communities of color, and continued this with abusive immigration policies that separated families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Aggrandizing executive power: Trump repeatedly did this in such forms as declaring a fake emergency to appropriate funds that Congress refused to authorize for a border wall as well as asserting “the right to do whatever I want” and that his “authority is total.”

Quashing dissent: Trump tried to do so by using regulatory powers to retaliate against critics in the media, stoking violence to silence opponents, even attempting to ban books.

Corrupting elections: Trump was impeached for trying to pressure Ukraine into corrupting the 2020 election. And to this day his baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent are undermining public trust in our electoral system.

We came far too close to a full authoritarian takeover. Even absent Trump, anti-democratic toxins will remain in our body politic. To purge them, Trump-era abuses must be reckoned with — not as retribution, but to deter recurrence.

The U.S. government advises other countries that are emerging from authoritarian regimes to undertake a process of “transitional justice” to return to healthier footing. We should heed our own advice. That means establishing independent investigations to account for abuses that took place, prosecuting violations of law, and restoring ethical and professional norms through government and private-sector actions.

Immediate reform legislation should be passed to impose stronger guardrails against executive abuses. Congress should be re-empowered to have lead responsibility for making hard decisions on such matters as war powers, emergency powers and spending. And barriers to voting should be removed while better protecting our elections from foreign interference. There are already three bills before Congress that would accomplish this.

States need to fix some of the current system’s incentives for counterproductive political behavior. The primary system in many states rewards extreme candidates; uncontrolled gerrymandering enables minority parties to control state legislatures.

At the national level, President-elect Joe Biden should convene a diverse set of experts and citizens to make recommendations on how to address the representational deficiencies that are built into the Senate and the electoral college, including the way they have translated into an overly politicized federal judiciary.

Finally, we must reclaim our national identity as a country that derives its strength from its diversity. We’ve seen a skilled demagogue divide us and lead more Americans to see their political adversaries as worthy of violence. To reverse that trend, we need leaders across the political, cultural, religious, business and grass-roots spectrum to consistently tell a more unifying and uplifting story about America in the 21st century — a narrative about how we can become the first truly multiracial, pluralist democracy the world has seen. Then they need to take action to make that story a reality.

Voting Trump out of office was the treatment our critically ill government needed, but it’s this set of next steps that will be the vaccine.

Ian Bassin and Justin Florence are co-founders of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Protect Democracy. They previously served as associate White House counsels to President Obama.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

In his wake, Trump leaves vulnerabilities of democracy exposed

Peter Grier
Wed, November 25, 2020


President Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert an election he falsely claims to have won appear to be falling apart. The United States has likely avoided the sort of post-vote struggle for power that characterizes countries with less stable, shallowly rooted democracies.

But the extraordinary actions of the last three weeks could leave lasting marks on U.S. governance. Mr. Trump has identified many cracks and holes in America’s unwieldy, decentralized electoral system – and tested them to see what, if anything, might give.

The result has laid out a path for how others could push further in the future. The way the nation chooses its leader depends at many points on norms and traditions, as well as the goodwill of election workers and local and state officials. Recent weeks have highlighted how a candidate could conceivably manipulate or improperly influence events and key people – particularly if the candidate begins sowing doubts before the ballot, as Mr. Trump tried to do by attacking mail-in voting.

“Elections are the ways we resolve political differences peacefully, and he tried very hard to set up a false choice: one in which either he won or the system was broken,” says Myrna Pérez, director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights and Elections Program. “That really undermines the American system ... in which people choose their elected leaders – not the other way around.”

Trump’s four-pronged approach

Mr. Trump has refused to concede to President-elect Joe Biden and continues to insist that he has a path to reelection. On Wednesday he tweeted, “2020 is a long way from over!”

Many Republicans back the president’s resistance. A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that 84% of self-identified members of the GOP believe that Mr. Biden did not legitimately win the election.

But this week marked a turning point in the official transition of power, as the General Services Administration announced Monday that it would begin coordinating with the incoming Biden administration team. Mr. Biden is now receiving the classified President’s Daily Brief of sensitive intelligence information.

States with a total of 270 Electoral College votes – the margin needed for victory – have now certified a Biden victory.

Mr. Trump’s post-vote strategy to prevent the nation from reaching this point consisted of four things:

Direct appeals to the nation that he was the 2020 winner, which began with a White House appearance in the wee hours after the polls closed and continued on Twitter.


Court cases meant to stop vote counts or throw out duly cast ballots.


Lobbying state and county officials to delay the certification of vote totals.


Lobbying state legislators to ignore vote totals and seat pro-Trump electors.

Of these, the court cases have been the weakest link by far. While Trump lawyers and surrogates and right-leaning media have publicized what they claim to be evidence of voter fraud, those cases have largely dissolved upon close attention or constitute too few votes to make any difference. Judges have tossed virtually all the cases filed by the Trump legal team.

“Republican-appointed judges, Democratic-appointed judges, state and federal judges – they’ve all done their job and they’re acting as guardrails,” says Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School and host of the “Passing Judgment” podcast.

Yet the court cases have still had an effect. They have meshed with the president’s communications strategy to portray the 2020 election as “stolen.”

“The lawsuits themselves aren’t posing a legal obstacle. The dangerous thing is that there’s probably at least 40 to 50 million Americans who are buying falsehoods, lies, discredited conspiracy theories,” says Professor Levinson.

The president also broke norms by trying to interfere with the election process in some key states. He brought Michigan state Republican leaders to the White House while some of his surrogates on television were suggesting that those Republicans seat pro-Trump electors in the state, overruling Mr. Biden’s Michigan win. Mr. Trump and his allies also attacked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger prior to the state’s vote certification – despite the fact that Mr. Raffensperger voted for him.

These precedents might encourage future losers, particularly in close elections, to decline to concede, file multiple lawsuits, push to overturn state results, and delegitimize the seating of their opponent, all in a hardball attempt to gain power.

“The goal was to undermine not only the election outcome, but our democratic processes,” says Ms. Pérez.
Strengthening trust in elections

One way to counter this might be more nationwide voting standards and procedures. That could reassure voters that their election systems reflect broad best practices.

Easier registration, with standardized voter databases, would keep voters from being purged from rolls and help allay notional worries about fraud, writes Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina social scientist, in The New York Times.

Standardized and more common sharing of voter information between states could have the same effect. Required audits after elections – such as Georgia now has – could check for irregularities without the drama involved in asking for recounts or suing states to act.

Voting officials – the unsung heroes of this election cycle – need more resources to do their jobs, adds Ms. Pérez of the Brennan Center. Improved civics education could fill in the gaps in voters’ knowledge, so they have a better idea of when fraud claims are implausible.

Finally, citizens themselves need to stand for democracy.

“Voters need to tell our politicians in one very clear voice that we want free, fair, and accessible elections,” says Ms. Pérez. “We even want people who may not agree with us to have a free, fair, and accessible vote.”

Dominion Voting Systems tore into Sidney Powell's lawsuit accusing it of a vast conspiracy, calling it 'baseless, senseless, physically impossible'


Mia Jankowicz
Fri, November 27, 2020

Sidney Powell. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Dominion Voting Systems, a provider of election infrastructure, responded on Thursday to the pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell's accusations that it took part in vote rigging.

Powell released two lawsuits on Wednesday alleging "massive election fraud" in Georgia and Michigan.

The company is not a defendant in either lawsuit, but its products are mentioned. It responded to dozens of claims made about it in the Georgia suit.

In a point-by-point rejoinder, Dominion said Powell was "alleging a bizarre election fraud conspiracy" that would be impossible to carry out.

Powell was until recently part of President Donald Trump's legal team. She was unceremoniously dropped after criticism of her outlandish claims.

Dominion Voting Systems, the company that President Donald Trump's supporters have accused of enabling vast voter fraud in the US, on Thursday released a blistering point-by-point rebuttal to allegations from the attorney Sidney Powell.

Powell on Wednesday published two lawsuits challenging the election results in Georgia and Michigan that accused Dominion of being part of "massive election fraud."

The company is not a defendant in the lawsuits; governors and local election officials are listed. But allegations about it were scattered throughout, with mentions on 30 pages of the 104-page Georgia lawsuit.

The Michigan case has been filed. But as of Friday, Business Insider had not been able to verify the status of the Georgia complaint in federal court.

Dominion Voting Systems described the allegations in the Georgia suit as "baseless, senseless, physically impossible" and said the events that Powell claimed happened "simply did not occur."

It said Powell's document "appears to be a very rough draft" of a lawsuit "alleging a bizarre election fraud conspiracy that — were it possible — would necessarily require the collaboration of thousands of participants."

The company said that the allegations against it led to harassment and death threats to its staff.

Powell's lawsuit — which was peppered with typos — claimed that President-elect Joe Biden's victory in Georgia is fraudulent and should be overturned because of physical and digital vote tampering.

She accused Dominion Voting Systems of being one of two companies "founded by foreign oligarchs and dictators to ensure computerized ballot-stuffing and vote manipulation to whatever level was needed to make certain Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez never lost another election."

She claimed that in Georgia, votes for Trump were "switched" to votes for Biden in such a way as to be undetectable.

She also claimed the voting software "was accessed by agents acting on behalf of China and Iran in order to monitor and manipulate elections."

Many of her claims have been independently debunked, according to CNN. None of the allegations has been given credence by a judge.

Dominion Voting Systems said the fact that it was founded in Canada is a matter of public record, and it denied any connection to Venezuela or Chávez.

It also said the manipulation Powell described was not possible — "not on a machine-by-machine basis, not by alleged hacking, not by manipulating software, and not by imagined ways of 'sending' votes to overseas locations."

"But even if it were possible, it would have been discovered in the statewide handcount of votes," it said.

The company's statement addressed many other points.

Biden was certified as the winner in Georgia after an audit that included a hand recount of more than 5 million paper votes. The Trump campaign has nonetheless requested another recount.

Dominion Voting Systems had already issued a lengthy rebuttal to a wide range of theories floated by Powell and others about its role in numerous states' elections.

The company did not immediately respond to Business Insider's questions about whether it planned to write a rebuttal to charges in the Michigan case, which are similar.

Powell was a prominent part of the Trump campaign's legal team, but it disowned her after she made claims similar to those in her lawsuits at a press conference with Rudy Giuliani last week.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Indiana asks US Supreme Court to deny parental rights to same-sex couples


Stephanie Guerilus
Wed, November 25, 2020


Indiana is appealing a decision to the US Supreme Court that recognized lesbian mothers as parents to their children

The state of Indiana is asking the newly conservative Supreme Court to strip same-sex couples of their parental rights.

Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill asked the High Court to rule that states have the authority to deny married same-sex couples the right to be legally recognized as parents to their own children.

Read More: Martin Jenkins confirmed as California’s first openly gay Supreme Court justice

The case is centered on eight married lesbian couples who used artificial insemination to start families. They want Indiana to recognize both mothers on the birth certificate but the state has refused to do so.

A view of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, Nov. 11, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Ashlee and Ruby Henderson, who filed suit in 2015, were one of the couples denied their request by the Tippecanoe County Health Department. When their son was born the couple was not allowed to put both their names on his birth certificate. The health department, which issues them, cited Indiana state guidelines. A federal court ruled in the Henderson’s favor a year later, determining that same-sex married couples should have the same rights as heterosexual parents.

However, Indiana insists that biology is the determinative factor in paternity, arguing that two women cannot conceive a child and has taken the matter to the US Supreme Court. In the state’s laws, according to the Journal & Courier, it’s presumed that a child’s biological parents are a man and a woman. If that is not the case, as with same-sex parents, one parent would have to formally adopt the child to be considered the child’s legal parent.

“Doing so, however, is in tension with the traditional, constitutionally protected understanding that, at birth, only a baby’s biological parents have legal rights and obligations toward the child,” Tom Fisher, Indiana’s solicitor-general said about issuing the birth certificates to a same-sex couple. “To protect these rights, Indiana lists a child’s biological parents, and no one else, on the child’s birth certificate unless the child is legally adopted.”

A request was filed by Indiana on June 15 for the case to be reviewed after a U.S. Appeals Court ruled that same-sex couples were entitled to the same parental rights that heterosexual couples have.

“We are disappointed the state of Indiana continues to fight against families headed by same-sex spouses,” Karen Celestino-Horseman, the Hendersons’ Indianapolis-based attorney, said in June. “The Supreme Court has already spoken on this issue, and yet Indiana continues to expend resources fighting against same-sex marriage.”

Read More: Supreme Court rules in favor of BLM activist DeRay McKesson

(Photo by Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images)

In September, the Supreme Court rescheduled a private conference on the case and asked for a response from the plaintiffs. The mothers asked the Court to reject the appeal by Indiana.

The justices will now hear the case in a private conference on Dec. 11, in a court now shaped by a 6-3 conservative majority who have openly criticized the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision that made gay marriage legal. Last month, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito suggested the law needed to be overturned to maintain religious liberty.

“[Kim] Davis may have been one of the first victims of this Court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision,” Thomas said, “but she will not be the last.”

Davis is the Kentucky clerk who in 2015 refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples citing her religious beliefs.

As theGrio reported, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Sept. 18. The liberal jurist was replaced by Justice Amy Coney Barrett who ie expected to rule with the Court’s conservative majority.


The post Indiana asks US Supreme Court to deny parental rights to same-sex couples appeared first on TheGrio.

An orphan manatee calf named Squirrel forms 'an instant bond' with Stubby, the Columbus Zoo's 'queen'

Alissa Widman Neese, The Columbus Dispatch
Wed, November 25, 2020

Orphan manatees, Squirrel and Scampi eat lunch alongside longtime manatee resident Stubby, Thursday, November 19, 2020, at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. Squirrel, the smallest, has bonded with Stubby faster than any previous calves, and mostly doesn't leave her side. Florida manatees that are federally regulated and the two calves are destined to be returned to the wild.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – When they saw the tiny face full of whiskers surfacing for air in the nearby canal, the Florida residents knew it was time to call for help.

The little manatee's mother wasn't coming back.

Alone, the calf hovered around a large boulder — an object rescuers say she probably became attached to in her mother's absence. She had been alone for more than a day, much longer than a mother would typically leave a calf on its own. When the rescue crew arrived, a man scooped up the 65-pound sea cow in his arms to get her to safety.

"She was not budging from that rock. But thank God she didn't, because it made it really easy to get to her," recalled Mary Stella, spokeswoman for the Dolphin Research Center, based in the Florida Keys, which operates one of several manatee rescue teams in the state. She had a bacterial infection, no food and was getting weaker, with no mom to guide her. She probably would have died."

These days, the calf, named Squirrel, has established a new bond miles away from home — with a manatee admired by many visitors of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

In early November, Stubby, a permanent resident of the zoo's Manatee Coast, became Squirrel's surrogate mom. And keepers say they've never seen her connect with a calf so quickly and closely.

"It was an instant bond," said Becky Ellsworth, curator of the zoo's Shores region, which includes Manatee Coast. "Squirrel's only happy if she's touching Stubby at all times."

Stubby, a fan favorite, has lived at the Columbus Zoo since 2005 — a 15-year reign that, along with her laissez-faire attitude, has earned her the nickname "queen of the zoo." Though she hasn't birthed a calf of her own, she has been a welcoming pool mate for more than 20 rescued orphan manatees that have been rehabilitated at the zoo since her arrival.

Squirrel is among the littlest manatees for which the zoo has tended, Ellsworth said. She has bulked up to more than 130 pounds, though, since her rescue on May 2.

On a recent afternoon, Ellsworth watched as she rested on Stubby's back, and then tagged along for a cruise around the 300,000-gallon Manatee Coast pool.

Squirrel occasionally drifted away, distracted by some scrumptious, floating pieces of romaine lettuce, the main meal of a manatee in human care. But just a few feet of exploring was just a little too much adventure for her. She quickly darted through the water, back to Stubby's side.

Watching is a critical part of caring for manatees. Unlike other zoo animals, the calves are preparing to eventually be released back into the Florida waters from which they were rescued. Too much human interaction could keep them from learning survival skills, so keepers must use a hands-off approach.

Orphan manatees, Squirrel and Scampi eat lunch alongside longtime manatee resident Stubby, Thursday, November 19, 2020, at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. Squirrel, the smallest, has bonded with Stubby faster than any previous calves, and mostly doesn't leave her side. Florida manatees that are federally regulated and the two calves are destined to be returned to the wild.

So instead of hand-feeding, for example, keepers will attach lettuce to a weighted pipe that sinks and toss it in the water from a distance, to re-create the behavior of grazing for natural sea grasses on the ocean floor.

Stubby and Squirrel, along with Scampi, an older, more independent calf who also arrived in Columbus this month, are currently eating 300 heads of lettuce every day.

"We don't want them to associate people with food, or anything," Ellsworth said. "The best thing we can do as their caretakers is let them be manatees."

Stubby is an exception, though. After a boat struck her in the mid 1990s, part of her tail had to be amputated. That means it isn't flat and paddle-shaped like typical manatees'. She also has an undiagnosed skin condition, which causes her to lose weight when it flares up and has left white scars across her body. Recently, it has been under control, and she's bulked up to a healthy 2,000 pounds.

Stubby hasn't been released into the wild because her ongoing health problems would make it very difficult for her to survive, Ellsworth said.

But that means she can be trained to participate in health-care procedures, such as rolling onto her back at the water's surface. While she nibbles on treats, her caretakers can draw blood or collect urine samples.

That training has been put on hold for a while, though, Ellsworth said.

"We would need to separate her from Squirrel, and that's not happening," she joked.

Manatees are federally protected, so only members of an authorized group, the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership, can rescue and care for them. The Columbus Zoo and the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden are the only program partners located outside Florida.

Over 20 years, the partnership has rescued, rehabilitated and released 618 manatees, according to Andy Garrett, who coordinates rescues for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. An additional 616 received on-site treatment and were released, for a total of 1,234 manatees assisted.

The Ohio facilities are a crucial part of the partnership, freeing space in the Florida facilities for the sick and injured manatees that need critical care, said Julie Heyde, animal care supervisor at the Miami Seaquarium. The manatees that come to Columbus just need time to grow large enough to survive on their own.

Squirrel and Scampi are the 32nd and 33rd manatee calves to rehab in Columbus.

Andy Clarkson, exhibit artist at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, adds two more manatees to the list of those rehabilitated and returned to the wild Thursday, November 19, 2020.

Before she came to Columbus, Stubby resided at SeaWorld Orlando for 10 years. She's currently the only permanent manatee resident in the Midwest. The calves first received care at the Miami Seaquarium.

Scampi was rescued in November 2019 after a boat hit her mother, Jumbo. She became an orphan a few weeks later, when Jumbo died because of her severe lung injuries.

The Seaquarium currently has nine manatees, including three permanent residents, but that number ballooned to as many as 24 a few years ago, Heyde said.

"We don't get much of a break," she said. "Any day, at any time, we may get a call of a manatee in need of rescue."

Tom Stalf, president and CEO of the Columbus Zoo, said the Ohio facilities also help people in the Midwest connect with a species they otherwise might never see.

Until a few years ago, the federal government considered manatees endangered. They're now threatened, with more than 6,500 animals living in the southeastern U.S. and Puerto Rico, mostly in Florida. In 1991, there were only 1,300 in Florida.

In addition to boat strikes, manatees are susceptible to harmful algal blooms and cold stress caused by changes to their habitats, as well as entanglement in discarded fishing gear.

"Our Columbus visitors respect manatees and they love them," Stalf said. "This is conservation in action that you can watch right here in the United States."

The Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute spearheads the research that ensures recently released manatees are thriving, despite these threats.

By fastening a satellite tracking belt around their tails with a bobber attached to it, researchers can monitor manatees to ensure they're eating, socializing and finding warm water when the temperatures drop without them even realizing it, said James "Buddy" Powell, the institute's executive director.

With time, the trackers fall off or are removed.

Eventually, Squirrel will become more independent and the time will come for her to return to the ocean. In the wild, calves usually separate from their mothers by age 2.

Until then, Ellsworth will enjoy watching her learn to become a grownup alongside Stubby.

"She has gone through so much, but she's overcome everything. To me, Stubby is a symbol of using what you have to help others, or making the best of a poor situation," she said. "She's happier for it. Our program is better because of it. Without her, I don't know if we'd have this much success."

Follow Columbus reporter Alissa Widman on Twitter: @AlissaWidman.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Zoo: Orphaned manatee calf Squirrel, bonds with surrogate mom

A discovery inside a California cave suggests people were combining hallucinogenic drugs and art nearly 500 years ago


Susie Neilson
Wed, November 25, 2020

An enhanced image of the painting on the ceiling of the Pinwheel Cave in California. Devlin Gandy


On the ceiling of a California cave, a red pinwheel-shaped drawing likely depicts a psychoactive plant called datura.


Researchers recently found chewed-up lumps of datura stuffed in the cave's ceiling.


The finding is the first clear evidence that hallucinogens were used at a rock art site. It suggests that humans may have painted cave art to enhance hallucinations.


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For decades, researchers have thought that hallucinogenic substances likely played a role in rock art, inspiring many of the vivid drawings that adorn cliffs and caves across all six habitable continents.

But according to a new study, it could go the other way around: Paintings in caves could have acted as visual aids for drug-induced hallucinations.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, describes a cave in Southern California, between Santa Barbara and Bakersfield. It's within the historic territory of the indigenous Chumash people and is known as the "Pinwheel Cave" because of the pinwheel-shaped painting on its ceiling. The painting resembles the datura plant, which delivers intense psychoactive effects when ingested.


David Robinson, the study's lead researcher, has been investigating the cave since 2007. He and a team of archaeologists have over the years discovered and analyzed chewed wads, or "quids," of datura that were stuffed into cracks in the ceiling of the cave up to 490 years ago. Their analysis also showed that humans occupied the cave from about 1530 to 1890, and "in all probability" chewed the datura during that period.

Combined, this set of discoveries makes the Pinwheel Cave the first known site that links evidence of hallucinogen use to cave paintings.
Which came first: the rock art or the hallucinogens?

Indigenous Californians used datura for centuries. People once processed the plant into a drink called toloache for coming-of-age ceremonies, and the Chumash consumed it before "vision quests" in which individuals sought interaction with spirits. In the group's mythology, the plant is personified as a supernatural grandmother named Momoy.

The paintings in the Pinwheel Cave seem to depict datura and its primary pollinator, the hawk moth, in its larval stage. The researchers think the Chumash people painted the images while sober and intended them to serve either as "visual catalysts for communal experiences" or simply as signposts to indicate where to take datura.

The new analysis also contradicts what Robinson calls "the myth of the lone shaman": the idea that a single individual would go into a cave and do hallucinogens on their own. Both the density of the quids, as well as the presence of many tools in the cave, suggest that many Chumash people used the space.

"This is a community site," Robinson, who is a reader in archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire in England, told Live Science.

A datura flower as it begins to open in the early evening. 

Melissa Dabumalanz

What's more, the fact that these images evoke the plant and its pollinator, the researchers wrote, contradicts the idea that humans took hallucinogens partly for artistic inspiration. The drawing does not seem to be a reflection of divine or spiritual inspiration from the hallucinogenic effects of the plant.

In that sense, the cave painting "calls into question assumptions that rock art imagery directly reflects private images seen in trance," the researchers wrote.
A ritual discouraged as the result of US government policy

Datura's likely role in communal rituals makes sense given its importance to the Chumash people, according to Devlin Gandy, a co-author of the study.

"Datura is far more than a hallucinogen," Gandy told National Geographic. "It is a sacred being which is part of prayers, utilized for cleansing, as well as healing."

A pollinating hawk moth feeds from a dutura flower in Seattle, Washington. Thomson Reuters

The US government suppressed tribal rituals like datura ceremonies in the 20th century via forced cultural assimilation policies and the displacement of native people from traditional lands. President Jimmy Carter finally passed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act in 1978, which protected religious freedom for indigenous tribes. But modern-day Chumash people no longer ingest the plant.

Sandra Hernandez, a spokesperson for the Tejon Tribe, which has Chumash people enrolled, told National Geographic she finds her ancestors' relationship to datura inspiring.

"I find myself at times with a lack of words to define the feeling of how great it is to know how smart our ancestors were," she said. "I can never get around that. We knew things because we communed with creators and we communed with nature."

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