GRIFTER NATION

Donald Trump is spotted playing golf with Bernhard Langer a week after pardoning the two-time Masters champion's property developer friend for tax avoidance at his request

• Donald Trump on Monday was seen playing golf with the German professional
• Langer, 63, was not known to have played with the president until now
• On December 23 Trump pardoned a friend of Langer's, at the golfer's request
• Langer in January 2017 was said by Trump to have had issues voting
• Trump then called the German golfer to clear up the misunderstanding
• Florida-based Langer said at the time that he and Trump were friends 

By HARRIET ALEXANDER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 01:24 EST, 29 December 2020 | UPDATED: 07:11 EST, 29 December 2020

Donald Trump played golf with pro Bernhard Langer six days after he pardoned a property developer friend of the two-time Masters champion at his request. 

Florida resident Langer, 63, had until now been notable in his absence from publicly playing a round of golf with the president. Trump has been spotted on the greens with Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson and Ernie Els, among other golf pros.

On December 23, Trump announced that he was pardoning South Florida real estate developer James Batmasian. The pardon was backed by Langer, GOP Congressman Brian Mast and 'many others from the South Flroida community', according to a White House statement.  

Batmasian - who was once the largest commercial property owner developer in Boca Raton - served eight months in federal prison in 2008 for not paying the IRS about $250,000 in payroll taxes. 

In a statement, the White House said Batmasian 'made overtime payments without withholding for income taxes or FICA contributions. While illegal, Mr. Batmasian recorded all of these payments and made no attempt to hide them when confronted by IRS investigators.'

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Trump and Langer were seen together at the president's West Palm Beach golf course Monday

On Monday - six days after Batmasian was granted the pardon - Langer was spotted teeing off with Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach

Batmasian is pictured with his wife Marta in court in Palm Beach in November 2017

Trump returns to Mar-a-Lago after another day of golfing

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• Golf legend Bernhard Langer says President Trump called him...Trump 'drags German golfer Bernhard Langer into his claims...

On Monday - six days after Batmasian was granted the pardon - Langer was spotted teeing off with Trump at his golf course in West Palm Beach. 

Trump's decision to help out his golfing friend is just the latest example of his unprecedented use of the presidential pardon.

While other presidents have pardoned more people, Trump is the only one to so openly reward friends and political allies for their loyalty.

Among those he has pardoned are figures from the Mueller investigation such as Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort and George Papadopoulous, and Jared Kushner's father, Charles. 

He pardoned former Republican Congress members Chris Collins of New York, Duncan Hunter of California, and Steve Stockman of Texas, each of whom pleaded guilty to or was convicted of corruption charges.  

Harvard professor Jack Goldsmith estimated 88 per cent of Trump's pardons and commutations have gone to people with personal or political ties to Trump. 

The latest pardons 'continue Trump's unprecedented pattern of issuing self-serving pardons and commutations that advance his personal interests, reward friends, seek retribution against enemies, or gratify political constituencies,' Goldsmith told the New York Times.

The president's pardon powers are nearly limitless and face almost no constraints.

Past presidents have also used their pardon powers for friends and allies.  

Bill Clinton triggered controversy when he issued more than 100 pardons on his last day in office, including to his half-brother and to Marc Rich, whose ex-wife was a Clinton donor. 

James Batmasian was among 26 people pardoned by the president on December 23

Langer is pictured with Eric Trump (left) and Donald Trump Jr  

Langer lobbied for his friend James Batmasian to be pardoned by Trump, and Trump complied

Langer has previously been drawn into controversy with Trump. 

In January 2017 Trump, alleging voter fraud that he said prevented him winning the popular vote, told a story of how 'the very famous golfer, Bernhard Langer' had a frustrating experience when trying to vote near his Florida home on Election Day.

Langer - who is German and lives in Florida - later qualified that he is not a US citizen, and was therefore never intended on voting.

He said that Trump had called him to clear up the matter, reported by The New York Times, which he thought was 'amazing'.

'We talked on the phone, and he was very clear,' said Langer during a press conference on tour. 'If there was anything that hurt me, he apologized.

'And I apologized, too, for some of the quotes that were incorrect and we're on good terms.

'It was fun talking to him briefly and I thought that's a great gesture from him because he's got a lot of other things to be concerned about, not just, you know, this golfer Bernhard Langer. He's got far more important things to do. But for him to take the time, talk to me for a brief while and clear things up is pretty amazing.'

The German golfer has been the dominant player on the PGA Tour Champions, winning 30 career titles to rank second on the all-time list

Langer's daughter Christina said that her father and Trump were not friends, but Langer himself said Christina was misquoted.

'I know what my daughter said and it's not what was quoted,' Langer said.

'My daughter said he's probably not a close friend of Mr Trump. What was the quote? He's not a friend of Mr Trump.

'Now, what does that say? Not a close friend means he could be a friend or they had some kind of relationship. Not a friend means he doesn't like him at all.

'I was very disappointed with the article, the way it was written and what happened. It's not the first time and it may not be the last time because it's out of my control.'

Share or comment on this article: 

Donald Trump spotted playing golf with Bernhard Langer a week after pardoning the golfer's friend

Croatia: At least 6 dead (AND A CAT) in huge earthquake felt as far as Vienna and Munich

Tuesday 29 December 2020, 

At least six people have died - among them a 12-year-old girl - after a powerful earthquake hit central Croatia, causing widespread damage to homes and buildings in a town near the capital Zagreb.

Authorities said dozens more have been left injured.

The European Mediterranean Seismological Centre said an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude hit 46 kilometres (28 miles) south-east of Zagreb.

The earthquake has also caused widespread damage, collapsing roofs, building facades and even some entire buildings, according to local reports.

The same area was struck by a 5.2 quake on Monday and several smaller aftershocks were felt on Tuesday.

Croatian state broadcaster HRT said a girl died in the earthquake in Petrinja, a town south east of the capital that was hit hardest by the earthquake.

Other Croatian media also reported the death, quoting the town’s mayor.

"The centre of Petrinja as it used to be no longer exists," HRT said in its report.

This is like Hiroshima - half of the city no longer exists Darinko Dumbovic, mayor of Petrinja

"One girl died and there are injuries and people inside collapsed buildings."

"My town has been completely destroyed, we have dead children," Petrinja mayor Darinko Dumbovic said in a statement broadcast by HRT TV.

"This is like Hiroshima - half of the city no longer exists."

"The city has been demolished, the city is no longer liveable,” he said. “We need help.”Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenkovic, and President Zoran Milanovic, right, inspect damage caused by an earthquake in Sisak, Croatia

Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenkovic and other government ministers arrived in Petrinja after the earthquake.

The regional N1 television reported live on Tuesday from Petrinja, which was hard-hit in the Monday quake, that a collapsed building had fallen on a car.

The footage showed firefighters trying to remove the debris to reach the car, which was buried underneath.

In Petrinja, streets were littered with fallen bricks and dust and many houses were completely destroyed.

The Croatian military was deployed in Petrinja to help with the rescue operation

VIDEO Croatia: At least 6 dead in huge earthquake felt as far as Vienna and Munich | ITV News

A damaged roof caused by an earthquake in Sisak, Croatia

Credit: AP

Croatian seismologist Kresimir Kuk described the earthquake as "extremely strong", far stronger than another one that hit Zagreb and nearby areas in spring.

He warned people to keep out of potentially shaky, old buildings and move to the newer areas of the city because of the aftershocks.

In Zagreb, people ran out into the streets and parks in fear.

Many were reportedly leaving the city, ignoring a travel ban imposed because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Residents gather outside in central Zagreb after an earthquake

Credit: Filip Horvat/AP

The earthquake on Tuesday was felt throughout the country and in neighbouring Serbia and Bosnia.

It was even felt as far away as Graz in southern Austria, the Austria Press Agency reported.

Authorities in Slovenia said the Krsko nuclear power plant was temporarily shut down following the earthquake.

The power plant is jointly owned by Slovenia and Croatia and located near their border.

UK

Teaching union calls for delay to January school return - but ministers hope to go ahead as planned

Monday 28 December 2020

VIDEO Minister Michael Gove says he hopes to stick to the outlined plan

A teaching union has urged the government to delay its plan to reopen schools in January, amid concerns about safety during the latest Covid outbreak.

But speaking on Monday, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said the government hopes the staggered reopening of schools in England will go ahead next month as planned.

Officials from Downing Street and the Department for Education are due to discuss the issue on Monday amid concerns over the spread of a new strain of coronavirus.

Earlier this month, the government said exam-year students would go back to school as normal after the Christmas holidays - but the majority of secondary school pupils would start the term online to allow headteachers to roll out mass testing of children and staff.

Dr Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT, wrote to the Education Secretary on Monday demanding further action on school safety.

Gavin Williamson.Credit: PA

The letter calls for Gavin Williamson to allow schools to move to remote learning for all pupils, except those deemed to be vulnerable or the children of key workers, in the highest tier areas.

"Delaying the return of pupils to schools and colleges at the start of the spring term will also enable all school and college employers to undertake and consult as required on new risk assessments and ensure that they can be compliant with any new measures or requirements contained in any forthcoming national guidance," it says.

The union is also asking the government to publish new safety guidance in light of the new, more infectious Covid-19 variant, introduce mandatory face coverings within schools and give staff priority access to the vaccine.

Earlier this month, the Government said the majority of secondary school pupils would start the term online

Credit: Jane Barlow/PA

Speaking before the letter was published, Mr Gove told BBC's Radio 4 Today programme, the government was confident primary school pupils and Year 11 and Year 13 pupils in England would be able to return in the first week of January - with the rest going back later in the month.

“It is our intention to make sure we can get children back to school as early as possible,” he said.

“We are talking to teachers and headteachers in order to make sure we can deliver effectively. But we all know that there are trade-offs.

“As a country we have decided – and I think this is the right thing to do – that we prioritise children returning to school.

“But we have a new strain and it is also the case that we have also had, albeit in a very limited way, Christmas mixing, so we do have to remain vigilant.

“We are confident that we will be able to get schools back in good order. Our plan and our timetable is there, and we are working with teachers to deliver it.”

Millions of people in England are under strict 'Tier 4' lockdown.

Credit: PA

He told Sky News: “We always keep things under review but teachers and headteachers have been working incredibly hard over the Christmas period since schools broke up in order to prepare for a new testing regime – community testing – in order to make sure that children and all of us are safer.”

Scientists have suggested that the mutated coronavirus strain could more easily infect children.

The National Education Union has previously said the Government should allow schools to move classes online for most pupils for a fortnight in January to allow Covid-19 cases to fall.

Some schools have had to close due to Covid-19 outbreaks.

Credit: PA

Labour has hit out at the Prime Minister "failing to be clear" about scientific advice he's received amid reports that SAGE urge schools to remain shut.

Kate Green MP, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, said: "Labour has been clear that keeping pupils learning should be a national priority, but a litany of government failures, from a lack of funding for safety measures through to the delayed and chaotic announcement of mass testing, is putting young people’s education at risk.“It is time for the Prime Minister to get a grip on the situation and show some leadership.

"The country needs to hear from him today, alongside the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Advisor, about the evidence on the spread of the virus, how he plans to minimise disruption to education and a clear strategy for schools and colleges that commands the support of parents, pupils and staff.”

Mobile testing centres set up in parts of London to test secondary school pupils for Covid.

Credit: PA

Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said the arguments for reopening schools in January were “very finely balanced”.

He said: “Certainly my own view is that schools opening is an absolute priority. But society – and eventually this is a political decision – will have to balance keeping schools open, if that is possible, with therefore closing down other parts of society.

“It is going be a trade-off between one or other. You cannot have everything. You cannot have the whole of society opening, and schools opening and further education and universities, and keep R below 1 with this variant.”

Florida professor predicts Amazon rainforest collapse by 2064
By Paul Brinkmann
SCIENCE NEWS 
DEC. 29, 2020 / 3:00 AM

A gold mine in the Amazon rainforest is one example of environmental destruction that could result in collapse of the ecosystem by 2064. Photo courtesy of Robert Walker/University of Florida

ORLANDO, Fla., Dec. 29 (UPI) -- The world's largest rainforest ecosystem, the Amazon, will collapse and largely become a dry, scrubby plain by 2064 because of climate change and deforestation, a University of Florida professor predicts.

That forecast, published online in the journal Environment, gives the most specific date yet for the general demise of the Brazilian ecosystem, according to scientists familiar with Amazonian research.


The article, Collision Course: Development Pushes Amazonia Toward Its Tipping Point, was written by Robert Walker, a professor on the faculty of the university's Center for Latin American Studies, who describes himself as a land change scientist.

"The best way to think of the forest ecosystem is that it's a pump," Walker told UPI. "The forest recycles moisture, which supports regional rainfall. If you continue to destroy the forest, the rainfall amount drops ... and eventually, you wreck the pump."

RELATED Demand for meat driving deforestation in Brazil

Walker said he's spent a lot of time in the Amazon region talking to farmers and loggers who live there. He said poverty and poor use of government resources ultimately drives much of the deforestation.

"The people there, they don't worry so much about biodiversity, the environment, when they have to worry about eating their next meal," he said.

The rainforest can recover from periodic drought if those dry spells come years apart, according to Walker's article. But a severe drought in 2005 began a period of more frequent and longer drought periods.

RELATED Officials: Amazon deforestation in Brazil at 12-year high

The Amazon covers about 2.7 million square miles, a little less than the lower 48 U.S. states. But it has shrunk by about 20 percent since intense development began, Walker noted.

"If southern Amazonia's dry season continues lengthening as it has over the past few decades, the drought of 2005 will become the region's new normal before the end of the century," Walker wrote.

Such longer periods of drought are due not only to deforestation, but to global warming and climate change, Walker said.

RELATED Evidence of biodiversity losses found deep inside the rainforest

A NASA satellite photo shows fires burning in near the Amazon rainforest in 2019. NASA photo/EPA-EFE

That global impact means local actions won't be enough to save the Amazon, which stores large amounts of carbon from carbon dioxide -- a major contributor to climate change. The dry season has lengthened in the south by an additional 6.5 days per decade, Walker wrote.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has noted Increasing fire activity in the Brazilian rainforest, as seen by satellites.

The "rainforest has experienced three major droughts, considered once-in-a-century events in 2005, 2010, and in 2015-2016," the agency said in a 2019 update.

Environmental advocacy in Brazil and around the world was strong in the 1980s and 1990s, Walker said, but it has collapsed since then.

His article takes aim at Brazil's conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro.

"The upshot is that the deforestation rate has begun to rise, if slowly, after reaching its historic low point in 2012," Walker wrote, noting that Bolsonaro's administration "appears intent on scrapping all remaining restraints on the unfettered exploitation of Amazonia's natural resources."

The unique characteristic about the article is the specific predicted date for the Amazon's demise, said another Amazon researcher, Nathan Moore, associate professor of geology at Michigan State University.

"The new thing ... here is saying that we can see the edge," Moore said. "[Walker] offers the first estimate, the year 2064, as when we will certainly have seen cataclysmic die-back."

Moore noted that other researchers have only given estimates in broad terms.

"Everyone wants to just wave their hands and say 'later in the century' or something. So Walker is making a real commitment here," Moore said.

Large areas of the forest will become grassland and will not return to a rainforest state, he said.

"All of the huge benefits of this massive forest will be gone, too -- abundant water and timber, food, new medicines," Moore said.

upi.com/7063867

Joe Biden Is A ‘Fascist War Criminal Who Should Be In Prison,’ Congressional Candidate Says

DREW ANGERER / GETTY IMAGESUS POLITICS

Tyler MacDonald
December 28, 2020

Ohio Green Party congressional candidate Joe Manchik took aim at President-elect Joe Biden on Saturday for his role in the United States’ initiation of the Iraq War. His comment was a response to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which claimed that activists and young voters “made a difference in November” by electing Biden as president.

“Wake up, @BoldProgressive! The FACT is, Joe Biden is a fascist war criminal who should be in prison today for treason instead of The White House, just like Donald Trump,” he tweeted to the political action committee.


Manchik linked to the documentary Worth the Price? Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War, which is narrated by Danny Glover. As reported by Democracy Now!, the film was directed by the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Mark Weisbrot, who focused on Biden’s role in pushing the invasion, which he later apologized for supporting.

Weisbrot stressed Biden’s part in “enabling and allowing and getting the authorization” for the Iraq War through Congress.

“That was a huge role in bringing us this war. It wasn’t just a vote for the war. He was the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And, you know, when I was going through this footage, it was amazing, all the things that he did. He argued very strongly for the war. He had a lot of influence.”

The antitrust scholar whose work laid the blueprint for a new wave of monopoly lawsuits against Big Tech

OAKLAND, Calif. — Three years ago, before she became an antitrust scholar whose work laid the blueprint for a new wave of monopoly lawsuits against Big Tech, Dina Srinivasan was a digital advertising executive bored with her job and worried about the bleak outlook for the industry.With no background in academia but an insider’s understanding of the digital ad world and a stack of economics books, Dina Srinivasan wrote a paper with a novel theory: that Facebook harmed consumers by extracting more and more personal data for using its free services.

© Dina Srinivasan/Twitter Dina Srinivasan.

“It just felt like, OK, Facebook and Google were going to win, and everybody else is going to lose, and that’s just the way the cards were stacked,” Srinivasan said. “I don’t think this was widely understood.”

So she quit her job at a unit of WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency, and pursued something she had not done since her days as a law student at Yale University: writing a legal treatise.

With no background in academia but an insider’s understanding of the digital ad world and a stack of economics books, she wrote a paper with a novel theory: that Facebook harmed consumers by extracting more and more personal data for using its free services. This year, she argued in another paper that Google’s monopoly in advertising technology allowed for the type of self-dealing and insider trading that would be illegal on Wall Street.

Her arguments reframed the antitrust thinking about the companies. And her timing was perfect.

Federal regulators and state attorneys general had expressed growing unease about the unchecked power of the technology giants. But many had struggled with how to bring a case because of the complexity of the companies and the markets they competed in. Arguing that these firms were harming consumers was also difficult because many of their products were free.© Dina Srinivasan/Twitter Dina Srinivasan.

“Her work has allowed policymakers to clarify their ideas, to move from a confused state of being worried to a state where they can articulate the specifics of what they worry about,” said Thomas Philippon, an economist and New York University professor who has written about the concentration of corporate power. “There’s no doubt that her work has been influential.”

For two decades, while the biggest technology companies amassed more power, branched into new businesses and gobbled up competitors, U.S. regulators had exercised restraint in enforcing antitrust laws. But in recent months, mounting concerns about the outsize influence of tech’s most powerful companies have set off a cascade of antitrust lawsuits, with three cases targeting Google and two suits against Facebook.

As the legal arguments take shape, there is evidence of Srinivasan’s fingerprints.

When Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, accused Facebook of buying up rivals to illegally crush the competition as part of a multistate lawsuit against the company this month, she noted that consumers paid the price with reduced privacy protections. That notion of consumer harm is the crux of Srinivasan’s thesis in her paper, “The Antitrust Case Against Facebook.”

When Texas and nine other states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google last week, the complaint identified many of the same conflicts of interest as Srinivasan’s paper “Why Google Dominates Advertising Markets” in the Stanford Technology Law Review. The lawsuit said Google controlled every part of the digital advertising pipeline and used it to give priority to its own services, acting as “pitcher, batter and umpire, all at the same time.”

The similarities were obvious for good reason. In September, Srinivasan became a technical consultant to the team of lawyers in the Texas attorney general’s office working on the investigation into Google. With her understanding of economics and the advertising market, she took on an expanded role and was instrumental in drafting the complaint, said a person familiar with the case who was not allowed to speak publicly on the matter.

“Dina was an integral part of the team, particularly in the closing months as we sought to finalize the petition,” the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, said in a statement. “Dina contributed immensely to the entire effort, and we were fortunate to have her aid.”

It remains to be seen how the courts will receive Srinivasan’s legal arguments. Facebook has said that concerns about its handling of privacy and harmful content are important, but they are not antitrust issues. Google said that the case led by Texas is “meritless” and “baseless.”
Opinion: The world is finally taking Big Tech seriously. Canada should step up
Ottawa likely to face pressure from Google, Facebook on news sharing rules following threats against Australia

As regulators home in on the technology giants, they are relying on the assistance of current and former insiders like Srinivasan to provide the expertise necessary to apply 20th-century competition laws to 21st-century technology and markets.

For Srinivasan, 40, her second career as an antitrust scholar finally provided a use for her law degree from Yale, where she had a keen interest in competition law. Her final research paper at Yale in 2006 was an argument that the rules for the National Association of Realtors amounted to an illegal conspiracy among its members. (The discussion was in the news at the time because the Department of Justice had brought its own antitrust case against the trade association in 2005. The two sides reached a settlement in 2008.)

When Srinivasan graduated law school, she passed on a law career and started a company to help local businesses efficiently buy advertising on the internet. She sold the technology to a division of WPP and joined its then-subsidiary Kantar Media as an executive in 2012.

Srinivasan said she had an epiphany in June 2014 when Facebook announced that it would start tracking the behaviour of users across the internet — and outside of its network — to sharpen its ad targeting. Even as her colleagues celebrated the news as an important breakthrough for advertisers, Srinivasan could not shake the feeling that this represented a failure of the free market.

“Who the heck consents to having a company track them across the internet,” she remembered thinking. “They could only do it because they had monopoly power to do something that clearly goes against consumer interests.”

After leaving the ad world in 2017, she spent the next year researching and writing a paper on why Facebook was a monopoly. When she was done, she submitted her paper to the websites of about a dozen law reviews. To her surprise, the Berkeley Business Law Journal, which is associated with the University of California, Berkeley’s law school, agreed to publish her work. Srinivasan said she cried at the news.

Her Facebook paper quickly captured the attention of regulators. In March 2019, a month after it was published, Rep. David Cicilline, the Democratic chair of the House antitrust subcommittee, wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to investigate Facebook on antitrust grounds, citing her paper, among other works. The New York attorney general’s office later asked her to speak to its lawyers about her work.

This year, she took aim with her Stanford Technology Law Review article at the other behemoth of the online ad world: Google. She explained the complex world of online ad exchanges, where display ads are sold and bought in milliseconds. Srinivasan argued that Google dominates nearly all facets of these markets, representing buyers and sellers while also operating the largest exchange.

While other electronic trading markets — namely, financial markets — are heavily regulated to prevent conflicts of interest and unfair advantages of speed and inside information, online ad trading is largely unregulated. She argued that Google’s dominance inflated the price of ads — a concept described as a “monopoly tax” in the multistate lawsuit led by Texas.

© LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES U.S. federal and state antitrust enforcers filed suit against Facebook on Dec. 9, 2020 claiming the social media giant abused its dominant position with acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

Marshall Steinbaum, an assistant professor at the University of Utah’s economics department, wrote on Twitter that Srinivasan’s articles on Google and Facebook had a greater influence on the recently filed antitrust cases than all the other research about those companies or tech in general by traditional economists focused on competition policy.

“Her papers are just very clearly on point about the actual conduct of the platforms and its competitive significance,” Steinbaum said. “They’re helpful to enforcers and come from a perspective of someone who obviously knows the industry and the facts.”

These days, Srinivasan is a fellow with an antitrust research group at Yale, and she is trying to figure out what to do next. She passed the California bar exam last December and also considered enrolling in a doctoral program in economics. For a little over a year until September, she worked as a consultant to News Corp., advising the company on antitrust matters.

Srinivasan said she is just happy that anyone bothered to read what she wrote. While she still feels like an outsider to the world of antitrust scholars, she said not having a traditional academic background helped her see problems differently and come up with a new line of thinking.

“It probably helped me to be disconnected,” she said. “It allowed me to think outside the box.”

#VELIKOVSKY SAID IT DID
Does lightning strike on Venus? Mysterious flash may help solve puzzle.

On March 1, 2020, humanity’s only spacecraft orbiting Venus—Japan’s Akatsuki—saw a mysterious flash in the planet’s alien skies. The flicker could provide crucial evidence in a 40-year quest to answer a perplexing planetary puzzle: Is there lightning on this cloud-shrouded world?

© Photograph by JAXA/PLANET-C Project Team
A false color image of Venus taken in ultraviolet light by Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft, revealing patterns in the planet's cloud layers.

Lightning is found all over the solar system. Spacecraft have detected extraterrestrial lightning strikes in the clouds of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Cloaked in thick clouds, “we expect there to be lightning on Venus” as well, says Noam Izenberg, a planetary geologist at Johns Hopkins University and deputy chair of the Venus Exploration Analysis Group.

The flash seen by the spacecraft Akatsuki, which means “Dawn” in Japanese, was revealed by planetary scientist Yukihiro Takahashi of Hokkaido University at this year’s gathering of the American Geophysical Union. Takahashi’s team suspects it was either a powerful lightning strike, roughly 10 times more energetic than lightning on Earth, or a large meteor that exploded in the planet’s atmosphere.

The flash was spotted by the craft’s Lightning and Airglow Camera, an instrument that has been scanning the clouds of Venus for five years—only now picking up its first flash of light. It’s one of the most promising signs of lightning on Venus, but the team is still analyzing the data, and the members have declined to talk about the research until it has been published in a peer-reviewed paper.

“The existence of lightning in Venus has been controversial for many decades,” Takahashi said during his talk.

Tantalizing evidence of Venusian lightning has been spotted before, from electromagnetic pulses measured by spacecraft to blips of light seen from Earth. But each time, scientists have questioned whether the signals were coming from lightning or another source, such as flashes of particles from deep space known as cosmic rays, or from noise created by the scientific instruments themselves.

To identify the source of the recent flash, astronomers are hoping to see another one. “It’s intriguing, and they are doing the work to rule out other things,” says Izenberg, who is not involved in the new research. But “the proof is going to be in the pudding of seeing it again.”

If the flash was lightning, it’s discovery would be a major step toward deciphering the mysterious nature of Venus’s thick clouds—including providing a clue as to whether such an environment could support life. “[Lightning] can break apart atoms, and it gives you free radicals which recombine and form molecules which you otherwise wouldn’t expect to get,” says Colin Wilson, a planetary scientist at the University of Oxford.
Whistles in the maelstrom

Scientists have been looking for lightning on Venus for nearly half a century, searching through telescopes and monitoring for telltale electromagnetic sizzling with spacecraft. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which could easily detect lightning on Earth, flew by Venus twice in the late 1990s on its way to Saturn and didn’t pick up any flashes.

But earlier clues exist. Some of the Soviet Union’s Venera landers, launched between the 1960s and 1980s, registered suspicious pings on magnetic and acoustic sensors. The United States’ Pioneer Venus Orbiter picked up energetic bursts in the 1980s, as did the radio attached to the Galileo probe as it zipped by in 1990 on the way to Jupiter. A ground-based telescope also saw several faint luminous splotches on Venus in the mid-1990s.

“None of these have been completely convincing,” says Karen Aplin, a physicist at the University of Bristol who studies planetary lightning. “In general, it has been difficult to exclude the possibility of other explanations.”

The European Space Agency’s Venus Express spacecraft, which orbited the planet from 2006 to 2015, heard many “whistler-mode” radio waves coming from the planet. On Earth, these signals—named by radio operators during World War I who heard whistling sounds on the radio and worried they might be incoming grenades—can be generated by lightning.



Gallery: 50 space terms for understanding the universe (Stacker)


However, “whistler-mode waves can be generated by any kind of instability or disturbance within the atmosphere,” says Shannon Curry, a planetary physicist at the University of California, Berkeley. They are heard regularly emanating from Venus and Mars, and it’s possible that these signals are coming from elusive lightning, but astronomers can’t be sure.
Seeing is believing

Most of the optical searches for lightning—looking for the visible flashes—have yielded no results. One possibility, Wilson says, is that “the source of the lightning is below the top of the clouds, which means the radio waves get out, but a lot of the light is blocked.”

The Akatsuki spacecraft can search for faint flashes of light escaping Venus’s clouds. However, because the craft experienced an engine malfunction and failed to enter orbit around Venus in 2010, it had to circle around the solar system and try again in 2015. Although Akatsuki successfully entered Venus orbit on the second try, it had to settle for an overly elongated orbit that keeps the craft far away from the planet most of the time.

After half a decade, though, Akatsuki spotted a flash of light. “I’m surprised they didn’t see it again,” Curry says. “The fact that they only saw it once is what bothers me,” as lightning should appear in clusters. But “the detection itself I’m willing to believe.”

The flash doesn’t look like it could have been caused by a cosmic ray, though the Akatsuki team believes it could have been a bolide—a meteor that explodes in the atmosphere with a bright flash. The odds of Akatsuki seeing a bolide, based on what we know about how often they hit planets, however, is exceedingly unlikely.

For now, the leading explanation is lightning.

“An isolated case of instrument error that happens to look like a real signal would be an incredible coincidence,” says Ricky Hart, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies signals from possible lightning on Venus. The flash, he says, “adds a good deal of support to the argument for lightning on Venus.”
Mysteries in thick alien clouds

If the flash is lightning, what’s making it? Astronomers hunting for the answer to this question believe it could revolutionize what we know about the skies of Venus.

The planet’s sulfuric acid clouds are unique in the solar system, so traditional models of lightning generation don’t apply to Venus, Aplin says. One issue is that its clouds are thought to conduct electricity relatively well, which may prevent electricity from accumulating in one place to the point where lightning is triggered.

Earth’s clouds separate electrically charged water droplets and ice crystals through convection—when warmer clouds move up and cooler clouds sink down—leading to lightning. But it’s not clear how much vertical mixing happens in Venus’ clouds, says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at North Carolina State University. And Akatsuki can’t place the altitude of the flash, so if it was lightning, it could have struck from anywhere between the upper atmosphere and the main cloud deck tens of miles deeper.

One possibility is that flashes of lightning on Venus follow volcanic eruptions. Although no eruption has yet been directly observed through the planet’s obscuring clouds, circumstantial evidence has many planetary scientists convinced that eruptions are nevertheless taking place. Explosive events producing ashy, electrically excited plumes could generate bolts of lightning.

Whether this detection turns out to be genuine or not, planetary scientists will continue to search for more flashes, eager to know if lightning’s alchemic power is at work on Venus.

“Lightning is charismatic, as a process. It’s active,” Izenberg says. It “could be one of the potential engines for prebiotic chemistry on Venus,” meaning the blasts of energy could stitch together molecules that are needed for life. If this process occurs in parts of the atmosphere that are known to be watery, temperate, and sunlit, it could create a potential haven for photosynthetic microbes.

Lightning may also be responsible for making the gas phosphine, a compound that was recently detected on Venus—though some experts have questioned whether the detection is valid—and is known to be produced by microbes on Earth. If this gas really does exist in the Venusian clouds, some of it may be forged by lightning interacting with the atmosphere.

Dual observations made by terrestrial telescopes and Akatsuki would go a long way to convincing the community that lightning has been identified, Curry says. But until humanity sends a new mission to Venus to dive through the atmosphere or fly close to the cloud tops, the presence of lightning will likely remain an open question, Byrne says.

We know surprisingly little about Venus, a world that is about the same size and composition as Earth but whose evolution has differed dramatically. This flash, Izenberg says, is “yet another argument that says we have to go back.”

Alberta company sued after former employee spends two months in hellish Congo jail

Ronan O’Mhaoinigh had been working in the Republic of Congo for Alberta’s United Safety International barely six weeks when the subpoena arrived.

© Provided by National Post Pointe-Noire, Congo.

It summoned him ominously to a courthouse in Pointe-Noire, heart of the central African country’s sizeable oil industry, to face unspecified legal accusations.

The situation quickly grew even more alarming. The Irish native learned he was being sued by the Canadian firm’s former agent, a man with links to the nation’s autocratic rulers. The agent claimed O’Mhaoinigh had pocketed $2 million in unpaid fees owed to him, news to the novice employee.

Soon enough the judge had the United Safety worker handcuffed and hustled off to a local jail.

And for the next two months in 2015, O’Mhaoinigh and another employee languished in the lockup’s hellish conditions, where 300 prisoners were jammed into a space equivalent to two basketball courts, guards kept their distance and violent criminals ruled the roost.

He eventually fled the country with his wife, a Congo native, but the couple are now suing United Safety in an unusual civil action. It alleges the Airdrie, Alta., oil and gas safety-equipment supplier was immersed in the corruption of what NGO Global Witness calls “one of the world’s longest-lasting kleptocracies.”

The company exposed O’Mhaoinigh to danger through its questionable dealings with well-connected agent Marc Emanuelli, struck a back-room deal for his freedom that left a baseless criminal charge hanging over his head and laid him off not long after the ordeal, he charges.

“Just yesterday or the day before, I rang my wife to remind her of how we were before United Safety came along,” O’Mhaoinigh said in an affidavit filed a year ago in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench. “We were hopeful, we had plans, we wanted children, we helped each other … United Safety and its directors took away all that.”

None of the allegations has been proven in court. A legal official called a “master” ruled this month against the plaintiffs’ request for a “summary judgment” based on written submissions, saying the dispute would have to be settled at trial.

Unable to afford a lawyer in Alberta, the plaintiffs are representing themselves.

The company, like O’Mhaoinigh, declined to comment on the action, but it has responded in court with a very different version of events.

United Safety says it had no idea Emanuelli was accused of involvement in shady activities, but did all it could with its Canadian and African lawyers to get O’Mhaoinigh released. In the meantime, the employee needlessly antagonized the judicial and political systems in Congo, tried to bribe a court officer, and spurned the help of United Safety and its lawyers, the firm charges.

He was laid off eventually, after taking months of paid leave, only because the global oil industry was crumbling and United Safety was pulling out of Congo, it says.

“United Safety worked tirelessly and at great expense to support and free Mr. O’Mhaoinigh from detention,” CEO Lee Whittaker says in an affidavit.

Regardless of whose account is more accurate, the case shines a light on the sometimes controversial role played by Western businesses in resource-wealthy developing countries like Congo, sub-Saharan Africa’s third-biggest oil producer.

Despite its petroleum riches, Congo — also known as Congo-Brazzaville — is nearly bankrupt after years of corruption under strong-man president Denis Sassou Nguesso.

© LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images Republic of Congo’s President Denis Sassou Nguesso arrives for a visit at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Sept. 3, 2019.

In a report earlier this year, Global Witness noted that over US$1 billion of the state oil company’s revenue is unaccounted for, something it says needs to be investigated given Congo’s “long history of diversion of public funds by political elites.” Swiss authorities fined a company US$95 million in 2019 for employing bribery in the country, and San Marino confiscated $US17 million from Nguesso in a money-laundering investigation. Meanwhile, the president lives in luxury, spending a reported US$110,000 just on crocodile-skin shoes .

United Safety, which was founded in 1987, and boasts of its “excellent (employee) safety record,” has branch offices throughout the world, from Kazakhstan to Singapore, Romania and Saudi Arabia. It had been doing business in Congo since at least 2011.

O’Mhaoinigh moved to the country in 2012 with his Congolese wife, Marie Therese Nenette Bouithy, the couple having met while both were working for Médecins Sans Frontières in Colombia. Bouithy started a wholesale flower-growing business. The husband first worked for a security company, then took the job as account manager with United Safety, spending the first three months training in Alberta.

He started work on the ground in January 2015, and a few weeks later received the subpoena, requiring him to meet the judge in a “dark, dungeon-like and untidy” office, his affidavit says. The official asked immediately if he had stolen Emmanuelli’s money.

O’Mhaoinigh said ‘No,” and pleaded ignorance of the whole situation, but the judge promptly had him arrested, as United Safety’s lawyer said nothing, the suit alleges.

He was the only white man in the jail, the area for prisoners surrounded by a canal full of urine and excrement, with no running water available. Absent any guards, prisoners armed with razor blades and other weapons kept order, administering beatings with a metal rod on a daily basis, alleges the lawsuit.

O’Mhaoinigh said a sense of hopelessness overtook him, and he was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and would lash out at his wife periodically for months after his release.

He says he knew nothing about Emanuelli at the time, but it turns out the firm had ended its contract with the agent days before the Irishman’s arrest in Pointe-Noire. The arrangement had given the French-Lebanese citizen 10 per cent of any deals the Calgary firm struck in Congo.

In a pre-trial examination for discovery, United Safety CEO Lee Whittaker said Emanuelli had been hired as a sort of facilitator to navigate local culture, language, tax laws and other aspects of doing business in Congo.

But for at least one of his foreign clients, the businessman had a history of providing much more. According to the Swiss watchdog group Public Eye , Emanuelli helped the Swiss commodity trader Gunvor gain a foothold in Congo, introducing Denis Cristel Sassou Nguesso , the president’s son, to Gunvor executives at a high-end hotel in Paris in 2008. Bribes were involved, Public Eye alleged.

Gunvor later worked with other go-betweens on more lucrative deals, and last year was convicted under Swiss laws of facilitating corruption in Congo, including the payment of millions in bribes.

With two of his own staff in jail, Whittaker wrote Emanuelli in 2015, offering to pay him $2 million in five installments for his work that year, indicates a letter filed in court. The CEO wrote that he understood the agent would “proceed to the immediate release of my employees” and withdrawal of charges on receiving the letter.

But the CEO says in an affidavit that O’Mhaoinigh was not freed because of any payments United Safety made to Emanuelli. The company was also unaware of allegations of corruption against the agent, and has seen no objective proof of those charges.

O’Mhaoinigh argues in court documents his role was essentially to do what Emanuelli had been doing — help obtain business for United Safety. He questions why he was paid $54,000 a year and the local businessman millions if that money wasn’t used for greasing the wheels of a corrupt government.

He alleges the company worked behind the scenes, tapping high-level contacts with Congo’s leadership, to get him released and his passport returned. But O’Mhaoinigh alleges it left him still facing a criminal charge and fearful of more retribution from Nguesso allies. He says lawyers he retained were on the way to having him cleared completely but the company essentially short-circuited those efforts.

United Safety says it was the work of its own lawyers and nothing else that got its employees out of jail and that, in fact, all charges were dismissed. And the situation was exacerbated by O’Mhaoinigh’s own actions, charges Whittaker’s affidavit.

That includes his “aggressive and disrespectful behaviour” in the Congolese courts; attempt to bribe a police officer; refusal to co-operate with the company and its lawyer; political activism; and publication on the Internet of details of the case, which the judge deemed “an attack on his honour,” the affidavit says.

A letter from the company’s lawyer that O’Mhaoinigh received after his release, also filed in court, accuses him of conducting a “campaign of defamation and denigration” against United Safety and Congo’s judiciary, and said the firm reserved the right to take legal action against him if he persisted.

Regardless, O’Mhaoinigh says in court documents the episode has turned the couple’s lives upside down.

They left Congo with nothing, touching down first in Spain, then moving to Ireland, O’Mhaoinigh says. He even tried to obtain a visa to Canada, but his application was rejected at that time because of the bogus criminal charge in Congo, he says in an affidavit.

He says his career in corporate finance is effectively over, the outstanding charge in Congo turning off most employers.

The lawsuit claims more than $18 million in damages, much of it for “economic loss.

7 months after massive anti-racism rally in Edmonton, efforts to address the issues continue

© Cliff Harris/ Global News Protesters gather for a "Fight For Equity" rally at the Alberta legislature on Friday, June 5, 2020.

When Tiera Williams planned the Fight for Equity protest in Edmonton, she only expected to see her family and friends to come. But just days after she posted her plans, it went viral.

Rarely has a protest drawn a crowd in Edmonton like June's anti-racism rally did -- 15,000 people showed up.

Read more: Over 15,000 people in Edmonton gather for equality rally at Alberta legislature grounds

“The only time I see our city go crazy on something like this is when we are in playoffs with the Oilers,” Williams said.

“(It told me) that Black lives do matter, and Indigenous lives do matter. Like, I knew that already, but it told me other people believe that too.

“Everybody being on the same page and feeling that emotion together and just wanting to fight for something better, we all deserve it.”

Anti-racism rallies swept the world following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck. Another incident that spurred the movement was the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by police in a botched raid.

Millions took to the streets denouncing police brutality and shining a spotlight on systemic racism.

Barrington Walker felt inspired when he saw the protests unfold.

Walker is a history professor focusing on the histories of Black people, race immigration and law. He is also the senior adviser on equity, diversity and inclusion at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario.

“I am cautiously optimistic that this has managed to garner sustained attention that I think is unprecedented, certainly not since the 1960s,” he said.

Walker thinks people need to look at who was in the crowd to really understand the power of the movement.

“What struck me as being different in this particular instance was the scope of the protest, just the sheer numbers of people who took to the street in cities across North America," he said.

“What else struck me was unlike earlier eras that I studied in the past, was the interracial, intergenerational, intersectional nature of the people.

“If you take just a quick perusal from some of the footage in the summer, there are a lot of non-Black people that came out in support of people of African descent at this time.

“The number of young people who have been inspired, and mobilized to come out and fight against oppression, I am inspired by it and I am cautiously optimistic."

Read more: Calgary Catholic students walk out of class to protest systemic racism in education system

Almost seven months later, the conversation about the issues is ongoing and there have been some changes made.

In Edmonton, the Edmonton Police Service has committed to an action plan to address its relationship with racialized communities.

Read more: Edmonton police chief releases commitment to take action to improve relations with racialized, underserved communities

“Systemic racism isn't fixed by focusing on one entity, it needs to be focused on the system, and if we are really going to get to that, we are going to need to work with the other systems that really reflect our community and our society,” said EPS Chief Dale McFee.

While Edmonton city council voted to shrink the police budget by $11 million in favour of community programs, McFee said he doesn’t think that decision will result in improvements.

“Defund the police, or abolish the police… moving money around has never worked," he said. "It hasn't worked in 20 years and it's not going to work in the next 20 years.

“What I would like to see different is, find out how much money is in the system... What outcomes do we get in that social net space, and when you start to look at this partnership and say, 'How do we deliver better services for our citizens?', don't make it about one particular entity -- how do you set joint outcomes and joint spaces that actually make a difference?

“How do we use that $11 million and who else is going to come to the table with money or resources to say, 'Let’s do some different things.'

Read more: Violence, defund the police and COVID-19: looking back on 2020 with Edmonton’s police chief

“We are not going be successful by doubling down on what we are doing right now, and we all know that -- and I think COVID-19 has exposed that. But there is probably more opportunities that ever existed before, but it's going to require more leadership and require leadership to obviously take some calculated risks.”

Edmonton is also looking to a new task force to present a plan to council in March.

“The issue of racism and discrimination is not new," said community safety and well-being task force member Serena Mah. "We have been talking about this for years, but now I feel this is a real moment for change -- take action at how we can make it better.


“Before this, we were talking about racism as if it didn't exist, so I think we have moved past that... I think we are at the cusp of finding solutions."

Mah said the task force is talking about defunding the police, but also looking at what that means.

“It's not going to be a magic bullet to get racism to go away, but there are small things that can be tackled and put into action to make it a more equitable society for everybody," Mah said.

Williams is also trying to do her part. She continues to attend anti-racism rallies and also hosts virtual conversations weekly on a Fight for Equity’s Facebook group.

“We do inclusivity check conversations every week," she said. "We have topics and we just try to invite people to still come and listen. Even if you're not taking part in speaking in it, you can still learn something.”

Even though momentum has slowed, Williams hopes people won’t forget why they showed up back in June.


“We need people to hear us when we say, 'Our lives do matter and we matter. Black and Indigenous lives aren't a trend.'”