Algeria: Thousands take to the streets to relaunch protest movement

The Hirak movement, which ousted former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, has been given a new breath of life after a year of coronavirus restrictions.



The protests mark the one-year anniversary of the first Hirak protests

Over 5,000 people gathered in the northern Algerian town of Kherrata on Tuesday to mark the two year anniversary of the Hirak protest movement that ousted the country's long term president from power in 2019.

Protesters gathered in the town where the movement originally began — 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of the capital Algiers — hoping to kick it off again a year after the coronavirus pandemic forced it off the streets.

"We came to revive the Hirak that was stopped for health reasons. They didn't stop us. We stopped because we care for our people. Today coronavirus is over and we will get the Hirak back," Nassima, a protester, told Reuters.

The protesters waved Algerian flags and chanted: "A civilian state, not a military state" and "The gang must go."

What is the Hirak movement?

The Hirak protests were successful in forcing the veteran former president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to step down, but protests numbering in the tens of thousands continued.

Protesters called for "Freedom of the press and of expression"

They called for the complete removal of Algeria's political elite and dubbed the elections that followed Bouteflika's resignation a charade.

Abdelmadjid Tebboube, who was elected in the December 2019 vote, praised the Hirak movement, but failed to pass any major reforms.

Around 70 people are currently in prison for their connection to the Hirak protests, the CNLD prisoners' support group said.

Karim Tabbou, a prominent figure in the protests, who was given a one-year suspended sentence in December for "undermining national security" was also present in Kherrata.
What do the protesters want?

Hirak is a leaderless movement, but supporters have spent lockdown discussing online how to reinvigorate the protests while under Algeria's COVID-19 lockdown.

Watch video 01:38 Looking back on the Arab Spring

Smaller demonstrations have been taking place across the country in recent weeks in a build-up to the February 22 anniversary of the first nationwide protests.

"It is a revolutionary process for a very precise goal, which is the departure of the regime, the whole regime with all its components," another protester, Hamid, told Reuters.

The movement is seeking to overhaul the country's political system which has been in place since it gained independence from France in 1962.

ab/aw (Reuters, AFP)

Why does Bitcoin need more energy than whole countries?

Running the cryptocurrency Bitcoin requires more energy than New Zealand and Belgium put together. How can something virtual keep power plants around the world so busy? DW's Timothy Rooks looks into the numbers.


An artist's rendition of what a Bitcoin could look like if it were made of metal

If you are reading this article, you are using electricity. The same goes for every Google search, email sent and photo saved to the cloud. As our lives go digital, we need more electricity to power those lives. Yet there is one digital outlier that keeps getting a lot of attention: Bitcoin.

For something that doesn't physically exist, Bitcoin really captivates the imagination and needs a lot of electric power to keep going. That's according to an ongoing study by the University of Cambridge's Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. They calculate that in one year the machines behind the cryptocurrency require more power than the Netherlands, a country with over 17 million inhabitants.

As the value of Bitcoin has skyrocketed recently to over $50,000 (€41,300), so has the need for electric power to run it.

Bitcoin supporters say this is OK since it is creating an entirely new financial system free of government interference. Mining gold and printing money too cost a lot to produce, transport and keep safe. Meanwhile, today's financial system with its digital platforms and offices uses lots of energy too.

How much power does Bitcoin need?

Undisputed numbers are hard to come by because of the complex nature of the calculations. Back at the start of 2017, Bitcoin was using 6.6 terawatt-hours of power a year. In October 2020, that was up to 67 terawatt-hours. Now a few months later, it has nearly doubled to 121 terawatt-hours, the Cambridge researchers found, enough to run their entire university for nearly 700 years.

By these same calculations, if Bitcoin were a country, only 30 other countries would use more electricity. It would surpass the yearly power needs of the UAE, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Belgium, Austria or Israel.

Dutch economist Alex de Vries is a bit more conservative and thinks Bitcoin uses 77 terawatt-hours of power a year. He has also been following the situation for years and publishes his research on Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index.

Today all data centers globally — the ones that run Big Tech, the cloud, the internet and the current financial system — need around 200 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, according to de Vries. "At the moment the Bitcoin network consumes about half this amount," he told DW.

By comparison, one Bitcoin transaction had the same energy footprint as 80,000 Visa transactions in 2018. Now a single Bitcoin transaction uses the same electricity to run 453,000 Visa transactions, according to numbers on Digiconomist, a website "dedicated to exposing the unintended consequences of digital trends."

Why does Bitcoin need energy at all?

Bitcoin is a virtual cryptocurrency. Basically, that means it is run by a massive peer-to-peer computer network. To keep track of everything and to keep the network safe, it uses a ledger system called blockchain. This records all transactions and everyone in the network gets a copy and each copy is linked to each other. Since everything is interconnected the hope is that tampering with the system is impossible.

Anyone can become a part of the network; they just need to have a high-powered purpose-built computer, the more powerful the better. These computers solve increasingly difficult math problems to keep it all going. To avoid overheating, the busy machines must be kept cool.

Elon Musk, Bitcoin's most famous investor

The people running these computers, often called miners, don't get paid per se, but have the chance of being rewarded with Bitcoin. The more computing power they have, the higher their chances of getting some. When the price of Bitcoin goes up, it makes investing in more technology attractive. It's an upward spiral as more computers are added.

"The higher the price, the more miners will earn, and the bigger the incentive to add more machines to the network," said de Vries, adding that usage is also important "because the network can only process five transactions per second, it quickly gets more expensive to use Bitcoin if a lot of people try to do so. Since transaction fees also go to the miners, this also drives miner earnings and ultimately energy consumption."

Where are the Bitcoin miners?

Currently, over 65% of Bitcoin miners are in China, followed by the US and Russia both with around 7%, according to the researchers at Cambridge.

"In China, they can get cheap excesses of hydropower in the summer and take advantage of cheap coal-based power in the winter," de Vries told DW. "Since they still have to move seasonally within China to optimally benefit from this, we've recently seen countries like Iran and Kazakhstan gain popularity."

Critics see this as a big problem. Many countries have unstable power grids and some cannot handle the increased needs. In January, the Iranian government blamed Bitcoin mining for power outages in the country. On top of that, there is the giant CO2 footprint of all that electricity production.

Though Bitcoin's environmental damage is so far only a tiny fraction of what cars and industry produce, these ecological concerns have pushed many miners away from coal power to places with cheaper hydroelectric power. And despite most concerns, the cryptocurrency still has a big fan base, most famous among them Tesla's Elon Musk.

Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency on the block though. Understudied cryptocurrencies added 50% on top of Bitcoin's energy needs last year, according to de Vries. Some use a similar mining technique to Bitcoin. Others use alternatives in which the block creation process depends on wealth rather than computational power. "Theoretically this modification could also be implemented in Bitcoin and would remove any incentive to use specialized mining hardware, saving both energy and electronic waste," he concluded.


Watch video 01:31 A tipping point for Bitcoin?

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Belarus jails 2 journalists for filming protests


The two women were accused of orchestrating demonstrations against longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko. One of them said she "risked her life every time she went to work."

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Duration: 01:04 
Residents have been rescuing cold-stunned sea turtles and taking them to a convention center in a South Texas resort town. (Feb. 17)

Glacial event that killed dozens could happen more often due to climate change

Warming temperatures across the globe are changing landscapes and threatening local cities and communities

A devastating break of a glacier in the Himalayas on Feb. 7 left dozens dead and more than 100 missing after it smashed into multiple dams, collecting debris and energy as it made its way down the flank before slamming into two hydroelectric plants in northern India.

While it's difficult to attribute the cause of the collapse on climate change alone, rising temperatures will undoubtedly create more of these types of events in the future, experts told ABC News.

"With the accelerated warming that is happening in the Himalayas, and the rapid response of glaciers across the Himalayas ... the probability for hazards does go up, Summer Rupper, a glaciologist at the University of Utah, told ABC News

.

© AP National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) personnel clear debris after a portion of the Nanda Devi glacier snapped off Sunday morning, releasing water trapped behind it in Tapovan, northern state of Uttarakhand, India, Feb. 9, 2021.
It is still unclear what caused the dam to break

Scientists are still trying to figure out exactly what caused the glacier to break on Feb. 7. At first, a glacial lake outburst was blamed. Although satellite imagery soon disproved that theory, there is potential for glacier outbursts to increase in number and time as temperatures increasingly cause them to thin and retreat, Joerg Schaefer, a climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, told ABC News.

© Yawar Nazir/Getty Images, FILE

Schaefer hypothesized that some kind of mechanism triggered a landslide and that the resulting water pressure eventually burst the dam, causing the mass to plunge down the "extremely steep" flank.MORE: Greenland's glaciers could lose more ice than predicted, study says

Schaefer described the mass as a "water monster" that made the event even more hazardous.

Hazards experts in the Himalayas have feared that these type of disastrous events would come to fruition. A calamitous glacier event has been a "huge conversation" within the hazards community, Rupper said, and experts have been warning the Indian government since 2014 of the potential of landslides and avalanches, The Associated Press reported.

There is concern that there wasn't adequate monitoring or early warning systems in the valley, especially with multiple hydropower plant projects that were all damaged, Rupper said. And the potential for another landslide is currently there, as a glacial lake is currently forming behind a landslide in the valley where the accident occurred, she added.

© Rajat Gupta/EPA via Shutterstock The damaged Dhauliganga 

hydro power project in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, India, is 

shown on Feb. 9, 2021.

The melting of glaciers will cause catastrophe in more ways than one

Another type of glacial event that can occur as temperatures warm is the potential for the ice masses to drape across varied topography, including steep landscapes that result in hanging glaciers that are especially prone to breaking off and causing ice avalanches, Rupper added.

In addition, the melting of glaciers is a considerable contributor to sea level rise, on par with melting ice sheets, which can cause catastrophic events for coastal areas all over the world.MORE: Researchers to commemorate first 'dead' glacier with plaque, memorial service

Glaciers across the Himalayas have experienced significant ice loss over the past 40 years, with the average rate of ice loss doubling in the 21st century compared to the end of the 20th century, according to a study published in Science Advances in 2019, which Rupper and Schaefer co-authored.

The Himalayan glaciers are retreating "very homogeneously and accelerating their retreat," Schaefer said, adding that the "single culprit" is warming temperatures.

© Yawar Nazir/Getty Images, FILE In this June 25, 2010, file photo, a receding glacier on in Sonamarg, Kashmir, India, is shown.

"It's a very disturbing finding because it means that if you're not asking what happens to the glacier tomorrow, but what happens with the glacier in 10, 15 years, it will follow the temperature curve, which keeps getting warmer," he said.

The shrinking of the Himalayan glaciers, which contribute to local water resources, poses several challenges for neighboring societies, researchers say. The glaciers also feed the hydro plants and they will stop providing meltwater as they shrink, Shaefer said.

"We know that temperatures are warming across the Himalayas. That's really well documented," Rupper said. "And we know that the rate of mass loss of glaciers has accelerated over time. And so that affects everything from water resources to hazards across the Himalayan range."
The melting will also mean the end of climbing in the region

For mountaineers who spend their lives dreaming of climbing the Himalayas and other sought-after destinations around the world, climate change means they may not get there in time.

Cory Richards, a National Geographic photographer who has been climbing for 35 years, told ABC News that he's seen "massive observable shifts" in the deflation and disruption in glaciers around the world.MORE: Missing hiker found dead atop glacier on mountain

"So what that means for us as an industry is yet to be seen," he said. "Certainly, there are routes on specific mountains that will be altered as glaciers start to become less predictable."

One of the places where this is most evident is on the Khumbu Icefall, a passage on the Nepalese side of Mount Everest where ice is constantly falling from the head of the Khumbu glacier, Richards said.

"As temperatures rise, the calving of big ice cliffs and the collapsing of ice features in the Khumbu Icefall will accelerate, there's no doubt about that," he added, describing it as a "tumultuous piece of glacier."

© Planet Labs, Inc. via AP This Feb. 6, 2021, satellite image released by Planet Labs, Inc., shows Uttarakhand, India, before part of a Himalayan glacier broke off.

In addition, if the glacier dam that sits near the Khumbu Valley floods or breaks, it will flood the entire valley downstream, endangering the lives of the residents.

The warming also poses a risk for classic trade routes, such as on the south side of Mount Everest. It will be difficult for guided companies to ensure people will be able to climb safely, Richards said.

For at least 20 years, people in the climbing industry have said, "I don't know how much longer this is gonna be climbable," according to Richards.

"Now, we seem to find ways to do those things, continually," he added. "But that's not to say that it is safe or smart."

Republican politicians are using the widespread power outages in Texas to place false blame on renewable energy sources, but clean energy isn't what was fueling the majority of power plants that failed.

VIDEO
CEO of Texas power company responds to governor’s call to resign amid blackouts

Millions in the state were without power following a massive winter storm that brought snow and freezing temperatures to the region as a second storm loomed nearby.

MORE: Why green hydrogen is the renewable energy source to watch in 2021

Republicans soon after began casting renewable energy as unreliable.

On Tuesday, Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines retweeted a picture of a wind turbine being defrosted, arguing this is a reason to oppose Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland, who has supported wind energy in the past, as interior secretary.

Former Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, who served under the Trump administration, appeared Tuesday on a Fox News segment that contained the chyron, "Storm Shutters Green Energy," where he stated that the current situation in Texas are the reason why fossil fuels should continue to be the main energy source.

© Ron Jenkins/Getty Images

MORE: Millions without power in Texas as dangerous winter weather continues

Brouillette described renewables as "intermittent to sometimes unreliable," adding, "... the technology is not ready for primetime.

"

© Austin American-Statesman via USA Today A gas station in Pflugerville, Texas turned away people that needed gas, Feb 16, 2021, after a winter storm disrupted deliveries and caused power outages.

Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott attributed his state's crisis to the 10% of power plants that are powered by renewables and even went as far as to describe the Green New Deal, a climate proposal by House Democrats, as "deadly" in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity on Tuesday.

MORE: As power outages rock Texas, here's what you should know to stay safe

"Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis," he said.

Abbott later acknowledged in a press conference Wednesday that coal and natural gas played a role in the outages.

"Those coal and natural gas power generating facilities either froze up or had mechanical failure, and we're incapable of adding power to the power grid," the governor said. He also noted that one of the power outages was at the South Texas Project, a nuclear power plant.

The politicians are "misleading the public," Daniel Cohan, associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston, told ABC News.

"The tiny piece of it that's true is that wind turbines, like every other major piece of the Texas power supply, produced less power than we expected it to under these arctic blast conditions," he said. "What is not true is that that is anywhere near in the top five list of the problems that have caused millions of homes to lose power this week and have caused life-threatening conditions across the state."

© Austin American-Statesman via USA Today Austin, Texas is covered in snow on Feb. 15, 2021.

During winter months, the "vast majority" of energy in Texas, more than two-thirds, is supplied by fuel, coal and nuclear sources, Cohan said. The crisis is not so much that the power plants are failing, but that they don't have enough supply, especially of fuel, he added.

"The crisis has shown us the mutual vulnerabilities of our power and natural gas systems to each other when we are so over-reliant on natural gas for our power and heating needs at the same time," Cohan said.

Neil Chatterjee, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, also said on CNBC Wednesday that the power outages seem to be a combination of the extreme weather event coupled with a spike in demand for electricity, stating that he thinks "people are so quick to view things through partisan lenses."

"I am confident that if we take the politics out of this and let the engineers and the economists and the experts examine what went on here, we will figure out ways to continue the energy transition that's taking place in Texas and around the country while maintaining the reliable affordable grid that really sets Texas and the United States of America apart from the rest of the world," Chatterjee said.

© Ashley Landis/AP Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon stands on his kitchen counter to warm his feet over his gas stove, Feb. 16, 2021, in Austin, Texas.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which oversees the state's electric grid, started rolling blackouts earlier this week to conserve power.

CEO Bill Magness told ABC News the power systems are not designed to withstand extreme cold. While the storm was the "central cause" of the power outages, he said there were outages caused by generation of coal and natural gas, as well as wind and solar, he said.

"So, you know, I think what this storm does is expose the vulnerabilities perhaps of all different kinds of power making generation on the system," Magness said.

© Ron Jenkins/Getty Images Pike Electric service trucks line up after

 a snow storm, Feb. 16, 2021, in Fort Worth, Texas.

ERCOT stated in November in its planning document for winter that it had well over 10,000 megawatts of surplus power but that just 8% would come from wind and solar. The power company ended up losing more than 30,000 megawatts in supply, Cohan said.

"I think what the politicians are missing, and what they’re misleading the public about, is the fact that average conditions are different from peak conditions, and the way we need to plan for extreme events is to realize that the needs on the coldest days are different than the needs on the hottest day, which are different than the needs on the mildest days throughout the year," Cohan said.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation will open a joint federal inquiry into the grid operations during the storm.

ABC News' Tom Dunlavey and Stephanie Ebbs contributed to this report.

THEY LOOTED THE 1%

US charges North Korean computer programmers in global hacks

LET'S SEE; RUSSIA, IRAN, CHINA NOW

NORTH KOREA 

THINK WE SHOULD TELL THE US ABOUT MOSSAD?

POST MODERN ROBIN HOOD

© Provided by The Canadian Press

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has charged three North Korean computer programmers in a broad range of global hacks, including a destructive attack targeting an American movie studio, and in the attempted theft and extortion of more than $1.3 billion from banks and companies, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The newly unsealed indictment builds off an earlier criminal case brought in 2018 and adds two additional North Korean defendants. Prosecutors identified all three as members of a North Korean military intelligence agency, accusing them of carrying out hacks at the behest of the government with a goal of using stolen funds for the benefit of the regime. Alarmingly to U.S. officials, the defendants worked at times from locations in Russia and China.

THEY ROB BANKS, LIKE BONNIE AND CLYDE

Law enforcement officials say the prosecution highlights the profit-driven motive behind North Korea's criminal hacking, a contrast from other adversarial nations like Russia, China and Iran who are generally more interested in espionage, intellectual property theft or even disrupting democracy. As the U.S. announced its case against the North Koreans, the government was still grappling with hacks by Russia of federal agencies and private corporations that officials say was aimed at information-gathering.

“What we see emerging uniquely out of North Korea is trying to raise funds through illegal cyber activities,” including the theft of traditional currency and cryptocurrency, as well as cyber extortion schemes, said Assistant Attorney General John Demers, the Justice Department's top national security official.

Because of North Korea's economic system and sanctions imposed on the country, he added, “They use their cyber capabilities to try to get currency wherever they can do that, and that's not something that we really see from actors in China or Russia or in Iran.”

None of the three defendants is in American custody, and though officials don't expect them to travel to the U.S. anytime soon for prosecution, Justice Department officials in recent years have found value in indicting foreign government hackers — even in absentia — as a message that they are not anonymous and can be identified and implicated in crimes.

At the same time, prosecutors unsealed a plea deal with a dual U.S.-Canadian citizen who investigators say organized the sophisticated laundering of millions of dollars in stolen funds. Ghaleb Alaumary, 37, of Ontario, Canada,agreed to plead guilty in Los Angeles to organizing teams of co-conspirators in the U.S. and Canada to launder funds obtained through various schemes.

The indictment unsealed Wednesday charges Jon Chang Hyok, Kim Il and Park Jin Hyok with crimes including conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud. Park was previously charged in 2018 in a criminal complaint linking him to the hacking team responsible for the hack of Sony Pictures and the WannaCry global ransomware attack, among other acts.

Besides naming two additional defendants beyond the original case, the new indictment also adds to the list of victims from around the world of hacks carried out by the Reconnaissance General Bureau.

The indictment accuses the hackers of participating in a conspiracy that attempted to steal more than $1.3 billion of money and cryptocurrency from banks and businesses, unleashed a sweeping ransomware campaign and targeted Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014 in retaliation for a Hollywood movie, “The Interview,” that the North Korean government didn't like because it depicted a fictionalized assassination of leader Kim Jong Un.

The indictment says the hackers engaged not just in cybertheft but also in “revenge-motivated computer attacks, at times executing commands “to destroy computer systems, deploy ransomware” or otherwise render victims' computers inoperable.

“The scope of these crimes by the North Korean hackers is staggering," said Tracy Wilkison, the acting U.S. Attorney in the Central District of California, where Sony Pictures is located and where the indictment was filed. “They are the crimes of a nation-state that has stopped at nothing to extract revenge and to obtain money to prop up its regime.”

Wilkison would not say how much money the hackers actually received. But the indictment does charge them in connection with a theft from Bangladesh's central bank in 2016 involving wire transfers “totalling approximately $81 million to bank accounts in the Philippines and $20 million to a bank account in Sri Lanka," and with multiple other multi-million-dollar ATM cashouts and cyber extortion schemes.

All told, the conspirators “attempted to steal or extort more than $1.3 billion," according to the indictment.

To empty the cryptocurrency accounts of victims, the cyberthieves seeded malware posing as cryptocurrency-trading software on legitimate-seeming websites to trick victims, according to an alert published by the FBI and other U.S. agencies. Once infected, a victim’s computer could be entered and controlled by remote access. Later, hackers used other techniques including phishing and social engineering to infect victims' computers.

____

Associated Press writer Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report.

Eric Tucker, The Associated Press

California lawmakers propose ban on fracking by 2027

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — New legislation would ban all fracking in California by 2027, taking aim at the powerful oil and gas industry in the state already planning to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Progressive California has long been a leader in combating climate change, requiring solar panels on new homes and passing a law to make the nation's most populated state rely entirely on renewable energy by 2045.

But environmental groups say California officials — particularly governors — have long had a blind spot for the oil and gas industry, which has wielded its immense political power many times to kill or weaken legislation aimed at curtailing production.

That could be changing. Last year, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom announced steps to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and called on lawmakers to go further by banning new permits for fracking, a technique to extract oil and gas embedded in rock deep beneath the surface that climate groups say harms the environment and threatens public health.

Two state senators answered that call Wednesday, announcing a measure that would halt new fracking permits or renewals by Jan. 1 and ban the practice altogether by 2027. Democratic state Sens. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Monique Limon of Santa Barbara also say they will change the bill next month to halt new oil and gas permits within 2,500 feet (762 metres) of homes or schools by Jan. 1.

“This is real. It is harming so many people, and the time to deal with it in the future is over. We need to deal with it now,” Wiener said.

The oil and gas industry quickly pushed back. Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president and CEO of the Western States Petroleum Association, said the legislation was “so broad and ambiguous” it would “lead to a total (oil) production ban in California.”

Rock Zierman, CEO of the California Independent Petroleum Association, called the measure “legally questionable."

“Shutting down energy production under the toughest regulations on the planet will devastate the economies of oil-producing regions,” Zierman said.

Newsom, speaking at an unrelated news conference in the Coachella Valley, said he had not read the proposal yet and was "unable to comment on it.”

California was among the top oil-producing states in the country, reaching a peak of 394 million barrels in 1985. But by 2017, production had dropped significantly, and it now ranks behind Texas, North Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado and Alaska, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Part of the reason is the industry has exhausted much of California's easily extractable oil reserves. What's left is embedded deep in rock underground that requires immense energy to extract. That includes using processes like fracking, cyclic steaming, acid well stimulation and water and steam flooding to separate the oil from the rock — all processes that would be banned by 2027 under the new legislation.

“It's some of the dirtiest oil in the world,” said Hollin Kretzmann, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute.

Environmental groups say those methods can cause significant harm to air quality and water supplies. Research published this month by a team at Harvard University estimated that 8.7 million people worldwide died prematurely from fossil fuel pollution in 2018, including 34,000 people in California, the Desert Sun in Palm Springs reported.

“We must stop doing what we know causes death and disease,” said Dr. Karina Maher, a pediatrician in Los Angeles who works with the advocacy group Climate Health Now.

But critics say halting the state's oil production won't stop the state's reliance on oil because millions of people still drive gas-powered cars. State Sen. Shannon Grove, a Republican whose district includes parts of Kern County, said that if the bill becomes law, it would force the state to “rely on foreign countries with dismal human rights records that barely let women drive and have little to no regard for the environment."

Republican Assemblyman Vince Fong, who also represents Kern County, said California produces oil “in the most environmentally responsible way.”

“At a time like now, when we need to be revitalizing our economy, I don't quite understand why we would be pushing legislation that eliminates jobs in our state," he said.

California has more than 5,500 oil wells that have likely been abandoned and could cost more than half a billion dollars to clean up, according to an assessment by the California Council on Science and Technology. For companies that eventually do that work, the legislation would require the state to offer them undefined “incentives” to hire laid-off oil and gas workers.

Wiener says it makes sense to start preparing for the eventual decline of the oil and gas industry and try to avoid the fate of the coal industry, whose decline has devastated communities in the Appalachian region.

“It's a declining industry. And instead of waiting for it to eventually decline and fall apart, let's get ahead of it, facilitate the phasing out and help the workers,” Wiener said.

Adam Beam, The Associated Press

Blue dogs seen roaming near abandoned Russian chemical factory
Shari Kulha 

Copper sulfate, stored on the site of a chemical factory that went bankrupt in 2015, has turned the fur of a pack of local dogs varying shades of blue.

CU2 IS TOXIC

© Provided by National Post The stray dogs either ingested chemical-laden trash near the factory, or, less likely, rolled in some pigment there.

Animal experts who studied the dogs say they’ve suffered no adverse effects beyond the colour change , Newsweek reports. The canines were seen near the Russian city of Zhershinsk, at a factory site that produced plexiglass and hydrocyanic acid.

Municipal officials obtained permission to enter the grounds of the disused factory to determine the veracity of the dogs’ rumoured coat colour.

Video: Blue-coloured stray dogs found near derelict Russian chemical plant (cbc.ca)

Seven of the dogs were taken to a veterinary hospital for examination. The veterinary centre director, Vladimir Groisman, told news outlet RBC that “the general analysis of their blood and feces showed normal levels for all of them, including their biochemistry.” Two of the dogs have already been adopted, and the rest will be kept at the centre for a week.

Groisman had earlier said the dogs had likely been stained by chemical residues. He doubted the dogs could have been caught and painted, and said the animals appeared to be well-fed and alert, local news site Vgorode reported. Humane Society International said the dogs could be suffering from skin irritation and internal bleeding as a result of exposure to toxic or harmful chemicals.

In 2017, pictures circulated online of a pack of bright-blue street dogs taken in Mumbai, India. An investigation revealed the dogs had been exposed to chloride pumped illegally from a local factory into a river in which they swam.

An investigation into the cause of the most recent incident has been launched by Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources. The department told Newsweek that it was preparing to file a legal procedure to allow regular spot inspections at the factory site.

DeSantis defends controversial vaccine deal with developer -- and threatens to pull vaccines if officials don't like it

By Konstantin Toropin, CNN

Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has threatened to move a pop-up vaccination clinic that his state has set up in an affluent community in Manatee County after he was confronted with allegations of political favoritism and preference for the wealthy at a news conference Wednesday.

© Evan Vucci/AP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attends an event with President Donald Trump on the environment at the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse and Museum, Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2020, in Jupiter, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Manatee County announced on Tuesday that Florida's Division of Emergency Management would host a "pop-up" vaccination spot at Lakewood Ranch this week for 3,000 Manatee County residents, according to a statement from the county.

The vaccines, however, would be limited to people living in only two zip codes -- 34202 and 34211.

Manatee County Commissioner Misty Servia, a Republican, criticized the selection of these two areas at a Board of County Commissioners work session on Tuesday.

"You're taking the Whitest demographic, the richest demographic in Manatee County and putting them ahead of everyone else," Servia said. "The optics are bad ... very bad -- I'm really disappointed," she added.

Commissioner Reggie Bellamy, a Democrat, also noted that he's been "fighting like hell to show people that the (vaccine) lottery is equal and we cannot compromise the system."

"And now all of a sudden someone is telling me that we were able to go in and pull names out -- pull a certain demographic out -- and say, 'These are the people that we're going to serve,'" he added at the Tuesday meeting.

Board of County Commissioners Chair Vanessa Baugh, a Republican who is a strong supporter of DeSantis, said that the clinic "was done strictly by the governor who called Rex Jensen ... they wanted to do a pop up session in Lakewood Ranch."

Jensen is the CEO of Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, the parent company of Lakewood Ranch, according to the company's website. The development is an affluent community that boasts new home prices "from the $180,000s to more than $1 million," according to its website.

DeSantis, however, defended the choice when confronted with the criticism at a news conference on Wednesday.

"It wasn't a choice about zip codes, it was a choice about where's a high concentration of seniors where you could have communities provide the ability for them to go on (to get vaccinated)," he said.

He also pushed back at the suggestion that the choice was politically motivated, saying he didn't "understand the accusation."

DeSantis fired back at the county officials who had concerns with the choice.

"If Manatee County doesn't like us doing this, then we are totally fine with putting this in counties that want it," DeSantis said.

"We're going to look to do more and more with the additional doses but anyone in Manatee ... if they don't want us doing it, then just tell us, and we'll make sure that that that we send those doses to folks who want it," he also repeated later in the news conference.

The governor also noted that the doses that will be distributed at this location are in addition to the doses allocated to the county as a whole and that he has set up two of these vaccination events every week in places like The Villages, Kings Point and Sun City in Hillsborough County.

Meanwhile, Lakewood Ranch, in a statement to CNN, said that their involvement in the clinic was only "to help identify a site that could accommodate 1,000 people per day."

"We reached out to Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh and asked if the County-owned Premier Sports Campus would be an option," spokeswoman Lisa Barnott said in an email.

Barnott noted that Baugh coordinated the use of the site, as well as use of the Manatee County registry of people who had signed up for vaccinations.

State Democrats have blasted DeSantis for his remarks.

Florida Democratic Party Chair Manny Diaz said in a statement that DeSantis "must stop playing politics with the vaccine distribution here in Florida."

"Threatening retribution and less vaccine access for communities that criticize the vaccine rollout for its problems is shameful and inhumane," Diaz added.

Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo said that "it's disgusting and unacceptable for the governor to politicize life-saving vaccines."

"The Governor owes Manatee county residents an apology and a public statement reassuring the public that political games will not be used in the distribution of vaccines in our state. Period," she added in a statement.

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