Hydrogen, carbon storage project tapping into all the trends

By ANYA LITVAK AND LAURA LEGERE, 

Pittsburgh Post-Gazettean hour ago


PITTSBURGH (AP) —

For as long as the Marcellus Shale has been pumping out more natural gas than the state knows what to do with, Perry Babb has been hatching schemes to alleviate the glut.

He’s been involved in projects to compress the gas, liquify it, put it on trucks, and make things out of it. He’s the kind of prolific entrepreneur whose bankers have actually pleaded with him to stop launching new companies, Mr. Babb once confessed.

His latest venture is such a collection of hot topics that government and university scientists who’ve spent careers writing “what if” papers can hardly believe they might see their work tested in a live experiment.

It’s got hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, shale drilling, chemical production, economically distressed communities, a possible solar tie-in and an elk habitat.

“I don’t have a problem using the word miracle,” Mr. Babb, a former pastor, said of the $410 million project that’s slated to be built on a large tract of mostly empty land in Clinton County.

Without a single permit filed or the financing secured, the central Pennsylvania project — called KeyState to Zero — sums up a zeitgeist in the energy industry. After years of being the next big thing, hydrogen is having a moment inspired by the tidal wave of corporate and government commitments to reach net zero carbon emissions by various self-imposed deadlines to forestall catastrophic climate change.

“If we were talking about reducing emissions by 20-30-50 percent, I’m not sure we’d be having a conference about hydrogen,” said Capella Festa, COO of Genvia, at S&P Global’s Second Annual Hydrogen Markets Conference in May.

The newly established hydrogen venture, Genvia, is backed by the world’s largest oilfield services company, Schlumberger. The other oil and gas service giants, Baker Hughes and Halliburton, also have announced hydrogen projects.

Here’s why they are all chasing hydrogen: the path to net zero means electrifying as much as possible and churning out that electricity through increasing amounts of carbon-free sources. Hydrogen — a colorless, odorless, highly flammable gas — is a leading candidate to power industries that can’t be electrified, at least not easily, like marine transportation, cement and steel production, and long-haul freight. Hydrogen has no carbon and thus emits none when burned or reacted in fuel cells.

It also might be a lifeline for the oil and gas industry in an increasingly carbon conscious world because hydrogen is most commonly made from natural gas.

When Mr. Babb spoke at the inaugural Appalachian Hydrogen & Carbon Capture Conference at Southpointe in April, he declared: “Hydrogen is the next chapter.”

“Thank God, if you’re in the Marcellus industry, that this is not the end of natural gas,” he said.

“The best environmental thing we can do on a large scale,” Mr. Babb said, “is to have everything running on natural gas.”
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A chance encounter

Mr. Babb’s project did not start out with hydrogen. It started with a stranded asset — a 7,000-acre slot of land in Clinton County where a small natural gas company, Frontier Natural Resources, leased the rights to the natural gas and inherited four producing wells.

Frontier hired Mr. Babb to figure out what to do with that gas since there were no pipelines nearby to get it to market. Mr. Babb decided he would bring the market to the gas instead. The team built a small plant, now in the start-up phase, to liquefy the gas and load the compressed fuel into tanker trucks for local delivery.

But there was much more fuel left in the ground, so Mr. Babb — looking at the many economic development studies that predicted a slew of manufacturing plants would spring up around shale gas supplies — set out to build one that uses natural gas as a power source and a feedstock.

At first, he thought it would be a fertilizer plant. Then an ammonia and urea facility. Ammonia, made from natural gas, is used in agriculture and chemical industries. Urea, which is ammonia combined with carbon dioxide, is mostly used as a diesel exhaust fluid to reduce emissions from vehicles.

He pitched the idea at a meeting with two senior officials at the U.S. Department of Energy in December 2019. Shawn Bennett, then the deputy assistant secretary for oil and gas at DOE, was one of them.

At the time, Mr. Bennett was several months into researching a hydrogen roadmap for the U.S., which DOE released in November 2020. As a well-connected former oil and gas lobbyist in Ohio, he was also hearing rumblings about the promise of hydrogen and carbon capture in keeping the oil and gas industry relevant during the energy transition to a zero emission future.

With all that swirling around in his brain, Mr. Bennett asked Mr. Babb if he’d considered capturing and storing the carbon from his proposed manufacturing plant.

“No sir, we haven’t,” Mr. Babb said.

Had he considered making hydrogen?

“No sir, but we’ll find out about it,” Mr. Babb promised.

They never spoke again.

Mr. Bennett was tickled to find out recently that his suggestion materialized. (He is now a consultant for companies looking at hydrogen and carbon storage, but Mr. Babb’s project wasn’t on his radar.)

The hydrogen color wars

Like many trendy items, hydrogen comes in different colors.

If it’s derived from electrolysis — where renewable energy is used to power the splitting of water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen — it’s referred to as green hydrogen.

Today, the vast majority of the hydrogen that’s produced is gray. It is done through a process called steam methane reforming where very hot steam is used to produce hydrogen from methane, the primary component of natural gas. The chemical reaction also yields carbon dioxide, as does the burning of whatever fuel is used to heat the steam — most often also natural gas.

If that CO2 were captured and sequestered, that hydrogen would be called blue.

There is also pink hydrogen (where electrolysis is powered by nuclear energy) and turquoise (which involves pyrolysis), but the oil and gas industry is squarely focused on the blue variety, which it claims has the biggest decarbonization potential in the shortest time.

Pennsylvania, with its abundance of natural gas and geological pockets that might be able to store vast amounts of CO2, is a natural fit for the development of a blue hydrogen economy, proponents argue.

Former Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner Andrew Place, who now serves as director for U.S. State Energy & Climate Policy at the Clean Air Task Force, made that case last month at a Pennsylvania House Democratic Policy Committee hearing.

“From a system perspective, reforming Pennsylvania’s natural gas with (carbon capture and storage) to produce hydrogen could allow us to remain a keystone of energy supply in the region,” he said.

The state has the gas. It already has pipelines, which could be repurposed to ferry hydrogen, either blended in with natural gas or by itself, and as Mr. Place noted, there is plenty of heavy industry — especially in the western part of Pennsylvania — that could avail itself of a carbon capture and hydrogen hub if one were available.

The challenges

Hydrogen isn’t exactly a plug-and-play fuel for current pipelines. It is a much smaller molecule than natural gas and more easily leaks out of steel pipelines. It can also cause steel to become brittle, is easier to combust and burns with an invisible flame. These issues aren’t unsolvable, but would take a huge investment to solve.

Critics argue that basing a hydrogen economy on natural gas would lock in the use of fossil fuels and divert investment from green hydrogen initiatives.

Mr. Babb, who also spoke to the Democratic Policy Committee last month, believes that blue hydrogen will build the house that green hydrogen can occupy when it becomes as cost effective, which the European Union and Bloomberg New Energy Finance project might be as soon as 2030.

But cost is just one part of the equation, he said. The ability to scale up, and quickly, is perhaps more important.

“Net zero is a great policy and goal, but what happens between now and net zero?” he said.

Mr. Babb has become a go-to voice for natural gas in the energy transition. Three times within a month this winter, he was a featured presenter at state House and Senate environmental committee meetings to discuss his project.

During debate over whether to create a $667 million state tax credit for manufacturers that turn methane into petrochemicals and fertilizer, the KeyState project was touted by supporters as a key possible beneficiary of the incentive. The tax break was approved by large margins in the Legislature and signed by Gov. Tom Wolf last year.

Laboratory at scale

At this point, the list of major oil and gas companies that aren’t looking at hydrogen might be shorter than those who have made announcements over the past year.

Earlier this year, Downtown-based EQT Corp., the largest producer of natural gas in the country, said it was partnering with U.S. Steel, local universities and government researchers in exploring a hydrogen and carbon storage hub in southwestern Pennsylvania. The details are still fuzzy, but EQT’s CEO Toby Rice said he expects the company could make the cheapest hydrogen from its gas and would start experimenting with pumping CO2 down its depleted wells.

The buzz from that announcement has served Mr. Babb’s much smaller project well.

“It’s nice when you hear that substantial, mature companies are thinking about something you’re talking about,” he said. “You don’t sound so crazy.”

If things work out as Mr. Babb expects, KeyState is likely to be the first project in Pennsylvania and anywhere in the Northeast to begin commercially storing carbon dioxide in the ground.

To do so, it would need authorization from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a carbon storage well. The EPA has only permitted one such project, in Illinois, and is reviewing three other applications.

Mr. Babb has said that even if it takes years to get the carbon storage permit, that won’t keep the project from breaking ground. The ammonia and urea off-take contracts are the profit center of the deal, not the carbon capture aspect, he said, although it’s what will make the project a “laboratory at scale.”

Tom Murphy, who co-directs Penn State’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said there are about a dozen researchers at the university interested in different aspects of Mr. Babb’s project.

For example, KeyState is working with Penn State researchers on the design of the carbon capture system, which will scale up technology they have demonstrated in smaller settings.

“It is every researcher’s dream to get their inventions and developed technologies commercialized and into practical application,” said Xiaoxing Wang, an associate research professor at Penn State who specializes in carbon capture. “Perry and his KeyState project offer us this great opportunity.”

Other members of the team will have to drill and assess possibly miles of geological layers to find out if any are suitable for storing the carbon after it is captured.

“They would have to still prove it out before they would call this a storage project,” said Kristin Carter, assistant state geologist of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey.

Still, she said, “I remember when I first met Perry and he was explaining to me what they wanted to do, I was struck by — whether it’s fortuitous or intended — they’ve got a lot going for them in this location.”

Crucially, KeyState has the right to access both the surface and subsurface on the 7,000-acre parcel. That will allow them to drill both wells for the natural gas they need for power and feedstock and wells to store carbon dioxide in perpetuity.

The carbon storage needs for the KeyState project would be modest — between 100,000 and 200,000 tons of CO2 per year, compared to a power plant that might need millions of tons of CO2 storage annually, Ms. Carter said.

Some sandstone layers a mile or less underground that had once been the target of gas drillers in the area would possibly be suitable for the relatively low volumes of CO2 that KeyState is seeking to store.

But there’s a business case for drilling much deeper.

The Appalachian Basin in Pennsylvania is at its deepest just west of the ridge and valley that cuts roughly diagonally across the state. From West Keating Township, it could take 20,000 feet or more of drilling to reach the geologic basement. If KeyState can assess all those rock layers, it may find it has more storage than it needs and can sell the space to other companies looking to sequester their CO2.

“You know what, it probably is one of the better spots to pick,” to pilot a carbon storage project in Pennsylvania, Ms. Carter said. “If you’re going to do a really good test, I would say go for where you think it might be really deep. That would be the most bang for the buck of permitting the test well and having to pay for the drilling and coring.”

Mr. Babb is already planning for just such an expansion of the yet-to-be-built project. He envisions a pipeline being built to carry CO2 from northeastern Pennsylvania.

“We want to be in a position to take other people’s emissions,” he said.

For the moment, Mr. Babb is focused on lining up financing for his next round of studies: he is in the pre-engineering and design phase now, he said, and is projecting construction might begin sometime in 2023.

“A lot of the envisioning that a person like me would do, it’s to build stamina for the big one, or the harder one,” Mr. Babb said recently, reflecting on his previously unsuccessful attempts to find a big-enough market for shale gas.

“Do those misses make me less passionate about this one? No,” he said. “If you have no hope for the future, it’s a terrible way to live.”

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Online:

https://bit.ly/3CLEQgN

Clean needles depend on the blue blood of horseshoe crabs
By MEG KINNARDyesterday


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South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, right, listens as Foster Jordan of Charles River Labs, left, talks about the properties of horseshoe crab blood, which is a vital component in the contamination testing of injectable medicines - including the coronavirus vaccines - at Charles River Labs on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, in Charleston, S.C. McMaster says the South Carolina company that bleeds horseshoe crabs for a component crucial to contamination testing of injectable medications is vital to development of a domestic medical supply chain. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — It’s one of the stranger, lesser-known aspects of U.S. health care — the striking, milky-blue blood of horseshoe crabs is a critical component of tests to ensure injectable medications such as coronavirus vaccines aren’t contaminated.

To obtain it, harvesters bring many thousands of the creatures to laboratories to be bled each year, and then return them to the sea — a practice that has drawn criticism from conservationists because some don’t survive the process.

The blood, which is blue due to its copper content, is coveted for proteins used to create the LAL test, a process used to screen medical products for bacteria. Synthetic alternatives aren’t widely accepted by the health care industry and haven’t been approved federally, leaving the crabs as the only domestic source of this key ingredient.

Many of these crabs are harvested along the coast of South Carolina, where Gov. Henry McMaster promoted the niche industry as key to the development of a domestic medical supply chain, while also noting that environmental concerns should be explored.



“We don’t want to have to depend on foreign countries for a lot of reasons, including national security, so it’s good to see this company thriving in the United States,” McMaster told The Associated Press. He spoke this month during a visit to Charles River Laboratories at its Charleston facilities, to which AP was granted rare access. “We want to do everything we can to onshore all of these critical operations.”

Horseshoe crabs — aquatic arthropods shaped like helmets with long tails — are more akin to scorpions than crabs, and older than dinosaurs. They’ve been scurrying along the brackish floors of coastal waters for hundreds of millions of years. Their eggs are considered a primary fat source for more than a dozen species of migratory shore birds, according to South Carolina’s Department of Natural Resources.

Their value to avoiding infection emerged after scientists researching their immune response injected bacteria into horseshoe crabs in the 1950s. They ultimately developed the LAL test, and the technique has been used since the 1970s to keep medical materials and supplies free of bacteria.

Their biomedical use has been on the rise, with 464,482 crabs brought to biomedical facilities in 2018, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

In South Carolina, that’s done only by Charles River, a Massachusetts-based company that tests 55% of the world’s injectables and medical devices — like IV bags, dialysis solutions and even surgical cleaning wipes, according to company officials.

“We are almost the last line of defense before these drugs leave the manufacturing area and make it to a patient,” senior vice president Foster Jordan told McMaster. “If it touches your blood, it’s been tested by LAL. And, more than likely, it’s been tested by us.”

Charles River employs local fishermen to harvest the crabs by hand, a process governed by wildlife officials that can only happen during a small annual window, when the creatures come ashore to spawn.

Contractors bring them to the company’s bleeding facilities, then return them to the waters from which they came. During a year, Jordan said his harvesters can bring in 100,000 to 150,000 horseshoe crabs, and still can’t satisfy the growing demand.

“We need more, though,” Jordan told McMaster, adding that his company is working with the state to open up more harvesting areas. “The population’s steady. ... We need access to more beaches, to get more crabs.”

The practice is not without its critics, some of whom have argued that bleeding the crabs and hauling them back and forth is harmful. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 10% to 15% of harvested crabs die during the process.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the species overall as “vulnerable,” noting decreasing numbers as of a 2016 assessment. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission listed 2019 stock as “good” in the Southeast, but “poor” in areas around New York.

Conservationists sued last year, accusing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of shirking its duty to protect areas including South Carolina’s Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge by allowing horseshoe crab harvesting. They argued that taking out the crabs affects other species in the protected area. A federal judge temporarily halted the harvest, but was reversed following Charles River’s appeal.

The environmental groups asked to withdraw their complaint this month after federal officials imposed a permitting process for any commercial activity in the refuge, including horseshoe harvesting, beginning Aug. 15. Even if such permits are denied, Jordan told McMaster that only 20% of its harvest came from the refuge, with most coming from further down the South Carolina coast.

There is a synthetic alternative to the horseshoe crab blood, but it hasn’t been widely accepted in the U.S., and meanwhile, Charles River’s international competitors are making synthetics and also pressing for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, which Jordan said could hamper domestic efforts like his own.

“My mission is to make sure that any competitor that comes into the United States, from China or any of these other producers, has to go through the same regulatory process that we had to go through, to make sure that it’s safe,” Jordan said. “If all these synthetics start coming in from other countries, we’re going to lose the protection that we’ve had for all these years, and the safety, and the control of the drug supply.”

“We want to have as much stuff made here as we can,” McMaster said in response.

As for the environmental concerns, the governor said maintaining a healthy balance between scientific demands and the state’s ecosystems, which bolster a significant portion of South Carolina’s tourism economy, is paramount.

“It’s like a house of cards. You pull out one part, and the rest of it will fall,” McMaster said. “So I think we have to be very careful, and be sure that any company, any business, any activity, whether it’s commercial or otherwise, meets whatever requirements are there to protect the species — birds, horseshoe crabs, any sort of life.”

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

8th-graders lead effort to pardon wrongly convicted ‘witch’

By WILLIAM J. KOLE

August 19, 2021

In this July 19, 2017, file photograph, Karla Hailer, a fifth-grade teacher from Scituate, Mass., shoots a video where a memorial stands at the site in Salem, Mass., where five women were hanged as witches more than 325 years earlier. A woman convicted of witchcraft in 1693 and sentenced to death at the height of the Salem Witch Trials finally will be exonerated if Massachusetts lawmakers approve a bill inspired by a curious eighth-grade history class. State Sen. Diana DiZoglio, a Democrat from Methuen, has introduced legislation to clear the name of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., 328 years after she was condemned but never executed. DiZoglio says she was inspired by sleuthing done by a group of 13- and 14-year-olds at North Andover Middle School. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File)


BOSTON (AP) — More than three centuries after a Massachusetts woman was wrongly convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death, she’s finally on the verge of being exonerated — thanks to a curious eighth-grade civics class.

State Sen. Diana DiZoglio, a Democrat from Methuen, has introduced legislation to clear the name of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who was condemned in 1693 at the height of the Salem Witch Trials but never executed.

DiZoglio says she was inspired by sleuthing done by a group of 13- and 14-year-olds at North Andover Middle School. Civics teacher Carrie LaPierre’s students painstakingly researched Johnson and the steps that would need to be taken to make sure she was formally pardoned.

“It is important that we work to correct history,” DiZoglio said Wednesday. “We will never be able to change what happened to these victims, but at the very least, we can set the record straight.”

If lawmakers approve the measure, Johnson will be the last accused witch to be cleared, according to Witches of Massachusetts Bay, a group devoted to the history and lore of the 17th-century witch hunts.

Twenty people from Salem and neighboring towns were killed and hundreds of others accused during a frenzy of Puritan injustice that began in 1692, stoked by superstition, fear of disease and strangers, scapegoating and petty jealousies. Nineteen were hanged, and one man was crushed to death by rocks.

In the 328 years that have ensued, dozens of suspects officially were cleared, including Johnson’s own mother, the daughter of a minister whose conviction eventually was reversed. But for some reason, Johnson’s name wasn’t included in various legislative attempts to set the record straight.

Johnson was 22 when she was caught up in the hysteria of the witch trials and sentenced to hang. It never happened: Then-Gov. William Phips threw out her punishment as the magnitude of the gross miscarriages of justice in Salem sank in.

But because she wasn’t among those whose convictions were formally set aside, hers still technically stands.

“It showed how superstitious people still were after the witch trials,” said Artem Likhanov, 14, a rising high school freshman who participated in the school project. “It’s not like after it ended people didn’t believe in witches anymore. They still thought she was a witch and they wouldn’t exonerate her.”

DiZoglio’s bill would tweak 1957 legislation, amended in 2001, to include Johnson among others who were pardoned after being wrongly accused and convicted of witchcraft.

“Why Elizabeth was not exonerated is unclear but no action was ever taken on her behalf by the General Assembly or the courts,” DiZoglio said. “Possibly because she was neither a wife nor a mother, she was not considered worthy of having her name cleared. And because she never had children, there is no group of descendants acting on her behalf.”

In 2017, officials unveiled a semi-circular stone wall memorial inscribed with the names of people hanged at a site in Salem known as Proctor’s Ledge. It was funded in part by donations from descendants of those accused of being witches.

LaPierre, the teacher, said some of her students initially were ambivalent about the effort to exonerate Johnson because they launched it before the 2020 presidential election and at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was raging.

“Some of the conversation was, ‘Why are we doing this? She’s dead. Isn’t there more important stuff going on in the world?’” she said. “But they came around to the idea that it’s important that in some small way we could do this one thing.”

US appeals court refuses to end CDC’s eviction moratorium

By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and GARY FIELDS

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Gary Zaremba knocks on an apartment door as he checks in with tenants to discuss building maintenance at one of his at properties, Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021, in the Queens borough of New York. Landlords say they have suffered financially due to various state, local and federal moratoriums in place since last year. “Without rent, we’re out of business," said Zaremba. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday said a pause on evictions designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus can remain in place for now, setting up a battle before the nation’s highest court.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected a bid by Alabama and Georgia landlords to block the eviction moratorium reinstated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month.

The landlords filed an emergency motion hours later with the Supreme Court, urging the justices to allow evictions to proceed.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 in June to allow the moratorium to continue through the end of July. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who joined the majority — warned the administration not to act further without explicit congressional approval.

“As five Members of this Court indicated less than two months ago, Congress never gave the CDC the staggering amount of power it claims,” attorneys for the landlords told the Supreme Court on Friday.

In a short written decision, the appeals court panel said the court had rejected a similar bid and a lower court also declined to overturn the moratorium.

“In view of that decision and on the record before us, we likewise deny the emergency motion directed to this court,” the judges said in the ruling.

The Biden administration allowed an earlier moratorium to lapse on July 31, saying it had no legal authority to allow it to continue. But the CDC issued a new moratorium days later as pressure mounted from lawmakers and others to help vulnerable renters stay in their homes as the coronavirus’ delta variant surged. The moratorium is scheduled to expire Oct. 3.

As of Aug. 2, roughly 3.5 million people in the United States said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

The new moratorium temporarily halted evictions in counties with “substantial and high levels” of virus transmissions and would cover areas where 90% of the U.S. population lives.

The Trump administration initially put a nationwide eviction moratorium in place last year out of fear that people who can’t pay their rent would end up in crowded living conditions like homeless shelters and help spread the virus.

President Joe Biden acknowledged there were questions about the legality of the new eviction freeze. But he said a court fight over the new order would buy time for the distribution of some of the more than $45 billion in rental assistance that has been approved but not yet used.

In urging the appeals court to keep the ban in place, the Biden administration noted that the new moratorium was more targeted than the nationwide ban that had lapsed, and that landscape had changed since the Supreme Court ruling because of the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.

The landlords accused Biden’s administration of caving to political pressure and reinstating the moratorium even though it knew it was illegal.

“In light of the Executive Branch’s statement that its litigation efforts are designed to buy time to achieve its economic policy goals — and the fact that landlords are now subject to federal criminal penalties for exercising their property rights depending on where they do business — applicants respectfully ask this Court to issue relief as soon as possible,” their lawyers told the Supreme Court.

A lower court judge ruled earlier this month that the freeze is illegal, but rejected the landlords’ request to lift the moratorium, saying her hands were tied by an appellate decision from the last time courts considered the eviction moratorium in the spring.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Friday that the rise of the delta variant made the continuing moratorium “vitally important” and she praised the appeals court decision. Psaki called on state and local officials to “move more aggressively” in distributing rental assistance funds and urged state and local courts to issue their own moratoriums to “discourage eviction filings” until landlords and tenants have sought the funds.

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Richer reported from Boston.

Diving among ancient ruins where Romans used to party

AFP 5 hrs ago

Fish dart across mosaic floors and into the ruined villas, where holidaying Romans once drank, plotted and flirted in the party town of Baiae, now an underwater archaeological park near Naples.

© Andreas SOLARO Divers can explore the underwater ruins of the ancient Roman party town of Baiae

© Andreas SOLARO Now an underwater archaeological park near Naples, Rome's nobility were first attracted in the 2nd century BC to the hot springs at Baiae

Statues which once decorated luxury abodes in this beachside resort are now playgrounds for crabs off the coast of Italy, where divers can explore ruins of palaces and domed bathhouses built for emperors.

Rome's nobility were first attracted in the 2nd century BC to the hot springs at Baiae, which sits on the coast within the Campi Flegrei -- a supervolcano known in English as the Phlegraean Fields.

Seven emperors, including Augustus and Nero, had villas here, as did Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. The poet Sextus Propertius described the town as a place of vice, which was "foe to virtuous creatures"

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© Andreas SOLARO By the 4th century, the porticos, marble columns, shrines and ornamental fish ponds of Baiae had begun to sink due to bradyseism, the gradual rise and fall of land due to hydrothermal and seismic activity

It was where "old men behave like young boys, and lots of young boys act like young girls," according to the Roman scholar Varro.

But by the 4th century, the porticos, marble columns, shrines and ornamental fish ponds had begun to sink due to bradyseism, the gradual rise and fall of land due to hydrothermal and seismic activity

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© Andreas SOLARO Baiae sits on the Italian coast within the Campi Flegrei -- a supervolcano known in English as the Phlegraean Fields

The whole area, including the neighbouring commercial capital of Pozzuoli and military seat at Miseno, were submerged. Their ruins now lie between four and six metres (15 to 20 feet) underwater

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© Andreas SOLARO The underwater site has been a protected marine area since 2002 and divers must be accompanied by a registered guide

- 'Something unique' -

"It's difficult, especially for those coming for the first time, to imagine that you can find things you would never be able to see anywhere else in the world in just a few metres of water," said Marcello Bertolaso, head of the Campi Flegrei diving centre, which takes tourists around the site.

"Divers love to see very special things, but what you can see in the park of Baiae is something unique."

The 177-hectare (437-acre) underwater site has been a protected marine area since 2002, following decades in which antiques were found in fishermen's nets and looters had free rein.

Divers must be accompanied by a registered guide.

A careful sweep of sand near a low wall uncovers a stunning mosaic floor from a villa which belonged to Gaius Calpurnius Pisoni, known to have spent his days here conspiring against Emperor Nero.

Explorers follow the ancient stones of the coastal road past ruins of spas and shops, the sunlight on a clear day piercing the waves to light up statues. These are replicas; the originals are now in a museum

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© Andreas SOLARO "There are undoubtedly still ancient relics to be found," said the archaeologist in charge of the Baiae park

"When we research new areas, we gently remove the sand where we know there could be a floor, we document it, and then we re-cover it," archaeologist Enrico Gallocchio told AFPTV

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© Andrea BERNARDI The town of Baiae was once a spot for holidaying Romans to drink and party - until it began to sink. Now the ruins of the palaces and domed bathhouses built for Rome's nobility form an underwater archaeological park near Naples.

"If we don't, the marine fauna or flora will attack the ruins. The sand protects them," said Gallocchio, who is in charge of the Baiae park.

"The big ruins were easily discovered by moving a bit of sand, but there are areas where the banks of sand could be metres deep. There are undoubtedly still ancient relics to be found," he said.

Diver takes you on his adventures in the Delaware River

By SARAH CASSI, 

LehighValleyLive.com


EASTON, Pa. (AP) — Matt Schade has crossed the iconic Easton-Phillipsburg free bridge hundreds of times, looked out at the Delaware River and wondered what was underneath the water’s surface.

Many have wondered the same thing, curiosity piqued by rumors of what, or who, might be hidden in the river in between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

But most don’t have scuba gear like Schade, and fewer have the sense of discovery that pushes the Allentown man to suit up and dive in waterways around the Lehigh Valley.

“I was always curious as a kid, looking out at water sources, or the rivers and lakes, curious on how deep they went, what could be down there. What does it look like down there?” he said. “It’s a lot of mysterious questions, they’re unanswered and I always enjoyed that. Exploring is one of the main things that I truly like to do.”

Schade explores with friends, but thousands of strangers now eagerly share in his adventures.

Schade, who goes by STILLFIN online, posts videos of his hikes and dives to his Facebook and YouTube pages. He initially posted the videos for fun, but during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid Pennsylvania’s stay-at-home order, Schade’s videos took off.

A May 2020 video of his dive near Bethlehem’s Sand Island, where he found a hatchet, was the first one to get more than 2,000 views on Facebook. His audience has only grown since then.

Schade’s most popular video so far is his dive in July under the free bridge, which has more than 64,600 views and almost 350 comments on Facebook.

Watching his videos, there are Zen-like moments of peace, as Schade navigates the dark waters with only the sounds of the water and his breathing.

“It definitely is calming, it’s very tranquil down there, especially when a fish swims right up to you, without question,” he said. “It’s a completely different world down there, completely different physics. ... You can’t really hear anything, but when you do hear something, it surrounds you.”

The 31-year-old said he started exploring the area woods and water after realizing he wasn’t fully living his life.

“I felt like I was doing a lot more work than actual living. I moved onto something a little more exotic, a little more extreme,” he said. “It definitely perked up my life a lot, so now I’m really happy with it. It’s a good thing.”

Before he got his water certification in 2017, Schade was hiking in the woods, checking out abandoned buildings, and diving with a snorkel, some fins and a knife.

“I would go looking for junk and take pictures of it, and throw it online,” he said.

He and his diving buddy, who goes by STIFFCHIN, started recording their dives about five years ago. Now, they use GoPro cameras on their hands and head to document the trips

Sometimes they dive in places they see every day, like the free bridge or the Race Street bridge in Catasauqua. Other times, word of mouth leads them to other spots. Not all of the locations are dive-able, with some too far from any road or a place to park to bring in the necessary gear.

One of his favorite dives was in the Delaware Water Gap, where the river can go from about 30 feet to 50 feet in spots and gets really dark.

“That was beautiful. I was not expecting the visibility to be that good,” Schade said. By comparison, the Lehigh River gets dark at about 20 feet.

“It’s like going on the moon, except you don’t need a rocket,” he said.

Abandoned fishing lines are a common hazard, especially in the Lehigh. Schade and his diving friends have gotten tangled and needed to be cut free.

“It’s something that needs to be cleaned up. It’s out of hand,” he said.

Other hazards are rebar, flash floods and tree limbs. Branches in the water can turn into spider webs that trap a diver, and flash flooding not only changes the current, but affects visibility.

“Once you start getting zero visibility and you’re out there in chocolate milk with your buddy, you’ve got to get the hell out of there,” Schade said.

The rivers are full of fish, random trash and some treasures: hubcaps, car seats, tires, cellphones, old coins, even a pocket watch.

“Anything could be in that river. Anything, man,” he said. “I’ve seen so much stuff under there, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

The rivers were especially busy last summer when most municipal pools were closed because of the coronavirus.

“People were exploring Mother Nature more, since they didn’t have these other places to go. We found a lot more stuff in the river last year. People were losing stuff left and right,” he said.

Right now, Schade said he’s sticking to exploring around the free bridge. He uploaded a new video Wednesday after diving friends helped guide him to the remnants of the old bridge.

“It’s unknown territory to us. There’s still plenty to be found down there. I’ve been told there’s abandon cars down there, and all that,” he said.

His latest video was up for less than a day and already more than 4,700 people had watched it.

The popularity has surprised him, but Schade said he would keep diving even if no one watched the videos.

“Now it’s finally taking off a little bit. I can’t believe it. It’s something else,” he said.

___

Online:

https://bit.ly/3meS3bZ

In Haiti, close relation between the living and the dead
By MARK STEVENSON and EVENS SANON

yesterday


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A cemetery worker opens a used tomb to place the body of a boy who was found in a collapsed building in Les Cayes, Haiti, Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021, three days after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit. According to an engineer working for Les Cayes Mayor, the boy's body was found Monday amid the rubble of a collapsed hostal. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

LES CAYES, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s unusually close relationship between the living and the dead has helped hide, in part, the huge toll of Saturday’s earthquake: People in Haiti want to be close to their deceased relatives, to the point of sometimes burying them in their front yards.

Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency puts the number of dead from the quake at almost 2,200. Questions had arisen about how such a large number of dead could have been handled or buried so quickly, but amateur burials and overflowing private funeral parlors may explain where all the bodies went.

The magnitude 7.2 earthquake injured more than 12,000 people, destroyed or damaged more than 100,000 homes and left about 30,000 families homeless, officials said. Schools, offices and churches — and even funeral homes and cemeteries — were demolished or badly damaged.




A worker carries a coffin form a storage depot to a funeral home in Les Cayes, Haiti, Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021. A 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the southwestern part of the hemisphere's poorest nation on Aug. 14. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

The quake also brought the living and the dead even closer in a nation which, like Mexico, celebrates a Day of the Dead holiday: In the countryside outside the city of Les Cayes, some of the frontyard burial crypts were broken open by the force of the quake, exposing coffins inside.

And some of the living came closer to the grave than anyone should: Serge Chery, the head of civil defense for the Southern Province, which covers Les Cayes, said that his officers had found two women buried in the rubble of a two-story apartment building because they had been able to communicate with the outside world via cellphones.

Such stories are common rumors in disaster zones. Chery said his department received innumerable false reports of such calls. “We dialed one number that people said was sending messages from a collapsed house, and a living person answered it in Jeremie,” a nearby city.

But Chery refused to call the real cellphone rescue a miracle.

“The only miracle was that they had their phones charged and in their hands at the time of the quake, and they had sufficient room to dial afterward,” Chery said.

Government hospital morgues, like the one at the Les Cayes’ general hospital, are almost empty. That’s because, as the hospital’s director admits, they haven’t had working refrigeration at the morgue for at least three months due to problems with the electrical equipment.

Instead, local residents know they have to take deceased to one of the dozens of small, modest private funeral homes in the area.

BARON SAMENDI

There, at least air-conditioned rooms mean the bodies won’t decompose while relatives struggle to come up with enough money to meet burial costs that can run around $500, a fortune for people in the hemisphere’s poorest country.

Jean Eddy Montezima runs one such parlor, the St. Jaques funeral home in Les Cayes, on a shoestring, and he is overworked and fed up. As he spoke with journalists, another rickety, informal “ambulance” — actually just an SUV with a folding stretcher in the back — pulled up with another body, a woman who died of natural causes at a local hospital.

That’s good, because Montezima says he is no longer accepting the bodies of quake victims. He has 15 corpses crowding his small, air-conditioned rooms. The woman’s body was carried into the parlor and relatives promised to come back later to make arrangements.

Montezima says he has taken in the bodies of at least 50 quake victims since Saturday at his small building, where a noisy generator growls 24 hours a day to keep air conditioners running so the bodies won’t decompose.

“A lot of people may not have the money to bury them,” Montezima said. “If the families don’t come back, I will probably have to do a mass grave with them.” Such a solution is little short of a sacrilege in Haiti, but the beleaguered funeral home director has little choice.

“I was already working eight hours a day, and now I have to work 24,” he said. “I am burning $50 in gas every day. We need an institution or a charity to donate to help with the costs.”

“In some cases, the bodies were in such bad condition, we had to bury them immediately,” he said, adding he can’t hand that task off to the government. “If the body is badly decomposed, they won’t accept them at the morgue.”

Eventually, though, the dead and the living have to part ways.

Chery has the painful task of deciding, along with other authorities, when to send in heavy machinery to clear the rubble, though he acknowledges it will ’inevitably” result in churning up more bodies. Chery said that in the Les Cayes area alone, 300 people are still missing; many are probably still under tons of broken concrete and brick.

“We are planning a meeting to start clearing all of the sites that were destroyed because that will give the owner of that site at least the chance to build something temporary, out of wood, to live on that site,” Chery said, noting that “it will be easier to distribute aid if people are living at their addresses, rather than in a tent.”

He stressed the need to start engineering inspections of buildings to find out which are safe. “If we want the schools and banks and hotels to start working, we have to give people confidence, because they don’t want to go back into those buildings now,” Chery said.

“In Haiti, it is something cultural; families are attached to their dead,” Chery said. “Culturally, even with cholera or COVID-19, people want their relatives to be buried in a nice grave.” But due to the mangled condition of many quake victims, many were buried immediately.

BARON SATURNDAY

That attitude is on display at the Marc Dor Lebrun funeral home, which he touts as the city’s cleanest and best equipped. Here grieving families can rent a 30-foot-long stretch Humvee limousine to carry the funeral cortege.

Stainless steel refrigerated body cabinets line one room and an air-conditioned preparation room lies nearby. But with the bodies of 17 earthquake victims, and 22 others, already filling his facilities, Lebrun says he cannot take any more.

“It’s because we’re honest. We’re telling people we are not receiving any more bodies,” Lebrun said. “I don’t know about the rest of them,” he said, referring to less well-equipped homes.

“We got three bodies that were so badly destroyed that we put them in zippered body bags and gave them to relatives and they buried them on their own,” Lebrun said.

For the rest — families who can’t meet the costs of burials — Lebrun said he won’t turn them away or set a fixed price. “This is the situation,” he said, referring to Haiti’s grinding poverty. “If a family can’t pay, we’ll help them out.”

At 60, Peace Corps plots return to world after virus hiatus

By WILSON RING and ROY NKOSI

yesterday

1 of 5

Cameron Beach, left, sieves maize flour as she helps prepare a meal, in Dedza, near Lilongwe, Malawi, Friday, July 23, 2021. Beach, a former Peace Corps volunteer, is living in rural Malawi teaching English at a rural high school where she had been sent by the United States government 18-months before COVID-19 began sweeping the world. 

(AP Photo/Roy Nkosi)

DEDZA, Malawi (AP) — More than a year after COVID-19 began sweeping the world, abruptly cutting short her Peace Corps stint, Cameron Beach is once again living in rural Malawi — this time on her own dime.

The Peace Corps, a U.S. government program marking its 60th anniversary this year, boasted 7,000 volunteers in 62 countries in March 2020. They were given little time to pack before being put on a plane and sent back to the United States that month.

“It was especially painful for me because I was given 24 hours to leave a place that I’d called home for almost two years,” Beach said during a recent video call from her home in Malawi, a landlocked country in southern Africa.

Beach was trained to speak Chichewa and had been teaching English at the Mkomera Community Day Secondary School in Dedza, located in a compound about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of the capital, Lilongwe. The 25-year-old Greenville, South Carolina, native paid her own way back to her post nine months after evacuation and is living on savings, but says she would “absolutely” rejoin the Peace Corps if it became possible.

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Cameron Beach, carries a child on her back as she collects water from a communal borehole in Dedza, near Lilongwe, Malawi, Friday, July 23, 2021. Beach, a former Peace Corps volunteer, is living in rural Malawi teaching English at a rural high school where she had been sent by the United States government 18-months before COVID-19 began sweeping the world. (AP Photo/Roy Nkosi)

5 of 5
Cameron Beach, teaches children in Dedza, near Lilongwe, Malawi, Friday, July 23, 2021. Beach, a former Peace Corps volunteer, is living in rural Malawi teaching English at a rural high school where she had been sent by the United States government 18-months before COVID-19 began sweeping the world. (AP Photo/Roy Nkosi)

It might be: The organization hopes to begin returning volunteers to the field late this year or early next year.

While Peace Corps volunteers would be required to be vaccinated, sending them back will depend on the situation in individual countries. Initially, about 2,400 evacuated volunteers expressed interest in going back and there are about 10,000 applications on file, Acting Peace Corps Director Carol Spahn told The Associated Press.

“Immediately after the evacuation we had tremendous interest from volunteers who were evacuated in returning to their country of service,” Spahn said. “Clearly, as time goes on, you know, people do move on with their lives, but I will say we have a robust pipeline of both people who were evacuated as well as those who were invited, but were unable to go and those who are expressing new interest.”

How soon they can be sent overseas depends on the worldwide fight against the virus, complicated by the recent emergence of the more transmissible delta variant and the slow rollout of vaccines in developing countries — many of which host Peace Corps programs.

Spahn estimates it will be several years before the Peace Corps is back to its full strength. After all, while volunteers in select countries had been evacuated before, March 2020 marked the first time since the organization was founded by President John F. Kennedy that it had to evacuate all its volunteers at the same time.

Since its creation in 1961, more than 240,000 Americans have served as Peace Corps volunteers in scores of countries. The goal is to help the countries meet their development needs with a wide variety of programs — from education to health and agriculture programs — while helping promote a better understanding of Americans.

Typical service lasts two years after a training period, the length of which depends on the country and the program. During the pandemic most Peace Corps staff, both U.S. citizens and local hires, remained in place and, in some cases, kept up some programs. Some former volunteers even worked remotely on development projects from the United States, receiving a small stipend for their work.

Heading back overseas is nonetheless a daunting undertaking between the required training and rebuilding of programs. Areas that have few returning volunteers will also lose the institutional, cross-cultural and local knowledge typically passed on by departing volunteers to their successors.

It’s not just the Peace Corps that has had to recall thousands from remote reaches of the globe and navigate the aftermath.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had to send home about 26,000 missionaries tasked with recruiting new members to the faith known widely as the Mormon church. Many pivoted to doing missions in their home countries with a focus on online work.

In November, the church began sending missionaries back into the field and, in June of this year, the church reopened its missionary training centers in Utah, the Philippines and Mexico.

All missionaries from the United States who serve overseas are required to be vaccinated, said church spokesperson Sam Penrod. Missionaries who do not want to be vaccinated will be assigned to missions in their home countries.

“The church is taking a careful approach when assigning missionaries outside of their home country, based upon local conditions and following the guidance of government and health officials,” he said in an email.

As time goes by, potential recruits and returnees are moving on.

Cullen O’Donnell, 25, originally from Mentor, Ohio, served two years with the Peace Corps in Ecuador teaching English and then extended for a third year. He was planning another year, working on the Galapagos Islands, when COVID-19 hit.

He’d still like to go back — “then again with Peace Corps it’s very vague: ‘Yeah we’re hoping to get back to the field,’ but it keeps getting pushed back.”

So he’s getting on with his life. He now has a fulfilling job at a school for at-risk students in Pennsylvania and was just accepted to graduate school.

The Peace Corps has been accepting new applications throughout the pandemic, but in June the agency began planning for a return to Belize after the government there asked for volunteers who could help local schools recover from the pandemic’s disruptions. But there is no indication when the first trainees would be sent to the tiny country tucked between Mexico and Guatemala.

A few volunteers refused to be evacuated but their Peace Corps service was ended, Spahn said. Despite their truncated service, volunteers are eligible for the variety of benefits typically afforded those who complete the two years — including resettlement payments, preferred hiring status for federal jobs and special scholarships.

But those former volunteers — like Beach — could help seed the revived Peace Corps, Spahn said.

Beach hadn’t been able to say goodbye. Her students had missed her.

“The time when Madam Beach left Malawi, lots of things went wrong especially in our class,” said Aness Leman Filimoni, who is in her last year of high school. “Madam Beach was teaching us English but when she left, the school could not find a suitable replacement.”

Beach is now teaching her usual two classes a day, five days a week. She’s also helping finish up a girls’ dormitory built in part with a Peace Corps grant.

Just before the pandemic, there were 108 volunteers in Malawi. Peace Corps Malawi Director Amber Lucero-Dwyer, who stayed, has seen a handful of former volunteers return on their own — although she thought most were visiting, not staying indefinitely as Beach is.

“We have tried to be as creative as possible to determine what can we do, what core Peace Corps work can we do in the absence of volunteers,” Lucero-Dwyer said.

Beach was originally sent to Malawi just weeks after her college graduation, and was scheduled to complete her service in August 2020; if she’s able to return to service, she doesn’t know how long the stint would last.

Regardless, she’s found her niche.

“It’s what I feel I’m meant to do,” Beach said of what she sees as the calling that drew her to the Peace Corps and ultimately Malawi. “It wasn’t a very windy road.”

___

Ring reported from Stowe, Vermont.

Patagonia boycotts Wyoming ski resort over owners’ GOP event

By MEAD GRUVER

August 19, 2021

In this Aug. 5, 2021, photo Nikki Kaufman takes a photo of a fellow demonstrator while protesting Jackson Hole Mountain Resort owner Jay Kemmerer's decision to co-host a fundraiser for the House Freedom Fund near Jackson, Wyo. Kaufman and others have called on others to think critically about their ski pass purchases. The outdoor gear and clothing company Patagonia has stopped providing its merchandise for sale at a Wyoming ski resort to protest the owners' sponsorship of a Republican fundraiser featuring Marjorie Taylor Greene and other core supporters of former President Donald Trump. (Meg Potter/Jackson Hole News & Guide via AP)


CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The outdoor gear and clothing company Patagonia has stopped providing its merchandise for sale at a Wyoming ski resort to protest the owners’ sponsorship of a Republican fundraiser featuring Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and other top supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Well known for decades for its outspoken support of progressive causes and environmentalism, Patagonia in the past has brought unwanted attention to Facebook and Instagram and the Outdoor Retailer shows in Salt Lake City.

Now, the company’s activism could spell trouble — among left-leaning skiers at least — for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. A major tourism destination in Wyoming, the resort known for its bright red gondola car and logo with a silhouetted bucking horse and rider is among the best-known brands from one of the most Republican states.

“We join with the local community that is using its voice in protest. We will continue to use our business to advocate for stronger policies to protect our planet, end hate speech and support voting rights and a strong democracy,” Patagonia spokeswoman Corley Kenna said in a statement Wednesday.

The boycott, first reported by WyoFile, means Patagonia merchandise won’t be available in three shops at the resort which Kenna said were Patagonia’s largest account in Jackson Hole.


This Aug. 18, 2021 shows the Jackson Hole Resort Store downtown Jackson, Wyo. The outdoor clothing and gear company Patagonia has decided to quit supplying Jackson Hole Mountain Resort with its products, fallout from the resort owner Jay Kemmerer's support of the House Freedom Caucus. The resort, which is Patagonia's largest single customer in the Jackson Hole area, operates retail stores in Teton Village and the town of Jackson. The outdoor gear and clothing company Patagonia has stopped providing its merchandise for sale at a Wyoming ski resort to protest the owners' sponsorship of a Republican fundraiser featuring Marjorie Taylor Greene and other core supporters of former President Donald Trump. (Bradly J. Boner/Jackson Hole News & Guide via AP)

Resort owners Jay and Karen Kemmerer cosponsored the Aug. 5 GOP fundraiser in Jackson Hole featuring Greene, a Georgia congresswoman suspended from Twitter over allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19. Greene called the suspension a “Communist-style” attack.

Also there were Rep. Jim Jordan, of Ohio, and Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff. Admission started at $2,000 per couple.

The event drew a small group of curbside protesters, some with signs that read “Hey JHMR, your Greene washing is showing” and “JHMR passes fund treason?”

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort has been a ski industry leader in recycling and reducing energy use and will continue to offer “world-class brands” in its stores, President Mary Kate Buckley said in a statement Thursday.

“We are proud to be the largest mountain resort operating on 100% wind today. We will remain focused on operating a world-class mountain resort and protecting the health and safety of our guests and employees,” Buckley said.

Ventura, California-based Patagonia would reconsider its boycott if the resort owners demonstrated “a commitment to a healthy planet and healthy communities,” Kenna said Thursday.

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort is in Teton County, one of just two Wyoming counties that preferred Joe Biden over Trump in the 2020 election. Biden won Teton County with 67% of the vote; Trump won the state with 70%.

Teton County also is home to Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney. Trump has vowed to help defeat Liz Cheney in 2022 for voting to impeach him for his role in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s COVID claim denounced as racist

By ACACIA CORONADO

 In this July 9, 2021, file photo, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during opening general session of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas. Lt. Gov. Patrick blamed rising hospitalization and death rates from COVID-19 on unvaccinated Black people, and his comments were quickly denounced as racist. Patrick made the comments Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021, night on a Fox News segment. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)


AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas’ lieutenant governor blamed rising hospitalization and death rates from COVID-19 on unvaccinated Black people — comments that were quickly denounced as racist.

Republican Lt. Governor Dan Patrick made the remarks Thursday night on a Fox News segment in response to question about the latest coronavirus surge in Texas. The state is seeing its highest hospitalization rates since January as the highly contagious delta variant spreads.

“The biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated,” Patrick said.

Patrick did not change course Friday, saying “Democrat social media trolls” misstated facts and that he had used state data in his assertions. His office did not respond to a request for additional comments.

But statistics from the Texas Department of State Health Services don’t back that. Black people — who make up about 12% of the more than 29 million people in Texas — accounted for about 15% of total COVID-19 cases and just more than 10% of deaths.

Patrick also told Fox News that Democrats were to blame for low vaccination rates among Black people, who frequently support that party, even though he believes Republicans should persuade more people to get their shots, too. But he also tiptoed around that issue, which has been sensitive for the GOP.

“But we respect the fact that if people don’t want the vaccination, we’re not going to force it on them,” Patrick said. “That’s their individual right.”

City and county officials in Texas — many of whom are are in ongoing legal battles with state government over mask mandates — met Patrick with swift rebukes.

“The Lt. Governor’s statements are offensive and should not be ignored,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who is Black, said on Twitter.

Rodney Ellis, a Black commissioner for the county that encompasses Houston, tweeted that Patrick’s comments were “racist and flat out wrong.”

“It’s disappointing that the Lt. Governor would rather scapegoat Black people than do the right thing and work with local government to help control the spread of COVID-19,” Ellis wrote.

About 8% of the eligible Black population in Texas has been vaccinated against COVID-19, according to state data, compared with 35% of the white population. White people make up the largest racial group in Texas at about 40% of the total residents.

Overall, 44% of Texans are fully vaccinated, less than the national rate of about 50%. COVID-19 is blamed for more than 50,000 deaths in the state, and more than 600,000 across the U.S.

Failures and abuses on behalf of government — including the “Tuskegee syphilis study,” in which unsuspecting Black men were used as guinea pigs in a study of a sexually transmitted disease — have led to mistrust in public institutions for many African Americans.

Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas State NAACP Conference, said those historic disparities combined with the politicization of vaccines, misinformation and access to shots is the problem. Bledsoe said he was “shocked” by Patrick’s comments.

“I am so concerned that he is going to give field to somebody to go out there and do something outrageous because they think someone in their community got infected by Black people. That is just not true,” Bledsoe said. “Reach out beyond your political base, reach out to people of all the political persuasions in Texas, all the races and religions, and say, ‘Let’s come together,’ because this is a major problem.”

The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths from COVID-19 in Texas has risen over the past two weeks from 50.29 deaths per day on Aug. 4 to 115.14 deaths per day on Aug. 18, according to data from Johns Hopkins University Center.

This is not the first time that Patrick has been criticized for comments related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In an April 2020 appearance on Fox News, Patrick said the U.S. should get back to work in the face of the pandemic and that people over the age of 70, who the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says are at higher risk for severe illness from the coronavirus, will “take care of ourselves.”

___

Acacia Coronado is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Artist Chuck Close, known for photorealistic portraits, dead at 81


Artist Chuck Close, who was known for painting photorealistic portraits, died at the age of 81 on Thursday. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo


Aug. 19 (UPI) -- Artist Chuck Close, known for his photorealistic paintings, died on Thursday. He was 81 years old.

Close's lawyer John Silberman confirmed Close's death to The Washington Post and Adriana Elgarresta, director of public relations at the Pace Gallery in New York, said the cause of death was congestive heart failure.

Using an airbrush and diluted black paint, Close created highly detailed paintings based on photographs of himself and his friends.

Born Charles Thomas Close in Monroe, Wash., on July 5, 1940, Close graduated from the University of Washington School of Art in 1962 and later earned a bachelor's degree and a master's of fine arts from Yale University and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Close later evolved his process by adding color to the paintings and eventually scanning hand-painted marks into a computer. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

In 1967, he moved to New York where he developed his style of photorealist paintings drawing a grid on the photo and a larger version of the grid on a blank canvas creating "Big Self-Portrait."

The painting depicted him staring at the camera through his black-rimmed glasses while smoking a cigarette on a 7-by-9-foot canvas.

Close later evolved his process by adding color to the paintings and eventually scanning hand-painted marks into a computer which he used to produce portraits of artists Cecily Brown, Kiki Smith, Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker.

In 2017, several women who came to his studio to pose accused Close of sexually harassing them between 2005 and 2013. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

In 1967, during his first solo exhibition at the gallery at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was teaching at the time, the university deemed several male nudes on display obscene and sent campus police to dismantle the show.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the American Association of University Professors sued on Close's behalf and won the trial but the decision was overturned on appeal.

In 2017, several women who came to his studio to pose accused Close of sexually harassing them between 2005 and 2013.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington indefinitely postponed an exhibition of Close's work following the allegations.

A collapsed spinal artery left Close paralyzed from the neck down in 1988 but he was ultimately able to regain movement in his arms and sit up and paint using brushes strapped to his hand after months of rehabilitation.

He was also diagnosed with frontal lobe dementia in 2015.

Close was married twice and is survived by his daughters, Georgia and Maggie, and four grandchildren.