Graves of 19th century migrants found on trail in Idaho

September 27, 2021

FILE - This undated file image provided by the City of Rocks National Reserve shows the Inner City formation inside the reserve in southeastern Idaho. Cadaver dogs have found what are probably seven graves of mid-1880s migrants who died in south-central Idaho on the California Trail while crossing what is now the City of Rocks National Reserve. 

(City of Rocks National Reserve via AP, File )

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (AP) — Cadaver dogs have found what are probably seven graves of mid-1880s migrants who died in south-central Idaho on the California Trail while crossing what is now the City of Rocks National Reserve.

Experts with the Oregon-California Historic Trails and City of Rocks National Reserve identified two possible graves.

The Post Register reported in a story last week that the cadaver dogs earlier this month confirmed the two sites as containing human remains and then found five more possible burial sites.

“It wasn’t a surprise,” said Tara McClure-Cannon, assistant park manager at City of Rocks. “We had suspected some of these areas in the past based on what they looked like. The dogs were partly confirming our suspicions.”

McClure-Cannon said the park has several options on how to handle the grave sites. It could bring in ground penetrating radar to confirm they are graves containing bodies. In rare cases, potential graves are excavated. The locations of the potential grave sites will be marked with a GPS location, but not made public so they won’t be disturbed.

Jerry Eichhorst, president of the Idaho chapter of the Oregon-California Trails Association, helped locate some of the potential graves and said marking the graves can create problems.

“Unfortunately, a lot of these places are very isolated, and if you put up a fence or anything around it, you just marked it,” Eichhorst said. “We mark that the GPS coordinates are a suspected grave site that’s been verified with cadaver dogs, and you know it’s there and the people that care know it’s there, but it’s not open to the general public for the risk of vandalism.”

About 200,000 migrants passed through the national reserve mainly heading to California on the California Trail that splits off of the nearby Oregon Trail, experts have said, adding that there are probably thousands of migrants buried along the California and Oregon trails.

“It’s estimated that there’s a person buried every quarter mile to every half mile, just depending on the accounts in the stories and such,” he said.

Deb Hurlburt trains, who trains cadaver dogs and works closely with regional search-and-rescue and crime units, said three German shepherds searched an area about the size of two football fields at the national reserve.

“A couple of areas our dogs definitely, based upon their body language, found the smell of human remains,” she said.

Eichhorst and his group have gathered about 2,700 diary entries from emigrants, with some of them indicating burial cites at the City of Rocks National Reserve and others offering clues on people who survived the journey.

“Several years ago I found a diary that referenced writing their name on some rocks at City of Rocks that we’ve never found names on,” Eichhorst said. “I told Wallace Keck, the park manager, about it and sent him the diary. He went out and was able to climb up these rocks and find names on it.”

Labour conference: Members vote for £15 minimum wage amid row

By Justin Parkinson & Jennifer Scott
Political reporters, BBC News
Labour Party Conference


Labour members have voted in favour of a £15 per hour minimum wage amid a row over the policy at its conference.

The vote is not binding, but comes after MP Andy McDonald resigned from shadow cabinet, saying he had been ordered to argue against the rise.

The leadership did not encourage members to back or reject the motion.

But earlier, Sir Keir Starmer told Sky News he stood by the party's current policy of raising the minimum wage to "at least" £10 an hour.

Left-wingers - including former leader Jeremy Corbyn - had called on Sir Keir to back to larger rise.

Mr Corbyn told the BBC it was something the party "should be supporting and campaigning for".

Arguments between the left, including supporters of Mr Corbyn, and Labour members loyal to Sir Keir have dominated the party conference in Brighton.

Sir Keir pushed through reforms to the party election rules, seen as unfavourable to left-wing members of Labour, in a vote on Sunday.

Andy McDonald MP: "Is it unreasonable to expect our key workers not to have that level of pay?"

The Unite union put forward a motion calling for the minimum wage to increase to £15 to a vote on Tuesday.

The current minimum wage is £8.91 for those 23 and over, £8.36 for those aged 21 and 22, and £6.56 for 18 to 20-year olds.

The wide-ranging Unite motion also said that, for Labour to win the next election, it "must be an anti-austerity party, defending jobs and improving living standards".

And it included demands for stronger union rights, higher taxes "on the very wealthiest", an end to zero-hour contracts and a "better work-life balance".

But asked about the wage rise earlier, Sir Keir said: "It should be a £10 minimum wage - that's a 12% increase [meaning] £2000 a year for working families."

Before the vote, shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said the party leadership was "perfectly happy" for conference delegates to back the £15 motion.

However, he said Labour would only reassess its current policy closer to the next general election, adding this was the "responsible thing to do".

But Mr Corbyn called for the party to commit to a £6 an hour rise in the minimum wage now.

Speaking at a fringe event alongside Labour's conference, the former leader told the BBC: "We live in a low-wage economy and a low-wage economy leads to poverty. We live in a society now with more food banks than branches of McDonald's. That's where we have got to."

Mr Corbyn also praised Mr McDonald, saying he had "huge admiration" for the MP, adding: "He went through a lot of trauma [on Monday] because he did not in all conscience feel he could go and say that he was opposed to £15 minimum wage because he is not.

"He supports it, so he took the decision he did to resign. I fully support him."

Sir Keir was a member of Mr Corbyn's shadow cabinet during the run-up to the 2019 election

Raising the minimum wage was not one of the 10 pledges Sir Keir made when running for the Labour leadership last year.

But he supported a campaign in 2019 for fast food chain McDonald's to improve pay and conditions.

At the time, he said: "They're not asking for the Earth. They're asking for the basics - £15 an hour, the right to know their hours in advance and to have trade union recognition. That ought to be the norm in 21st Century Britain."


But on Tuesday, Sir Keir said his comments were in relation to "particular industrial disputes at McDonald's", adding: "I backed them in that and I'd back them again today in relation to that the minimum wage, [but] across the whole of the economy is a completely different issue."


In a scathing resignation letter, Mr McDonald claimed the leader's office had instructed him go to a meeting at the party conference and "argue against a national minimum wage of £15 an hour and against statutory sick pay at the living wage".


"After many months of a pandemic when we made commitments to stand by key workers, I cannot now look those same workers in the eye and tell them they are not worth a wage that is enough to live on, or that they don't deserve security when they are ill," the former shadow employment secretary added.

Mr Corbyn also backed the so-called "McStrike" in 2019, but his policy as leader was for at least £10 minimum wage - also Labour's current position.

Japan’s next leader sets sights on wage hikes to fuel growth


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FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2021, file photo, Japan's former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida poses for a portrait picture following his press conference at the headquarters of the Liberal Democratic Party after he was elected as party president in Tokyo. The man soon to become Japan's next prime minister says he believes raising incomes is the only way to get the world's third-largest economy growing again. Growth had stalled even before the pandemic hit, stymied by longstanding problems including a shrinking population, growing inequality and stagnant incomes. (Du Xiaoyi/Pool Photo via AP, File)


MITO, Japan (AP) — Fumio Kishida, the man soon to become Japan’s prime minister, says he believes raising incomes is the only way to get the world’s third-largest economy growing again.

Kishida says he wants to promote a “new capitalism” that would be more equitable, with fairer distribution of national wealth — the only way to get frugal Japanese families to spend more.

“Unless the fruits of growth are properly distributed, a ‘virtuous cycle of growth and distribution’ cannot be realized,” he told reporters after he overwhelmingly was elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday. “I would like to take economic measures to raise the incomes of many of you.”

Nearly a decade after long-serving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to “make Japan great again,” the economy is in a holding pattern, stalled both by the pandemic and by chronic problems such as an aging and shrinking population, growing inequality and stagnant incomes.

Topping Kishida’s to-do list is another big dose of government spending to help Japan recover from the COVID-19 shock.

Despite his ambitious talk, Kishida is viewed as an establishment choice, not a reformer. He’s a former banker and solid member of the political elite: his father and grandfather also were politicians.

Analysts say Kishida, who is all-but-certain to be elected prime minister by Parliament on Monday, is unlikely to stray far from Abe’s playbook of heavy doses of stimulus. Neither did the current prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, who is stepping aside after one year in office.

Kishida’s top priority? “The economy,” he told national broadcaster NHK.

He said he plans to propose a spending package worth several hundred billion dollars soon.

His support for housing and education subsidies should boost consumer spending, said Naoya Oshikubo, senior economist at SuMi TRUST. He expects a “tailwind for the stock market, as it will make clear that ex-Prime Minister Abe’s economic policies will continue.”

Under Kishida, the Bank of Japan is likely to stick to its years-long efforts to spur growth by keeping interest rates near zero — making borrowing cheap — by pouring trillions of yen (hundreds of billions of dollars) into the economy through asset purchases.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell 0.3% Thursday after data showed factory output and retail sales weakened in August as the country buckled down to fight the pandemic.

While share prices are near their highest levels in three decades, that wealth is not trickling down to average Japanese. Their incomes adjusted for inflation have been falling while jobs are growing less secure as companies increasingly rely on part-time and contract workers to keep costs low. The average minimum wage in Japan is only 930 yen ($8.30), while the cost of living is higher than in many Western countries.

 

Czech support for nuclear becomes law

29 September 2021

Support for new nuclear build at the Czech Republic's Dukovany power plant has been signed into law by President Miloš Zeman. It is designed to remove market failures that stand in the way of the Czech Republic's goal to rely on nuclear energy for secure supply of power and heat.

Dukovany today. A new power plant adjacent to this is to be built by 2036 (Image: ČEZ)

The new law, approved by a large majority in the Chamber of Deputies on 16 September, allows a state-owned company to purchase electricity from new nuclear plants at a fixed rate for at least 30 years, with the possibility of extension. The power will be resold on the wholesale market and any profit or loss translated into an adjustment to power bills, although the government said it will set an upper limit on any extra cost. It is known as Lex Dukovany, after the power plant site where new build is planned. Zeman officially signed the law yesterday, bringing it into effect.

The Czech government and the International Energy Agency have both said this addresses market failures that inhibit the construction of both nuclear and renewable capacity.

Major drivers of the Czech Republic's pro-nuclear position are that the country needs to reduce the amount of coal it uses without prompting security of supply issues, such as an over-reliance on imports. The government has noted that renewable sources are limited by geographic factors. "In addition to stable electricity supplies," Lex Dukovany reads, "nuclear power plants also enable the provision of stable heat supplies, which is another advantage due to the extensive system of central heat supply in the Czech Republic."

Therefore, "Nuclear energy has been identified as the primary means of ensuring energy security in the Czech Republic in the context of achieving the goal of a climate-neutral EU by 2050 due to its ability to ensure low-carbon, stable and cheap electricity supplies."

Dukovany II

A national priority to maintain energy security is the continued operation of the Dukovany nuclear power plant, where four VVER-440 reactors have operated since the late 1980s. Approaching 40 years of age, they need engineering work to extend their service lives by a further 20 years, and after that replacement by a new power plant to be known as Dukovany II.

In July 2020 the Czech government signed a framework agreement on the construction of the new unit with national power company ČEZ and project company Elektrárna Dukovany II. That agreement aimed for ČEZ to hold a tender for the reactor supplier, negotiate a contract and receive all the required licences by 2024, so that the unit can be put into operation in 2036.

Notably, wordings in the new law restrict suppliers for new power plants and maintenance services to companies from countries that have signed the International Agreement on Government Procurement of 1996, which effectively excludes the Russian and Chinese industries. The Czech Ministry of Industry instead selected EDF, Westinghouse and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power for security vetting via a questionnaire. ČEZ said in June that the companies are answering questions about their "ownership structure, supply chain, links of stakeholders with the state, problems with the implementation of projects, accusations and other problems in nuclear resource projects, technology transfer and know-how."

Policies currently in place should see coal phased out in the Czech Republic in 2038, although the International Energy Agency recently encouraged a faster schedule. At that time renewables are expected to provide 25% of electricity and nuclear as much as 58%.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Pentagon officials say Afghan govt's collapse was rooted in 2020 US deal with Taliban



Issued on: 30/09/2021 - 

Gen. Frank McKenzie, Commander of US Central Command, appearing on screen from MacDill Air Force Base, in Tampa, Fla., speaks about Afghanistan during a virtual briefing at the Pentagon in Washington, Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. 

© Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP
Text by: FRANCE 24

Senior Pentagon officials said Wednesday the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces in August could be traced to the 2020 US agreement with the Taliban signed in Doha that promised a complete troop withdrawal. Joe Biden has faced the biggest crisis of his presidency over the withdrawal in Afghanistan, drawing criticism from Republican US lawmakers.

This week, the US House and Senate started hearings of a congressional review on the troop pull-out in Afghanistan and the war itself. During its second day, General Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that once the US troop presence was pushed below 2,500, as part of President Joe Biden's decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unravelling of the Washington-backed Afghan government accelerated.

“The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military - psychological more than anything else, but we set a date-certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said.

On February 29, 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in which the US promised to fully withdraw its troops by May 2021, with the Taliban committing to several conditions, including stopping attacks on American and coalition forces. The stated objective was to promote peace negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government in Kabul, but that diplomatic effort never gained traction before Biden took office in January.

McKenzie had believed “for quite a while” that if the United States reduced the number of its military advisers in Afghanistan below 2,500, the Kabul government inevitably would collapse “and that the military would follow." In addition to the morale-depleting effects of the Doha agreement, the troop reduction ordered by Biden in April was ”the other nail in the coffin" for the 20-year war effort, he added, because it blinded the US military to conditions inside the Afghan army: “our advisers were no longer down there with those units.”

Democrat Biden has faced the biggest crisis of his presidency over the war in Afghanistan, which he argued needed to be brought to a close after 20 years of stalemated fighting that had cost American lives, drained resources and distracted from greater strategic priorities.

Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, testifying alongside McKenzie, said he agreed with the analysis. The Doha agreement also committed the United States to ending airstrikes against the Taliban, “so the Taliban got stronger, they increased their offensive operations against the Afghan security forces, and the Afghans were losing a lot of people on a weekly basis,” he added.

War in Afghanistan 'a strategic failure'

Wednesday's hearing with Pentagon leaders was politically charged. Republicans sought to cast President Biden as wrongheaded on Afghanistan, and Democrats pointed to what they called ill-advised decisions during the Trump years.

The previous day, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a similar hearing in the Senate that the war in Afghanistan was a “strategic failure,” and he repeated that on Wednesday.

When pressed Tuesday, Milley also told the Senate committee that it had been his personal opinion that at least 2,500 American troops were needed to guard against a collapse of the Kabul government and a return to Taliban rule.

Defying US intelligence assessments, the Afghan government and its American-trained army collapsed on August 15, allowing the Taliban to capture Kabul with what Milley described as a couple of hundred men on motorcycles and without firing one shot. That triggered a frantic US effort to evacuate American civilians, Afghan allies and others from Kabul airport.

The Taliban had ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

‘Plain old politics’

US House and Senate started hearings which could become an extended congressional review of the US failures in Afghanistan. This after years of limited congressional oversight of the war although hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were consumed.

“The Republicans' sudden interest in Afghanistan is plain old politics,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, who supported Biden's decision to end US involvement there.

Tuesday's hearing also was contentious at times, as Republicans sought to portray Biden as having ignored advice from military officers and mischaracterised the military options with which he was presented last spring and summer.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton (Arkansas) asked why Milley did not choose to resign after his advice was rejected. The general, who was appointed to his position as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Donald Trump and retained by Biden, said it was his responsibility to provide the commander in chief with his best advice.

“The president doesn't have to agree with that advice,” Milley said. “He doesn't have to make those decisions just because we are generals. And it would be an incredible act of political defiance for a commissioned officer to resign just because my advice was not taken."

(FRANCE 24 with AP & REUTERS)

Reparations draw UN scrutiny, but those who’d pay say little

By SALLY HO

September 28, 2021

Prime Minister of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Timothy Harris, in a pre-recorded message, addresses the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Friday Sept. 24, 2021, at UN headquarters. At the United Nations General Assembly, African and Caribbean countries that stand to benefit from reparations were backed by other nations, though those most responsible for slavery and colonialism said little about what they might owe to African descendants.

 (Peter Foley/Pool Photo via AP)

More than a year after Black Lives Matter protests launched a worldwide reckoning about the centuries of racism that Black people continue to face, the question of reparations emerged — unevenly — as a high-profile issue at this year’s largest gathering of world leaders.

At the U.N. General Assembly, African and Caribbean countries that stand to benefit from reparations were backed by other nations, though those most responsible for slavery and colonialism said little about what they might owe to African descendants.

Leaders from Africa (South Africa and Cameroon) to the Caribbean (Saint Kitts & Nevis and Saint Lucia) were joined by representatives of countries that are unlikely to be tapped to pay up — Cuba and Malaysia among them — in explicitly endorsing the creation of reparation systems.

Those missing from the renewed global conversation on the topic, though, were noteworthy as well: the United States, Britain and Germany, wealthy and developed nations built from conquests of varying kinds.

“Caribbean countries like ours, which were exploited and underdeveloped to finance the development of Europe, have put forward a case for reparations for slavery and native genocide, and we expect that case to be treated with the seriousness and urgency it deserves,” said Philip J. Pierre, prime minister of Saint Lucia. “There should be no double standards in the international system in recognizing, acknowledging and compensating victims of crimes against humanity.”

A look at who is and isn’t talking about the issue this past week is a sign that while the movement supporting literal payback to the African continent and the forced diaspora that ravaged it is growing, the substantive engagement of major powers — however apologetic — is limited.

U.S. President Joe Biden, for example, made no mention of it in his address, though the White House earlier this year said it supported studying reparations for Black Americans. And the office of its U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is African American, wouldn’t comment on the recent reparations discussions.

Monetary atonement for America’s history of slavery is a seminal question in the world’s attempt to reconcile with what South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called “one of the darkest periods in the history of humankind, and a crime of unparalleled barbarity.”

“Its legacy persists in the Americas, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and in Africa itself,” Ramaphosa said at a meeting on reparations during the General Assembly. “Millions of the descendants of Africans who were sold into slavery remain trapped in lives of underdevelopment, disadvantage, discrimination and poverty.”

Slavery in what became the United States began more than 400 years ago with slaves forcibly transported by ship from Africa. The debate about reparations has been ongoing ever since slavery was abolished in 1865.

In recent years, the issue has languished in Congress for more than three decades, though reparations have gained traction in a smattering of cities and local governments as the country continues to grapple with fallout from the death of George Floyd in 2020.

Carla Ferstman, an international law expert who studies reparations as a professor at the University of Essex, said the U.N. talks this session mark a significant milestone for the global reparations movement that has been brewing for 20 years.

What remains to be seen is how it unfolds between individual nations — and how transformative the results are. While each reparations program would specifically be between the perpetrators and the victims’ descendants, the conversation to rectify wrongs in history has now become universal.

“It’s universal,” Ferstman said, “because inequity is universal.”

Valued reparations to address harm could come in the form of direct financial payments for individuals, developmental aid for countries, the return of colonized land, treasured artifacts and cultural items, systemic corrections of policies and laws that may still oppress, and the kind of full-throated apologies and acknowledgements that wipe aside certain historical figures that were once celebrated as national heroes.

“People perceive their harms in very different ways — this perception of how the wrongs happened and how they manifested in terms of later generations,” Ferstman said. “One needs to be sensitive to what is important and how to best rectify.”

The latest discussions on reparations came as the U.N. commemorated an important but contentious 2001 anti-racism conference in South Africa that resulted in what is known as the Durban Declaration.

A new resolution adopted at the commemoration meeting last Wednesday acknowledged some progress but deplored what it called a rise in discrimination, violence and intolerance directed at people of African heritage and many other groups — from the Roma to refugees, the young to the old, people with disabilities to displaced people.

There was even a discussion devoted to reparations, though it didn’t go unnoticed during that talk that last week’s new declaration stopped short of demanding nations must pay reparations to those their government harmed.

It said only that there should be a way for descendants to seek “just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered.” That was despite the U.N. Human Rights Council’s explicit recommendation for reparations in a major milestone report in June.

“While reparations could not compensate or right all the wrongs that had been done against the people of African descent, they could go a long way in addressing systemic racism that still lingers in the society today, in bringing about a level playing field to realize their true potentials,” Syed Mohamad Hasrin Aidid, head of Malaysia’s U.N. mission, said at Wednesday’s meeting.

The United States, Britain and Germany were among the dozens of countries that didn’t attend the Durban commemoration last week because of persisting grievances about the conference 20 years ago, when the U.S. boycotted it over references to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it did not dispute the horrors of slavery and colonialism, but that it was focused on solving today’s problems. It said in a statement: “While we acknowledge that the wounds run very deep, we believe that the most effective way for the U.K. today to respond to the cruelty of the past is to ensure that current and future generations do not forget what happened, and to address modern-day slavery and racism.”

Germany’s president, in his General Assembly address, didn’t mention reparations, though his is one of the few countries that have directed money to make up for its colonial-era actions.

Early this year, Germany officially recognized the massacre of tens of thousands of people in Namibia as genocide and agreed to provide 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) for projects that are expected to stretch over 30 years to help the communities affected. That announcement pointedly did not label Germany’s initiative as formal reparations.

Facing journalists this week at the United Nations who sought answers on Namibia, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said his country continues to negotiate proposals with the African leaders.

“(T)he results that have been achieved have been achieved with the desire to finally reach an outcome, though not a conclusion, with regard to this truly difficult chapter of German history,” Maas said. “For in fact, it is only the beginning of a period of very, very intensive cooperation between Germany and Namibia.”

____

Sally Ho, based in Seattle, is a member of The Associated Press’ Race & Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/_sallyho

Thai flood victims 'start from zero' after killer storm

Issued on: 30/09/2021 - 

A resident casts a net in his partially submerged Lopburi village

 Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP

Lopburi (Thailand) (AFP)

Watching his fridge float across the kitchen and bed disappear underwater was not how Samran Buachumsuk hoped to begin retirement at his newly built home in central Thailand.

Flooding after tropical storm Dianmu has hit 31 provinces, killed seven people and inundated more than 215,000 households, authorities say.

About 150 kilometres (93 miles) south, the capital is on alert -- with floodwater expected to reach Bangkok late next week.

In the ancient city of Lopburi, a caramel sea has lapped into homes and Samran does not know where he will find the money to repair his house and buy new furniture.

'I might have to start from zero since there is very little stuff that is salvageable,' said Samran Buachumsuk Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP

"I think this is it -- I might have to start from zero since there is very little stuff that is salvageable," the 61-year-old, who retired last month, told AFP.

Aoi Ketpan, 53, managed to move some of her family's belongings to higher ground but could not compete with the speed of the rising water.

"The water reached the level of my hip in a matter of minutes," she told AFP.

A resident steers his boat through crops subrmerged in floodwaters in Lopburi Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP

Down the road, teenage boys had found a silver lining: throwing nets into the torrent to catch fish and crabs for dinner.

At a nearby temple evacuees rest on mats, reliant on donated food packages.

Lopburi's weather bureau chief Norawat Thipraks said the flood peaked at two metres and would take at least two weeks to recede.

A boy swims in the floodwaters Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP

The level of the Chao Phraya river -- which snakes through Bangkok after winding almost 400 kilometres down from the north -- is steadily rising as authorities release water from dams further upstream.

The Royal Irrigation Department is discharging 2,750 cubic metres of water -- the equivalent of 1.1 Olympic swimming pools -- per second, from the Chao Phraya Dam into the river.

Somkiat Prajamwong from the Office of National Water Resources said authorities were working to divert some of the floodwater to protect the capital.

Lopburi's weather bureau chief Norawat Thipraks says the flood will take at least two weeks to recede Lillian SUWANRUMPHA AFP

Hydrology expert Seree Suparathit from Rangsit University said the floodwater would likely reach Bangkok around October 6-10, with a new storm expected next week adding to the risks.

The capital experienced catastrophic floods in 2011 that left a fifth of the city underwater, but experts say this year's disaster is unlikely to reach that level.

© 2021 AFP

Activist, historian, writer among `genius grant’ recipients

By DON BABWIN

1 of 6

Monica Muñoz Martinez sits for a portrait at the University of Texas in Austin on Sept. 16, 2021. The historian devoted to keeping alive stories of long-dead victims of racial violence along the Texas-Mexico border is among this year's MacArthur fellows and recipients of "genius grants."

 (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation via AP)


CHICAGO (AP) — A historian devoted to keeping alive the stories of long-dead victims of racial violence along the Texas-Mexico border and a civil rights activist whose mission is to make sure people who leave prison are free to walk into the voting booth are among this year’s MacArthur fellows and recipients of “genius grants.”

The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on Tuesday announced the 25 recipients, who will each receive $625,000.

The historian and the activist are part of an eclectic group that includes scientists, economists, poets, and filmmakers. As in previous years, the work of several recipients involves topics that have been dominating the news — from voting rights to how history is taught in schools.

Race figures prominently in the work of about half of them, including that of Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to be an Antiracist” and “Stamped from the Beginning,” which was a National Book Award winner for nonfiction.

There is a generation of older and younger writers, thinkers and creators who are able to recognize the “complexity of racism” and “clarify it for everyday people to see it and grasp it and be outraged by it,” Kendi said.

“These generations have been hugely inspired by previous generations,” added Kendi, who will contribute an essay to the forthcoming book “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story” that’s based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning “1619 Project” that centers U.S. history around slavery. “I think we built this movement to a point in which it is indeed a juggernaut with no way of stopping.”

The selection process for the MacArthur grants is shrouded in secrecy. Instead of applications, anonymous groups make nominations and recommendations to the foundation’s board of directors.

Kendi, 39, said he had no knowledge he had been nominated.

“My first words were: ‘Are you serious?’” Kendi said Tuesday. “It’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest, honor I’ve ever received.”

COVID-19 also was clearly on the minds of the foundation’s board of directors. It comes up in the work of no fewer than four recipients, including a computational biologist building tools to track and forecast viruses and a physician-economist working to better communicate the need for the COVID-19 vaccine to communities that distrust medical institutions.

“As we emerge from the shadows of the past two years, this class of 25 Fellows helps us re-imagine what’s possible,” said Cecilia Conrad, the foundation’s managing director of fellows.

Much of what is going on, from the COVID-19 pandemic to efforts in the U.S. to alter the way elections are held and the way students are taught in school, added a sense of urgency to this year’s awards, some recipients said.

“This award is so timely for me, personally ... to remain committed to make sure the public has access to the truth, true history, even when it is troubling (and) especially when that history can help us build a better future,” Monica Muñoz Martinez, a historian at the University of Texas, Austin, pointing to efforts in some states to limit how teachers discuss racism.

Martinez was recognized, in part because of her book “The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas,” about a period a century ago when hundreds Mexicans and Mexican Americans were slaughtered by vigilantes as well as the Texas Rangers.

Desmond Meade, who led a campaign that resulted in the passage of a measure in Florida that restored the voting rights of felons who have served their sentences, said the recognition — and the money — will help him continue his work to help former prison inmates. Meade’s effort had a setback last year when a federal appellate court upheld the position of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-led Legislature that Florida felons must pay all fines before regaining their right to vote.

Meade noted that he struggled with drug addiction and homelessness and has served time in prison himself.

“The country needs to see stories of triumph and everyday regular people who are impacting their communities,” he said. “This (genius grant) means that each and every one in this country has the capacity to do something great.”

___

Associated Press reporter Corey Williams contributed from West Bloomfield, Mich.

Enbridge-backed PennEast becomes the latest to scuttle a natural gas pipeline project

Proposed pipeline from Pennsylvania to New Jersey runs aground due to legal, regulatory challenges

Reuters
Scott Disavino
Publishing date:Sep 27, 2021 •

Natural gas pipelines in Canada's oilsands. 

PHOTO BY TODD KOROL/REUTERS FILES

PennEast Pipeline said on Monday it would stop developing a proposed pipeline from Pennsylvania to New Jersey, the latest in a series of natural gas lines to run aground due to legal and regulatory challenges.

The project was one of several proposed in recent years to draw natural gas from the fast-growing Appalachian region, only to run into local or environmental opposition to more fossil-fuel infrastructure. Gas prices have surged worldwide due to rising demand and lack of supply.

In the United States, there is plenty of product available for heating and power generation. But with the cancellation of PennEast, the industry is becoming more concerned that the vast growth in Appalachia’s production will become trapped.

Much of the growth in U.S. gas production over the past decade that turned the United States from a gas importer into one of the world’s biggest exporters of the fuel has come from the Appalachian region.

PennEast was cancelled, the company said, because it had not yet received all of its required permits. The project was one of the last major ones in the works set to pull gas from the Marcellus/Utica formation in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, the biggest gas shale basin in the United States. Enbridge Inc. owns 20 per cent of the company, while other partners include Southern Company Gas; NJR Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of New Jersey Resources, South Jersey Industries, and UGI Energy Services (UGIES), a subsidiary of UGI Corporation.

“The PennEast partners, following extensive evaluation and discussion, recently determined further development of the project no longer is supported,” PennEast said in an email, noting it “has ceased all further development of the project.”

U.S. natural gas prices are at a seven-year high, boosted by overseas demand for U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. Global gas prices are at a record due to low storage levels in Europe and insatiable demand in Asia.

Other East Coast gas pipes held up by regulators and legal battles include Williams Cos Inc.’s Northeast Supply Enhancement from Pennsylvania to New Jersey and New York, and Dominion Energy Inc’s Atlantic Coast from West Virginia to Virginia and North Carolina. The latter was canceled in 2020.

PennEast decided to stop development even though the U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled in its favour in a lawsuit allowing the line to seize state-owned or controlled land in New Jersey.

As recently as August, PennEast said it still hoped to finish the first phase of the US$1.2 billion pipe in Pennsylvania in 2022. However, the company still lacks certain permits, including a water quality certification in New Jersey.

The 120-mile (193 kilometre) pipe was designed to deliver 1.1 billion cubic feet per day of gas from the Marcellus shale to customers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. One billion cubic feet is enough gas for about five million U.S. homes for a day.

PennEast had initially hoped to complete the project in 2019.

© Thomson Reuters 2021

With additional reporting from Financial Post Staff

Carbon dioxide could be used to make fuel — on Earth and beyond it

This could be a game changer for space travel.

by Jordan Strickler
September 28, 2021

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati are going to try and kill two birds with one stone as they try to address climate change while simultaneously assisting future human Martian explorers.

Soon scientists could convert carbon dioxide into green energy.

 (Photo: Pixabay)

A team from the school’s College of Engineering and Applied Science is developing ways of transforming carbon dioxide into gases that could be used as a fuel on both planets.

In their study, published in the journal Nature Communications, assistant professor Jingjie Wu and his students used a carbon catalyst in a reactor to convert carbon dioxide into methane. The process, known as the “Sabatier reaction,” is the same process astronauts on the International Space Station use to scrub the carbon dioxide from the air they breathe and generate rocket fuel to keep the station in its orbit.

However, in the new study, Cincinnati researchers and their collaborators (from Rice University, Shanghai University, and East China University of Science and Technology) are taking things to a whole new level with their endeavor. By converting Mars’ atmosphere, which contains an abundance of carbon dioxide, to fuel, they could save half the fuel they need for a return trip.

As it stands now, astronauts would need to bring their own fuel, making the payloads ridiculously heavy, not to mention the additional room the fuel would require.

“Right now if you want to come back from Mars, you would need to bring twice as much fuel, which is very heavy,” Wu said. “And in the future, you’ll need other fuels. So we can produce methanol from carbon dioxide and use them to produce other downstream materials. Then maybe one day we could live on Mars…It’s like a gas station on Mars. You could easily pump carbon dioxide through this reactor and produce methane for a rocket.”

Wu and his students are experimenting with different catalysts such as graphene quantum dots, layers of carbon just nanometers big, that can increase the yield of methane and ethylene, which has been referred to as the world’s most important chemical as it is used in the manufacturing of plastics, rubber, synthetic clothing, and other products.

“The process is 100 times more productive than it was just 10 years ago,” Wu said. “So you can imagine that progress will come faster and faster. In the next 10 years, we’ll have a lot of startup companies to commercialize this technique.”

Adding this finding to the innovations made in which astronauts could build concrete on Mars with their own urine and blood, is making trips to the Red Planet increasingly more and more feasible with the materials we already have available.

With the Biden Administration’s goal of achieving a 50% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 and a sustainable economy that relies on renewable energy by 2050, the study has positive implications for Earth as well.

The process of converting carbon dioxide to methanol is scalable for use in power plants that can generate tons of carbon dioxide. Additionally, Wu says, the process is efficient since the conversion can take place right where excess carbon dioxide is produced.


“Right now we have excess green energy that we just throw away,” Wu said. “We can store this excess renewable energy in chemicals…I realized that greenhouse gases were going to be a big issue in society. A lot of countries realized that carbon dioxide is a big issue for the sustainable development of our society.”