Obama attacks GOP candidate’s ‘phony, trumped-up culture wars’ during Virginia rally

 Published: Oct. 24, 2021

Former President Barack Obama, left, campaigns with Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at Virginia Commonwealth University on Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021, in Richmond, Virginia. The Virginia gubernatorial election, pitting McAuliffe against Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, is November 2.

 (Win McNamee/Getty Images/TNS)TNS


By Tribune News Service

WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama waded into VirginIa’s gubernatorial race, criticizing Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin for supporting “phony, trumped-up culture wars” in his bid to flip the state.

Speaking at a rally in Richmond for Democrat Terry McAuliffe, Obama said Youngkin was seeking to win by signaling support for baseless claims about fraud in the 2020 election that led to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“Either he actually believes in the same conspiracy theories that resulted in a mob, or he doesn’t believe them but he’s willing to go along with them, to say or do anything to get elected,” Obama said of the former Carlyle Group co-CEO on Saturday. “And maybe that’s worse, because that says something about character.”

The rally was one of several early-voting drives held by McAuliffe’s campaign hosted by high-profile guests such as Vice President Kamala Harris and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. With national attention focused on the contest ahead of next year’s midterm elections, a rally with President Joe Biden is slated for next week.

Saturday’s event in front of a library at Virginia Commonwealth University attracted about 2,000 supporters. They were repeatedly encouraged to turn in mail-in ballots or go to one of the city’s early-voting sites, the closest of which was about a mile away.

Obama praised McAuliffe as an energetic former governor who could hit the ground running on jobs and education. But like other speakers at the two-hour rally, he spent much of his speech arguing that Youngkin — whom he never specifically named — and Republican lawmakers would roll back expanded voting options, access to abortion and public health measures on the coronavirus pandemic.

He highlighted a recent pro-Youngkin rally in which attendees recited the Pledge of Allegiance to a flag from the Jan. 6 riot.

While Youngkin was not involved in planning the event and later said the pledge was “weird and wrong,” he has given mixed signals about former President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud, calling for an audit of the state’s voting machines and appearing at an “election integrity” event at Liberty University in the state.

McAuliffe’s lead has steadily shrunk from this summer. One recent poll showed him tied with Youngkin.

Republicans say the Virginia race could show a path to recapturing some of the suburban voters they lost during the Trump administration. Democrats are seeking to generate enough enthusiasm to maintain control of a state Biden won by 10 points last year.

Ryan Teague Beckwith of Bloomberg News wrote this story.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

EXPLAINER: What the metaverse is and how it will work

By KELVIN CHAN and MATT O'BRIEN


FILE - In this Oct. 12, 2021 file photo, Hadrien Gurnel, software engineer EPFL's Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+) explores with a virtual reality helmet the most detailed 3D map of the universe with the virtual reality software VIRUP, Virtual Reality Universe Project developed by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in St-Sulpice near Lausanne, Switzerland. The term metaverse seems to be everywhere. Facebook is hiring thousands of engineers in Europe to work on it, while video game companies are outlining their long-term visions for what some consider the next big thing on the internet. Essentially, it’s a world of endless, interconnected virtual communities where people can meet, work and play. You can go to a virtual concert, take a trip online and try on digital clothing. But tech companies still have to figure out how to connect their online platforms.(Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP)


LONDON (AP) — The term “metaverse” seems to be everywhere. Facebook is hiring thousands of engineers in Europe to work on it, while video game companies are outlining their long-term visions for what some consider the next big thing online.

The metaverse, which could spring up again when Facebook releases earnings Monday, is the latest buzzword to capture the tech industry’s imagination.

It could be the future, or it could be the latest grandiose vision by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that doesn’t turn out as expected or isn’t widely adopted for years — if at all.

Plus, many have concerns about a new online world tied to a social media giant that could get access to even more personal data and is accused of failing to stop harmful content.

Here’s what this online world is all about:

WHAT IS THE METAVERSE?

Think of it as the internet brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D. Zuckerberg has described it as a “virtual environment” you can go inside of — instead of just looking at on a screen. Essentially, it’s a world of endless, interconnected virtual communities where people can meet, work and play, using virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps or other devices.

It also will incorporate other aspects of online life such as shopping and social media, according to Victoria Petrock, an analyst who follows emerging technologies.

“It’s the next evolution of connectivity where all of those things start to come together in a seamless, doppelganger universe, so you’re living your virtual life the same way you’re living your physical life,” she said.

But keep in mind that “it’s hard to define a label to something that hasn’t been created,” said Tuong Nguyen, an analyst who tracks immersive technologies for research firm Gartner.

Facebook warned it would take 10 to 15 years to develop responsible products for the metaverse, a term coined by writer Neal Stephenson for his 1992 science fiction novel “Snow Crash.”

WHAT WILL I BE ABLE TO DO IN THE METAVERSE?

Things like go to a virtual concert, take a trip online, and buy and try on digital clothing.

The metaverse also could be a game-changer for the work-from-home shift amid the coronavirus pandemic. Instead of seeing co-workers on a video call grid, employees could see them virtually.

Facebook has launched meeting software for companies, called Horizon Workrooms, to use with its Oculus VR headsets, though early reviews have not been great. The headsets cost $300 or more, putting the metaverse’s most cutting-edge experiences out of reach for many.

For those who can afford it, users would be able, through their avatars, to flit between virtual worlds created by different companies.

“A lot of the metaverse experience is going to be around being able to teleport from one experience to another,” Zuckerberg says.

Tech companies still have to figure out how to connect their online platforms to each other. Making it work will require competing technology platforms to agree on a set of standards, so there aren’t “people in the Facebook metaverse and other people in the Microsoft metaverse,” Petrock said.

IS FACEBOOK GOING ALL IN ON THE METAVERSE?

Indeed, Zuckerberg is going big on what he sees as the next generation of the internet because he thinks it’s going to be a big part of the digital economy. He expects people to start seeing Facebook as a metaverse company in coming years rather than a social media company.

A report by tech news site The Verge said Zuckerberg is looking at using Facebook’s annual virtual reality conference this coming week to announce a corporate name change, putting legacy apps like Facebook and Instagram under a metaverse-focused parent company. Facebook hasn’t commented on the report.

Critics wonder if the potential pivot could be an effort to distract from the company’s crises, including antitrust crackdowns, testimony by whistleblowing former employees and concerns about its handling of misinformation.

Former employee Frances Haugen, who accused Facebook’s platforms of harming children and inciting political violence, plans to testify Monday before a United Kingdom parliamentary committee looking to pass online safety legislation.

 In this Thursday, May 13, 2021 file photo, a view of a Gucci advertisement campaign selected for an exhibition to celebrate the vision of Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele at the Gucci Garden Archetypes, in Florence, Italy.The term metaverse seems to be everywhere. Facebook is hiring thousands of engineers in Europe to work on it, while video game companies are outlining their long-term visions for what some consider the next big thing on the internet. Essentially, it’s a world of endless, interconnected virtual communities where people can meet, work and play. You can go to a virtual concert, take a trip online and try on digital clothing. But tech companies still have to figure out how to connect their online platforms. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File)
IS THE METAVERSE JUST A FACEBOOK PROJECT?

No. Zuckerberg has acknowledged that “no one company” will build the metaverse by itself.

Just because Facebook is making a big deal about the metaverse doesn’t mean that it or another tech giant will dominate the space, Nguyen said.

“There are also a lot of startups that could be potential competitors,” he said. “There are new technologies and trends and applications that we’ve yet to discover.”

Video game companies also are taking a leading role. Epic Games, the company behind the popular Fortnite video game, has raised $1 billion from investors to help with its long-term plans for building the metaverse. Game platform Roblox is another big player, outlining its vision of the metaverse as a place where “people can come together within millions of 3D experiences to learn, work, play, create and socialize.”

Consumer brands are getting in on it, too. Italian fashion house Gucci collaborated in June with Roblox to sell a collection of digital-only accessories. Coca-Cola and Clinique have sold digital tokens pitched as a stepping stone to the metaverse.

Zuckerberg’s embrace of the metaverse in some ways contradicts a central tenet of its biggest enthusiasts. They envision the metaverse as online culture’s liberation from tech platforms like Facebook that assumed ownership of people’s accounts, photos, posts and playlists and traded off what they gleaned from that data.

“We want to be able to move around the internet with ease, but we also want to be able to move around the internet in a way we’re not tracked and monitored,” said venture capitalist Steve Jang, a managing partner at Kindred Ventures who focuses on cryptocurrency technology.

WILL THIS BE ANOTHER WAY TO GET MORE OF MY DATA?

It seems clear that Facebook wants to carry its business model, which is based on using personal data to sell targeted advertising, into the metaverse.

“Ads are going to continue being an important part of the strategy across the social media parts of what we do, and it will probably be a meaningful part of the metaverse, too,” Zuckerberg said in the company’s most recent earnings call.

That raises fresh privacy concerns, Nguyen said, involving “all the issues that we have today, and then some we’ve yet to discover because we’re still figuring out what the metaverse will do.”

Petrock she said she’s concerned about Facebook trying to lead the way into a virtual world that could require even more personal data and offer greater potential for abuse and misinformation when it hasn’t fixed those problems in its current platforms.

“I don’t think they fully thought through all the pitfalls,” she said. “I worry they’re not necessarily thinking through all the privacy implications of the metaverse.”

___

O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

___

See AP’s complete technology coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/technology

EXPLAINER: Will lawmakers dig into Kristi Noem, appraisers?

 South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem speaks during the Family Leadership Summit in this July 16, 2021, file photo in Des Moines, Iowa. South Dakota lawmakers will be taking a look at a state agency that has been at the center of questions about whether Gov. Kristi Noem used her influence to aid her daughter's application for a real estate appraiser license. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, file)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota lawmakers will be taking a look at a state agency that has been at the center of questions about whether Gov. Kristi Noem used her influence to aid her daughter’s application for a real estate appraiser license.

At first glance, the first item of business for the Legislature’s Government Operations and Audit Committee on Thursday appears routine: “Department of Labor and Regulation to discuss the Appraiser Certification Program.”

But it could have a big impact for the Republican governor, who has generated speculation about a possible 2024 White House bid. Noem has come under scrutiny after The Associated Press reported that she held a meeting in her office last year that included her daughter, Kassidy Peters, and the director of the Appraiser Certification Program, which had moved days earlier to deny Peters’ application for a license. Peters received her certification four months later.

WHO WILL BE SPEAKING?

Lawmakers have carved out a few hours in a packed schedule to hear from four people.

One is the Appraiser Certification Program’s former director, Sherry Bren. She was called into the July 2020 meeting in the governor’s office and was pressured to retire shortly after Peters received her license that November.

Another official slated to speak is Secretary of Labor and Regulation Marcia Hultman. She was also in the meeting and later pressured Bren to retire. Hultman has defended her actions by saying there have been positive changes at the agency since Bren left.

Lawmakers have also called the president of the state’s professional appraiser association, Sandra Gresh. She has raised concerns about the new direction of the state program.

The director of the state’s Office of Risk Management, Craig Ambach, also is expected to appear. His office helped negotiate a $200,000 payment to Bren for her to retire and withdraw an age discrimination complaint. Both Bren and Hultman are bound by a clause in that settlement that bans them from disparaging each other.

WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED AT THE MEETING IN NOEM’S OFFICE?

It is not entirely clear. The governor hasn’t answered detailed questions about the meeting. Bren told the AP it covered the procedures for appraiser certification and that she was presented with a letter from Peters’ supervisor that criticized the agency’s decision to deny the license.

Noem has said she didn’t ask for special treatment for her daughter. She has cast the episode as yet another way she has “cut the red tape” to solve a shortage of appraisers and smooth the homebuying process.

In a YouTube video responding to the AP’s report, Noem pointed out that Bren had been in her position for decades, and she charged that the system “was designed to benefit those who were already certified and to keep others out.”

IS THERE A SHORTAGE OF APPRAISERS?

Yes. Industry experts have long said that’s a problem, especially in rural states. In South Dakota, many experienced appraisers are nearing retirement age.

However, the governor’s ability to “streamline” requirements for a license would be limited because they are mostly set at the federal level.

As governor, Noem has worked to ease licensing requirements for an array of professions. She said she had been working on appraiser regulations for years.

Asked for examples of that work prior to last year, her spokesman Ian Fury pointed out that Noem, during her eight years in Congress, twice signed onto GOP-sponsored bills that would have, among other financial reforms, adjusted federal appraiser regulations.

HOW CAN THE SHORTAGE BE SOLVED?

Since Bren’s departure, Noem’s administration has moved to waive certification requirements that go beyond the federal standards, such as an exam for entry-level appraisers.

But the leadership of the Professional Appraisers Association of South Dakota has raised concerns about those moves. The group says the biggest barrier to becoming an appraiser is a lack of supervisors who can train new appraisers.

Before Bren left her job, she was working to launch a first-of-its-kind program that would allow appraiser trainees to take hands-on courses and avoid the traditional apprenticeship model that has become a bottleneck. Bren helped the state win a $120,000 annual federal grant and later testified in the Legislature in support of a bill to create the training program. Noem signed it into law this year.

WHAT WILL THE COMMITTEE DO?

It’s not clear. Republican lawmakers said they will start by asking about the state agency and why there are difficulties to becoming an appraiser. But they also acknowledged that the meeting was an opportunity to question the governor’s conduct. Just two Democrats sit on the 10-person committee.

If lawmakers are satisfied, they could move on from the issue.

They also could decide to delve deeper. The committee has the power to subpoena witnesses and records, but that would require approval from the Executive Board, a ranking committee of top legislators.

Kathleen Clark, a law professor who specializes in government ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said she would not be satisfied with the governor’s explanation that she was simply trying to “cut the red tape.”

“It is conceivable that the agency processes needed improvement,” she said. “But the presence of the daughter and the timing of the meeting suggest that this was not a meeting aimed at improving processes in general, but instead aimed at pressuring the agency to change its mind.”

French sexual abuse victims denounce police mistreatment

By SYLVIE CORBET and ARNO PEDRAM

 Thousands of French women have denounced in a new online campaign the shocking response of police officers victim-blaming them or mishandling their complaints as they were reporting sexual abuse. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere, File)

PARIS (AP) — One rape victim was asked by Paris police what she wore that day, and why she didn’t struggle more. Another woman was forced to fondle herself to demonstrate a sexual assault to a skeptical police officer.

They are among thousands of French women who have denounced in a new online campaign the shocking response of police officers victim-blaming them or mishandling their complaints as they reported sexual abuse.

The hashtag #DoublePeine (#DoubleSentencing) was launched last month by Anna Toumazoff after she learned that a 19-year-old woman who filed a rape complaint in the southern city of Montpellier was asked by police in graphic terms whether she experienced pleasure during the assault.

The hashtag quickly went viral, with women describing similar experiences in Montpellier and other police stations across France. French women’s rights group NousToutes counted at least 30,000 accounts of mistreatment in tweets and other messages sent on social media and on a specific website.

Despite recent training programs for French police and growing awareness around violence against women, activists say authorities must do more to face up to the gravity of sex crimes, and to eradicate discrimination against victims.

Addressing the national issue last week, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said “there are questions that cannot be asked to women when they come to file a complaint.”

“It’s not up to the police officer to say whether there was domestic violence or not, that’s up to the judge to do it,” he added.

He also announced an internal investigation at the Montpellier police station.

The prefect of the region of Montpellier had previously condemned in a statement what he called “defamatory comments” against officers. He denounced “false information” and “lies” aiming at discrediting police action.

Toumazoff denied launching an anti-police campaign, saying the hashtag aims at urging the government to take action.

“By letting incompetent and dangerous officers working in police stations, (authorities) expose the whole profession to shame,” she told The Associated Press. She said the victim mentioned in her initial tweet does not wish to speak publicly while her rape complaint is under investigation.

The Montpellier regional branch of powerful police union Alliance argued that officers are just doing their jobs. “While police officers understand the victims’ distress, the establishment of the truth requires us to ask ‘embarrassing’ questions,” it said.

A 37-year-old Parisian woman told the AP about her experience at a police station after she was assaulted this year by a man living near her home, who had previously harassed her in the street.

Once, he blocked her path and pressed her against a wall, touching her belly and her breast and threatening to kill her, she recalled.

The woman described arriving scared and crying at the police station, where officers welcomed her “very kindly.”

But then, she said, the officer in charge of filing the complaint did not write down her description of the assault, so she refused to sign the document.

“I had to tell it all again,” she said. The officer asked if she was certain that the abuser wanted to touch her breast.

“I had to make the gesture so that he sees that it was not another part of the body,” she said. “Making me repeat and ... mime the gesture in front of a wall, that’s humiliating. I found it very degrading. I felt I was like a puppet.”

The case is still ongoing. Police suggested a change of apartment to move away from her abuser, she said.

FILE - In this March 8, 2021 file photo, women react during a march to mark International Women's Day, in Paris. Despite recent French training programs for police and growing awareness around violence against women, activists say authorities must do more to face up to the gravity of sex crimes, and to eradicate discrimination against victims. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)

Another Parisian woman, aged 25, said she was left “traumatized” by the police treatment after she had been raped by her ex-boyfriend in 2016.

When she filed her initial complaint, the police officer, who had received special training, “explained to me why he was asking all these questions, he was in a spirit of kindness,” she remembers. “I felt rather safe and that he believed me.”

Months later she was summoned to another police station, located in the same street where her attacker was living. Feeling very anxious at the idea of potentially seeing him, she said she was talked to as if she was “stupid” and “a liar.”

Police asked what she was wearing that day, why it was different from when she was having consensual sex with him, how she could argue she was surprised if he was wearing a condom, she recalled. An officer told her, “I don’t understand why you did not struggle more.”

The complaint was closed without follow-up due to lack of evidence. The young woman described the police response as very difficult to live through, with a “huge impact” on her private life and almost leading her to giving up her studies.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they are victims of sexual assault.

Speaking to lawmakers at the National Assembly, the interior minister acknowledged things “can still be improved” on the matter across France.

The government has set the goal to have at least one specially trained officer in each police station for dealing with domestic violence and sexual abuse. An annual survey led by national statistics institute INSEE shows that currently only 10% of victims in these cases file a formal complaint.

The #doublepeine movement comes after the shocking killing earlier this year of a woman who was shot and set on fire in the street by her estranged husband. One of the officers who had taken her domestic abuse complaint a few months earlier had recently been convicted for domestic violence himself.

Darmanin promised that officers definitively convicted for such acts won’t be allowed to be in contact with the public anymore.

Women have been raising the alarm for years, Toumazoff said, denouncing announcements by politicians not followed by action.

“When there are urgent situations, like terror attacks, they can do things because it’s urgent,” she said. “It’s the same here. Women’s lives are at stake. It’s urgent every day.”

AP PHOTOS: Sufi religious order finally able to gather again

By MOSA'AB ELSHAMY

PHOTO ESSAY 1 of 17

Members of the Sufi Karkariya order reach out to kiss the hands of their leader during a religious celebration of the prophet Muhammed's birthday, in Aroui, near Nador, eastern Morocco, Monday, Oct. 18, 2021. It was the first such gathering since the pandemic. The order, the Karkariya, follows a mystical form of Islam recognizable by its unique dress code: A modest yet colorful patchwork robe. (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)


RABAT, Morocco (AP) — Followers of a Sufi religious order convened on a Moroccan village near the city of Nador for the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad in the first such gathering since the pandemic.

A few hundred faithful, known as Fuqaras, from France, Tunisia, Ivory Coast and other countries, met for the weeklong Islamic holiday celebration.

The order, the Karkariya, follows a mystical form of Islam recognizable by its unique dress code: A modest yet colorful patchwork robe.

In the rituals, they surrounded their order’s leader and founder, Sheikh Mohamed Fawzi al Karkari, kissing his hand and pledging religious allegiance to him as they prayed and chanted. Later in the night, the faithful formed circles and danced in fervent movements that symbolize verses from the Quran according to believers.

From March 2020 until July 2021, large religious gatherings in Morocco were banned because of the pandemic. Mosques and thousands of Sufi shrines were also closed for sporadic periods.

The Karkariya Sufi order was founded relatively recently, in the are where they are now meeting.

The term Sufi is broad and includes hundreds of movements spread all over the world. Each Sufi order is defined by its leader or its books. Morocco has hundreds of Sufi orders and the kingdom encourages and supports their presence as a moderate form of religious devotion, as well as maintaining soft power with Sufi orders across West and North Africa.

As the order spread beyond Morocco, it ruffled feathers. In 2017, Algerian media and some religious figures criticized the Karkariya order for the perception that the Morocco-founded order was infringing on Algeria in a “religious invasion.”

Yet Algerian members were still able to travel to Morocco, up until this year when relations took a nose dive and Algeria severed diplomatic ties with its neighbor.

Khaled El Jidoui, a Tunisian member who studies computer science at Stanford University and became a member alongside his brother and father, says joining the order was “the best decision of my life,” pointing to the impact it had on the social and practical aspects of his life.

Asked about the colorful outfit, he describes the mosaic as his “identity,” where every patch represents different facets of his life aiming to “merge together into one white.”

Imad Ali Saeed, a Yemeni researcher and scholar described the pride he felt at being one of Sheikh Al Karkari’s students, noting that he learned about the order during his time researching Sufi sects in Morocco it was the “superiority” of knowledge of the leader that convinced him to join.

Mohammed Shaibani, a businessman from Mauritania, described a 30-year search across West and North Africa for a mentor and his happiness to have gathered again after the pandemic with his fellow members.

A cat rests as members of the Sufi Karkariya order pray during a religious celebration of the birthday of the prophet Muhammed, in Aroui, near Nador, eastern Morocco, Monday, Oct. 18, 2021. 

(AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for SUFI 

Let computers do it: Film set tragedy spurs call to ban guns

By JOCELYN NOVECK

FILE - A large crowd of movie industry workers and New Mexico residents attend a candlelight vigil to honor cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in downtown Albuquerque, N.M. Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021. Hutchins was killed when Alec Baldwin fired a weapon on a film set that a crew member told him was safe. The tragedy has led to calls for fundamental change in Hollywood: the banning of real guns on sets. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton, file)


NEW YORK (AP) — With computer-generated imagery, it seems the sky’s the limit in the magic Hollywood can produce: elaborate dystopian universes. Trips to outer space, for those neither astronauts nor billionaires. Immersive journeys to the future, or back to bygone eras.

But as a shocked and saddened industry was reminded this week, many productions still use guns — real guns — when filming. And despite rules and regulations, people can get killed, as happened last week when Alec Baldwin fatally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins after he was handed a weapon and told it was safe.

The tragedy has led some in Hollywood, along with incredulous observers, to ask: Why are real guns ever used on set, when computers can create gunshots in post-production? Isn’t even the smallest risk unacceptable?


Movie industry worker Hailey Josselyn, wearing a t-shirt of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSA), holds a candle during a vigil to honor cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in Albuquerque, N.M., Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021. Hutchins was killed when actor Alec Baldwin fired a weapon on a film set that a crew member told him was safe. The tragedy has led to calls for fundamental change in Hollywood: the banning of real guns on sets. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton, file)


For Alexi Hawley, it is. “Any risk is too much risk,” the executive producer of ABC’s police drama “The Rookie” announced in a staff memo Friday, saying the events in New Mexico had “shaken us all.”

There “will be no more ‘live’ weapons on the show,” he wrote in a note, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter and confirmed by The Associated Press.

Instead, he said, the policy would be to use replica guns, which use pellets and not bullets, with muzzle flashes added in post-production.

The director of the popular Kate Winslet drama “Mare of Easttown,” Craig Zobel, called for the entire industry to follow suit and said gunshots on that show were added after filming, even though on previous productions he has used live rounds.

“There’s no reason to have guns loaded with blanks or anything on set anymore,” Zobel wrote on Twitter. “Should just be fully outlawed. There’s computers now. The gunshots on ‘Mare of Easttown’ are all digital. You can probably tell, but who cares? It’s an unnecessary risk.”

Bill Dill — a cinematographer who taught Hutchins, a rising star in her field, at the American Film Institute — expressed disgust in an interview over the “archaic practice of using real guns with blanks in them, when we have readily available and inexpensive computer graphics.”

Dill, whose credits include “The Five Heartbeats” and “Dancing in September,” said there was added danger from real guns because “people are working long hours” on films and “are exhausted.”

“There’s no excuse for using live weapons,” he said.

A petition was launched over the weekend on change.org for real guns to be banned from production sets.

“There is no excuse for something like this to happen in the 21st century,” it said of the tragedy. “This isn’t the early 90′s, when Brandon Lee was killed in the same manner. Change needs to happen before additional talented lives are lost.” Lee, the actor son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee, was killed in 1993 by a makeshift bullet left in a prop gun after a previous scene.

The petition appealed to Baldwin directly “to use his power and influence” in the industry and promote “Halyna’s Law,” which would ban the use of real firearms on set. As it stands, the U.S. federal workplace safety agency is silent on the issue and most of the preferred states for productions take a largely hands-off approach.

Hutchins, 42, died and director Joel Souza was wounded Thursday on the set of the Western “Rust” when Baldwin fired a prop gun that a crew member unwittingly told him was “cold” or not loaded with live rounds, according to court documents made public Friday.

Souza was later released from the hospital.

The tragedy came after some workers had walked off the job to protest safety conditions and other production issues on the film, of which Baldwin is the star and a producer.

In an interview, British cinematographer Steven Hall noted that he worked on a production this year in Madrid that involved “lots of firearms.”

“We were encouraged not to use blanks, but to rely on visual effects in post (production) to create whatever effect we wanted from a particular firearm, with the actor miming the recoil from the gun, and it works very well,” he said.

He noted, though, that special effects add costs to a production’s budget. “So it’s easier and perhaps more economic to actually discharge your weapon on set using a blank,” said Hall, a veteran cinematographer who has worked on films like “Fury” and “Thor: The Dark World.” But, he said, “the problem with blanks is, of course … something is emitted from the gun.”

Besides financial concerns, why else would real guns be seen as preferable? “There are advantages to using blanks on set that some people want to get,” said Sam Dormer, a British “armorer,” or firearms specialist. “For instance, you get a (better) reaction from the actor.”

Still, Dormer said, the movie industry is likely moving away from real guns, albeit slowly.

The term “prop gun” can apply to anything from a rubber toy to a real firearm that can fire a projectile. If it’s used for firing, even blanks, it’s considered a real gun. A blank is a cartridge that contains gunpowder but no bullet. Still, it can hurt or even kill someone who is close by, according to the Actors’ Equity Association.

That’s why many are calling to ban blanks as well, and use disabled or replica guns.

“Really there is no good reason in this day to have blanks on set,” director Liz Garbus wrote on Twitter. “CGI can make the gun seem ‘real,’ and if you don’t have the budget for the CGI, then don’t shoot the scene.”

Megan Griffiths, a Seattle-based filmmaker, wrote that she often gets pushback when demanding disabled, non-firing weapons on set.

“But this is why,” she said on Twitter. “Mistakes happen, and when they involve guns, mistakes kill. ... Muzzle flashes are the easiest & cheapest visual effect.”

“Why are we still doing this?”

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Associated Press writers Lindsey Bahr, Lynn Elber in Los Angeles, Hillel Italie in New York and Lizzie Knight in London contributed to this report.

'Rust' assistant director had a history of unsafe practices, prop maker says

David Douglas and Alicia Victoria Lozano 

LOS ANGELES — The assistant director on the New Mexico set of "Rust" where Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins allowed an unsafe environment on more than one production, according to a prop maker who previously worked with him.

 

Alec Baldwin fires prop gun on movie set, killing cinematographer 

(Adria Malcolm / Reuters)

In a detailed statement to NBC News, prop master Maggie Goll said she was called to work on Hulu's "Into the Dark" anthology series in February 2019 and worked with Dave Halls, who "at first he seemed like an older, affable First [assistant director] with the usual run of idiosyncrasies, but that facade soon disappeared."

"For those who don't already know, the anthology series was a 'Side Letter' agreement ... that allowed for lesser working conditions, no true jurisdiction over covered union work aka non-preferential hiring, and what amounts to poverty wages for the crew," Goll said.

Halls handed the gun to Baldwin and yelled "Cold gun" before the fatal shooting, according to records filed in a Santa Fe court.

Halls did not respond to requests for comment Friday and Saturday.

Goll, an experienced special effects technician and pyrotechnician, said that in one instance, Halls attempted to keep filming even after the lead pyrotechnician had suffered a medical emergency and the set had become unsafe.

"He did not maintain a safe working environment," Goll said. "Sets were almost always allowed to become increasingly claustrophobic, no established fire lanes, exits blocked, talent ... safety meetings were nonexistent."

The gun Baldwin used that was supposed to contain blanks had misfired before on the set, sources familiar with the situation told NBC News Friday. Investigators have not said whether the gun held blanks.

When Baldwin pulled the trigger, he unwittingly killed Hutchins and wounded director Joel Souza, who was standing behind her.

"There is absolutely no reason that gun safety should be ignored on set, even when it is a non-firing prop firearm," Goll said.

On the set of "Into the Dark," Halls "did not feel the same" and neglected to hold safety meetings or make announcements prior to the appearance of a firearm on set, Goll added.

"The only reason the crew was made aware of a weapon's presence was because the Assistant Prop Master demanded Dave acknowledge and announce the situation each day," she said.

No one has been arrested or charged in the shooting and the investigation is ongoing.

US should have pushed ex-Afghan president Ghani harder: Khalilzad

Zalmay Khalilzad, seen in Doha on August 10, 2021, has blamed former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani for not agreeing to share power with the Taliban 

KARIM JAAFAR AFP/File

Issued on: 24/10/2021

Washington (AFP)

The Afghan-born Khalilzad, speaking for the first time since his resignation was announced on October 18, also expressed reservations about the decision by the Biden administration to lift conditions on the withdrawal deal he had negotiated with the Islamist insurgents during the administration of President Donald Trump.

The agreement signed on February 29, 2020 between Washington and the Taliban -- which excluded Ghani's government in Kabul -- paved the way for the US to end its longest war.

But it was "a conditions-based package" that included negotiations between the insurgents and Kabul, as well as a permanent, comprehensive cease-fire, Khalilzad said.

Once in the White House, however, President Joe Biden decided "to do a calendar-based withdrawal," without regard to those conditions, he said.

"That was a decision made way above my pay grade," he added.

Talks between the insurgents and Kabul had begun but were dragging, and Washington feared the Taliban would resume attacks on US forces if they stayed in the country much longer -- a situation Khalilzad acknowledged as he admitted things did not work out the way he had wanted.

He placed most of the blame on Ghani, who Khalilzad said never agreed to share power with the Taliban.

"They preferred the status quo to a political settlement," he said of the Kabul government.

"And then when it became clear that the US was leaving, then they -- they miscalculated the effects of the continuing war. They were not serious about the political settlement.

"It's my judgment that we didn't press him hard enough. We were gentle with President Ghani. We used diplomacy. We encouraged him."

He said that under the original conditional withdrawal agreement, the Taliban would have eventually agreed to power-sharing, though his evidence for that was unclear.

Biden had set a departure date of August 31 for the final withdrawal.

But in the months and weeks leading up to that date the Taliban offensive surged. On August 15 Ghani fled Kabul as government authority crumbled and the Taliban marched into the capital city.

Khalilzad -- derided in Afghanistan for, among other things, cutting Kabul out of the US-Taliban deal, and who has also been much criticized in Washington since the takeover -- has blamed Ghani before.

He told the Financial Times in September that Ghani's abrupt exit scuttled a deal in which the Taliban would hold off entering Kabul and negotiate a political transition.

Ghani, who sought safety in the United Arab Emirates, has apologized for how his government ended but said he left on the advice of palace security to avoid bloody street fighting.

The Taliban had been demanding the resignation of Ghani as part of any transitional government.

Ultimately, the Islamists named a caretaker government that has no non-Taliban nor women and that includes US-designated terrorists.

© 2021 AFP

EXCERPT

Transcript: Zalmay Khalilzad on "Face the Nation"

The following is a transcript of an interview with Zalmay Khalilzad, Former U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation that aired Sunday, October 24,2021, on "Face the Nation."

MARGARET BRENNNAN: The chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban's victory there has left many questions about whether Americans are actually safer now. Until a few days ago, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was the Biden administration's top envoy, negotiating directly with the Taliban. He brokered the Trump era deal with the Taliban, in which the US promised to withdraw all U.S. forces, and he joins us now for his first television interview. Welcome to the program.

FMR. US ENVOY FOR AFGHANISTAN ZAL KHALILZAD: It's great to be with you, MARGARET.

MARGARET BRRENNAN: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, said this was a strategic failure, the end of America's longest war. He said, "The enemy is now in charge in Kabul." Do you share that view?

KHALILZAD: Well, I think there is a lot of anger and a lot of resentment about what has happened there. I think with regard to terrorism, we largely have achieved that objective. On the issue of building a democratic Afghanistan - I think that- that did not succeed. The struggle goes on. The Talibs are a reality of Afghanistan. We did not defeat them. In fact, they were making progress on the battlefield even as we were negotiating with them. And the reason we negotiated with them was because militarily things were not going as well as we would have liked. We were losing ground each year.

MARGARET BRENNAN: They were winning the war.

KHALILZAD: Slowly but making progress. And for us to reverse the progress that they were making was going to require a lot more effort.

MARGARET BRENNAN: How many Americans remain in Afghanistan today?

KHALILZAD: We aren't sure, the frank answer is, because not every American-- some of them are Afghan Americans who have families there, who live there and that--

MARGARET BRENNAN: It's hundreds, isn't it?

KHALILZAD: I think it's very likely that it'll be in hundreds, but we don't know. The truth of the matter is, we don't know.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The UN has given some pretty dire projections of what's happening inside Afghanistan right now. More than a million children could die of malnutrition in the next year. The Taliban has still not allowed girls aged 12 and older to return to school. They may say something, but they're not doing it. There are videos of women being beaten in the streets, just demonstrating for their rights. I mean, isn't this proof that the Taliban has no intention of becoming a democratic government or any kind of government that protects human rights?

KHALILZAD: Well, there's no question that the Taliban have a different vision for Afghanistan. It's their vision of a more Islamic government than existed before. And there is obviously disputes about the interpretation of Islam.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Little girls going to school?

KHALILZAD: Well, I think there is a disagreement inside the Taliban. That's why I think that we can't say all Taliban behave in the same way. There are factions inside it. Right now, for example, in at least three or four provinces, high schools for girls have been opened. And they say the same will happen as far as the rest of the country is concerned. And we should hold them to that, keep pressure on them. If they don't-- Taliban don't move toward more inclusiveness, respecting the rights of the Afghan people, and then honoring their commitment to us on terrorism; there will be no move towards normalcy and there shouldn't be. There should be no release of funds. So their economy could collapse and in that collapse a new civil war could start.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Do they know where the leader of Al-Qaeda is? The UN says he's living in Afghanistan.

KHALILZAD: Well, the report that I have seen indicates he could be in Afghanistan or adjacent territories.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Ayman al-Zawahiri.--

KHALILZAD: --al-Zawahiri. I don't know whether the Taliban know it. The Taliban that I dealt with, they told me they did not know where he was.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You did not include the Afghan government in the deal between the U.S. and Taliban. That was a later step that you promised to to include them, but for the deal you brokered...

KHALILZAD: Right.

MARGARET BRENNAN: H.R. McMaster, retired general, former national security adviser to President Trump, said you- you brokered a surrender deal. How do you respond to that?

KHALILZAD: The reason for the deal, to my friend General McMaster and others, is because we weren't winning the war. How long does General McMaster think we should continue while losing ground each year? Why- why- why was that the case after 20 years? That with so much investment, so much loss of life that we were losing ground to the Talibs, and the alternative was either a negotiated settlement or more of the same. And people way above my pay grade decided more of the same is not acceptable anymore.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Because the American public had lost the will to fight.

KHALILZAD: And- and the fight wasn't going right. The fight was not going right after 20 years.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But on the specific point of one of the things in the deal. Why did the Trump administration agree to the Taliban's demand that 5000 prisoners be released? 5000 prisoners who could very easily end up right on that battlefield?

KHALILZAD: Right?

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why did you do that before peace talks?

KHALILZAD: Well, that- the Taliban, in order to sit with the government, to negotiate, wanted some confidence-building measures from both sides. Their demand was all prisoners be released by both sides as a goodwill gesture as they were going to sit together at the table to negotiate peace.

MARGARET BRENNAN: What do they need potential fighters for if they're negotiating peace?

KHALILZAD: Well, but they were giving up fighters also, because there was an exchange of prisoners, not a release, one sided release.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The Ghani government was not supportive of your work.

KHALILZAD: I was representing the United States to carry out the president's direction. But I believe the biggest difficulty was that President Ghani and a few other Afghan leaders did not believe that we were serious about withdrawal for a long time, and they like the status quo compared to a political settlement in which they might not have the jobs that they had and- and the resources that the US was providing would not be there. They preferred the status quo to a political settlement.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But if the United States is promising essentially to deliver the Afghan government and to make this deal happen, wasn't it diplomatic malpractice--

KHALILZAD: No.

MARGARET BRENNAN --for the secretary of state not to be holding Ghani's hand walking him through this? Shouldn't Mike Pompeo have been doing that? Shouldn't Tony Blinken have been doing that?

KHALILZAD: Both of them spent a lot of time with uh-- President Ghani to take the negotiation seriously to believe that we were--

MARGARET BRENNAN: How was more arm twisting not happening then, if all the blame is to go on the Ghani government--

KHALILZAD: I believe myself, now that you've asked, that rather than that, we pressed Ghani too much, it's my judgment that we didn't press him hard enough. That we--

MARGARET BRENNAN: So the Trump administration could have pushed harder.

KHALILZAD: We could have pushed harder. I believe in retrospect, my judgment is that we could have pressed President Ghani harder.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Secretary Blinken has said he inherited the- President Biden inherited this deal and not a plan to execute it?

KHALILZAD: Right.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Whose job was that?

KHALILZAD: Well, I think that they did inherit a-a-a the agreement. No doubt they had that opportunity to take a look at it. And they did. They could have made a variety of decisions with regard to that agreement. They decided to stick with the withdrawal provisions.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why wasn't there a better plan in place from the Trump administration or crafted by the Biden administration to execute what you put on paper?

KHALILZAD: Well, this execution of the last phase was not a military withdrawal that went awry. It was the response of the Afghan people to- what was happening that created the scenes at the airport. It was a combination of fear and opportunity. Fear, because for a long time, everybody was saying, including some officials, that when the Talibs come into Kabul, there would be a terrible war. Street to street fighting, destruction of the city. So people were afraid, that was one. Two, the impression was created that anyone who can make it to the airport, whether you have documents or not, you would be evacuated to the United States and to-to Europe. That combination led to this flood of people to come to the airport and cause the- the- the terrible scenes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Is there blame to be borne by President Biden and his diplomats who you were working with?

KHALILZAD: Well, I believe that- that the diplomats worked very hard. The president made the decision that he did not to pursue a condition-based approach, but just the calendar-based approach, because of a belief that if you pursue a condition based approach - that the Afghan must negotiate and come to an agreement first - that we will be stuck there for a long time.

MARGARET BRENNAN: In your resignation letter, you said, "This did not turn out as you envisaged."

KHALILZAD: Right. I would have wished- I would have liked to see a negotiated settlement.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why wasn't there a plan in place, at least on the counterterrorism front, to deal with the Taliban, to talk to the Taliban?

KHALILZAD: Well we did talk to the Taliban. We have a set of agreements with them, some of which have not been released yet, on what they will do on the terrorism front. We hold them accountable to those agreements. And--

MARGARET BRENNAN: So - I'm sorry - because the administration says that those agreements are not in place, which is why they're trying to build those relationships now with the Taliban--

KHALILZAD: No no, there is an agreement in place. There is agreement in place with the Taliban on terrorism and counterterrorism. But--

MARGARET: To do what?

KHALILZAD: Well, that they will not host. They will not allow fundraising. They will not allow training. They will not allow recruitment of- by individuals or groups that will threaten the security of the United States and our allies, including Al Qaeda. But since we don't trust them, and since we decided to leave, we're going to do that from beyond Afghanistan. And that's what remains a critical mission.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you think Americans are safer now?

KHALILZAD: The terrorist threat from Afghanistan is not what it used to be. The American people should be pleased -- not with the way the final phase happened, we all are unhappy with that -- but that the Afghan war is over for the United States. The burden has been reduced, that we achieved the goal of the devastating Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The CIA says al Qaeda could reconstitute in as little as a year within Afghanistan.

KHALILZAD: Well, our record of predicting things, unfortunately, we need to be a little humble in this regard, but--

MARGARET BRENNAN: So we're not safer? You're hoping we are.

KHALILZAD: We are much safer than we were before we went to Afghanistan, when al Qaeda was running camps--

MARGARET BRENNAN: You're talking about 2001.

KHALILZAD: --and thousands of people were being trained, al Qaida, the sponsor of Afghanistan. That is gone.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But from August of this year on.

KHALILZAD: Well we need to keep an eye on the situation. Not- not to do the same thing we did prior to 9/11, as we were seeing Al Qaeda was developing, training, organizing. And we didn't have a serious strategy in response to it until after 9/11. We shouldn't repeat that mistake again.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you feel you were misled by the Taliban?

KHALILZAD: Well, I don't allow people to mislead me. I do my homework. A whole of government. This was not Zal Khalilzad alone doing this. I had the military, the intelligence, everyone with me.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You're the only one out here defending it though.

KHALILZAD: Yeah, but-- that's one reason why I left.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I give you credit for coming and talking about it.

KHALILZAD: I'm- I- One reason I left the government, as I wrote in my letter, is that- that the debate wasn't really, as it should be, based on realities and facts of what happened, what was going on and what our alternatives were. The decision ultimately was made to put conditions-based aside and- and follow a calendar basis.

MARGARET BRENNAN: President Biden could have asked to keep troops longer, is what you're saying?

KHALILZAD: He could have, then there would have been consequences for it, which is that the Talibs might not have accepted that and therefore they- no attack on U.S. forces that was in place for so many months.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Thirteen American service people died though.

KHALILZAD: As a result of a terrorist attack at the airport by DAESH, which the Talibs are enemy of--

MARGARET BRENNAN: Carried out by ISIS is who you're talking about.

KHALILZAD: By ISIS, and they are at war with each other.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But that bomber was released from prison by the Taliban.

KHALILZAD: Well, not with the intention--

MARGARET BRENNAN: Not with the intention. But that was what happened. So this wasn't an orderly withdrawal. Thirteen Americans died.

KHALILZAD: Nobody- nobody, I would- I'm not saying it was an orderly withdrawal. This was an ugly final phase. No doubt about it. Could have been a lot worse. It could be a lot-- The Talibs did help with the withdrawal. General McKenzie would tell you they did everything we asked them to do during that final phase. I was on the phone with them constantly, "Push this, close this road, allow these buses." It could have been a lot worse. Kabul could have been destroyed, street to street fighting could have occurred. I went to Afghanistan after 30-plus years after the Soviet withdrawal and what happened? Everywhere you looked, it was destruction like some German city after World War Two. This could have been a lot worse. It could have been a lot worse. It can still be a lot worse, or it can get better. But the choice is now mostly theirs, Afghans. Rumi, the great Afghan born in Balkh, said, "You can walk with people, You can not walk for them."

MARGARET BRENNAN: Ambassador, thank you for your time.

KHALILZAD: Thank you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you for taking questions.

KHALILZAD: Thank you very much. Good to see you.

LONG READ

The following is an unabridged transcript of Margaret Brennan's interview with Zalmay Khalilzad, Former U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation that aired Sunday, October 24,2021, on "Face the Nation."

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Transcript: Zalmay Khalilzad on "Face the Nation" (msn.com)

Pope Francis compares Libyan centers to 'concentration camps'

CONCENTRATION CAMPS WERE FIRST USED BY THE BRITISH 

IN THE BOER WAR

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN

Pope Francis has likened migrant detention centers in Libya to "concentration camps" and called on the international community to intervene in a worsening migrant situation in the central Mediterranean region.© Vatican TV

The Pontiff's remarks after Sunday's angelus come just a day after an Italian prosecutor summoned American Hollywood star Richard Gere to testify in a trial against Italy's right-wing politician Matteo Salvini.

The Pope urged the international community to help find "lasting solutions" for the management of the migration flows.

"Many of these men, women and children are subjected to inhumane violence. Once again, I ask the international community to keep its promise to seek common, concrete and lasting solutions for the management of migratory flows in Libya and throughout the Mediterranean," the pontiff said. "And how much those who are rejected suffer. There are some real concentration camps there.

"It is necessary to put an end to the return of migrants to unsafe countries and to give priority to the rescue of human lives at sea with rescue devices and predictable disembarkation, to guarantee them dignified living conditions, alternatives to detention, regular migration routes and access to asylum," he added.

On Sunday, more than 500 migrants either reached Italy or were trying to. Of those, 128 migrants were identified by the NGO Alarm Phone, which facilitates rescues at sea.

The group called on a nearby merchant vessel to intervene to save around 60 people on a rubber boat that was deflating. A further 68 people were on a boat near Malta which had called the NGO in distress. Alarm Phone tweeted that Maltese authorities had been involved in either a rescue or push back as the EU border control agency Frontex flew a surveillance flight overhead.

MSF also tweeted that another 296 people had been rescued overnight and were safely on their rescue ship waiting to be assigned a safe port in Italy or Malta to disembark.

The Guardia di Finanza also confirmed that it had intercepted a sailboat with around 100 migrants who were then escorted to San Gregorio in Puglia. It is not known where that vessel originated.

Salvini tweeted that Italy's interior minister Luciana Lamorgese had better be warned that "everyone is landing in Italy" while she is in Brussels.

The former interior minister also lashed out at a Sicilian prosecutor who had named Richard Gere as a witness in a trial against him for kidnapping 147 migrants in 2019 but blocking their disembarkation. Gere had delivered food and water to the vessel and will testify about conditions he observed. Salvini's next hearing is December 17.

It is unclear when Gere will testify

.

© TIZIANA FABI/AFP/AFP via Getty Images 

The Pope called for "lasting solutions" to prevent future migrant crises.

Pope: Don’t send migrants back to Libya and ‘inhumane’ camps

By FRANCES D'EMILIO

Pope Francis delivers his blessing as he recites the Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St.Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 24, 2021.

 (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)


VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Sunday made an impassioned plea to end the practice of returning migrants rescued at sea to Libya and other unsafe countries where they suffer “inhumane violence.”

Francis also waded into a highly contentious political debate in Europe, calling on the international community to find concrete ways to manage the “migratory flows” in the Mediterranean.

“I express my closeness to the thousands of migrants, refugees and others in need of protection in Libya,″ Francis said. ”I never forget you, I hear your cries and I pray for you.”

Even as the pontiff appealed for changes of migrant policy and of heart in his remarks to the public in St. Peter’s Square, hundreds of migrants were either at sea in the central Mediterranean awaiting a port after rescue or recently coming ashore in Sicily or the Italian mainland after setting sail from Libya or Turkey, according to authorities.

“So many of these men, women and children are subject to inhumane violence,″ he added. ”Yet again I ask the international community to keep the promises to search for common, concrete and lasting solutions to manage the migratory flows in Libya and in all the Mediterranean.”

“How they suffer, those who are sent back” after rescue at sea, the pope said. Detention facilities in Libya, he said “are true concentration camps.”

“We need to stop sending back (migrants) to unsafe countries and to give priority to the saving of human lives at sea with protocols of rescue and predictable disembarking, to guarantee them dignified conditions of life, alternatives to detention, regular paths of migration and access to asylum procedures,” Francis said.

U.N. refugee agency officials and human rights organizations have long denounced the conditions of detention centers for migrants in Libya, citing practices of beatings, rape and other forms of torture and insufficient food. Migrants endure weeks and months of those conditions, awaiting passage in unseaworthy rubber dinghies or rickety fishing boats arranged by human traffickers.

Hours after the pope’s appeal, the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders said that its rescue ship, Geo Barents, reached a rubber boat that was taking on water, with the sea buffeted by strong winds and waves up to three meters (10 feet) high. It tweeted that “we managed to rescue all the 71 people on board.”

The group thanked the charity group Alarm Phone for signaling that the boat crowded with migrants was in distressed.

Earlier, Geo Barents, then with 296 migrants aboard its rescue ship, was awaiting permission in waters off Malta to disembark. Six migrants tested positive for COVID-19, but because of the crowded conditions aboard, it was difficult to keep them sufficiently distant from the others, Doctors Without Borders said.

In Sicily, a ship operated by the German charity Sea-Watch, with 406 rescued migrants aboard, was granted permission to enter port. But Sea-Watch said that a rescue vessel operated by a Spanish charity, with 105 migrants aboard, has been awaiting a port assignment to disembark them for four days.

While hundreds of thousands of migrants have departed in traffickers’ boats for European shores in recent years and set foot on Sicily or nearby Italian islands, many reach the Italian mainland.

Red Cross officials in Roccella Ionica, a town on the coast of the “toe” of the Italian peninsula said on Sunday that about 700 migrants, some of them from Afghanistan, reached the Calabrian coast in recent days on boats that apparently departed from Turkey.

Authorities said so far this year, about 3,400 migrants had reached Roccella Ionica, a town of 6,000 people, compared to 480 in all of 2019. The migrants who arrived in the last several days were being housed in tent shelters, RAI state television said.

Italy and Malta have come under criticism by human rights advocates for leaving migrants aboard crowded rescue boats before assigning them a safe port.

The Libyan coast guard, which has been trained and equipped by Italy, has also been criticized for rescuing migrants in Libyan waters and then returning them to land where the detention centers awaited them.

On Friday, Doctors Without Borders tweeted that crew aboard the Geo Barents had “witnessed an interception” by the Libyan coast guard and that the migrants “”will be forcibly taken to dangerous detention facilities and exposed to violence and exploitation.”

With rising popularity of right-wing, anti-migrant parties in Italy in recent years, the Italian government has been under increasing domestic political pressure to crack down on illegal immigration.

Italy and Malta have lobbied theirs European Union partner countries, mainly in vain, to take in some of those rescued at sea.

___

Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

Opinion: Sen. Manchin's inaction on climate change is the real 'fiscal insanity'

Opinion by Jessica Moerman 

CNN

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has in recent weeks dubbed the proposed social safety net spending in the reconciliation bill currently being discussed in Congress as "reckless" and "fiscal insanity." However, when it comes to climate change, the true insanity is ignoring the brutal fiscal reality that our nation will face if we don't make serious investments now to stave off the worst of global warming and make American communities and the economy resilient to climate-fueled extreme weather.

© Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images 

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) speaks at a press conference outside his office on Capitol Hill on October 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Manchin spoke on the debt limit and the infrastructure bill.

Last week, negotiations to trim back President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion Build Back Better economic recovery plan were sent into another tailspin with Manchin indicating his opposition to the framework's climate linchpin -- the Clean Energy Performance Plan (CEPP), which would pay utilities to switch to clean electricity and fine those that don't. Deficit hawks, like Manchin and fellow moderate Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, however, would be foolish to slash ambitious climate investments in the name of fiscal responsibility as these provisions are necessary to prevent the future fiscal calamity which they seek to avoid.

As anyone with a leaky roof will tell you, making sufficient investments early on is key to avoiding catastrophic costs down the line. Looking at the dollars and cents, it's clear our failure to advance strategies to eliminate planet-warming carbon emissions -- either with carrots like clean energy tax incentives, sticks like carbon pollution standards, or market-based solutions like a carbon fee -- isn't only a future problem but one that's already costing us trillions.

Since 1980, the US has been hit with 308 weather and climate disasters that have caused more than a billion dollars each in damages, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). In total, these disasters have cost the American economy more than $2 trillion.

Manchin's West Virginia has not been spared. The Mountain State is facing one of the top ten largest increases in heat wave days nationwide, putting more than 60,000 vulnerable West Virginians at risk for heat illness or death, and has the highest percentage of homes, businesses, and critical infrastructure, like power stations, roads, and police and fire stations, at substantial risk of being rendered inoperable by flooding.

With each passing decade, the number of disasters in the US crossing the billion-dollar mark has climbed steeply while the total annual cost has grown exponentially. Costs nationwide have ballooned from an average national price tag of $18 billion per year in the 1980s to more than $86 billion per year for the last decade, according to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information. Extreme weather supercharged by climate change -- and compounded by increased economic development right in the firing line of hurricanes, wildfires, and floods -- is squarely to blame for these trends.

If we fail to make ambitious investments now to transition to a clean, low-carbon economy and make our communities resilient to climate change, damages from climate-fueled disasters are estimated to skyrocket to hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Indeed, we are already knocking on that door. NOAA's just updated report indicates that in the first nine months of 2021 alone, we've already clocked in nearly $105 billion in property and infrastructure damage and over 500 lives lost from 18 disasters, underscoring the urgency to act without delay.

Investing in clean power and transportation also promises huge savings not only by avoiding catastrophic disaster property damages but by protecting the health of American families and our children. Toxic air pollution like soot, mercury, and carcinogenic benzene -- emitted from the same fossil fuel sources that are fueling climate change -- currently cost the American economy an estimated $800 billion annually in work absences, hospital stays, years of life lost, and premature deaths.

Accelerating the deployment of clean cars and clean power not only saves on avoided costs but also yields a powerful return on investment, making spending on carbon reductions and climate resilience now a darn good deal.

For every dollar spent to avert climate change, an estimated $4-7 is saved in extreme weather damages, according to a National Institute of Building Sciences study. Furthermore, every dollar invested in climate action could save an eye-popping $30 from avoided health costs due to air pollution, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report.

While some may be tempted to point towards the Senate-passed $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan with its many climate and pollution investments -- from plugging leaking abandoned oil and gas wells to swapping out diesel-powered school buses for zero-emitting electric ones and building a national system of electric vehicle charging stations -- as a job well done, the infrastructure bill only gets the ball rolling.

To truly secure the sound economic future, healthier environment, and safer climate our children deserve, we cannot afford to slash or water down the critical climate and pollution provisions proposed in the budget reconciliation framework.

This includes tax incentives for clean electricity, zero and low emission vehicles, and energy efficient homes and buildings; financing utilities and the power sector to speed up the switch to clean electricity to power clean cars, buildings, and manufacturing; holding the oil and gas industry accountable for fixing methane leaks in gas infrastructure and halting wasteful practices like venting and flaring that spew not only heat-trapping gases but also toxic air pollution; supporting America's farmers and foresters to adopt 'climate smart' practices to store more carbon in soils and forests; and establishing a Civilian Climate Corps to enhance natural climate resilience.

Aggressively acting on climate is not only fiscally responsible on the macroeconomic level but also at the home economic level. The climate investments proposed in the reconciliation plan will create millions of new family-sustaining jobs across the urban to rural spectrum while also lowering household energy bills through increased home energy efficiency and accelerated access to electricity from utility-scale wind and solar, which have overtaken conventional fossil-powered energy as the cheapest sources of electricity when judged on a level playing field without subsidies.

However, with the national debt at the highest level it has been since the end of World War II, making such once-in-a-generation investments understandably may give deficit hawks pause. That's why a carbon-linked revenue-raiser like a carbon fee currently being discussed in Congress makes for a smart addition to the reconciliation plan.

Operating as a user fee for carbon polluters to pollute, a carbon fee is estimated to bring in up to $2 trillion over 10 years according to the Tax Foundation, effectively covering more than half -- to potentially all -- of the reconciliation plan's price tag. Indeed, a National Academies of Sciences' report released this year named an economy-wide carbon price, like a carbon fee, the most cost-effective and indispensable strategy to achieve a rapid, just, and equitable transition to a net-zero carbon economy that simultaneously unlocks innovation in every corner of the energy economy.

The definition of "fiscal insanity" is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Allowing billion-dollar disasters to batter our coastlines, burn our forests and family homes, and flood our farms and communities at an ever-increasing rate but continuing to do nothing about it is indeed insane.

Historic climate spending is not only fiscally responsible but necessary to passing a strong and secure economic future on to our children and ensuring they won't be saddled with trillions of unnecessary and destabilizing future spending.

To avoid the brutal fiscal reality wrought by unchecked carbon emissions and global warming, deficit hawks should cheer ambitious climate action and ensure that the level of climate investment within the current framework survives the reconciliation bill chopping block intact.