UN says over 3 million in Myanmar need “life-saving” aid

By EDITH M. LEDERER

In this photo released by the Chin Human Rights Organization, fires burn in the town of Thantlang in Myanmar's northwestern state of Chin, on Friday Oct. 29, 2021. More than 160 buildings in the town in the northwestern Myanmar, including three churches, have been destroyed by fire caused by shelling by government troops, local media and activists reported Saturday. (Chin Human Rights Organization via AP)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. humanitarian chief urged Myanmar’s military leaders on Monday to provide unimpeded access to the more than 3 million people in need of life-saving humanitarian assistance since government forces seized power on Feb. 1 “because of growing conflict and insecurity, COVID-19 and a failing economy.”

Martin Griffiths warned that without an end to violence and a peaceful resolution of Myanmar’s crisis, “this number will only rise.”

He also urged donors to respond to the U.N. appeal, saying less than half of the $385 million required has been raised since the military ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Monday was the first anniversary of the 2020 elections in Myanmar, which “were deemed free and fair by domestic and international observers,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. They were won by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party with approximately 80% of the elected seats in the upper and lower houses of Parliament. The military rejects the results, claiming the vote was fraudulent.

“The United Nations reiterates its call on the military to respect the will of the people and put the country back on track to democratic transition,” Dujarric said, stressing that the U.N. remains “gravely concerned about the intensifying violence in Myanmar” and again urges unimpeded humanitarian access.

Griffiths’ statement was issued as members of the U.N. Security Council held a closed-door meeting on Myanmar requested by the United Kingdom. Diplomats said Russia and China objected to a proposed press statement that would express concern at recent violence including air strikes and reaffirm the council’s support for the country’s democratic transition, but discussions were continuing.

UK deputy ambassador James Kariuki told reporters before heading into the meeting that Britain is particularly concerned about the buildup of military action in northwest Chin state, “and we are concerned that this rather mirrors the activity we saw four years ago ahead of the atrocities that were committed in Rakhine against the Rohingya” Muslim minority.

“So, we’re very keen to make sure the council is focused, and the military know that we’re watching,” he said.

Since Suu Kyi’s ouster, Myanmar has been wracked by unrest, with peaceful demonstrations against the ruling generals morphing first into a low-level insurgency in many urban areas after security forces used deadly force and then into more serious combat in rural areas, especially in border regions where ethnic minority militias have been engaging in heavy clashes with government troops.

On Sept. 7, the National Unity Government, the main underground group coordinating resistance to the military which was established by elected legislators who had been barred from taking their seats when the military seized power, called for a nationwide uprising. Its “People’s Defense Forces” operate in many areas and have received training and weapons from some armed ethnic groups.

Christine Schraner Burgener told The Associated Press shortly before her 3 ½ year term as the U.N. special envoy for Myanmar ended on Oct. 31 that “civil war” has spread throughout the country.

She said the U.N. has heard that many soldiers are on the ground conducting “clearing operations” in Chin state, and reminded the world that the military’s “clearing operation” in Rakhine state in 2017 saw villages burned down, widespread rapes and more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

Griffiths also called the situation in the northwest “extremely concerning, with an escalation in hostilities between the Myanmar Armed Forces and the Chinland Defense Force in Chin state, and with the People’s Defense Forces in Magway and Sagaing regions.”

“More than 37,000 people, including women and children, have been newly displaced, and more than 160 homes have been burned, including churches and the offices of a humanitarian organization,” Griffiths said. “Attacks directed against civilians and civilian infrastructure, including humanitarian workers and facilities, are clearly prohibited under international humanitarian law and must stop immediately.”

Since Feb. 1, he said, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence across the country, and 223,000 people remain internally displaced.

“This includes 165,000 in the southeast of the country and is on top of a significant population of people who were already displaced in Rakhine, Chin, Shan and Kachin states prior to the takeover,” Griffiths said. He noted that 144,000 Rohingya people are still confined to camps or living in camp-like settings in Rakhine, many since their displacement in 2012, and more than 105,000 people have been displaced in Kachin and Shan, many for years.

The U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs said he is also “increasingly concerned about reports of rising levels of food insecurity in and around urban areas, including in Yangon and Mandalay.”

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Rep. Gosar under fire for anime attacking Rep. Ocasio-Cortez

FILE - Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., waits for a news conference about the Delta variant of COVID-19 and the origin of the virus, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 22, 2021. Gosar is facing criticism after he tweeted a video that included altered animation showing him striking congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword. In a tweet Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez said Gosar “shared a fantasy video of him killing me.” (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar was facing criticism after he tweeted a video that included altered animation showing him striking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword.

In a tweet Monday night, Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., referred to Gosar as “a creepy member I work with” and said he “shared a fantasy video of him killing me.” She added that Gosar would face no consequences because Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy “cheers him on with excuses.” She also said that institutions “don’t protect” women of color.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted Tuesday from the climate conference in Scotland, where she’s leading a congressional delegation that includes Ocasio-Cortez, that: “Threats of violence against Members of Congress and the President of the United States must not be tolerated.” She called on McCarthy to condemn “this horrific video and call on the Ethics Committee and law enforcement to investigate.”

Spokespersons for McCarthy did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Pelosi’s tweet.

A fellow House Democrat, Ted Lieu of California, referred to Gosar’s tweet as “sick behavior” and said in a tweet of his own: “In any workplace in America, if a coworker made an anime video killing another coworker, that person would be fired.

Gosar, a Republican, posted the video Sunday afternoon with a note saying: “Any anime fans out there?”

The roughly 90-second video is an altered version of a Japanese anime series, interspersed with shots of Border Patrol officers and migrants at the southern U.S. border. During one roughly 10-second section of the video, animated characters whose faces have been replaced with Gosar and fellow Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado are seen fighting other animated characters.

In one scene, Gosar’s character is seen striking the one made to look like Ocasio-Cortez in the neck with a sword.

Twitter later attached a warning to the tweet saying “it violated the Twitter Rules about hateful conduct. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

Gosar is known as an ardent ally of former President Donald Trump. He was among the lawmakers whose phone or computer records a House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection asked social media and telecommunications companies to preserve as they were potentially involved with efforts to “challenge, delay or interfere” with the certification or otherwise try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

AOC says Republican who posted sword attack video ‘cheered on’ by party

Twitter said Paul Gosar’s anime spoof in which he appears to strike Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez violated its rules on ‘hateful conduct’

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Paul Gosar would face no consequences ‘because institutions don’t protect women of color’. 

Photograph: Allison Bailey/Rex/Shutterstock

Martin Pengelly in New York and agencies
THE GUARDIAN
Tue 9 Nov 2021 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez accused Republican leaders of “cheering on” a congressman who tweeted a video depicting him striking her with a sword – and said the incident showed how US institutions failed to protect women of color.


AOC says Marjorie Taylor Greene is ‘deeply unwell’ after 2019 video surfaces

The Democratic congresswoman from New York also said the Arizona Republican who tweeted the doctored anime video on Sunday, Paul Gosar, was “just a collection of wet toothpicks anyway” and “couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself”.

The video ended with an apparent threat to Joe Biden.

On Tuesday, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said “threats of violence against members of Congress and the president of the United States must not be tolerated” and called on the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, to “join in condemning this horrific video and call on the ethics committee and law enforcement to investigate”.

Twitter attached a hateful conduct warning to Gosar’s tweet, which was also posted to Instagram.

“This tweet violated the Twitter Rules about hateful conduct,” Twitter’s message said. “However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the tweet to remain accessible.”

The roughly 90-second video is an altered version of a Japanese anime series, interspersed with shots of border patrol officers and migrants at the US border with Mexico.

In one section, characters whose faces are replaced with those of Gosar and fellow extremist Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado are seen fighting other characters.

Gosar’s character strikes another, made to look like Ocasio-Cortez, in the neck with a sword.

On Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez wrote: “A creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me and he’ll face no consequences because [McCarthy] cheers him on with excuses. Fun Monday!

“Well, back to work because institutions don’t protect women of color.”

Ocasio-Cortez also listed other instances of threatening behavior from Republicans in Congress.

“Remember when [Ted] Yoho accosted me on the Capitol [steps] and called me a f[uck]ing b[itch]. Remember when Greene ran after me a few months ago screaming and reaching. Remember when she stalked my office the first time with insurrectionists and people locked inside.

“All at my job and nothing ever happens. Anyways, back to business.”

The congresswoman returned to the subject, however, to call Gosar “just a collection of wet toothpicks anyway”.

“White supremacy,” she said, “is for extremely fragile people and sad men like him, whose self concept relies on the myth that he was born superior because deep down he knows he couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself.”

Gosar is an ardent Trump ally who in 2018 was the subject of a campaign ad made by six of his siblings, exhorting voters to ditch him.

He is also among lawmakers whose phone or computer records are sought by the House committee investigating the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January, in which Trump supporters sought to overturn the former president’s election defeat.

On Monday, Eric Swalwell, a House California Democrat, said: “These bloodthirsty losers are more comfortable with violence than voting. Keep exposing them.”

The Yale historian Joanne Freeman, author of The Field of Blood, a well-regarded history of violence in Congress before the civil war, wrote: “Threats of violence lead to actual violence. They clear the ground. They cow opposition. They plant the idea. They normalize it. They encourage it. They maim democracy. And run the risk of killing it.”

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Dean Stockwell of ‘Quantum Leap,’ ‘Blue Velvet’ dies at 85

FILE - Actor Dean Stockwell poses with his award for best supporting actor for his role in "Quantum Leap" at the 47th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles on Jan. 20, 1990. Stockwell, a top Hollywood child actor who gained new success in middle age, garnering an Oscar nomination for “Married to the Mob” and Emmy nominations for “Quantum Leap,” died of natural causes at his home on Sunday, Nov. 7, 2021. He was 85. (AP Photo/Douglas Pizac, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Dean Stockwell, a top Hollywood child actor who gained new success in middle age in the sci-fi series “Quantum Leap” and in a string of indelible performances in film, including David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” and Jonathan Demme’s “Married to the Mob,” has died. He was 85.

Agent Jay Schwartz, a family spokesperson, said Stockwell died of natural causes at home Sunday.

Stockwell was Oscar-nominated for his comic mafia kingpin in “Married to the Mob” and was four times an Emmy-nominee for “Quantum Leap.” But in a career that spanned seven decades, Stockwell was a supreme character actor whose performances — lip-syncing Roy Orbison in a nightmarish party scene in “Blue Velvet,” a desperate agent in Robert Altman’s “The Player,” Howard Hughes in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” — didn’t have to be lengthy to be mesmerizing.

Stockwell’s own relationship with acting, having started on Broadway at age 7, was complicated. In a peripatetic career, he quit show business several times, including at age 16 and again in the 1980s, when he moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to sell real estate.

“Dean spent a lifetime yo-yoing back and forth between fame and anonymity,” his family said in a statement. “Because of that, when he had a job, he was grateful. He never took the business for granted. He was a rebel, wildly talented and always a breath of fresh air.”

The dark-haired Stockwell was a Hollywood veteran by the time he reached his teens. In his 20s, he starred on Broadway as a young killer in the play “Compulsion” and in prestigious films such as “Sons and Lovers.” He was awarded best actor at the Cannes Film Festival twice, in 1959 for the big-screen version of “Compulsion” and in 1962 for Sidney Lumet’s adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” While his career had some lean times, he reached his full stride in the 1980s.

“My way of working is still the same as it was in the beginning — totally intuitive and instinctive,” he told The New York Times in 1987. “But as you live your life, you compile so many millions of experiences and bits of information that you become a richer vessel as a person. You draw on more experience.”

His Oscar-nominated role as Tony “The Tiger” Russo, a flamboyant gangster, in the 1988 hit “Married to the Mob” led to his most notable TV role the following year, in NBC’s science fiction series “Quantum Leap.” Both roles had strong comic elements.

“It’s the first time anyone’s offered me a series and the first time I’ve ever wanted to do one,” he said in 1989. “If people hadn’t seen me in ‘Married To the Mob’ they wouldn’t have realized I could do comedy.”

Starring with Stockwell in “Quantum Leap” was Scott Bakula, playing a scientist who assumes different identities in different eras after a time-travel experiment goes awry. As his colleague, “The Observer,” Stockwell lends his help but is seen only on a holographic computer image. The show lasted from 1989 to 1993.

He continued playing roles, big and small, in films and TV, into the 21st century, including a regular role in another science fiction series, “Battlestar Galactica.”

Stockwell became an actor at an early age. His father, Harry Stockwell, voiced the role of Prince Charming in Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and appeared in several Broadway musicals.

At age 7, Dean made his show business debut in the 1943 Broadway show “The Innocent Voyage,” the story of orphaned children entangled with pirates. His older brother, Guy, also was in the cast.

A producer at MGM was impressed by Dean and persuaded the studio to sign him. His first significant role was as Kathryn Grayson’s nephew in the 1945 musical “Anchors Away,” which starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra.

In the next few years, Stockwell appeared in such films as the Oscar-winning anti-Semitism drama “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” with Gregory Peck, as well as “Song of the Thin Man,” the last of the William Powell-Myrna Loy mystery series, with Stockwell playing their son.

He had the title roles in the 1948 anti-war film “The Boy With Green Hair,” about a war orphan whose hair changes color, and “Kim,” the 1950 version of the Rudyard Kipling tale, which starred Errol Flynn. Films in his youth also included “Down to the Sea in Ships,” with Lionel Barrymore; “The Secret Garden,” with Margaret O’Brien; and “Stars in My Crown” with Joel McCrea.

“I was very lucky to have a loving and caring and sympathetic mother and not a stage mother,” he told The Associated Press in 1989. Still, he stressed, it wasn’t always easy, and he dropped out of the business when he reached 16.

“I never really wanted to be an actor,” he said. “I found acting very difficult from the beginning. I worked long hours, six days a week. It wasn’t fun.” It wasn’t the only time he dropped out. But, he said, “I came back each time because I had no other training.”

Reviving his career after five years, Stockwell returned to New York where he co-starred with Roddy McDowall on Broadway in “Compulsion,” a 1957 drama based on the notorious Leopold-Loeb murder case in which two college students killed a 14-year-old boy for the thrill of it. The film version starred Orson Welles.

Stockwell had two more prestigious film roles in the early 1960s. He was the struggling son in D.H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers” — an Oscar nominee for best picture — and the sensitive younger brother in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” with Ralph Richardson and Katharine Hepburn.

He also tried his hand at theater directing, putting on a well-received program of Beckett and Ionesco plays in Los Angeles in 1961.

In 1960, Stockwell married Millie Perkins, best known for her starring turn as Anne in the 1959 film “The Diary of Anne Frank.” The marriage ended in divorce after only two years.

In the mid-60s, Stockwell dropped out of Hollywood and became a regular presence at the hippie enclave of Topanga Canyon. After the encouragement of Dennis Hopper, Stockwell wrote a screenplay that never got produced but inspired Neil Young’s 1970 album “After the Gold Rush,” which took its name from Stockwell’s script. Stockwell, longtime friends with Young, later co-directed and starred with Young on 1982′s “Human Highway.” Stockwell also designed the cover of Young’s 1977 album “American Stars ’N Bars.”

In 1981 he married Joy Marchenko, a textile expert. When his career hit a down period, Stockwell decided to take his family to New Mexico. As soon as he left Hollywood, filmmakers started calling again.

He was cast as Harry Dean Stanton’s drifting brother in Wim Wenders’ acclaimed 1984 film “Paris, Texas” and that same year as the evil Dr. Yueh in Lynch’s “Dune.”

He called his success from the 1980s onward his “third career.” As for the Oscar nomination, he told the AP in 1989 that it was “something I’ve dreamed about for years. ... It’s just one of the best feelings I’ve ever had.”

Like his longtime friend Hopper, a noted photographer as well as an actor, Stockwell was active in the visual arts. He made photo collages and what he called “diceworks,” sculptures made of dice. He often used his full name, Robert Dean Stockwell, in his art projects.

His brother, Guy Stockwell, also became a prolific film and television actor, even doing guest shot on “Quantum Leap.” He died in 2002 at age 68.

Stockwell is survived by his wife, Joy, and their two children, Austin Stockwell and Sophie Stockwell.

___

Late Associated Press writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical information to this report.

Russia comes in from cold on climate, launches forest plan

By TANYA TITOVA and FRANK JORDANS

November 9, 2021 GMT



MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian island north of Japan has become a testing ground for Moscow’s efforts to reconcile its prized fossil fuel industry with the need to do something about climate change.

More than two-thirds of Sakhalin Island is forested. With the Kremlin’s blessing, authorities there have set an ambitious goal of making the island — Russia’s largest — carbon neutral by 2025.

Tree growth will absorb as much planet-warming carbon dioxide as the island’s half-million residents and its businesses produce, an idea the Russian government 4,000 miles to the west in Moscow hopes to apply to the whole country, which has more forested area than any other nation.

“The economic structure of Sakhalin and the large share of forestland in the territory and carbon balance distribution reflect the general situation in Russia,” said Dinara Gershinkova, an adviser to Sakhalin’s governor on climate and sustainable development. “So the results of the experiment in Sakhalin will be representative and applicable to the whole Russian Federation.”

The plan reflects a marked change of mood in Russia on climate change.

President Vladimir Putin joked about global warming in 2003, saying that Russians would be able to “spend less on fur coats, and the grain harvest would increase” if it continued.

Last year, he acknowledged that climate change “requires real actions and way more attention,” and he has sought to position the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporter as a leader in the fight against global warming.

The country’s vast forests are key to this idea.

“By aiming to build a carbon-neutral economy by no later than 2060, Russia is relying, among other things, on the unique resource of forest ecosystems available to us, and their significant capacity to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen,” Putin said in a video address Nov. 2 to the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. “After all, our country accounts for around 20% of the world’s forestland.”

Scientists say that natural forms of removing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, from the atmosphere will indeed play a key role in tackling global warming.

Many of the countries at the climate summit rely on some form of absorbing emissions to achieve their targets of being “net zero” by 2050 — that is, emitting only as much greenhouse gas as can be captured again by natural or artificial means.

But experts say the math behind such calculations is notoriously fuzzy and prone to manipulation by governments, who have a vested interest in making their emissions figures look good.

“Russia makes an enormous contribution in the absorption of global emissions -– both its own and others’ -– by means of absorptive capacity of our ecosystems, firstly of forests, which is estimated at 2.5 billion (metric) tons of CO2 equivalent a year,” said Viktoria Abramchenko, deputy prime minister for environmental issues, speaking at a recent conference in St. Petersburg.

The figure came as a surprise to scientists contacted by The Associated Press. It constitutes a fivefold increase on the 535 million metric tons of CO2 absorption that Russia reported to the U.N. climate office for 2019.

Natalia Lukina, the director of the Center of Ecology and Productivity of Forests, a government-funded research institute, said the estimates are actually assumptions because “there is no real accurate data.”

“Unfortunately, our official information about forestland is 25 years old, then this data was updated somehow, but there were no direct measurements,” she said.

One problem is that nobody knows how many trees are in Russia’s forests.

Last year, its forestry body finished an inventory that took 13 years and cost at least $142 million, but it hasn’t been made public or shared with the scientific community.

Russia’s network of emissions monitoring stations is likewise limited, Lukina said.

Vadim Mamkin, a scientist who maintains one of the country’s 11 greenhouse gas measuring masts in the Tver region, said the carbon balance of such old forests is “usually about zero,” though figures vary about 10% from year to year.

Wildfires that burn millions of hectares of forest are another, increasingly pressing problem. Forests that have stored carbon for decades suddenly become big emitters when they burn, undoing an absorption effect, said Sergey Bartalev, head of the boreal ecosystems monitoring lab at the Space Research Institute.

Such fires are becoming increasingly frequent in Russia, partly due to climate change.

This year saw a record 13.1 million hectares burned, leading to emissions of 970 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, according to an estimate by the European Union’s Copernicus Programme — almost twice as much as the last reported absorption.

Fire protection is now a priority in Moscow’s new strategy of low-carbon development.

Ahead of the climate summit, Putin declared that Russia plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 — a goal similar to those set by China and Saudi Arabia — but a decade behind the midcentury deadline that the U.S. and EU are aiming for.

Scientists say that stopping additional emissions of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere by 2050 is the only way to achieve the Paris accord’s goal to keep the Earth’s warming below catastrophic levels of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century.

Russia sent a large delegation to the Glasgow summit, although Putin himself did not attend.

Environmental campaigns and other nations that are wary of giving Moscow a free pass while they ramp up their own efforts to cut emissions will be watching closely what Russian diplomats propose.

Vasily Yablokov, the head of Energy and Climate Sector at Russian Greenpeace, said Russia’s forest calculations will play a key role in its climate plan, and he fears that estimates would be made to “fit into the answer.”

One reason why Russia has a vested interest in minimizing its reported emissions in front of the United Nations is the prospect of a carbon tariff being mulled by the EU on imports from countries that are deemed to be not doing enough on climate.

“The role of forest is overestimated, unfortunately,” said Alexey Kokorin, the head of climate and energy program at WWF-Russia. “It would be good to trust that Russia will be able to increase the absorption as it is in the draft strategy, and all of us will do the best to achieve it, but it looks like it’s too much.”

—-

Jordans reported from Glasgow, Scotland.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the climate summit at http://apnews.com/hub/climate

Owl habitat cuts by Trump appointees used ‘faulty’ science

By MATTHEW BROWN and GILLIAN FLACCUS

November 9, 2021 

 In this May 8, 2003, file photo, a Northern Spotted Owl flies after an elusive mouse jumping off the end of a stick in the Deschutes National Forest near Camp Sherman, Ore. The Trump administration has slashed more than 3 million acres of protected habitat for the northern spotted owl in Oregon, Washington and northern California, much of it in prime timber locations in Oregon's coastal ranges. Environmentalists are accusing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Donald Trump of taking a "parting shot" at protections designed to help restore the threatened owl species.

 (AP Photo/Don Ryan, File)


PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Political appointees in the Trump administration relied on faulty science to justify stripping habitat protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl, U.S. wildlife officials said Tuesday as they struck down a rule that would have opened millions of acres of forest in Oregon, Washington and California to potential logging.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed a decision made five days before Trump left office to drastically shrink so-called critical habitat for the spotted owl. The small, reclusive bird has been in decline for decades as old-growth forests disappear.

The Associated Press obtained details on Tuesday’s action prior to it being made public.

Government biologists objected to the changes under Trump and warned they would put the spotted owl on a path to extinction, documents show.

But Trump’s Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and former Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith dismissed those concerns — instead adopting a plan to lift restrictions on more land than even the timber industry had sought.

Officials said in documents provided to AP that Bernhardt and Skipwith underestimated the threat of extinction and relied on a “faulty interpretation of the science” to reach their decision.

Bernhardt defended his handling of the matter, telling AP in an email that Congress gave the interior secretary authority to exclude areas from protection.

Bernhardt said the agency’s “reasonable certainty” the owl would go extinct did not match the law’s requirement that habitat be protected lest a species “will” go extinct.

If wildlife officials want to change that standard, Bernhardt added, “they should seek a change from Congress.”

“Any future Secretary can weigh the benefit factors differently, but they can not change the law or the legal standard,” Bernhardt wrote.

Officials twice delayed the changes after President Joe Biden took office and they never went into effect. That puts them among numerous Trump-era policies reversed or struck down by the Interior Department in recent months on issues ranging from oil and gas drilling on some public lands to protections for birds from wind farms.

Democratic lawmakers from Oregon, Washington and California in February called for an investigation into the removal of spotted owl protections, citing “potential scientific meddling” by Trump appointees.

Wildlife advocates, government agencies and the timber industry have sparred for decades over the northern spotted owl, which is now in precipitous decline and getting closer to disappearing from Washington and parts of Oregon, according to a rule published Tuesday that replaces the one under Trump.

Federal habitat protections imposed in 2012 were meant to avert the bird’s extinction. They’ve also been blamed for a logging slowdown that’s devastated some rural communities.

Of 9.6 million protected acres (3.9 million hectares), federal officials proposed in August 2020 to remove protections for about 2%.

The timber industry said the plan didn’t go far enough and called for removal of more than 28%. In January, Skipwith abruptly changed her agency’s recommendation and went even further, telling Bernhardt more than one-third of the protected land, or almost 3.5 million acres (1.4 million hectares), should be excluded from protection.

The land has huge swaths of timber and includes 2 million acres (809,000 hectares) spread in a checkerboard pattern across western Oregon.

Logging those lands might not have immediately killed off the owls immediately — they live up to 20 years on individual territories that can stretch across 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) — yet eventually they would have gone extinct, said Paul Henson, the wildlife service’s Oregon supervisor.

When Henson brought his concerns to superiors last December, Skipwith overrode them.

“You can’t remove over a third of an endangered species’ habitat and not expect it to go extinct,” Henson said in an interview. “There wasn’t much disagreement about the science. The disagreement was how much that risk constrains the secretary’s authority” to remove habitat protections.

The logging industry says more thinning and management of protected forests is necessary to prevent wildfires, which devastated 560 square miles (1,450 square kilometers) of spotted owl habitat last fall. Most of that area is no longer considered viable for the birds.

Timber interests also say some of the land set aside under Tuesday’s announcement isn’t actually spotted owl habitat or is broken up into parcels too small to support the owl. As such, the smaller habitat designation issued under Trump was “legally and scientifically valid,” said Nick Smith, a spokesman for the American Forest Resouce Council. The group represents about 100 manufacturing and logging operations in five western U.S. states.

“The federal government cannot set aside critical habitat unless it is habitat for the species. That’s the critical concern,” he said.

The logging industry says the larger, non-native barred owl is a much greater threat than cutting trees. Skipwith echoed that contention when she said the most effective way to preserve spotted owls was to control barred owl numbers.

“The main threats faced by the northern spotted owl are the barred owl and the devastating forest fires,” Skipwith said, adding that she used sound science to reach her conclusion. “It’s not an issue of acreage; it’s an issue of the management of the land.”

The barred owls, native to the eastern U.S., began affecting spotted owl numbers in Washington and Oregon about a decade ago as they expanded their range west and south, Henson said.

Biologists beginning in 2009 studied the impact of barred owl removal in areas of northern California, Oregon and Washington with the smaller spotted owl. The pilot program, which wrapped up in August, showed spotted owl numbers stabilized when barred owl numbers were reduced. They continued to decline in areas without the removals.

Study authors cautioned that the results show habitat protections are also critical to the spotted owl’s survival.

In rejecting the Trump rule, federal officials said the dual threats of wildfires and competition from the barred owl underscore why more forest needs protection — to make sure there’s enough “redundancy” of habitat that a large fire won’t doom the species.

A large-scale barred owl removal program is not in place. Wildlife officials said the best science shows protecting older forests — where owls nest, roost and hunt — is crucial.

Owl expert R. J. Gutiérrez from the University of Minnesota agreed. He said setting aside forest habitat and naming the northern spotted owl as a threatened species in 1990 briefly boosted it before barred owls arrived.

Until barred owls are dealt with, “all habitat is critical” so spotted owls can find refuge from the aggressive newcomers, said Gutiérrez who lives in California and has spent several decades studying spotted owls along the West Coast.

Environmental groups cheered Tuesday’s move but expressed frustration that about 200,000 acres (about 81,000 hectares) of previously protected habitat were excluded from the new rule.

“In the past 20 years, there’s been accelerated loss of old-growth forest on state and private lands so it’s continued to lose habitat,” said Noah Greenwald with the Center for Biological Diversity. Climate change adds to the threats, he said.

In December, federal officials determined that northern spotted owl’s continued decline means it merits a more critical listing as “endangered.”

The agency refused to do so immediately, saying other species took priority. That decision is facing a legal challenge.

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana

___

Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter: @MatthewBrownAP

The AP Interview: Facebook whistleblower fears the metaverse
By RAF CASERT and KELVIN CHAN

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Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Brussels, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. Facebook Whistleblower, Frances Haugen spoke Monday to MEP's about the negative impact of big tech companies' business models on users and societies and how this could be tackled by the EU's digital legislation. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

BRUSSELS (AP) — Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen warned Tuesday that the “metaverse,” the all-encompassing virtual reality world at the heart of the social media giant’s growth strategy, will be addictive and rob people of yet more personal information while giving the embattled company another monopoly online.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Haugen said her former employer rushed to trumpet the metaverse recently because of the intense pressure it is facing after she revealed deep-seated problems at the company, in disclosures that have energized legislative and regulatory efforts around the world to crack down on Big Tech.

“If you don’t like the conversation, you try to change the conversation,” the former product-manager-turned-whistleblower said. The documents she has turned over to authorities and her testimony to lawmakers have drawn global attention for providing insight into what Facebook may have known about the damage its social media platforms can cause. She is in the midst of a series of appearances before European lawmakers and regulators who are drawing up rules for social media companies.



Meta, the new name for the parent company of Facebook, denied it was trying to divert attention away from the troubles it faces by pushing the metaverse. “This is not true. We have been working on this for a long time internally,” the company said in a statement.

It stressed that it’s working to responsibly build the metaverse — essentially a series of interconnected virtual communities that will merge online life with real life. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that users will, for example, be able to attend virtual concerts or fence with holograms of Olympic athletes in the metaverse — and he refocused the entire company on creating it, including renaming the business Meta.

Launching that new brand, in fact, draws attention to the company, it said in a statement, adding that if it didn’t want the scrutiny it would have delayed or scrapped the launch altogether.

But the new focus on the metaverse creates a whole new set of dangers, Haugen said. In “Snow Crash,” the 1992 sci-fi novel that coined the phrase, “it was a thing that people used to numb themselves when their lives were horrible,” she said.

“So beyond the fact that these immersive environments are extremely addictive and they encourage people to unplug from the reality we actually live,” she said, “I’m also worried about it on the level of — the metaverse will require us to put many, many more sensors in our homes and our workplaces,” forcing users to relinquish more of their data and their privacy.

In a presentation last month, Zuckerberg described how the metaverse would allow for mixed-reality business meetings where some participants are physically present while others beam in as avatars. The company has launched virtual meeting software called Horizon Workrooms for use with its virtual reality headsets, so co-workers can (hopefully) better communicate, brainstorm and socialize virtually, instead of, say, looking at one another on a Zoom call grid.

But Haugen said employees of companies that use the metaverse would have little option but to participate in the system or leave their jobs.

“If your employer decides they’re now a metaverse company, you have to give out way more personal data to a company that’s demonstrated that it lies whenever it is in its best interests,” she said.

And she cautioned the public not to expect more transparency.

“They’ve demonstrated with regard to Facebook that they can hide behind a wall. They keep making unforced errors, they keep making things that prioritize their own profits over our safety,” she said.

Haugen has said Facebook’s systems amplify online hate and extremism, fail to protect young people from harmful content, and that the company lacks any incentive to fix the problems, in revelations that shed light on an internal crisis at the company that provides free services to 3 billion people.

To back up her allegations, she has made a series of disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission that were also provided to Congress in redacted form by her legal team. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including the AP.

In Tuesday’s interview, she expressed astonishment that the company would shift focus to a whole new realm while it is under such intense criticism about the areas where it is already working.

“They’re going to hire 10,000 engineers to work on video games when they haven’t actually gotten safety right on their main product,” Haugen said.

For that, she faulted Zuckerberg personally, saying he has exhibited a pattern of prioritizing growth over making sure Facebook is good for users.

“I think that is a failure of leadership,” she said. “Unless he wants to prioritize the safety of the platform, he should step aside and let someone else focus on that.”

The company denied that it’s putting profits over safety. “Yes, we’re a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or well-being misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie,” it said, adding that it plans to spend more than $5 billion in 2021 on safety and security and employs more than 40,000 people who work on keeping users safe.

Zuckerberg has previously dismissed Haugen’s claims as a “coordinated effort” to paint a false picture of the company.

But officials in Washington and European capitals are taking her claims seriously. European Union lawmakers questioned her intensely Monday, before applauding her at the end of the 2 1/2 hour hearing.

The EU is drafting new digital rules for the 27-nation bloc that call for reining in big “digital gatekeepers,” requiring them to be more transparent about algorithms that determine what people see on their feeds and making them more accountable for the content on their platforms.

Facebook has said it largely supports regulations, with legislative efforts in the EU and United Kingdom much further along than those in the U.S. New rules could squeeze advertising revenue, but Meta’s stock price appears to have so far weathered the recent storm.

Haugen has made stops in London and Berlin to speak to officials and lawmakers and spoke at a tech conference in Lisbon. She also will address French lawmakers in Paris on Wednesday.

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Chan reported from London.

Buttigieg: Administration will keep fighting for family leave provision

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg talks to reporters during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Photo by Oliver Contreras/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 8 (UPI) -- The White House will keep fighting for workers' paid family leave even though it was eliminated from President Joe Biden's Build Back Better framework, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday.

HOMOPHOBIC CHAUVINIST CRITICISM FROM THE RIGHT
Buttigieg, who himself has faced criticism from Republicans over three weeks spent away from the administration after adopting twins, said family leave remains high on Biden's agenda even after it was stripped from the social spending proposal at the insistence of centrist Democrats.

"The president put forward a framework that he's confident can pass the House in the Senate," Buttigieg told reporters during a White House briefing to discuss the newly-passed, $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal.

"I think it's also no secret how I feel about family leave and how the president does, which is why he proposed it, campaigned on it and will continue to fight for it," he added.

Biden had initially proposed 12 weeks of paid family leave in the safety net proposal, which Democratic lawmakers are attempting to pass through the Senate by using the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process. The proposal, however, was first reduced and then eliminated completely from framework as a concession to centrist Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., announced last week that a four-week version of the provision had been added back into the $1.75 trillion deal.

Manchin, however, voiced continuing skepticism, making its chances of passing the Senate murky.

Buttigieg, the first openly gay Senate-confirmed Cabinet official in U.S. history, has fielded heavy criticism from conservatives after taking paternity leave following the adoption of newborn twins with his husband.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., accused him of abandoning the nation while it faces a supply-chain crisis, citing her own delivery of one of her four children while in the front seat of her truck.

"It's talked about as time off," Buttgieg said of family leave Monday. "It's time to do work -- good work, joyful work, meaningful work -- but it's time to do important work."

CONTRARY TO THE GOP WALL ST. LOVES GOVT SPENDING
S&P 500 surpasses 4,700 for the first time as infrastructure bill boosts markets


The S&P 500 exceeded 4,700 points for the first time on Monday, while the broader market was lifted by the House sending a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to President Joe Biden for his signature.

 File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo


Nov. 8 (UPI) -- The S&P 500 closed above 4,700 points for the first time on Monday as markets got a boost from Congress passing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill over the weekend.

The broad index gained 4.17 points, or 0.087%, to reach 4,701.70 at the end of trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 104.27 points, or 0.29%, for an intraday record, while the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.067%.

Industrials and materials stocks led the way Monday after the House late Friday voted to send the bill that seeks to modernize roads, public transit, bridges, broadband, water ports, airports, and doing other things to address the "climate crisis," to President Joe Biden's desk for his signature.

"Investors have waited for a significant step-up in infrastructure spending for decade's," Citi's Anthony Pettinari said in a note, according to CNBC. "We view this generational investment as a significant catalyst for growth for a number of our stocks."

Caterpillar stock gained 4.06% to lead the Dow, while chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices rose 10.14% to lead the S&P and Nasdaq as it announced Meta, formerly known as Facebook, would use its chips while also revealing new products.


Tesla stock fell 4.92% after CEO Elon Musk over the weekend pledged to sell 10% of his holdings based on the results of a Twitter poll.

Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida on Monday said he was confident "imbalances" in the market leading to inflation will realign with the central bank's forecast next year, allowing it to refrain from raising interest rates until the end of 2022

"Inflation so far this year represents to me, much more than a 'moderate' overshoot of our 2% longer-run inflation objective and I would not consider a repeat performance next year a policy success," he said. "Second, as always, there are risks to any outlook and I and 12 of my colleagues believe that the risks to the outlook for inflation are to the upside."

Crow Nation members perform at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier centennial

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Members of the Crow Nation perform during a centennial commemoration event at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday. 

The plaza at the tomb was open for the public to lay flowers for the first time in almost a century. 

The original burial took place November 9 and 10, 1921.


Members of the Crow Nation perform in the Memorial Amphitheater during a opening ceremony centennial commemoration event at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday Nov 8

IN CANADA NOV 8 IS CELEBRATED AS INDIGENOUS VETERANS DAY

Harry Rock Above, of the Crow Nation and descendent of Crow Nation Chief Plenty Coups, speaks in front of the Grand Staircase. Chief Plenty Coups attended the original burial 100 years ago. 

IN THIS CASE COUP IS A REFERENCE TO TRIBAL WARFARE AKA COUNTING COUP, THE STRIKING BLOW THAT FELLS YOUR OPPONENT BUT DOES NOT KILL THEM



A member of the Crow Nation prepares to perform. 


Members of the Crow Nation perform in the Memorial Amphitheater. 


The ceremony also coincides with National Native American Heritage Month. 

A tomb guard of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, known as "The Old Guard," walks in front of members of the Crow Nation.

Members of the Crow Nation perform in the Memorial Amphitheater. 

Pool Photo by Alex Brandon/UPI
License photo | Permalink



Members of the Crow Nation line up to place flowers during a centennial commemoration. 

Pool Photo by Alex Brandon/UPI
License photo | Permalink



The opening ceremony leads up to a flyover and procession on Thursday to honor Veterans Day, replicating elements of the World War I Unknown Soldier's 1921 burial.

A woman arrives to place flowers during a centennial commemoration event.

A U.S. Army soldier holds flowers to be placed during a centennial commemoration.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and his family place flowers during a centennial commemoration event.

A group of U.S. Navy sailors hold flowers to be placed during a centennial commemoration event.

 Pool Photos by Alex Brandon/UPI
License photo | Permalink

Ethiopia's war triggers fears in Kenya, South Sudan

As the yearlong civil war in Ethiopia's Tigray region escalates, Kenya and South Sudan are on high alert.

Ethiopia's federal forces, pictured here, have been battling Tigrayan fighters since November 2020

Kenya's government has announced the tightening of security along its 800-kilometer (500-mile) northern border with Ethiopia.

Police have also set up additional roadblocks to monitor the movement of firearms and foreigners who may try to enter Kenya illegally.

Local communities and the government fear an influx of Ethiopian refugees, as the war raging in the country's northern Tigray region spills into other areas of Ethiopia and Tigrayan fighters and their allies advance on the capital, Addis Ababa.

Northern Kenya is already home to the refugee camps of Kakuma in the northwest and Dadaab in the northeast. They are among the world's largest refugee settlements.

For the past few years, Kenyan officials have been pushing hard to have the camps completely closed by mid-2022 — a plan that could be scuttled by new refugees from Ethiopia.

Kenya's police service has already cautioned citizens to report cases of undocumented persons and unprocessed immigrants in the country.

Most Ethiopian refugees so far have fled north over the border to Sudan but Kenya fears that may change

Northern Kenya already under stress

"There is a likelihood [of] hundreds of thousands, if not millions of refugees, flocking into Kenya," the director of the Nairobi-based Institute for Strategic Studies, Hassan Khannenje, told DW.

This will "impose heavy costs on Kenya," he said, adding it could trigger a humanitarian situation that Kenya isn't prepared for.

The large numbers of refugees in northern Kenya have stressed local resources in the region, and are fueling tensions with local communities.

Two million people are currently facing food insecurity in Kenya's north, where the United Nations has described the situation as "particularly drastic" because of poor rainfall.

Trade between the two countries has also fallen because of the Tigray conflict, according to Kenyan authorities. Earlier this year, Kenya and Ethiopia set up the Moyale Ones Stop Border Post, a free trade area to make cross-border business dealings easier.

Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta appealed last week for a stop to the war between the forces of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and fighters from the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).

"The men and women of the government of Ethiopia, led by my dear brother in leadership, Abiy Ahmed, as well as the men and women who constitute the leadership that is fighting the government must find reason to cease the conflict immediately and talk," Kenyatta said in a statement released last Wednesday.
South Sudan's peace deal at risk

The conflict in Ethiopia seems to have indirectly weakened the implementation of a peace deal in neighboring South Sudan.

Ethiopia, in recent years, has played a mediating role between the rival factions of President Salva Kiir and the former opposition leader Riek Machar.

South Sudan's two main peace deals, signed in 2015 and 2018, were both negotiated in Ethiopia.

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir holds a copy of a signed peace agreement

In addition, the international community is diverting more time and energy on Ethiopia, says political analyst Boboya James from the Juba-based Institute for Social Policy and Research.

"Traditionally the international community used to urge the government of South Sudan to fully implement the peace agreement, but now it appears their attention has been diverted to resolving the conflict in Ethiopia," James told DW.

"You can see the Americans now spending a lot of time in asking the two factions in Ethiopia to dialogue and bring about peace."

He fears that South Sudan's peace process could become more elusive as Ethiopia's war drags on.

Uncertainty for South Sudanese in Ethiopia

Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing South Sudan's war have taken refuge in Ethiopia's Gambela region on Sudan's western border with Ethiopia.

The communities living on both sides of the border have great cultural affinity and there is a brisk flow of goods across the border there, mainly from Ethiopia into South Sudan.

"The majority of South Sudanese on the border get food from Ethiopia," James said.

So if Ethiopia's war continues, it will "definitely bring economic destabilization to the border between South Sudan and Ethiopia," he said.

Diplomatic efforts

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has called an extraordinary summit of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, known as IGAD, in Kampala on November 16.

Ethiopia is a member of the eight-member bloc which also includes Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti.

IGAD, which helped broker South Sudan's peace deal, is hoping for a similar role in Ethiopia.

Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts are ongoing to try to resolve the war in Ethiopia.

US and African Union envoys have been holding urgent talks in Ethiopia in search of a cease-fire.

The UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, visited the Tigray region on Sunday, using the occasion to plead for greater access for aid to civilians.

The UN is warning that some 7 million people in Ethiopia, including 5 million in Tigray, are facing famine-like conditions because of the war.