Malala Yousafzai ties the knot with Asser in Britain



Malala and Aseer pose for a family photo.

Gulf Today Report

Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, announced on Tuesday that she has tied the knot with Asser in an intimate nikkah ceremony in Birmingham, United Kingdom.

Malala shared the good news on his official Twitter account.

“Today marks a precious day in my life. Asser and I tied the knot to be partners for life. We celebrated a small nikkah ceremony at home in Birmingham with our families. Please send us your prayers. We are excited to walk together for the journey ahead,” she tweeted.

PPP leader Aseefa Bhutto Zardari congratulated Malala on Twitter.

 

Malala and Asser pose for wedding photograph.

Aseefa wrote, “Congratulations! May you both find every joy together, and may your journey be blessed at every turn. Sending you love & duas…”

Jemima Goldsmith wrote on Twitter, “Congratulations and mashallah x”

Malala who was shot by the Pakistani Taliban as a schoolgirl, has urged Afghanistan's new rulers to let girls return to school.

It has been one month since the Taliban, which seized power in August, excluded girls from returning to secondary school while ordering boys back to class.

The Taliban have claimed they will allow girls to return once they have ensured security and stricter segregation under their interpretation of Islamic law — but many are sceptical.

 

Malala and Asser pose for a photograph at a garden.

"To the Taliban authorities...reverse the de facto ban on girls' education and re-open girls' secondary schools immediately," Yousafzai and a number of Afghan women's rights activists said in an open letter published on Sunday.

Yousafzai called on the leaders of Muslim nations to make it clear to the Taliban that "religion does not justify preventing girls from going to school."

"Afghanistan is now the only country in the world that forbids girls' education," said the writers, who included the head of the Afghan human rights commission under the last US-backed government Shaharzad Akbar.

The authors called on G20 world leaders to provide urgent funding for an education plan for Afghan children.

 

Asser signs the nikkah papers.

A petition alongside the letter had on Monday received more than 640,000 signatures.

Education activist Yousafzai was shot by militants from the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, an offshoot of the Afghan Taliban, in her home town in the Swat valley while on a school bus in 2012.

Now 24 years old, she advocates for girls' education, with her non-profit Malala Fund having invested $2 million in Afghanistan.

The Nikah ceremony is the Muslim marriage ceremony. In the Islamic tradition, the marriage contract is signed during the Nikah and it’s during this event that the bride and groom say, “I do.” Traditionally, the Nikah ceremony often takes place in a mosque and the leader or imam of the mosque officiates the Nikah.

Nikah Ceremony: Everything You Need to Know

www.brides.com/nikkah-ceremony-5079931

King of Jordan praises Abbas, stands alongside PA

The king emphasized the need to establish a just and comprehensive peace based on a two-state solution, which would ensure the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem its capital.

JORDAN IS WESTERN PALESTINE THE KING SHOULD GO

Arutz Sheva Staff , Nov 09 , 2021 

Jordan King Abdullah
Flash 90

The office of Jordan's King Abdullah this evening (Tuesday) issued an official announcement of the king's meeting at his palace in Amman with United Arab List (Ra'am) chairman Mansour Abbas.

"During the meeting, the two discussed developments in the Palestinian territories and ways to advance the peace process. The King of Jordan emphasized his standing alongside the Palestinian brothers in their efforts to achieve just and legitimate rights," the statement said.

It added that "the king emphasized the need to establish a just and comprehensive peace based on a two-state solution, which would ensure the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on lines 67 with its capital East Jerusalem. Jordan continues to make every effort to protect the holy places of Islam and Christianity in Jerusalem by virtue of Hashemite guardianship."

MK Mansour Abba, praised at the meeting the positions of the King of Jordan on the Palestinian issue and Jordan's efforts to maintain the status quo in Jerusalem. He expressed appreciation for the assistance Jordan is providing to Israeli Arabs.

The meeting between Abbas and the King of Jordan, according to political sources, took place with the knowledge of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

White House awaits Enbridge Line 5 review before any decision

Only half of people in Ontario and Michigan say Enbridge Line 5 should stay open

Shachi Kurl, president of Angus Reid Institute, discusses a survey that polled residents of Michigan, Ontario, and Quebec on Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline. Only about half of the residents in Michigan and Ontario said the pipeline must remain in operation. The rest either wants it closed or say they don't know.

Robert Tuttle and Josh Wingrove, 

BNN Bloomberg News

11/09/2021

The White House said it’s waiting on a study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before deciding whether to wade into a debate over the future of a controversial oil pipeline that carries Canadian oil across the Great Lakes into Michigan.

The idea that the Biden administration is considering shutting Enbridge Inc.’s Line 5 is “inaccurate,” White House Spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday, in response to news reports. Instead, the White House noted that the Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing a proposal by Enbridge to build a tunnel to house the pipeline under the waterway for safety reasons. That review will help inform any U.S. position on the pipeline, she said.

Speculation that President Joe Biden was considering killing Line 5, like he did with TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL project, prompted angry reactions among Republicans as the country grapples with surging prices for everything from propane to gasoline. Line 5 supplies crude and propane to Michigan homes, as well as refineries in the U.S. Midwest and Ontario

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Enbridge have been in a legal tussle for the past year over the fate of the pipeline. Whitmer has ordered the line shut down, arguing it’s a threat to the Great Lakes because it crosses the Straits of Mackinac.

Enbridge has defied the governor’s order and is instead seeking to build a tunnel to house the pipeline under the waterway, saying it will make the pipeline safer. Currently, the Army Corps is preparing an environmental impact statement on the tunnel project.


The Army Corps review “will help inform any additional action or position the U.S. will be taking,” Jean-Pierre said.

The fate of Line 5 has also turned into a source of contention between the U.S. and Canada, which has fiercely defended the line’s continued operation, recently invoking a dispute resolution provision of a 1977 treaty.

Pipeline pile-on: Biden faces heat from Canada, Republicans, Michigan’s governor and the price of propane

The president is caught between environmentalists and Indigenous groups on one side and Republicans blaming him for soaring energy prices on the other.





The Biden administration is studying what to do about a pipeline stretching across Michigan that activists — and the state's Democratic governor — contend poses a catastrophic pollution risk to the Great Lakes. | Scott Olson/Getty Images


By BEN LEFEBVRE and ZI-ANN LUM

POLITICO
11/07/2021 

President Joe Biden's plans to push the country away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy are facing an unexpected hurdle: the price of propane in Escanaba, Michigan.

Biden took the stage in Glasgow last week to promise world leaders the U.S. was ready to lead the charge against climate change. But the messy pipeline fights in the U.S. are putting his administration in the crossfire between environmentalists and Indigenous groups eager to block fossil fuel projects and Republicans who are ramping up attacks blaming the White House for soaring energy prices.

Biden was quick to win plaudits from greens for quashing the Keystone XL pipeline upon taking office, but he has drawn criticism from some of the same advocates for not stopping another pipeline project in Minnesota. Now, the administration is studying what to do about a pipeline stretching across Michigan that activists — and the state's Democratic governor — contend poses a catastrophic pollution risk to the Great Lakes. But the oil and gas industry, backed by the Canadian government, warns closing will drive fuel prices even higher.

Word that the Biden administration was quietly studying the potential market impact of killing the Line 5 pipeline, first reported by POLITICO, set off a firestorm of criticism from Republicans saying the move would worsen the spike that has already driven propane prices up 50 percent from a year ago just as Michigan residents — the nation's biggest consumers of the fuel — stock up for cold weather. Propane is stripped out of the line at the small port city of Escanaba to help feed supplies to communities in the state's Upper Peninsula.

“As we enter the winter months and temperatures drop across the Midwest, the termination of Line 5 will undoubtedly further exacerbate shortages and price increases in home heating fuels like natural gas and propane at a time when Americans are already facing rapidly rising energy prices, steep home heating costs, global supply shortages, and skyrocketing gas prices,” Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) and a dozen other congressional lawmakers representing the region said in letter to Biden on Nov. 4.

But equal pressure is coming from from environmental groups and Native tribes to back Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in her fight to shut the pipeline down. The groups say a potential oil spill from the 70-year-old pipeline that crosses the Straits of Mackinac would devastate the Great Lakes and Michigan’s coastal economies — a concern that grew after the lines were damaged by an anchor strike in 2018.

“Given the strength and oscillation of the currents, over 700 miles of Lake Michigan and Huron shoreline would face serious contamination” in case of a spill, a group of 12 tribal nations wrote in their own Nov. 4 letter to Biden. “In contrast to Canada’s vocal support of [pipeline owner] Enbridge, and despite what we understand to be the Governor’s requests for help, your Administration has thus far been silent regarding Line 5.”

The Canadian government is also applying heat. Conservative Party members in the country's government, already irked by Biden pulling the crucial permit for the Keystone XL pipeline before it could even be built, have said shutting down the Line 5 pipeline would require 2,100 rail cars to deliver the oil from Superior, Wis., to the Imperial Oil refinery in Sarnia, Ontario, just across the U.S. border.

An aboveground section of Enbridge's Line 5 oil pipeline is pictured at the Mackinaw City, Mich., pump station in this October 2016 file photo. | AP Photo/John Flesher, File

Canada Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly discussed the pipeline with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, according to a readout of their call. The Canadian government recently invoked a 1977 treaty to bolster its position that the oil continue to flow.

Canada Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told reporters Friday that he had called Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm that day to discuss the pipeline. Wilkinson told reporters the pipeline’s continued operation was “non-negotiable.” Canada hoped to have the issue “resolved in coming months” but was preparing contingency plans in case the line was shut down, Wilkinson added.

“Certainly it is prudent for governments at all levels to be thinking about what happens in the event that we are not able to resolve the issue with Michigan and we’re not successful in the court,” Wilkinson told reporters. “But I would say that, that is a contingency plan that we hope never to have to use.”

All this means that Biden, who promised at the COP26 climate talks that the United States would be “hopefully leading by the power of our example,” is facing the sort of cold, hard political decision that such grand climate ambitions can force on a country that is the world's top oil and gas producer, said Kevin Book, managing director at energy consulting firm ClearView Energy: Either keep the pipeline in place and disappoint progressives, or revoke its permit and hand Republicans fresh ammunition just after they shellacked Democrats in Virginia and other state elections.

“When fuel prices are high, it may not matter what project gets stopped so much as the White House is seen stopping it,” Book said. “Politically speaking, anything that could get in the way of the propane supply ahead of winter could play badly in Midwestern swing states.”

The administration hasn’t decided what to do yet, sources close to the White House have said. Market studies have concluded that gasoline prices in Michigan would rise a few cents a gallon if the pipeline was removed. But propane, currently nearly $2.50 a gallon, could increase between 5 and 25 cents before supplies could be redirected there from other sources, including other pipelines in the area. Advocates of shutting the pipeline down have suggested that closing it in phases might soften any price impact.

"With an orderly shut down — and this key: an orderly shutdown — there will be little noticeable impact," said Beth Wallace, manager of conservation partnerships at the National Wildlife Federation, an environmental group that commissioned a study on the effects of shutting the line down.

Still, any increase would become a Republican talking point and could make it harder for Democrats to make any more ambitious moves on energy policy. The GOP has already hammered Democrats for current fuel price increases that have had little to do with White House policy, and voters would certainly notice if anything coming directly from the administration increased prices more.

But Republicans are already tapping into voter frustrations over the surge at the pump that has pushed the average U.S. gasoline price up by a $1.30 from last year to $3.42 per gallon. They aggressively sought to tie that increase to Biden's move on the Keystone XL pipeline and his pause on new auctions of federal land to oil and gas drillers, though energy experts have said the rise is due largely to the tightness in the global energy supply after the industry troubles last year when prices plummeted during the worst of the pandemic.


Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a state heavily dependent on oil and gas production, said voters are especially attuned to fuel costs and could turn on politicians they see as doing anything that would raise prices.

“Anytime you have people focused on something like the high price of gas at the pump, or if natural gas prices are high and they’re seeing higher utility bills, there’s a focus on that,” Murkowski said in an interview. “And I think it impacts how they view longer-term policies. I think we recognize that the price of oil may come and go, the price of natural gas is going to come and go, but I think it has significant bearing on how people are feeling about different legislative initiatives or policy initiatives.”

Anthony Adragna contributed to this report

 Saskatchewan

Sask. carbon capture not meeting targets, prolonging reliance on fossil fuels: U of R professor

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'Saskatchewan has the highest greenhouse gas emissions

 per capita in Canada,' says Emily Eaton

Colleen Silverthorn · CBC News · Posted: Nov 08, 2021 2:48 PM CT | Last Updated: 1 hour ago

The carbon capture project at SaskPower's Boundary Dam isn't meeting targets of 90 per cent carbon capture, according to University of Regina professor Emily Eaton. (Michael Bell/Canadian Press)

A University of Regina professor is challenging Premier Scott Moe's claims that the province has the most sustainable energy sector in the world.

Emily Eaton, a professor of geography and environmental studies at the University of Regina, said that contrary to Moe's recent claims, Saskatchewan's fossil-fuel industry is a major polluter.

"Saskatchewan has the highest greenhouse gas emissions per capita in Canada and some of the highest across the whole world," Eaton told CBC's The Morning Edition.

"And it is largely a result of our oil and gas industry. Thirty per cent of Saskatchewan's greenhouse gases come from that single industry." 

Speaking to a crowd of supporters at a Sask Party convention this past weekend, Moe said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be promoting Saskatchewan's sustainable energy to countries attending the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

"If everyone else in the world produced their energy the same way we did here in Saskatchewan ...global emissions in oil production would drop by 25 per cent overnight."

A spokesperson for Moe said he was referring to a 2018 University of Calgary study that said adopting Canada's standards and regulations would cut emissions globally by one quarter.

• Canadian oilpatch rules could cut global emissions, study concludes

According to the Government of Canada, Saskatchewan produced 74.8 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2019, up 10 per cent from 2005.

Carbon capture just prolongs reliance on oil: scientist

Eaton said that Saskatchewan is doing a poor job of transitioning away from fossil fuels.

She said the province has poured money into carbon capture projects that are providing less than optimum results.

In 2014, Unit 3 of SaskPower's Boundary Dam Power Station was retrofitted to capture carbon emissions, the first power station in the world to successfully capture and store carbon emissions.

SaskPower relies on coal, a large producer of greenhouse gas emissions, for 30 per cent of its power supply.

At the time, the carbon capture project aimed to capture about 90 per cent of emissions from the coal-fired plant.

Eaton said studies are showing that the carbon capture rate at Boundary Dam is closer to 45 per cent.

 "Carbon capture is a dangerous distraction that consumes a lot of public resources and prevents us … from not making the pollution in the first place," she said.

• How this Calgary company uses captured CO2 emissions to make stronger concrete

• OPINION
  Saskatchewan's emission numbers make us a world leader in the worst way possible

• Mayor of Estevan, Sask., invites Elon Musk to visit Boundary Dam CCS project

Eaton said that capturing emissions from fossil fuel production isn't enough to meet climate change targets.

"About 80 to 95 per cent of the emissions come from combusting that fossil fuel, whether that's in combustion engines or in gas fired coal plants. And so even if we could reduce the emissions from our oil and gas industry down to something close to net zero, we can't be producing fossil fuels in a zero carbon future."

Matthew Glover, a spokesperson for the province, said that Saskatchewan's Whitecap Enhanced Oil Recovery facility sequesters about half of Canada's carbon emissions annually and has 82 per cent fewer emissions compared with standard oil extraction.

"As the demand for oil is expected to grow over the next decade, our government will continue to poise Saskatchewan to be a leading supplier of energy that the world needs, while standing by our record on environmental stewardship and human rights compared to other jurisdictions." 

Eaton said focusing on carbon capture just prolongs Saskatchewan's reliance on fossil fuels when time and resources should be spent transitioning away from that industry.

"We're not talking about turning the tap off overnight. We're talking about today's oil production is the peak production."

She also said that the emissions captured at the Boundary Dam are sent by pipeline to the Weyburn oil fields, where they are being used for enhanced oil recovery.

"So we're actually producing more fossil fuels than we would otherwise be able to do through sequestration and utilization of that carbon."

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

Little time, but ‘mountain to climb’ at UN climate talks
By SETH BORENSTEIN, ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL AND FRANK JORDANS

1 of 17

Activists protest for climate justice outside parliament in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. The protests coincides with the second week of as the COP26, UN Climate Summit in Glasgow. (AP Photo/Nardus Engelbrecht)


GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — The United Nations climate summit in Glasgow has made “some serious toddler steps” toward cutting emissions but far from the giant leaps needed to limit global warming to internationally accepted goals, two new analyses and top officials said Tuesday.

And time is running out on the two weeks of negotiations.

The president of the climate talks, Alok Sharma, told high-level government ministers at the U.N. conference to reach out to their capitals and bosses soon to see if they can get more ambitious pledges because “we have only a few days left.”

This month’s summit has seen such limited progress that a United Nations Environment Programme analysis of new pledges found they weren’t enough to improve future warming scenarios. All they did was trim the “emissions gap” — how much carbon pollution can be spewed without hitting dangerous warming levels— a few tenths of a percentage point, according to the review released Tuesday.

The analysis found that by 2030, the world will be emitting 51.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, 1.5 billion tons less than before the latest pledges. To achieve the limit first set in the 2015 Paris climate accord, which came out of a similar summit, the world can only emit 12.5 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases in 2030.

A separate analysis by independent scientists found a slight decrease in future warming, but one still insufficient to limit the warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. The planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.

“There’s some serious toddler steps,” United Nations Environment Programme Director Inger Andersen said in an interview with The Associated Press a few minutes after the U.N. analysis was finished. “But they are not the leaps we need to see, by any stretch of the imagination.”

In Glasgow, officials touted advances, but not necessarily success.

“We are making progress,” Sharma said, “but we still have a mountain to climb over the next few days, and what has been collectively committed to goes some way, but certainly not all the way, to keeping 1.5 within reach.”

Andersen acknowledged that none of the three main U.N. criteria for success for the two-week climate talks has been achieved so far. They are cutting greenhouse gas emissions by about half by 2030; securing $100 billion a year in aid from rich countries to poor nations; and having half of that money be for for developing nations to adapt to global warming’s worst harms.

The second analysis by Climate Action Tracker, which for years has monitored nations’ emission-cutting pledges, said based on those submitted targets the world is now on track to warm 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times by the end of this century. That’s a far cry from the 2015 Paris climate deal overarching limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees) and its fallback limit of 2 degrees Celsius. (shouldn’t we move this up above

Given what’s been pledged “we are likely to be in that area 2.4 degrees, which is still catastrophic climate change and far, far away from the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said climate scientist Niklas Hohne of the New Climate Institute and the Climate Action Tracker.

Hohne’s group, independent of the U.N., also looked at how much warming there would be if other less firm national promises were put into effect. If all the submitted national targets and other promises that have a bit of the force of law are included, future warming drops down to 2.1 degrees.

And in the “optimistic scenario” if all the net-zero pledges for mid-century are taken into account, warming would be 1.8 degrees, Hohne said. That’s the same figure as the International Energy Agency came up with for that optimistic scenario.

Andersen said success is about her great-grandchildren living in a world with warming kept to the level outlined in the Paris accord and that “the kids on the street” protesting in Glasgow help the United Nations in pushing negotiators to do more.

“Progress happens at meetings. Success is delivered into people’s lives when their livelihoods and their health and well-being is improved,” Andersen told the AP.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who brought her climate-celebrity star power to the U.N. climate talks on Tuesday along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told reporters she had a message for those youth protesters: “Stay in the streets. Keep pushing.”

As “high level” ministers try to forge a deal by Friday, they have a big gap to bridge. Or more accurately, multiple gaps: there’s a trust gap, a wealth gap and a north-south gap based on money, history and future threats.

On one side of the gap are nations that developed and became rich from the Industrial Revolution fueled by coal, oil and gas that started in the U.K. On the other side are the nations that haven’t developed yet and haven’t gotten rich and are now being told those fuels are too dangerous for the planet.

The key financial issue is the $100 billion a year pledge first made in 2009. The developed nations still haven’t reached the $100 billion a year mark. This year, the rich nations increased their aid to just shy of $80 billion a year, still short of what was promised.

“Everybody here is livid,” said Saleemul Huq, a climate science and policy expert who is director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh

Huq said it’s more than just the money, it’s important to bridge the gap in trust between rich nations and poor nations.

“They reneged on their promise. They failed to deliver it,” Huq said. “And they seem not to care about it. And, so why should we trust anything they say anymore?”

Andersen and Sharma still hold out hope.

“We’re not done yet. We still have a couple of days,” Andersen said. “And so we’re certainly from our side, from the United Nations side, we’re going to try to hold everyone’s feet to the fire.”

___

Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report from Glasgow.

___

Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

___

Follow Seth Borenstein and Aniruddha Ghosal on Twitter at @borenbears and @aniruddgh1

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Shell to partner with renewables firm on solar farm near Edmonton

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Solar farm will help power the Scotford refinery, expected to be operational by 2023

Amanda Stephenson · The Canadian Press · Posted: Nov 09, 2021 

All of the power generated by the new solar farm will be dedicated to the Scotford refinery, for at least the next 25 years. The solar farm is expected to produce enough renewable electricity to provide 20 per cent of the refinery's energy needs. (Tom Steepe/CBC)

Shell Canada and its North American solar platform Silicon Ranch have announced plans to build a 58-megawatt solar farm adjacent to Shell's Scotford refinery and chemicals park near Edmonton.

The solar farm will be the first in Canada to be built, owned and operated by Tennessee-based Silicon Ranch, which is 47 per cent owned by Royal Dutch Shell plc and building solar projects for the global energy giant all over the U.S.

Shell Canada previously built a five-megawatt solar farm at Scotford that will start up this fall and offset emissions from the Shell-owned chemicals plant. But the project announced Tuesday — which Shell says will begin construction next year and be operational by the end of 2023 — will be much larger.

Solar power to feed refinery

In an interview, Shell senior vice-president Mark Pattenden said all of the power generated by the new solar farm will be dedicated to the Scotford refinery, for at least the next 25 years.

The solar farm is expected to produce enough renewable electricity to provide 20 per cent of the refinery's energy needs.

"This is really material decarbonization, of either the existing products we produce through the refinery ... or it creates the opportunity for future production of things like hydrogen or biofuels as well," Pattenden said.

• VIDEO
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Shell has said it wants to transform the Scotford Complex into one of five energy and chemicals parks owned by the company around the world.

Within this decade, the company wants to use carbon capture and storage (CCUS) and renewable power to process new feedstocks such as bio-oils or waste oils to reduce the C02 emitted in the production of fuel.

As part of its vision, Shell has proposed its Polaris CCUS project, that will capture carbon dioxide from the Scotford refinery and chemicals plant, with storage capacity of about 300 million tonnes of C02. Shell said it will make a final investment decision about the project in 2023

Shell also has plans to collaborate with Mitsubishi Corp. on the production of low-carbon hydrogen at Scotford.

Quest carbon capture and storage facility in Fort Saskatchewan Alta, on Friday November 6, 2015. Shell has said it wants to transform the Scotford Complex into one of five energy and chemicals parks owned by the company around the world. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

The proposed solar farm at Scotford won't require any government subsidies or funding.

Pattenden said as the company moves forward with its goal of reducing direct and indirect carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 compared with 2016 levels, what it needs most is regulatory certainty around things like carbon pricing and renewable energy policy.

"We continue to look not so much for specific policy, but more certainty," Pattenden said.

Solar moves north

The construction of a solar farm near Scotford will mark the first large-scale solar installation in Alberta's industrial heartland, Pattenden said, noting solar farms are typically built in the southernmost portion of the province.

But he said there's no reason a solar farm can't produce effectively at Scotford, pointing out it will be designed with panels that can also capture sunlight reflected off snow.

• OPINION | Solar power is the new king, and that crown is going to be very difficult to knock off

• Amazon to purchase power from massive southern Alberta solar farm

"It's without a doubt that southern Alberta is one of the best places in the world [for solar power] but the Edmonton area is not far off," Pattenden said. "We do have shorter days in the winter, but longer days in the summer offsetting that, and just about as many sunshine hours as southern Alberta."

Silicon Ranch will provide all of the capital investment for the solar farm. A spokesperson for that company did not reply to an email inquiry about the total dollar value of the project in time for deadline.

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.”

SICK FUCK A HATEFUL LITTLE MAN
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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RIP
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.