Top official in northeast India wants army powers removed


The coffins of people killed by Indian army soldiers on Saturday, who mistakenly believed some of them were militants, and one who was killed when soldiers fired at a crowd of protestors on Sunday, are laid out in a row during a public funeral in Mon, in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland, Monday, Dec. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Fifi Konyak)



SHEIKH SAALIQ
Mon, December 6, 2021

NEW DELHI (AP) — A top elected official in India's northeast region called on Monday for the withdrawal of emergency powers granted to Indian troops, a day after soldiers killed over a dozen civilians, sparking violent protests in the troubled state.

India’s remote northeast region — which includes eight states — is home to dozens of separatist insurgencies led by ethnic rebel groups.

Nagaland state’s Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio said his government wants the longstanding Armed Forces Special Powers Act, or AFSPA, repealed.


“AFSPA is damaging the image of our country which is the world’s largest democracy,” Rio said at the funeral services for the dead civilians, in the district of Mon, the site of the incidents.

Rio reiterated that authorities would pursue justice for those civilians killed. Rio is an ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party, the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party.

Fourteen civilians and a soldier were killed in a series of violent incidents over the weekend in Nagaland state, officials said Sunday. At least 28 civilians were also wounded in the clashes and some of them were in critical condition, police said.

The killings prompted calls from local residents and politicians for the revocation of the act that gives the military in some parts of India's northeast sweeping powers to search, seize and even shoot suspects on sight without fear of prosecution.

Under the act, local authorities need federal approval to prosecute army or paramilitary soldiers in civilian courts.

People in Nagaland for years have accused security forces of exceeding the powers granted to them under the 1958 AFSPA in their counterinsurgency operations. Human rights groups have called the act draconian and pleaded for its repeal for decades.

The Indian military said soldiers fired at a pickup truck on Saturday after a tip about a movement of insurgents in the state's remote Mon district along the border with Myanmar. Six civilians were killed, prompting violent protests by angry villagers who torched three army vehicles. The soldiers responded by firing at them, killing seven more people, officials said. One soldier was also killed in the clash with protesters.

Locals said the victims were miners returning home to their village when soldiers ambushed the truck carrying them.

The violence escalated on Sunday when protesters attacked an army camp and set some residential quarters on fire. Army soldiers used live ammunition at the crowd, killing one more person.

Police have ordered an investigation amid rising tensions in the state. The Indian army in a statement released Sunday said the operation was based on “credible intelligence” but expressed “regret” and called it a case of “mistaken identity.”

Local residents rejected the military statement and demanded an independent probe.

“If the operation was based on the so-called credible intelligence then how could it be a case of mistaken identity,” said Phangnon Konyak, a local tribal leader. “It was a cold-blooded murder.”

Speaking to hundreds of people gathered at the funeral services Monday, Chief Minister Rio said Nagas will never forget the slain civilians as their coffins were lined up on the ground. Mourners put wreaths on the coffins during the funeral services and displayed protest placards.

“Killing of innocent civilians is terrorism,” one placard read.

Rio also offered financial assistance to the families of the victims.

Rebels, as well as local leaders and other groups, have campaigned for decades for demands ranging from independent homelands to maximum autonomy within the Indian Constitution.

In recent years, the violence has ebbed but the demands for political rights have amplified even as the federal government has pushed for talks with separatists.

In Nagaland, the insurrection began in the mid-1950s with rebel leaders seeking an independent homeland. Some rebel groups have since watered down their original demands for an independent homeland and agreed to reach a solution under the Indian Constitution.

Officials say insurgents often cross into Myanmar after attacking Indian government forces in the remote area.

___

Associated Press writer Wasbir Hussain in Gauhati, India, contributed to this report.

Toyota to open multi-billion dollar, car battery plant in NC with thousands of jobs



Lars Dolder
Mon, December 6, 2021, 9:00 AM·2 min read

Toyota will open a multi-billion dollar battery plant with at least 1,750 employees about an hour’s drive outside the Triangle, according to ABC 11, The News & Observer’s media partner.

The Japanese auto maker announced in October it would build a $1.29 billion facility in the United States to manufacture hybrid and electric vehicle batteries, the Greensboro News & Record reported. The plant will launch production in 2025 and expand operations by 2031.

Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and Gov. Roy Cooper are expected to confirm that Toyota has picked the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite, about 20 miles southeast of Greensboro, in specially convened economic development meetings Monday.

NC budget appropriation

Toyota’s decision to build in North Carolina was facilitated by the state’s new budget, which appropriates $455 million for infrastructure and site development at Randolph’s 1,800-acre megasite.

Up to $185 million is available for Toyota to make site improvements at its discretion. Another $135 million is allocated to the N.C. Dept. of Transportation for road improvements; $100 million will go to site preparation and wetland mitigation; and the final $35 million is earmarked for additional road work.

To secure state funds, Toyota had to commit at least $1 billion in investment. Over the next 10 years, though, the company plans to expand that to $3 billion, with about 3,875 jobs. The site’s construction will mark the largest capital investment in state history.

Toyota’s commitment is “transformational,” and should attract other economic development opportunities for North Carolina, according to state Rep. Jon Hardister, a Republican from Greensboro.

“If you get a large manufacturer, not only is it a lot of jobs, but they are jobs that pay well,” he previously said in a telephone interview. “And when you have large manufacturers, you tend to have ancillary companies as well.”]

The "Right to Work" In An "At-Will State" - Narron Wenzel ...

https://narronwenzel.com/the-right-to-work-in-an-at-will-state

Of Counsel. North Carolina is both an at-will state and a Right to Work state. The two phrases are sometimes conflated and confused. Each refers to a distinct and separate legal doctrine. There is one point of intersection nevertheless that will be discussed in this paper. The at-will rule is a common law doctrine that has been summed up frequently in the following formulation: Where a contract of …

• Estimated Reading Time: 7 mins

SOUTH AFRICA
Strike ends at Walmart-owned Massmart after agreement reached


Workers go on strike outside a Walmart-led Massmart Holdings owned Makro store in Johannesburg

Mon, December 6, 2021

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Thousands of striking workers at companies under Massmart Holdings in South Africa, which is owned by Walmart Inc, will return to work after reaching an agreement over disputes, a labour union said on Monday.

The disgruntled workers had been on strike since Nov.19 over low wages, unilateral restructuring and changes to terms and conditions of employment.

At Builders Warehouse, unions were demanding a wage increase of 500 rand ($31.50) monthly, while Massmart was offering an increase of 320 rand.

The unions also wanted workers who had lost jobs due to restructuring at the general merchandise chain, Game, to be reinstated. Massmart had said it had identified alternative jobs for those workers.

In settlement agreements seen by Reuters and sent by the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU), an affiliate of the powerful Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the parties agreed on an across- the-board monthly wage increase of 400 rand, or 4.5%, for all 45-hour permanent and 40-hour fixed employees who are union members.

This will be "retrospectively" effective from July 1, 2021, according to the settlement agreements.

They also agreed on an increase of 4.5% on the hourly rate for all permanent part time associates.

In another agreement, Massmart said it would try to reinstate Game retrenched workers into vacant positions across the company.

"This has been a challenging time for those involved and we are pleased that the decision to end the strike will enable participating SACCAWU members to return to work," Massmart said in a statement.

SACCAWU said workers returned this afternoon.

The more than two-week strike had no impact on Massmart's operations as it hired contract employees to its stores.

($1 = 15.8740 rand)

(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

14-Year-Old Mexican Girl Jailed for Escaping Arranged Wedding Ceremony

Jeremy Kryt
Sun, December 5, 2021,

Tlachinollan Human Rights Center

A 14-year-old girl was jailed last week after running away to escape the wedding ceremony for which she had been sold.

The girl, who has been identified in the local press only as Anayeli “N,” was supposed to marry a neighbor in Mexico’s Guerrero state whose family had offered a sum of 200,000 pesos (about US$9,300) to buy her hand in marriage.

Anayeli’s mother had accepted the payment, and the neighboring family had hired a band, slaughtered a cow, and prepared a marriage feast to take place last Monday. All told, the would-be groom’s parents spent around 56,000 pesos ($2,600) on wedding prep.

But Anayeli, who is a member of the indigenous Mixtec people, wasn’t having any of it. Early on the morning of the “big day” she escaped from her family’s house in the village of Joya Real, in southwestern Mexico, and took shelter in the nearby home of her 15-year-old friend Alfredo “N.”

“She thought it was her older sister who was going to be married, she never thought it would be her, because she was a minor,” said Abel Barrera, director of the Guerrero-based Tlachinollan Human Rights Center, in an interview with The Daily Beast.

When Anayeli found out that it was not her sister but herself who was the intended bride, “she preferred to flee without notifying anyone, regardless of the fact that her mother had already agreed [on the price] and the expenses paid by the groom’s father,” Barrera said.

“None of that interested the girl. She simply wanted to preserve her freedom, her life, and her safety,” he said. Barrera said that, although technically illegal under Mexican law since 2019, arranged marriages for minors are still common between families living in rural regions.

Once a girl is bought, she is “treated as an object” by the family that paid for them, Barrera said. “She has to work, she has to cook the food, she has to do the cleaning, she has to go to the fields, and if she gets to work as an agricultural laborer, the money is not going to be paid to her, but to her father-in-law,” Barrera said.

Marina Reyna Aguilar, the executive director of the Guerrero Association Against Violence Toward Women, told The Daily Beast that it took great courage for Anayeli to breach social norms by running away and refusing to be “part of a tradition that forces underage girls in their community to marry by agreement of their relatives in exchange for money [or] goods or things such as beer, cows, or other animals.”

With the child bride gone missing, the groom’s family asked Joya Real’s Community Police officers to track Anayeli down. They swept the small village, found Anayeli and Alfredo in hiding, and marched them off to jail.

“In the [indigenous] community there is no one who watches over the rights of girls,” said Barrera, who is also an anthropologist specializing in local native culture. “It is the men who do justice, the older men, as there is a patriarchal culture. Women cannot go to the defense of girls because they would also be imprisoned.”

During the night they spent in jail, the two minors were told by police officers that Anayeli must submit to the marriage or pay back the $2,600 the groom’s family had already spent on the wedding and related fiestas.

The Community Police are an independent, auxiliary form of law enforcement meant to provide security in isolated regions of Mexico where there is little or no federal or state police presence. As such, officers in small towns and villages sometimes act unilaterally, since they answer to no higher authority, said Aguilar. She accused the Community Police of abusing their power by “normalizing the customs that contravene the human rights of girls and women,” despite the laws on the books forbidding underage marriage.

“The Community Police, when deciding to lock up Anayeli, [are] ignoring a legal framework which they must respect and enforce... By not complying, this turns them into law-breaking criminals,” Aguilar said.

By Tuesday morning, members of Barrera’s Tlachinollan Center, state police, and representatives of the regional district attorney’s office had all arrived in Joya Real to ensure that the teens were freed from jail. For their own safety, the two were then put into protective custody as part of Mexico’s Comprehensive Family Development system [known as DIF for its acronym in Spanish].

“Anayeli’s case is very complicated,” said Neil Arias Vitinio, a lawyer who helped secure the girl’s release. According to Vitinio, one of the complicating factors is that Anayeli speaks only the Mixtec language known as Tu’un Savi.

“The situation with her was very difficult because she is a monolingual, illiterate girl who does not even have a minimum of schooling,” Vitinio said. “When talking to her we realized that she is very self-conscious. She would hardly speak a word to us, most of the time she was silent.”

Center director Barrera said “this must all be understood in the context of extreme poverty” within marginalized indigenous communities that have been neglected by the state.

“The government has forgotten these communities. Here there is no way to study, there is no way to find a job, to develop any artistic ability,” Barrera said, and added that Anayeli’s father had recently been murdered by unknown assailants, leaving her mother desperate to fend for the family.

Arranged marriages are often seen as the only way out, as otherwise “the girls are condemned to live in these deplorable conditions,” he said.

A recent report by Spanish newspaper El Pais indicated that “thousands” of underage girls across Mexico are sold into forced marriages each year. Because the girls are then forced into hard labor and unwanted pregnancies, El Pais likened the practice to that of “slavery.” One infamous case that came to light earlier this year involved a woman who had been bought from her own father for a single bottle of mescal when she was a girl of 10.

Inside America’s Sickening Forced-Marriage Epidemic

Vitinio, who often provides legal advice to the victims of forced marriages in Guerrero along with the Tlachinollan Center, said that in many cases the underage girls “see it as something very normal and say that they know that at a certain age their parents are going to deliver them to someone.”

Largely rural, poor, and home to several diverse indigenous populations, Guerrero is one of the nation’s leading states for the sale of child brides, along with neighboring Michoacán and Oaxaca. During a stop in the mountains of Guerrero last October, not far from Anayeli’s home in Joya Real, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador drew fire for choosing to downplay the issue.

“I’m not here to look at that because it’s not the rule,” Obrador said. “There are a lot of moral, cultural and spiritual values in the [indigenous] communities. [Buying child brides] might be the exception, but it’s not the rule.”

Groups like the Network for Children’s Rights in Mexico promptly lambasted the president for “disregarding” the country’s “child trafficking problem, including the sale of young girls,” according to Mexico News Daily.

[T]he President is irresponsible in wanting to hide such a serious problem that is occurring in indigenous and rural areas, he does not recognize and wants to minimize the problem,” said women’s rights defender Aguilar. She sees Obrador’s dismissive attitude as setting a dangerous precedent of tolerance and looking the other way, which will be picked up on and emulated at the state and local level.

“I think that his opinion is misogynistic and sexist,” said Aguilar, who accused the president of “not caring what happens to this vulnerable group, because they are minors, because they are indigenous and rural, because they are poor, and because they are marginalized populations.”

Vintinio agreed, saying instead of trivializing the problem, the president should be “looking for strategies to end the practice of forced marriages.”

But there are signs that today’s generation of girls and young women might not be waiting on outside help from a disinterested president. That they might be fed up with the customs and traditions and patriarchal demands that cause them to be sold into marriage, and ready to take action themselves.

Days before Obrador made his inflammatory speech in Guerrero, headlines across the country carried the story of another girl from Guerrero who had been sold into marriage at 15. Like Anayeli, this victim was also imprisoned by the Community Police of her village after fleeing from her new husband’s home after her father-in-law tried to rape her. As was the case with the two minors in Joya Real, this girl was also placed in a protection program with the DIF.

Tlachinollan’s Barrera said that while some girls are still “forced to obey” their parents and submit to being sold, the tide might be changing—and that Anayeli’s own escape had been inspired by this new trend.

“There are beginning to be cases now in which the girls, because they don’t love the men, are making decisions not to marry them.” The word is spreading and fast enough, Barrera said, “that it had reached Anayeli’s ears.”

Jeff Bezos donates over $400 million to help save the planet he blasted off from just months ago

Ayelet Sheffey

Mon, December 6, 2021

Jeff Bezos laughs as he speaks about his flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepard into space during a press conference on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas.Joe Raedle/Getty Images

• Jeff Bezos' Earth Fund donated $443 million to 44 climate groups on Monday.

• This is part of his commitment to spend $10 billion by 2030 to fight the climate crisis.

• Bezos recently used his fortune to send himself to space and has been criticized for focusing too much on space travel.

Jeff Bezos left his fellow humans on Earth for about 15 minutes in July when he shot himself up to the edge of space. But that doesn't mean he's leaving his home planet behind.

On Monday, the founder of Amazon announced a $443 million donation to organizations focused on climate justice, nature conservation, and tracking climate goals. Bezos' organization, the Bezos Earth Fund, wrote in a press release that it awarded 44 grants to organizations that fit that criteria, including $140 million to President Joe Biden's Justice40 initiative, which helps fight climate change in disadvantaged communities, along with $51 million to support land restoration in the US and Africa.

These grants are part of Bezos' $10 billion commitment to his Earth Fund to fight climate change — funds of which he promised would be fully disbursed by 2030.

"The goal of the Bezos Earth Fund is to support change agents who are seizing the challenges that this decisive decade presents," Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund, said in a statement. "Through these grants, we are advancing climate justice and the protection of nature, two areas that demand stronger action."

As the world's second richest person, Bezos has been using his money to not only fight the climate crisis — his fund gave $791 million to 16 climate organizations last year — but to venture into space. On July 20, Bezos boarded a rocket made by his aerospace company Blue Origin and spent about three minutes in outer space — a form of travel, and way of life, he anticipates will become the norm.

"Over centuries, many people will be born in space. It will be their first home," Bezos said during a recent conference. "They will be born on these colonies, live on these colonies. Then, they'll visit Earth the way you would visit, you know, Yellowstone National Park."

After his space flight, Bezos also expressed the need to preserve the Earth and move the "polluting industry to space," adding that his quick trip "reinforces my commitment to climate change, to the environment."

"We live on this beautiful planet. You can't imagine how thin the atmosphere is when you see it from space," Bezos said in July. "We live in it, and it looks so big. It feels like, you know, this atmosphere is huge and we can disregard it and treat it poorly. When you get up there and you see it, you see how tiny it is and how fragile it is."

The billionaire has been criticized for focusing too much on outer space when there are many pressing problems down here on Earth. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, recently criticized Bezos for his fixation on space travel while managing to avoid paying his fair share in taxes.

"The richest guy on Earth can launch himself into space while over half the country lives paycheck to paycheck, nearly 43 million are saddled with student debt, and child care costs force millions out of work," Warren tweeted. "He can afford to pitch in so everyone else gets a chance."

But Bezos responded to claims he doesn't focus enough on pressing issues on Earth, saying at the same conference that those critics miss the fact that "we need to do both, and that the two things are deeply connected."

 

CANADIANS JONI MITCHELL & LORNE MICHAELS HONOURED

Joe Biden Helps Kennedy Center Honors Return To Tradition During A Weekend Of Politicos, Performers And Proof Of Vaccination

Ted Johnson
Mon, December 6, 2021


UPDATED, with additional quotes: David Letterman opened Sunday night’s Kennedy Center Honors by telling the audience in the Opera House, “Tonight, it is quite nice, very nice, to see the presidential box once again being occupied.”

The crowd cheered and then gave President Joe Biden a standing ovation, after which Letterman quipped, “The same with the Oval Office.”

White House Correspondents' Association Plans Return Of Annual Dinner In 2022

2021 Kennedy Center honorees, from left, Justino Díaz, Lorne Michaels, Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler, and Berry Gordy pose following the Medallion Ceremony for the 44th annual Kennedy Center Honors on Saturday. - Credit: (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

The ceremony marked a return to the large-scale, lavish gala of tradition, as Covid-19 forced last year’s ceremony to be postponed and later scaled back. But it also was the return of the presidential seal of approval, after four years in which President Donald Trump did not attend or host a pre-ceremony reception at the White House.

Instead, Biden and First Lady Jill Biden hosted honorees Justino Diaz, Berry Gordy, Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler and Lorne Michaels for an event in the East Room before the ceremony. The president gave Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live, a little ribbing, “He’s trying out seven guys to play me.”

He added, “If you can’t laugh at yourself, we’re in real trouble. And you make me laugh at myself a lot.” (Trump, by contrast, railed on Twitter over Alec Baldwin’s portrayal).

Then Biden introduced Steve Martin, sitting in the crowd, who quipped, “Do you want me to play you?”

“Steve, I’m afraid that you understand me too well,” Biden said.

The ceremony itself, to be broadcast later this month on CBS, again featured moving tributes to the honorees from friends and admirers, but also one of the plum see-and-be-seen A-list social events of the year for D.C. Things weren’t entirely normal, as most attendees were vigilant about wearing a mask and other requirements.

David Rubenstein, the chairman of the Kennedy Center, drew cheers when he said on stage to the audience, “How does it feel to be in a room where everyone is vaccinated and tested?”

Sitting near the Bidens were Vice President Kamala Harris and First Gentleman Doug Emhoff, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chief Justice John Roberts and Secretary of State Tony Blinken. Shari Redstone was spotted during the National Anthem between Emhoff and Pelosi, and nearby were other figures like Bob Bakish and Steve Schwartzman. Joe Manchin, who was a visible presence in the scaled back Kennedy Center Honors last spring, made a return visit, along with a slew of other Democrats. There was a sprinkling of Republicans — including Newt and Callista Gingrich, former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) — but Letterman perhaps said it best when he told the crowd, “This night is about the honorees whose unique gifts cross all boundaries and represent all parties from the left to the far left.”

President Joe Biden looks at actor Steve Martin, standing right, a he speaks during the Kennedy Center Honorees Reception at the White House. - Credit: (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

The ceremony has shades of the Grammys, the Tonys, the Oscars, The Emmys and This Is Your Life.

Chita Rivera honored Diaz and noted that the opera legend has “a secret fondness for singing disco.” Grace Brumbry said that Diaz “was that rare combination of an opera singer who is also an extraordinary actor.” Christian Van Horn, Denyce Graves, Ariana Wehr, Hannah Shea, Ana Maria Martinez and Matthew Polenzani performed selections from some of Diaz’s best known performances.

For the tribute to Mitchell, Norah Jones performed A Case of You and other works, Ellie Goulding sang Big Yellow Taxi and Brandi Carlile performed River, and Brittany Howard finished up the set with Both Sides Now accompanied by Herbie Hancock.

Goldie Hawn, Scarlett Johansson, Melissa Manchester and the cast of Hello, Dolly! paid tribute to Midler, with Beanie Feldstein, Kate Baldwin and Taylor Trensch performing Friends and Kelli O’Hara singing Wind Beneath My Wings. Billy Porter got an ovation for a medley of Midler’s hits, finishing with From a Distance. Barbara Hershey said that she became lifelong friends with Midler when they made Beaches. She said that when they get together they are recognized and she has to tell people, “Yes, it’s us. Yes, we are actually friends. Yes, I’m still alive.”

Michaels’ tribute was highlighted by Paul Simon singing America, and by three different on-stage versions of Weekend Update: first one anchored by Kevin Nealon, followed by Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers, and then Colin Jost and Michael Che. One of the clip packages was devoted to the political figures spoofed on the show, although left out Baldwin and his spoof of Trump. There weren’t any mentions of the 45th president, for that matter.

Others giving testimonials for Michaels: Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson, Kenan Thompson and Jimmy Fallon.

The tributes turned into a roast at points, from cast members past and present, along with multiple host Martin, who said, “Even after 45 years of producing the show, Lorne still has a dream about Saturday Night Live. That is to get two laughs in a row.”

The tribute to Motown founder Gordy featured Smokey Robinson, Andra Day and the cast of Ain’t Too Proud: The Life And Times of the Temptations. Although Stevie Wonder, with the finale, called a brief halt to reset the production (he even sang words of assurance, “We’re getting this right,” as the audience waited). The delay was worth it: Superstition, followed by the capper, Higher Ground.

The Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss production will at at 9 PM ET on CBS.

On the red carpet, Midler told reporters that her cream-colored dress was “federal,” in honor of the nation’s capital. Asked what she thought of her White House experience, she said, “Very clean. Lovely. Great staff. The food was excellent. The wine was a little sweet.” Then she got a tad more serious. She described Biden as “so kind and so generous. He was obviously so happy to be there. The vice president and her husband were there, and that was very moving, although with masks I couldn’t tell you who was who.”

Diaz, wearing an inverness cape, explained to Midler that Leonard Bernstein “had one just like it.” He then gave Midler and kiss and said, “I love you.” Diaz performed Ginastera’s Beatrix Cenci at the Kennedy Center in its inaugural year.

Gordy may have been the most ebullient of the honorees who walked the carpet, as he was joined by Robinson, a longtime friend. “It’s like a fairly tale, you know? All of the stuff I wished for as a kid.” Asked how he went from a boxer to a music career, he said, “I wanted to be like Sugar Ray Robinson. I wanted to be a great fighter. He was so good because I wanted to hit and not be hit. But music took over … and music won out.”

The Kennedy Center Honors is officially apolitical, but when the first set of honorees were announced during Trump’s term, in 2017, Norman Lear and others announced that they would not attend the White House ceremony. Trump then announced that he would not go to the ceremony at all, and he never did.

Saturday Night Live member Colin Jost, right, and Scarlett Johansson pose on the red carpet at the 44th Annual Kennedy Center Honors. - Credit: (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Still, on Sunday night, some attendees didn’t shy from the political fray. Robinson, who once said that Republicans needed to stand up to Trump, said that hasn’t happened. Judy Collins lamented the potential demise of the Supreme Court’s Roe Vs. Wade decision.

As Biden ribbed Michaels over the show’s portrayal of him, a number of the politicos also were queried about their SNL characterizations. That made this ceremony a bit more unique than others, what with the interaction of real life vs. satire.

As Davidson put it during the ceremony, “Basically if you are in politics and you have screwed up, we’ve got someone who looks and sounds like you and you are going to be on the show. And if you screwed up and we don’t have someone who looks or sounds just like you, I get to play you.”

Manchin told Deadline that he wasn’t a fan of Aidy Bryant’s take on him in a skit earlier this season. “Awful,” he said. Asked about the show’s portrayals of her, Pelosi said, “Just as long as it’s funny. If it’s not funny, well…”

Asked what the night meant given that Trump avoided the ceremony for four years, Pelosi told Deadline, “Let’s not worry about that. Let’s move forward in a center named for a great president, in a theater in here named for President Eisenhower, and tonight we will be honored by the presidency of Joe Biden.”

All-day alligator hunting proposed in Florida. The price? Rotting carcasses, irritated tour operators



David Fleshler, South Florida Sun Sentinel
Mon, December 6, 2021

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida has 24-hour restaurants and 24-hour gyms. Why not 24-hour alligator hunting?

The state wildlife commission has proposed adding seven daylight hours to the annual public alligator hunt, which typically takes place at night, making the activity a 24-hour-day experience.

Many hunters support the idea, since it would give them more options and take away the pressure to finish by 10 a.m., especially if they’re on the verge of nabbing a trophy-sized gator.

But some airboat tour operators say daytime hunting could scare away the very animals their clients are most eager to see. And alligator processors, who transform the dead reptiles into useable meat and hides, are not enchanted at the idea of receiving carcasses that have been baking in the sun.

“My biggest concern is people bringing spoiled alligators,” said Grayson Padrick, owner of Central Florida Trophy Hunts, whose Cocoa plant processes about 1,200 alligators a year, one of three processors who expressed concern about the idea. “Currently we see quite a bit of spoilage from the daytime hunting as it is. The skin starts slipping. You can take your hand and wipe them down the alligator and the scales will literally peal off in your hand.”

Alligators, one of the original members of the endangered species list, recovered so robustly that hunting was reopened on them in Florida in 1988. Florida is home to an estimated 1.3 million alligators.

Last year hunters killed 8,216 alligators in Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The average length was about 8 feet, although seven came in at 13 feet or more and one topped 14 feet. The Florida record is a 14-foot, 3 1/2-inch male taken in Lake Washington in Brevard County.

At a meeting held by the wildlife agency Thursday evening in Moore Haven, near the western shore of Lake Okeechobee, only three hunters showed up to discuss the proposal. All three supported it.

“I think the 24-hour hunting is a big plus,” said Stephen Greep, a Fort Lauderdale hunting guide.

He said it can be difficult for his clients to fit a nighttime hunt into their schedules and that stormy weather can ruin their plans if hunting is restricted to certain hours.

“We have the afternoon thunderstorms that blow us off the lake at 5 p.m. till 11 o’clock sometimes,” he said. “There’s a lot of time, money and planning that goes into it, taking time off for that week.”

Jim Simon, of Moore Haven, who once got a 13-foot, 4-inch alligator on Lake Okeechobee, said, “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to hunt them all day long.”

Alligators have typically been hunted at night, when they’re more active and can be found with a spotlight by their red eyeshine. Hunters catch them with methods such as harpoons, fishing rods, spearguns and crossbows. Once they catch the alligator, they kill it with a bang stick, a pole that discharges a shotgun shell or high-caliber bullet on contact.

Alligators are a prime attraction for tourists exploring Florida’s interior, with visitors feeling they haven’t quite enjoyed the full experience without encountering the state’s most famous reptile.

“My people want to see alligators,” said Capt. Kenny Elkins, of Okeechobee Airboat & Eco Tours, who says his pre-COVID clients came from all over the United States and many foreign countries. “During the hunting season, they get very difficult to see.”

He opposes the extension of hunting hours.

“I don’t understand why they would want to do it,” he said. “To me, the alligators are more important to see than to kill. The alligator is worth more alive than he is dead.”

The state wildlife commission has set up an online information site on the proposal, with opportunities for the public to comment. If the proposal goes through intact, it will go in March for approval by the wildlife commission, a seven-member board appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

More than 80% of respondents to an online survey found a 24-hour alligator “very acceptable” or “extremely acceptable,” said Tammy Sapp, spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Brooke Talley, coordinator of the state’s alligator management program, said the extension of hunting hours would provide more flexibility.

“People will have more opportunity within their schedules to get out on the water,” she said. “That’s what we heard people tell us — I want to get out more, I work nights, I can’t get out at night. By allowing hunting during the day, we might be appealing to people who may not be as comfortable hunting at night, maybe the youth hunters. So there’s a lot of benefits to 24-hour hunting.”

Myanmar's process against Suu Kyi has low credibility - Nobel Peace Prize chair


The World Food Program is announced as Nobel Peace Prize laureate by Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Nobel Committee in Oslo

Mon, December 6, 2021
By Gwladys Fouche

OSLO (Reuters) - Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's conviction by a Myanmar court is part of a process whereby the country's military rulers are suppressing the opposition, the chair of Norway's prize awards committee said on Monday.

"The legal process against Aung San Suu Kyi appears to have low credibility," Berit Reiss-Andersen said in a statement to Reuters.

Suu Kyi, who is now 76, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 while under house arrest in recognition of her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights. She was arrested again this year following a military coup against her government.

A Myanmar court on Monday found the deposed leader guilty of charges of incitement and breaching coronavirus restrictions, and state TV said she will serve two years in detention at an undisclosed location.

"Aung San Suu Kyi has dedicated her life to the fight for freedom and democracy in Myanmar and has faced this demanding situation for more than 30 years," Reiss-Andersen said.

"The Nobel committee is worried by what her imprisonment will mean for the future of democracy in Myanmar. It is also concerned for the strains a long prison term could impose on Aung San Suu Kyi personally," she added.

(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, writing by Terje Solsvik, Editing by Catherine Evans and Angus MacSwan)

The trials of Aung San Suu Kyi, from heroine to villain to convict


Protest against the military coup in Yangon

Mon, December 6, 2021

(Reuters) - Put on trial by the generals who overthrew her elected government in a coup that cut short democratic reforms she had fought for decades to bring about, Myanmar's ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced on Monday to four years in prison.

The 76-year-old's sentence was later reduced to two years' detention in an undisclosed location after she was convicted of incitement and violations of a law on natural disasters in the first verdicts in more than a dozen criminal cases filed against her since the Feb. 1 military takeover.

Just 14 months before the coup, she had travelled to the U.N. International Court of Justice in the Hague to defend those same generals against charges of genocide over a 2017 military offensive that drove ethnic Rohingya Muslims out of Myanmar.


Suu Kyi's long struggle for democracy made her a heroine in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar, and the mostly Western criticism she faced over the plight of the Rohingya had no negative impact on her popularity at home.

Known as "the Lady", Suu Kyi had fulfilled the dreams of millions when her party first won a landslide election in 2015 that established Myanmar's first civilian government in half a century.

She spent 15 years under house arrest in the struggle for democracy, but her administration had to cohabit with the generals who retained control of defence and security.

That hybrid government failed to unite Myanmar's many ethnic groups or end its decades-long civil wars, and Suu Kyi also oversaw tightening restrictions on the press and civil society while falling out with some former allies.

But her second election victory in November unnerved the military - and it seized power on Feb. 1, alleging voter fraud by her National League for Democracy party despite rejection of the army's claims by the election commission and monitors.

The first criminal cases filed against Suu Kyi included breaching coronavirus restrictions and possession of unlicensed walkie-talkies.

More serious charges were to follow, including incitement, corruption and breaching the Official Secrets Act. She now faces a dozen cases with combined maximum sentences of more 100 years.

Protesters have taken to the streets in her name, calling for the release of "Mother Suu" despite hundreds of killings and thousands of detentions since the coup.

LADY BY THE LAKE

The daughter of independence hero Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947 when she was 2 years old, Suu Kyi spent much of her young life overseas. She attended Oxford University, met her husband, the British academic Michael Aris, and had two sons.

Before they married, she asked Aris to promise he would not stop her if she needed to return home. In 1988, she got the phone call that changed their lives: her mother was dying.

In the capital Yangon, then known as Rangoon, she was swept up in a student-led revolution against the then junta that had plunged the country into a ruinous isolation.

An eloquent public speaker, Suu Kyi became the leader of the new movement, quoting her father’s dream to "build up a free Burma".

The revolution was crushed, its leaders killed and jailed, and Suu Kyi was confined to her lakeside home. Speaking her name in public could earn her supporters a prison sentence, so they called her "the Lady".

Slightly built and soft-spoken, she played a crucial role in keeping world attention on Myanmar’s junta and its human rights record, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

Aris died in 1997, but she did not attend his funeral, fearful she would not be allowed to return.

During a brief release from house arrest in 1998 she attempted to travel outside Yangon to visit supporters and was blocked by the army. She sat inside her van for several days and nights, despite dehydration in the sweltering heat, and was said to have caught rainwater in an open umbrella.

She survived an assassination attempt in 2003 when pro-military men wielding spikes and rods attacked a convoy she was travelling in, killing and wounding some of her supporters.

The army again placed her under house arrest and from behind the gates, she gave weekly addresses to supporters, standing on rickety tables and talking about democracy under the watchful eyes of police.

A devout Buddhist, she sometimes spoke of her struggle in spiritual terms.

In 2010, the military began a series of democratic reforms and Suu Kyi was released before thousands of weeping, cheering supporters.

In the West, she was feted. Barack Obama became the first U.S president to visit Myanmar in 2012, calling her an "inspiration to people all around the world, including myself". U.S economic sanctions on Myanmar were eased, though Suu Kyi remained cautious about the extent of reforms.

But the Western optimism generated by Suu Kyi's 2015 election win evaporated two years later, when Rohingya militants attacked security forces and the military responded with an offensive that eventually expelled more than 730,000 Rohingya from Myanmar.

U.N. investigators in an August 2018 report said the Myanmar military had carried out killings and mass rape.

In December 2019, Suu Kyi defended the military operation before the U.N. International Court of Justice, describing it as a counterterrorism response and asking the court to dismiss a genocide accusation brought by Gambia.

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Angus MacSwan)

Automating the War on Noise Pollution

To reduce noise, cities need new sensor technology that can tell the difference between a dog barking, a garbage truck and a revving motorcycle engine.


A sensor deployed by researchers measures noise levels and collects data to train an AI model to automatically recognize the origin of the sound.
Courtesy of SONYC/Charlie Mydlarz

By Linda Poon 
December 2, 2021, 
Linda Poon is a writer for CityLab in Washington, D.C., focused on climate change and urban life. She also writes the CityLab Daily newsletter.@linpoonsays

Any city dweller is no stranger to the frequent revving of motorbikes and car engines, made all the more intolerable after the months of silence during pandemic lockdowns. Some cities have decided to take action.

Paris police set up an anti-noise patrol in 2020 to ticket motorists whose vehicles exceed a certain decibel level, and soon, the city will start piloting the use of noise sensors in two neighborhoods. Called Medusa, each device uses four microphones to detect and measure noise levels, and two cameras to help authorities track down the culprit. No decibel threshold or fines will be set during the three-month trial period, according to French newspaper Liberation, but it’ll test the potentials and limits of automating the war on sound pollution.

Cities like Toronto and Philadelphia are also considering deploying similar tools. By now, research has been mounting about the health effects of continuous noise exposure, including links to high blood pressure and heart disease, and to poor mental health. And for years, many cities have been tackling noise through ordinances and urban design, including various bans on leaf blowers, on construction at certain hours and on cars. Some have even hired “night mayors” to, among other things, address complaints about after-hours noise.

But enforcement, even with the help of simple camera-and-noise radars, has been a challenge. Since 2018, the Canadian city of Edmonton has been piloting the use of four radars attached to light poles at busy intersections in the downtown area. A 2021 report on the second phase of the project completed in 2020, found that officials had to manually sift through the data to take out noise made by, say, sirens. And the recordings didn’t always provide strong enough evidence against the offender in court. It was also costly: The pilot cost taxpayers $192,000, while fines generated a little more than half that amount, according to CTV News Edmonton.


Those obstacles have made noise pollution an increasingly popular target for smart city innovation, with companies and researchers looking to make environmental monitoring systems do more than just measure decibel levels.

A sensor deployed by researchers behind SONYC.
Courtesy of SONYC/Charlie Mydlarz

In one of the noisiest cities in the U.S., a group of researchers at New York University have been studying New York’s sound environment since 2016 in hopes of developing a network of smarter sensors. That is, sensors that use machine learning to help city officials not only better address 311 complaints about noise, but proactively set targeted policies to minimize the activity from which they originate.

“As the current tool to understand noise, 311 is totally flawed because it's a very reactive way of dealing with noise,” says Charlie Mydlarz, a senior audio researcher who’s part of the SONYC (Sounds of NYC) project funded by the National Science Foundation. “There has to be a noise problem for someone to pick up the phone to actually log a noise complaint.” The process is not only slow and limited by staffing resources of the city, he adds, but it’s also not representative of the city’s population, with complaints largely coming from wealthier neighborhoods.


A network of nearly 100 sensors has gathered “hundreds of millions of rows” of anonymized data from around the city — including audio snippets and data on decibel levels that will help the team understand noise patterns, how loud the city is in certain areas and how they vary over time, Mydlarz says. More than 2,800 citizen volunteers recently helped identify and label a subset of the audio snippets, which is used to train a machine learning model to automatically distinguish the nature of the various noises. Mydlarz adds that the samples have been randomized and broken up to preserve privacy, and that it’s unlikely for the sensors to pick up intelligible conversations from where they were placed — usually high off the ground.

Now in its second phase, the team is working with the city’s Department of Environmental Protection to trial a network of roughly 30 low-cost sensors deployed in residential neighborhoods and mounted to the homes of residents who’ve complained to the DEP about chronic noise issues. The sensors can stream real-time data on decibel levels in the neighborhood and source identification of noise disturbance to the department, which will help them better distribute and lead to a more immediate response time.

They can give the city concrete data to propose changes in regulation to, say, construction permits, if they detect a pattern among the noise violations. Mydlarz says their project has already proved useful in the Red Hook community of Brooklyn, where the waterfront has seen an influx of warehouses thanks to the e-commerce boom. Residents say trucks often pass through residential neighborhoods, clogging up streets and generating excessive amounts of noise.

“Our sensors were being used to generate data that then is used to convince the city agencies to reroute trucking away from residential areas,” says Mydlarz. The data illustrated just how loud the trucks are, and on Oct. 29 last year, the community board unanimously supported a resolution asking the city department of transportation to consider such changes.

As for residents, the noise monitoring network comes with an app that also provides context about the noise they’re hearing — if there is a permit for a construction project nearby, for example. The researchers are currently looking for more volunteers so they can deploy more sensors. (Mydlarz says they would ideally like to mount sensors on light poles and other city infrastructure, but are limited by which city agencies they’re able to partner with.)

The hope is to generate more support from both city officials and residents. “What we want to do is to show them the loop,” he adds, “meaning you deploy a sensor, you see the data, the DEP enforces [the noise code], and measure the impact of that enforcement.”

Paris is already deploying a similar strategy. Medusa, the type of sensors that the city will be using, was developed by the local environmental noise monitoring nonprofit Bruitparif. First tested in 2019 near busy bars and construction sites in the suburbs outside Paris, the sensors measure decibel levels several times per second. Images captured on camera combined with the nonprofit’s own technology displays the sound snippets as colored dots representing different noise levels, essentially allowing officials to “see” noise traveling from its source.

Like SONYC, Medusa aims to add crucial information to noise disturbance in hopes of answering a question that’s far more complex than it initially seems: “Where does the dominant noise come from?”

Shaanxi China January 23 1556

Last Updated on Mon, 06 Dec 2021 | Plate Tectonics

The deadliest earthquake and mass-wasting event on record occurred in 1556 in the central Chinese province of shaanxi. Most of the 830,000 deaths from this earthquake resulted from landslides and the collapse of homes built into loess, a deposit of wind-blown dust that covers much of central China. The loess represents the fine-grained soil eroded from the Gobi desert to the north and west and deposited by wind on the great loess plateau of central China. Thus, this disaster was triggered by an earthquake but mass-wasting processes were actually responsible for most of the casualties.

The earthquake that triggered this disaster on the morning of January 23, 1556, leveled a 520-mile-wide area and caused significant damage across 97 counties in the provinces of shaanxi, shanxi, Henan,

Hebei, hubei, shandong, Gansu, Jiangsu, and Anhui. sixty percent of the population was killed in some counties. There were no modern seismic instruments at the time, but seismologists estimate that the earthquake had a magnitude of 8 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter near Mount Hua in Hua County in shaanxi.

The reason for the unusually high death toll in this earthquake is that most people in the region at the time lived in homes carved out of the soft loess, or silty soil. People in the region would carve homes, called Yaodongs, out of the soft loess, benefit from the cool summer temperatures and moderate winter temperatures of the soil, and also have an escape from the sun and blowing dust that characterizes the loess plateau. The shaking from the magnitude 8 earthquake caused huge numbers of these Yaodongs to collapse, trapping the residents inside. Landslides raced down steep loess-covered slopes, and the long shaking caused the yaodongs even in flat areas to collapse.

Time tends to make people forget about risks associated with natural hazards. For events that occur only every couple of hundred years, several generations may pass between catastrophic events, and each generation remembers less about the risks than the previous generation. This character of human nature was unfortunately illustrated by another earthquake in central China, nearly 400 years later. In 1920, a large earthquake in Haiyuan, in the Ningxia Authority of northern Shaanxi Province, caused about 675 major landslides in deposits of loess, killing another 100,000-200,000 people. Further south in 2008, the May 12 magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Sichuan Province similarly initiated massive landslides that killed an estimated 87,587 people.