Investors push world's top chemicals companies over hazardous substances
Simon Jessop
Mon, December 13, 2021, 12:00 AM·3 min read
* 23 investors with $4.1 trln write to 50 companies
* Call for transparency on volumes, phase-out plan
* Comes ahead of tougher rules, threat of clean-up costs
LONDON, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Investors managing $4.1 trillion in assets are urging the world's biggest chemicals companies to phase out production of hazardous substances which linger in the environment and have been linked to serious health problems.
The move by 23 investors including Aviva Investors and Storebrand comes as regulators toughen rules around their use and as analysts warn some companies could face billions of dollars in associated clean-up and compensation costs.
In a letter to the world's 50-biggest chemical producers with combined revenues of $860 billion the investors call for increased transparency around how many "substances of very high concern" they produce every year.
Whilst U.S. and European regulators have disclosure requirements on hazardous chemicals, many other countries do not, and information on the volumes produced globally are not publically available.
To help investors, companies should also share the data with the non-profit International Chemical Secretariat (ICS), which advocates for a shift to safer chemicals and tracks the performance of leading producers, the letter seen by Reuters said.
"We believe sustainable management of chemicals is key to financial outperformance," Eugenie Mathieu, senior analyst at Aviva Investors, told Reuters, citing the example of litigation tied to PFAS or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, used in applications such as lubrication and industrial coatings.
So-called "persistent chemicals" such as PFAS - which degrade slowly and are linked to a range of illnesses after getting into local water supplies - have already led to payouts from companies including 3M https://www.reuters.com/business/3m-agrees-pay-98-mln-resolve-suits-over-forever-chemicals-2021-10-19 , and more cases are pending.
POTENTIAL COSTS
"In recent years the financial implications for (a) company's liability for past and current production of pollution of persistent chemicals, especially PFAS, have been clear," she added, citing one analyst's estimate of potential costs in the United States of between $25 billion and $40 billion.
A spokesperson for 3M, one of the companies to receive the letter, said the company was committed to environmental stewardship, adding: "We welcome the opportunity to engage with investors and other stakeholders regarding this topic".
Belgian company Umicore said it had engaged with ICS over the group's ChemScore questionnaire in October and complies with relevant legislation where it makes, imports or sells its products, using a "risk-based" approach to chemicals management.
Given the growing regulatory and litigation concerns, the investors said they wanted to see all companies make a time-linked commitment to phase out production of the chemicals, focusing first on persistent chemicals.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year laid out a plan to toughen rules https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-administration-moves-curtail-toxic-forever-chemicals-report-2021-10-18 for persistent chemicals, while the European Union is also looking to tighten legislation https://eur-lex.europa.eu/procedure/EN/2021_340 and incentivise a transition towards less hazardous materials.
Lastly, the investors said companies should set out plans to develop products that can be reused as part of a "circular economy", or which allow customers to design products that can be used in such a way - a key focus of EU lawmakers https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-economy-circular-idUSKBN20C2CU
"The chemical industry sits at the start of the supply chain so has a role to play in driving the circular economy forward," the letter said, citing examples such as using waste or bio-based material as feedstocks. (Additional reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by David Holmes)
Monday, December 13, 2021
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
French court set to rule on record UBS fine
Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi
Mon, December 13, 2021
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss bank UBS is seen in Zurich
ZURICH (Reuters) - French judges are set to rule on Monday on whether to overturn a record 4.5 billion euro ($5.1 billion) fine against Swiss bank UBS for allegedly helping wealthy clients stash undeclared assets offshore.
The case is being watched by banks to see if it signals a toughening European stance. Fines in Europe for tax-related and other offences have in the past been smaller than in the United States, but the size of the UBS penalty has proved an exception.
The Paris appeals court is set to rule on whether to confirm or adjust the penalty against Switzerland's largest lender, which was imposed after an initial trial in 2019.
UBS appealed against the verdict that found it guilty of illegally soliciting clients at sporting events and parties in France, and laundering the proceeds of tax evasion.
Lawyers for UBS argued in the appeals trial that, despite whistleblowers coming forward, investigators had never found clear evidence of systematic attempts to canvass French customers by UBS commercial specialists.
The bank wants the allegations thrown out. It has also said the fine imposed was disproportionate.
Prosecutors in the appeals trial said they would seek a fine of at least 2 billion euros, while the French state is looking for 1 billion euros in damages - bringing total penalties to closer to 3 billion euros.
The bank has set aside 450 million euros to cover for any penalty in the case.
The appeals court ruling was delayed from September due to the ill health of one of the magistrates. Any verdict in the case can be further appealed to France's Supreme Court.
The French case involved an unusually high fine for Europe. By comparison, UBS settled a Belgian tax evasion case in November involving a penalty of 49 million euros.
The 2019 UBS case in France also resulted in Swiss judges setting a precedent for foreign governments seeking information from Swiss banks, although they said such information was limited to pursuing tax evaders and not to be used against the bank itself.
($1 = 0.8866 euros)
(Editing by Edmund Blair)
French court set to rule on record UBS fine
Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi
Mon, December 13, 2021
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss bank UBS is seen in Zurich
ZURICH (Reuters) - French judges are set to rule on Monday on whether to overturn a record 4.5 billion euro ($5.1 billion) fine against Swiss bank UBS for allegedly helping wealthy clients stash undeclared assets offshore.
The case is being watched by banks to see if it signals a toughening European stance. Fines in Europe for tax-related and other offences have in the past been smaller than in the United States, but the size of the UBS penalty has proved an exception.
The Paris appeals court is set to rule on whether to confirm or adjust the penalty against Switzerland's largest lender, which was imposed after an initial trial in 2019.
UBS appealed against the verdict that found it guilty of illegally soliciting clients at sporting events and parties in France, and laundering the proceeds of tax evasion.
Lawyers for UBS argued in the appeals trial that, despite whistleblowers coming forward, investigators had never found clear evidence of systematic attempts to canvass French customers by UBS commercial specialists.
The bank wants the allegations thrown out. It has also said the fine imposed was disproportionate.
Prosecutors in the appeals trial said they would seek a fine of at least 2 billion euros, while the French state is looking for 1 billion euros in damages - bringing total penalties to closer to 3 billion euros.
The bank has set aside 450 million euros to cover for any penalty in the case.
The appeals court ruling was delayed from September due to the ill health of one of the magistrates. Any verdict in the case can be further appealed to France's Supreme Court.
The French case involved an unusually high fine for Europe. By comparison, UBS settled a Belgian tax evasion case in November involving a penalty of 49 million euros.
The 2019 UBS case in France also resulted in Swiss judges setting a precedent for foreign governments seeking information from Swiss banks, although they said such information was limited to pursuing tax evaders and not to be used against the bank itself.
($1 = 0.8866 euros)
(Editing by Edmund Blair)
CHINA'S CAPITALI$T CRISIS
Abandoned Projects Shatter Confidence in China’s Housing Market
Bloomberg News
Sun, December 12, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Construction cranes stand idle in China’s Yunnan Province, on the easternmost edge of the Himalayas. Building has ground to a halt on Hainan, off the coast of Vietnam, and up in Heilongjiang, along the Russian border.
Across China, tens of millions of square feet of unfinished apartment buildings -- the legacy of a real estate boom gone awry in 2021 -- are derailing countless dreams of owning a home.
In a country where private homeownership was only legalized two decades ago, ordinary Chinese are discovering how quickly fortunes can turn in the housing market. Creeping price declines and plummeting sales in recent months have called into question the way freewheeling property developers have financed, built and marketed homes to the masses.
No developer encapsulates the running travails quite like China Evergrande Group, the giant conglomerate that’s now in default and groaning under more than $300 billion in liabilities. But many smaller developers also followed Evergrande’s familiar strategy: borrow heavily, build aggressively -- and make buyers pay in full upfront, sometimes before ground is even broken. Until the bottom fell out, nearly nine out of every 10 homes in China were “pre-sold,” according to Hongta Securities Co. Buyer protections commonly used abroad, such as escrow accounts and installment payments, have tended to be weak.
The result is a mirror image of the 2008 subprime fiasco. Back then, in the U.S., it was homebuyers who got in over their heads. This time, in China, it’s builders. President Xi Jinping wants to crack down on what he sees as debt-fueled excess in the real estate industry without hurting the many millions who’ve scrimped and saved to buy homes. City dwellers tend to have roughly 80% of their assets tied up in housing.
Gary Chen is one of the 1.6 million Evergrande customers who’s waiting for his home to be finished. In 2019, Chen plowed the equivalent of $55,000 -- 13 years of savings, he says -- into a three-bedroom apartment in the Jiu Long Bay area of Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan. Two years later, construction is stalled. Dozens of cranes loomed beside the unfinished tower block, Chen said last month. The shallow foundations were soaked with water. Some 4,000 units remained unfinished.
“It never occurred to me that things would go wrong for a developer of this scale,” says Chen, 33, who declined to reveal his job.
Like Chen, most buyers simply thought they’d get what they’d paid for. Evergrande Chairman Hui Ka Yan has pledged publicly to complete projects. But as of mid-November, building sites covering 49 million square meters (572 million square feet) remained idle, according to a report by local media Caixin. That’s the equivalent of roughly 40% of all Evergrande projects that were underway at the end of 2020, before trouble hit.
It’s not just Evergrande’s customers that are in limbo. At Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd., some buyers are still waiting to receive apartments bought five years ago, according to state broadcaster CCTV. And at Tahoe Group Co., some owners have just started to see construction resume four months past the planned delivery date.
Representatives for Evergrande, Kaisa and Tahoe didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
To be sure, Chinese authorities are likely to make completing homes a priority even as they watch developers like Evergrande and Kaisa default. Homebuyers will probably be high on the list when debts are reckoned with, given Xi’s focus on “common prosperity” and aversion to social unrest.
But the building delays are sapping confidence. In cities nationwide, prices of new homes have dropped for two consecutive months, albeit less than 1%. Sales tumbled 24% from a year earlier in October.
The national numbers may mask starker declines in some pockets. In some economically weaker cities, the slump has been so sharp that at least two dozen local authorities have restricted minimum prices. A property industry association in Zhangjiajie, a relatively small city in mountainous central China, warned developers in late November not to push prices “off the cliff.” Home sales in northern China are likely to trail the more affluent south, Nomura Holdings Inc. economists say.
One small developer is struggling to entice homebuyers in so-called tier-three cities, even after offering 20% discounts, an executive said, asking not to be identified. Even at a top-10 builder of upmarket homes, some prospective buyers concerned about its ability to deliver on time have delayed purchases and demanded proof of its financial status, according to a person familiar with the matter.
To entice buyers in cities where large price cuts are banned, some developers are offering free parking lots and home appliances instead, local media have reported.
Granted, construction has resumed in some places. But many who bought earlier are aghast.
One recent buyer, who asked to be identified only by his surname, Tan, said he purchased a unit in the Evergrande Mansion development in Wenzhou, in southeastern China, only to have the developer slash prices there by a third, to below going rates. In the eastern city of Taixing, another buyer, Yin, said he regretted purchasing from Evergrande before the company’s troubles came to light, even though his unit was delivered on time.
Yin figures selling now will be difficult given the damage to Evergrande’s reputation and various construction flaws in his building. “Prices will drop for sure,” he says.
For developers, things could get worse from here. Proceeds from home sales make up more than half of their cash inflows, according to calculations based on official data, and stress is growing across the industry. Local governments have begun tightening oversight after protests broke out over the delays.
“Locals are getting increasingly nervous,” says Larry Hu, head of China economics at Macquarie Group Ltd.
And so what once seemed unthinkable now appears quite possible: the heady days of selling homes in China before they’re built might be threatened. The People’s Bank of China was advising changes as far back as 2005. A city in the southern province of Guangdong tightened up in 2018. Last year, Hainan, designated by Xi as a special economic zone, required developers to sell residences only after construction was finished.
In July, a similar stipulation was put on urban land parcels offered in Hangzhou, where Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is based. Last month, the Beijing local government required developers buying prime land near the eastern business district to do the same.
Many developers remain unprepared for the worst. A nationwide ban on pre-sales could wipe out as many as half of small builders, according to Zhang Dawei, an analyst at Centaline Group.
“Developers could be forced to gradually shift away from pre-sales to sale of completed projects in the future, though that’s going to take a while,” said Ziv Ang, a Kuala Lumpur-based analyst at UOB Kay Hian. “The current financing environment remains tough for most developers, meaning they would be under huge pressure if they were to make that shift.”
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Black Axe: Leaked documents shine spotlight on secretive Nigerian gang
Sun, December 12, 2021
A member of the Black Axe gang, one of Nigeria's most feared "cults"
A violent mafia-style gang in Nigeria linked to murder and fraud has infiltrated the country's political system and launched a global scamming operation well beyond Nigeria's borders, according to thousands of hacked documents and testimonies seen by the BBC.
The 'Black Axe' gang has been operating for decades in Nigeria and is among the country's most-feared organised crime syndicates. Membership of these syndicates, known as "cults" or "fraternities", is outlawed in Nigeria.
For the past two years, BBC Africa Eye has been following the Black Axe, speaking to former members and combing through thousands of leaked documents that appear to have been hacked from a number of prominent members of the group. It was not possible to verify the entire cache of hacked files, but key documents were verified by the BBC.
Among our findings were emails that suggest a prominent Nigerian businessman and 2019 APC Party candidate for political office, Augustus Bemigho, was a senior member of Black Axe and was involved in orchestrating fraudulent internet scams netting millions of dollars.
The cache of documents contained more than 18,000 pages from an email account linked Mr Bemigho, including emails that suggest he sent guidance on scamming to a network of collaborators on 62 occasions and communicated with others about specific scamming targets.
"We have removed him close to 1M dollar," says one email sent to Mr Bemigho, referring to a victim. The email contains the victim's full name, email address and number, and instructions on how to progress the scam.
The BBC tracked down two apparent scamming victims from Mr Bemigho's emails, who say they were defrauded of approximately $3.3m (£2.4m). Operations by international law enforcement agencies indicate that Black Axe's scamming profits may run into the billions. The BBC contacted Mr Bemigho but he did not respond to the allegations.
Some of the material in the leaked documents - showing the graphic results of the gang's activities - is too horrifying to publish. But the data paints a unique portrait of the Black Axe operations between 2009 and 2019, and suggests the gang has penetrated Nigerian politics in its home region of Edo State to a shocking extent.
Two documents state that in Benin City, 35 million naira (more than £64,000) was funnelled to the Neo-Black Movement of Africa (NBM) - a registered company in Nigeria considered by some western law enforcement to be synonymous with Black Axe - to "protect votes" and secure victory in a governorship election in 2012.
In exchange for the support, the files suggest that "80 slots [were] allocated to NBM Benin Zone for immediate employment by the state government".
Kurtis Ogebebor, an activist in Benin City who works to try and stop young people being recruited into cults like Black Axe, told the BBC that Nigeria's politics had become a "mafia politics".
"Cultism seems to be at all levels of our government, from the lowest to the highest," he added. "You find them everywhere."
Augustus Bemigho ran for political office in 2019 for the APC party
The Neo Black Movement of Africa strongly denies links to the Black Axe, and the group's lawyers told the BBC that any Black Axe members found among its ranks were "expelled immediately". The NBM claims to have three million members around the world, and regularly publicises charitable activity - donations to orphanages, schools and the police, both in Nigeria and abroad.
"NBM is not Black Axe. NBM has nothing to do with criminality," Ese Kakor, the president of the organisation, told the BBC.
But international law enforcement agencies have taken a different view. The US justice department has labelled the NBM a "criminal organisation" and says it is "part of the Black Axe", and Canadian authorities have said that the Black Axe and NBM "are the same".
In recent months, joint operations targeting Black Axe by the US Secret Service, the FBI and Interpol resulted in the arrest of more than 35 NBM members in the US and South Africa on charges related to multi-million dollar internet fraud schemes. The NBM told the BBC all these members have since been suspended.
In 2017, Canadian authorities broke up a money-laundering scheme linked to Black Axe worth in excess of $5bn - hinting at the scale of the gang's global financial operations. Nobody knows how many similar schemes are out there, the leaked documents show members communicating between Lagos, London, Tokyo, Dubai, and a dozen other countries.
In Nigeria, the Black Axe is better known for its street level crime and brutality and alleged links to politics and business. But the nature of the connections has long been murky and unsubstantiated.
A former member of the Edo State government, speaking to the international media for the first time, told the BBC Black Axe membership is widespread within the halls of power.
"If you sat me down and say, can you identify Black Axe in government, I will identify," said Tony Kabaka, who told the BBC he had survived repeated assassination attempts since leaving governmnet and whose house and front gate are littered with bullet holes.
"Most politicians, almost everybody is involved," he said.
We sent the government of Edo State the allegations that they have ties to the Black Axe, but they did not respond.
Black Axe: Leaked documents shine spotlight on secretive Nigerian gang
Sun, December 12, 2021
A member of the Black Axe gang, one of Nigeria's most feared "cults"
A violent mafia-style gang in Nigeria linked to murder and fraud has infiltrated the country's political system and launched a global scamming operation well beyond Nigeria's borders, according to thousands of hacked documents and testimonies seen by the BBC.
The 'Black Axe' gang has been operating for decades in Nigeria and is among the country's most-feared organised crime syndicates. Membership of these syndicates, known as "cults" or "fraternities", is outlawed in Nigeria.
For the past two years, BBC Africa Eye has been following the Black Axe, speaking to former members and combing through thousands of leaked documents that appear to have been hacked from a number of prominent members of the group. It was not possible to verify the entire cache of hacked files, but key documents were verified by the BBC.
Among our findings were emails that suggest a prominent Nigerian businessman and 2019 APC Party candidate for political office, Augustus Bemigho, was a senior member of Black Axe and was involved in orchestrating fraudulent internet scams netting millions of dollars.
The cache of documents contained more than 18,000 pages from an email account linked Mr Bemigho, including emails that suggest he sent guidance on scamming to a network of collaborators on 62 occasions and communicated with others about specific scamming targets.
"We have removed him close to 1M dollar," says one email sent to Mr Bemigho, referring to a victim. The email contains the victim's full name, email address and number, and instructions on how to progress the scam.
The BBC tracked down two apparent scamming victims from Mr Bemigho's emails, who say they were defrauded of approximately $3.3m (£2.4m). Operations by international law enforcement agencies indicate that Black Axe's scamming profits may run into the billions. The BBC contacted Mr Bemigho but he did not respond to the allegations.
Some of the material in the leaked documents - showing the graphic results of the gang's activities - is too horrifying to publish. But the data paints a unique portrait of the Black Axe operations between 2009 and 2019, and suggests the gang has penetrated Nigerian politics in its home region of Edo State to a shocking extent.
Two documents state that in Benin City, 35 million naira (more than £64,000) was funnelled to the Neo-Black Movement of Africa (NBM) - a registered company in Nigeria considered by some western law enforcement to be synonymous with Black Axe - to "protect votes" and secure victory in a governorship election in 2012.
In exchange for the support, the files suggest that "80 slots [were] allocated to NBM Benin Zone for immediate employment by the state government".
Kurtis Ogebebor, an activist in Benin City who works to try and stop young people being recruited into cults like Black Axe, told the BBC that Nigeria's politics had become a "mafia politics".
"Cultism seems to be at all levels of our government, from the lowest to the highest," he added. "You find them everywhere."
Augustus Bemigho ran for political office in 2019 for the APC party
The Neo Black Movement of Africa strongly denies links to the Black Axe, and the group's lawyers told the BBC that any Black Axe members found among its ranks were "expelled immediately". The NBM claims to have three million members around the world, and regularly publicises charitable activity - donations to orphanages, schools and the police, both in Nigeria and abroad.
"NBM is not Black Axe. NBM has nothing to do with criminality," Ese Kakor, the president of the organisation, told the BBC.
But international law enforcement agencies have taken a different view. The US justice department has labelled the NBM a "criminal organisation" and says it is "part of the Black Axe", and Canadian authorities have said that the Black Axe and NBM "are the same".
In recent months, joint operations targeting Black Axe by the US Secret Service, the FBI and Interpol resulted in the arrest of more than 35 NBM members in the US and South Africa on charges related to multi-million dollar internet fraud schemes. The NBM told the BBC all these members have since been suspended.
In 2017, Canadian authorities broke up a money-laundering scheme linked to Black Axe worth in excess of $5bn - hinting at the scale of the gang's global financial operations. Nobody knows how many similar schemes are out there, the leaked documents show members communicating between Lagos, London, Tokyo, Dubai, and a dozen other countries.
In Nigeria, the Black Axe is better known for its street level crime and brutality and alleged links to politics and business. But the nature of the connections has long been murky and unsubstantiated.
A former member of the Edo State government, speaking to the international media for the first time, told the BBC Black Axe membership is widespread within the halls of power.
"If you sat me down and say, can you identify Black Axe in government, I will identify," said Tony Kabaka, who told the BBC he had survived repeated assassination attempts since leaving governmnet and whose house and front gate are littered with bullet holes.
"Most politicians, almost everybody is involved," he said.
We sent the government of Edo State the allegations that they have ties to the Black Axe, but they did not respond.
Shed that traps cows' methane and burns it on site given go-ahead
Emma Gatten
Sat, December 11, 2021
Cows eating in a cow shed - Alamy
A cattle shed that collects methane from cows and uses their waste to grow fruit and vegetables has been given government backing in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The so-called GreenShed will look much like normal housing used to keep cattle inside over winter, but will be more airtight and include extraction technology to remove the methane and burn it onsite.
Methane is a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide and has a powerful short-term impact. Methane from livestock accounts for around six per cent of the UK’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.
The Government is relying on technological solutions to cut significant amounts of methane from livestock farming, rather than focusing on changing diets to encourage less meat eating.
Energy needed for the GreenShed will be provided in part by burning the waste produced by the cows in an anaerobic digestor attached to the shed.
The heat produced from that process will also be used in polytunnels that help crops to grow in a vertical farming system.
The project is being led by researchers at Scotland's Rural College, and is one of dozens to receive Government-backing from a fund to develop direct air capture of greenhouse gas emissions.
“Tackling methane really offers us a lot of opportunity,” said Carole-Anne Duthie, the head of SRUC's Beef and Sheep Research Centre. “Because it’s got such a short halflife, it can have a massive impact.”
Other inventions include 'burp-catching' mask
Other recent inventions to tackle livestock methane include a mask that catches their burps, and the addition of seaweed into their diet, which has been shown to reduce the gas by up to 80 per cent.
The GreenShed researchers hope the technology will be ready in the next three to four years, and could provide a simple retrofit solution on farms where cattle are already kept inside over winter.
It will target cows during the final “finishing” months before they are sent for slaughter, when their methane emissions are highest.
The system is expected to add 10-30p for the farmer on the cost of producing a kilo of beef, at a time when they are facing increasing pressure on price.
The researchers are relying on a growing desire in consumers for food produced in a greener way, and a willingness to pay for it.
Although the project estimates it can cut up to 250 tonnes of CO2 equivalent gas from every cattle shed per year, it will not solve the problem of emissions from agriculture.
Burning the methane will produce CO2, while the shed cannot tackle the emissions produced during the rest of the cattle’s life. There are also concerns that the feed given to cattles kept indoors is produced in areas that contribute to deforestation.
Instead, increasing numbers of environmentally minded farmers are focusing on a regenerative agriculture system, in which hardy breeds of cattle are kept outside all year long, in a boost to their welfare and to soil health and its ability to store carbon.
“We need to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis to have livestock outside and deliver the true benefits of a regenerative farming system,” said Martin Lines, the chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network. “My concern is this research will encourage the keeping of animals inside. We should be doing more to treat those animals as sentient beings.”
But its backers argue that the technology could provide a relatively simple way to reduce the emissions from cattle.
“It’s one of many in our potential toolkit to help solve the problem,” Ms Duthie said. “The key benefit is that you’re not asking for radical changes to how those farms are going to operate.
“The responses from farmers so far are really quite enthusiastic.”
Emma Gatten
Sat, December 11, 2021
Cows eating in a cow shed - Alamy
A cattle shed that collects methane from cows and uses their waste to grow fruit and vegetables has been given government backing in the fight to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The so-called GreenShed will look much like normal housing used to keep cattle inside over winter, but will be more airtight and include extraction technology to remove the methane and burn it onsite.
Methane is a greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide and has a powerful short-term impact. Methane from livestock accounts for around six per cent of the UK’s overall greenhouse gas emissions.
The Government is relying on technological solutions to cut significant amounts of methane from livestock farming, rather than focusing on changing diets to encourage less meat eating.
Energy needed for the GreenShed will be provided in part by burning the waste produced by the cows in an anaerobic digestor attached to the shed.
The heat produced from that process will also be used in polytunnels that help crops to grow in a vertical farming system.
The project is being led by researchers at Scotland's Rural College, and is one of dozens to receive Government-backing from a fund to develop direct air capture of greenhouse gas emissions.
“Tackling methane really offers us a lot of opportunity,” said Carole-Anne Duthie, the head of SRUC's Beef and Sheep Research Centre. “Because it’s got such a short halflife, it can have a massive impact.”
Other inventions include 'burp-catching' mask
Other recent inventions to tackle livestock methane include a mask that catches their burps, and the addition of seaweed into their diet, which has been shown to reduce the gas by up to 80 per cent.
The GreenShed researchers hope the technology will be ready in the next three to four years, and could provide a simple retrofit solution on farms where cattle are already kept inside over winter.
It will target cows during the final “finishing” months before they are sent for slaughter, when their methane emissions are highest.
The system is expected to add 10-30p for the farmer on the cost of producing a kilo of beef, at a time when they are facing increasing pressure on price.
The researchers are relying on a growing desire in consumers for food produced in a greener way, and a willingness to pay for it.
Although the project estimates it can cut up to 250 tonnes of CO2 equivalent gas from every cattle shed per year, it will not solve the problem of emissions from agriculture.
Burning the methane will produce CO2, while the shed cannot tackle the emissions produced during the rest of the cattle’s life. There are also concerns that the feed given to cattles kept indoors is produced in areas that contribute to deforestation.
Instead, increasing numbers of environmentally minded farmers are focusing on a regenerative agriculture system, in which hardy breeds of cattle are kept outside all year long, in a boost to their welfare and to soil health and its ability to store carbon.
“We need to tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis to have livestock outside and deliver the true benefits of a regenerative farming system,” said Martin Lines, the chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network. “My concern is this research will encourage the keeping of animals inside. We should be doing more to treat those animals as sentient beings.”
But its backers argue that the technology could provide a relatively simple way to reduce the emissions from cattle.
“It’s one of many in our potential toolkit to help solve the problem,” Ms Duthie said. “The key benefit is that you’re not asking for radical changes to how those farms are going to operate.
“The responses from farmers so far are really quite enthusiastic.”
Carbon Capture Innovations Will Play A Key Role In Net-Zero Ambitions
Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, December 11, 2021
Following several announcements over the past year from oil majors investing heavily in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, it appears progress has been made. Several governments and oil firms are working together to come up with various carbon capture solutions, from burying CO2 underground to pumping it into rocks. With the big players working together, this could be the mid-term answer to net-zero emissions the world’s been looking for.
In the U.K. this week, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) advised the country that the use of the reservoirs under the North Sea for CCS would be most effective, as the technologies get up and running in the region. However, reusing existing onshore wells could also provide an inexpensive and simple means for storing carbon, without having to create new structures or look for alternative land. With operations already taking place in the North Sea, feasibility studies and the development of sites would be relatively simple.
Net Zero Rise (Research Infrastructure for Subsurface Energy), a group of researchers from universities and oil companies, has recommended 20 candidate oil wells across the Midlands and Yorkshire to bury the initial CO2 loads, around 1,000 tonnes at each site. The repurposing of one well and the construction of two wells with monitoring equipment is expected to cost around $6.6 million. This follows similar tests currently taking place in the U.S. Canada and Australia.
By exploring both onshore and offshore options the U.K. could avoid wasting these wells once they become abandoned as they get filled in. Richard Davies, at the University of Newcastle explained, “These assets are already there, while drilling [new] boreholes is very expensive and adds a certain amount of risk. The range of boreholes we have will also give opportunities to test different rock types.”
There are several different approaches to CCS and as supermajors invest more heavily over the next decade we will begin to see which is most effective. Currently in the Midwest of the U.S. studies are taking place to understand the potential for pumping carbon waste into rock formations. There are two proposals for multiple pipelines in Illinois and North Dakota, which, if approved, would transport carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to rocks located across the states.
The CO2 would be stored by injecting it in the rocks to be pumped down into wells and then stored in large caverns in the rock sites. Summit Carbon Solutions from Iowa and Navigator CO2 Ventures from Texas are the companies behind the proposals, following the study of the area as a potential carbon storage option for two decades. Summit’s ‘Midwest Carbon Express pipeline’ would be the biggest of its type in the world if achieved, and would also support methane capture in the region.
A controversial idea that keeps coming up is the burying of CO2 in the world’s sea-beds. Researchers are studying the potential for pipelines to carry carbon to aquifers under sea-beds to be stored for thousands of years, if not forever. However, testing has been particularly difficult due to the hard-to-reach location and understanding of the area’s properties.
Recent innovations have meant that scientists can finally study the interaction between carbon dioxide and salty aquifer water, recreating saline solutions under conditions of pressure and temperatures similar to that of the proposed ocean areas. They believe this could provide a carbon storage solution that doesn’t lead to secondary repercussions seen in other technologies.
In Australia, the government announced in November that the country’s first CCS hub will be operational by 2024. Santos and Beach Energy are developing a joint project in Moomba, South Australia with the hopes of reducing emissions from gas production in the area by 70 percent. At a cost of $157.3 million, this marks the first CCS project to fall under the Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).
Santos plans to use the Bayu-Undan facilities in Timor-Leste to securely store up to 10 million tonnes of CO2per year. It is part of a government plan to continue producing liquefied natural gas (LNG) to meet global energy needs as plans go ahead to curb coal and oil output. LNG is seen by many governments and oil firms as a necessary fuel to bridge the gap between other more polluting fossil fuels and renewable alternatives, employing CCS technologies to reduce the emissions output from production.
The race is on to see who can come up with the technology needed to extract and store carbon dioxide in the most efficient and sustainable way. Whether pumping it into giant rocks, keeping it underground, or finding a safe way to inject it into aquifers under the sea bed, CCS appears to be here to stay, as part of an international strategy to reach net-zero.
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com
Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, December 11, 2021
Following several announcements over the past year from oil majors investing heavily in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, it appears progress has been made. Several governments and oil firms are working together to come up with various carbon capture solutions, from burying CO2 underground to pumping it into rocks. With the big players working together, this could be the mid-term answer to net-zero emissions the world’s been looking for.
In the U.K. this week, the Climate Change Committee (CCC) advised the country that the use of the reservoirs under the North Sea for CCS would be most effective, as the technologies get up and running in the region. However, reusing existing onshore wells could also provide an inexpensive and simple means for storing carbon, without having to create new structures or look for alternative land. With operations already taking place in the North Sea, feasibility studies and the development of sites would be relatively simple.
Net Zero Rise (Research Infrastructure for Subsurface Energy), a group of researchers from universities and oil companies, has recommended 20 candidate oil wells across the Midlands and Yorkshire to bury the initial CO2 loads, around 1,000 tonnes at each site. The repurposing of one well and the construction of two wells with monitoring equipment is expected to cost around $6.6 million. This follows similar tests currently taking place in the U.S. Canada and Australia.
By exploring both onshore and offshore options the U.K. could avoid wasting these wells once they become abandoned as they get filled in. Richard Davies, at the University of Newcastle explained, “These assets are already there, while drilling [new] boreholes is very expensive and adds a certain amount of risk. The range of boreholes we have will also give opportunities to test different rock types.”
There are several different approaches to CCS and as supermajors invest more heavily over the next decade we will begin to see which is most effective. Currently in the Midwest of the U.S. studies are taking place to understand the potential for pumping carbon waste into rock formations. There are two proposals for multiple pipelines in Illinois and North Dakota, which, if approved, would transport carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to rocks located across the states.
The CO2 would be stored by injecting it in the rocks to be pumped down into wells and then stored in large caverns in the rock sites. Summit Carbon Solutions from Iowa and Navigator CO2 Ventures from Texas are the companies behind the proposals, following the study of the area as a potential carbon storage option for two decades. Summit’s ‘Midwest Carbon Express pipeline’ would be the biggest of its type in the world if achieved, and would also support methane capture in the region.
A controversial idea that keeps coming up is the burying of CO2 in the world’s sea-beds. Researchers are studying the potential for pipelines to carry carbon to aquifers under sea-beds to be stored for thousands of years, if not forever. However, testing has been particularly difficult due to the hard-to-reach location and understanding of the area’s properties.
Recent innovations have meant that scientists can finally study the interaction between carbon dioxide and salty aquifer water, recreating saline solutions under conditions of pressure and temperatures similar to that of the proposed ocean areas. They believe this could provide a carbon storage solution that doesn’t lead to secondary repercussions seen in other technologies.
In Australia, the government announced in November that the country’s first CCS hub will be operational by 2024. Santos and Beach Energy are developing a joint project in Moomba, South Australia with the hopes of reducing emissions from gas production in the area by 70 percent. At a cost of $157.3 million, this marks the first CCS project to fall under the Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).
Santos plans to use the Bayu-Undan facilities in Timor-Leste to securely store up to 10 million tonnes of CO2per year. It is part of a government plan to continue producing liquefied natural gas (LNG) to meet global energy needs as plans go ahead to curb coal and oil output. LNG is seen by many governments and oil firms as a necessary fuel to bridge the gap between other more polluting fossil fuels and renewable alternatives, employing CCS technologies to reduce the emissions output from production.
The race is on to see who can come up with the technology needed to extract and store carbon dioxide in the most efficient and sustainable way. Whether pumping it into giant rocks, keeping it underground, or finding a safe way to inject it into aquifers under the sea bed, CCS appears to be here to stay, as part of an international strategy to reach net-zero.
By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com
The Secret Military Fortresses Hidden in the Swiss Alps
Chloe Berge
Fri, December 10, 2021
Courtesy of Sasso San Gottardo
Unlike most train rides in Switzerland, there is no postcard view of the snow-dusted Alps on the Metro del Sasso. Cold, damp air cuts through the underground funicular as it chugs uphill in near darkness, deep in the Gotthard mountains in the country’s southernmost canton of Ticino. Disembarking at the top, instead of a sweeping bucolic landscape, passengers arrive at a military command center.
Only declassified in 2001, Sasso da Pigna was one in a chain of secret fortresses constructed in the Swiss Alps during World War II. After France fell to the Axis powers in 1940, Switzerland lost a powerful ally, and army general Henri Guisan knew trying to continue to defend the country’s borders against indomitable Germany was futile. Instead, the Swiss National Redoubt was born. The military strategy drew troops away from the front lines, concentrating manpower in impenetrable mountain bunkers.
Fortresses like Sasso da Pigna, built in 1941–45, and two other key citadels at Saint-Maurice and Sargans served as strongholds in a network that stretched across the Alps. They housed troops and artillery, while others acted as hangars for fighter planes. Sasso da Pigna’s location at the Gotthard Pass was a particularly important one. The pass marks the main route through the mountains from north to south and has served as a major trade route through the Alps since the Middle Ages, modernized in the late 19th century with the creation of the Gotthard railway line.
When the fortress was finally declassified, its transformation began into Sasso San Gottardo, a museum that pays tribute to the area’s storied past. “This is where Switzerland started, at the foot of this pass,” says Sepp Huber, a former mountain infantry commander who now leads tours through the historic fortress. Visitors enter through a towering doorway carved into the rockface, big enough to allow tanks to pass through. Overhead, the red, blue, and yellow flags of Switzerland and the cantons of Ticino and Uri—whose border lies half a mile north of the fortress—snap and flicker in the icy alpine wind.
Inside the tunnels of the historic fortress, Sasso da Pigna
Courtesy of Sasso San Gottardo
The garrison-turned-museum tunnels two miles into the mountain, and on the first floor, visitors are greeted by contemporary exhibitions on the region’s natural history and culture. In a darkened gallery, quartz crystals the size of small trees—for which the area is world renowned—shimmer under a spotlight. Past exhibitions have been dedicated to themes such as the area’s renewable energy projects, and next year, the museum will launch a program focused on the work of Goethe. The 18th-century German poet was enchanted with the Gotthard Pass, making three pilgrimages there and writing extensively on this part of the Alps.
Past these rooms, a ride on the Metro del Sasso brings museum-goers to the historic heart of the military operation. Spartan barracks house wood bunk beds dressed in stiff khaki-colored sheets. The walls of a command center are hung with strategy maps bookended by radio transmitters on shelves, and an artillery room leads out to a newly-built terrace, where there’s a view of serpentine roads skirting green mountains veined with snow.
Today, Sasso San Gottardo is open to the public during its short season from May to October, when the pass isn’t sealed off by glittering ice and numbing winds. But during World War II and through to the end of the Cold War, the National Redoubt’s fortresses were shrouded in mystery.
“I’ve often looked out of train windows and seen a steel door in the cliffside, and thought to myself, there might be airplanes behind that,” says Clive Church, a Swiss history expert and professor emeritus at the University of Kent. Civilians knew of the redoubt, but no one knew exactly what was inside, and neither did Germany or Italy, which was part of the strategy to deter their encroachment. “The fortress only housed 400 men, but the Swiss would tell the Germans 4,000,” says Huber.
Historic army barracks at Sasso da Pigna
Courtesy of Sasso San Gottardo
“The Swiss knew that German and Italian spies were concentrated at the fortress construction sites in the central Alps, so they fed exaggerated information into channels they thought might be informing Germany,” adds museum director Damian Zingg. This strategy was part of the country’s longstanding policy of armed neutrality, which dates back to the Congress of Vienna in 1815. European powers collectively decided that keeping the country neutral would help the entire region remain stable, creating a buffer between France and Austria. “The redoubt was there if they were attacked, but it was also there as a dissuasive,” says Church. “The more you created this mythos of an impenetrable fortress that would have to be fought inch by inch up a very steep incline, the less it was something the Nazis thought they were able to do,” adds Church.
The creation of the redoubt was also a way for the Swiss to reassure other powers that they were not covertly assisting the Axis. “For most Swiss [the redoubt] is a symbol; it’s not just the concrete bunkers and the guns,” says Church. “It’s part of their resistance to Nazism.” The Swiss haven’t actually seen combat since the early 1500s but just how neutral Switzerland actually was during the war is contentious. It’s now known that the redoubt was only part of the defense strategy, and that Switzerland continued to trade with Germany and grant them access to the Gotthard railway.
“Switzerland needed raw materials and building supplies from Germany [to construct the fortresses], which it received in exchange for its exports and arms supplies,” says Jakob Tanner, a professor emeritus in Swiss history at the University of Zurich. According to most Swiss historians, these economic relations were, like the redoubt, aimed at deterring Germany from attacking, proving too much was at stake to invade the country.
Airolo, Passstrasse
The Swiss National Redoubt spanned the Alps, hidden in the rockface.
Andre Meier
Although the methods of warfare used in the redoubt became increasingly obsolete after the war, their symbolic nature kept the fortresses in operation. “Neutrality also had a domestic, internal function,” says Tanner. “While the army left the redoubt immediately after the end of the war, the population remained in the mental redoubt, which led to a boom in ‘spiritual national defense’ and anti-communism,” explains Tanner. To that end, the fortresses were used during the Cold War, although information on exactly how and why they were utilized remains restricted. By the 1990s, political stability in Western Europe and the steep maintenance costs associated with keeping the fortresses operational meant that most of them were declassified and sold to private buyers.
Like Sasso da Pigna, the fortress at Saint-Maurice was also converted into a museum. And less than a mile away from Sasso da Pigna at the top of the Gotthard Pass is an artillery bunker, San Carlo, that has been turned into the hotel La Claustra. Opened in 2004, the cavernous refuge was the work of Swiss architect Jean Odermatt and offers 17 rustic rooms surrounded by a lake and miles of hiking trails.
In 11 former bunkers in Stansstad, the company Gotthard-Pilze grows organic mushrooms, and in the region of Giswil, a military fortress called Pfedli is owned by the Swiss cheesemaker Seiler Kaserei AG. Once used for storing ammunition, spare parts for fighter jets, as well as guided missiles, the company now ripens over 90,000 wheels of raclette cheese in the bunker’s two 100-metre-long tunnels, where humidity levels and a temperature of 52 degrees Fahrenheit make an ideal environment for the ageing process.
While the National Redoubt fortresses live out their reincarnations as museums and food production facilities, the threat of the Axis powers seems an almost unimaginable chapter in Switzerland’s past. But it was very real for the thousands of Swiss men and women that served in World War II who filled the dark, subterranean world of the redoubt with their echoing footfall.
Under Switzerland’s emerald hills and the chorus of cow bells, beneath the fairytale chalets and icing sugar mountain peaks, exists a grittier history worth remembering. Long veiled in secrecy, the stories of the redoubt have worked to reinforce the mythic place of the mountains in the Swiss consciousness. “The mountains are the home of Switzerland, they always offer protection to the country,” says Tanner.
Chloe Berge
Fri, December 10, 2021
Courtesy of Sasso San Gottardo
Unlike most train rides in Switzerland, there is no postcard view of the snow-dusted Alps on the Metro del Sasso. Cold, damp air cuts through the underground funicular as it chugs uphill in near darkness, deep in the Gotthard mountains in the country’s southernmost canton of Ticino. Disembarking at the top, instead of a sweeping bucolic landscape, passengers arrive at a military command center.
Only declassified in 2001, Sasso da Pigna was one in a chain of secret fortresses constructed in the Swiss Alps during World War II. After France fell to the Axis powers in 1940, Switzerland lost a powerful ally, and army general Henri Guisan knew trying to continue to defend the country’s borders against indomitable Germany was futile. Instead, the Swiss National Redoubt was born. The military strategy drew troops away from the front lines, concentrating manpower in impenetrable mountain bunkers.
Fortresses like Sasso da Pigna, built in 1941–45, and two other key citadels at Saint-Maurice and Sargans served as strongholds in a network that stretched across the Alps. They housed troops and artillery, while others acted as hangars for fighter planes. Sasso da Pigna’s location at the Gotthard Pass was a particularly important one. The pass marks the main route through the mountains from north to south and has served as a major trade route through the Alps since the Middle Ages, modernized in the late 19th century with the creation of the Gotthard railway line.
When the fortress was finally declassified, its transformation began into Sasso San Gottardo, a museum that pays tribute to the area’s storied past. “This is where Switzerland started, at the foot of this pass,” says Sepp Huber, a former mountain infantry commander who now leads tours through the historic fortress. Visitors enter through a towering doorway carved into the rockface, big enough to allow tanks to pass through. Overhead, the red, blue, and yellow flags of Switzerland and the cantons of Ticino and Uri—whose border lies half a mile north of the fortress—snap and flicker in the icy alpine wind.
Inside the tunnels of the historic fortress, Sasso da Pigna
Courtesy of Sasso San Gottardo
The garrison-turned-museum tunnels two miles into the mountain, and on the first floor, visitors are greeted by contemporary exhibitions on the region’s natural history and culture. In a darkened gallery, quartz crystals the size of small trees—for which the area is world renowned—shimmer under a spotlight. Past exhibitions have been dedicated to themes such as the area’s renewable energy projects, and next year, the museum will launch a program focused on the work of Goethe. The 18th-century German poet was enchanted with the Gotthard Pass, making three pilgrimages there and writing extensively on this part of the Alps.
Past these rooms, a ride on the Metro del Sasso brings museum-goers to the historic heart of the military operation. Spartan barracks house wood bunk beds dressed in stiff khaki-colored sheets. The walls of a command center are hung with strategy maps bookended by radio transmitters on shelves, and an artillery room leads out to a newly-built terrace, where there’s a view of serpentine roads skirting green mountains veined with snow.
Today, Sasso San Gottardo is open to the public during its short season from May to October, when the pass isn’t sealed off by glittering ice and numbing winds. But during World War II and through to the end of the Cold War, the National Redoubt’s fortresses were shrouded in mystery.
“I’ve often looked out of train windows and seen a steel door in the cliffside, and thought to myself, there might be airplanes behind that,” says Clive Church, a Swiss history expert and professor emeritus at the University of Kent. Civilians knew of the redoubt, but no one knew exactly what was inside, and neither did Germany or Italy, which was part of the strategy to deter their encroachment. “The fortress only housed 400 men, but the Swiss would tell the Germans 4,000,” says Huber.
Historic army barracks at Sasso da Pigna
Courtesy of Sasso San Gottardo
“The Swiss knew that German and Italian spies were concentrated at the fortress construction sites in the central Alps, so they fed exaggerated information into channels they thought might be informing Germany,” adds museum director Damian Zingg. This strategy was part of the country’s longstanding policy of armed neutrality, which dates back to the Congress of Vienna in 1815. European powers collectively decided that keeping the country neutral would help the entire region remain stable, creating a buffer between France and Austria. “The redoubt was there if they were attacked, but it was also there as a dissuasive,” says Church. “The more you created this mythos of an impenetrable fortress that would have to be fought inch by inch up a very steep incline, the less it was something the Nazis thought they were able to do,” adds Church.
The creation of the redoubt was also a way for the Swiss to reassure other powers that they were not covertly assisting the Axis. “For most Swiss [the redoubt] is a symbol; it’s not just the concrete bunkers and the guns,” says Church. “It’s part of their resistance to Nazism.” The Swiss haven’t actually seen combat since the early 1500s but just how neutral Switzerland actually was during the war is contentious. It’s now known that the redoubt was only part of the defense strategy, and that Switzerland continued to trade with Germany and grant them access to the Gotthard railway.
“Switzerland needed raw materials and building supplies from Germany [to construct the fortresses], which it received in exchange for its exports and arms supplies,” says Jakob Tanner, a professor emeritus in Swiss history at the University of Zurich. According to most Swiss historians, these economic relations were, like the redoubt, aimed at deterring Germany from attacking, proving too much was at stake to invade the country.
Airolo, Passstrasse
The Swiss National Redoubt spanned the Alps, hidden in the rockface.
Andre Meier
Although the methods of warfare used in the redoubt became increasingly obsolete after the war, their symbolic nature kept the fortresses in operation. “Neutrality also had a domestic, internal function,” says Tanner. “While the army left the redoubt immediately after the end of the war, the population remained in the mental redoubt, which led to a boom in ‘spiritual national defense’ and anti-communism,” explains Tanner. To that end, the fortresses were used during the Cold War, although information on exactly how and why they were utilized remains restricted. By the 1990s, political stability in Western Europe and the steep maintenance costs associated with keeping the fortresses operational meant that most of them were declassified and sold to private buyers.
Like Sasso da Pigna, the fortress at Saint-Maurice was also converted into a museum. And less than a mile away from Sasso da Pigna at the top of the Gotthard Pass is an artillery bunker, San Carlo, that has been turned into the hotel La Claustra. Opened in 2004, the cavernous refuge was the work of Swiss architect Jean Odermatt and offers 17 rustic rooms surrounded by a lake and miles of hiking trails.
In 11 former bunkers in Stansstad, the company Gotthard-Pilze grows organic mushrooms, and in the region of Giswil, a military fortress called Pfedli is owned by the Swiss cheesemaker Seiler Kaserei AG. Once used for storing ammunition, spare parts for fighter jets, as well as guided missiles, the company now ripens over 90,000 wheels of raclette cheese in the bunker’s two 100-metre-long tunnels, where humidity levels and a temperature of 52 degrees Fahrenheit make an ideal environment for the ageing process.
While the National Redoubt fortresses live out their reincarnations as museums and food production facilities, the threat of the Axis powers seems an almost unimaginable chapter in Switzerland’s past. But it was very real for the thousands of Swiss men and women that served in World War II who filled the dark, subterranean world of the redoubt with their echoing footfall.
Under Switzerland’s emerald hills and the chorus of cow bells, beneath the fairytale chalets and icing sugar mountain peaks, exists a grittier history worth remembering. Long veiled in secrecy, the stories of the redoubt have worked to reinforce the mythic place of the mountains in the Swiss consciousness. “The mountains are the home of Switzerland, they always offer protection to the country,” says Tanner.
Faith in numbers: Fox News is must-watch for white evangelicals, a turnoff for atheists...and Hindus, Muslims really like CNN
Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois University
Sat, December 11, 2021,
Fox News has a faithful audience. AP Photo/Richard Drew
Fox News possesses an “outsized influence” on the American public, especially among religious viewers.
That was the conclusion of the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute in a report released just after the 2020 presidential election. It noted that 15% of Americans cited Fox News as the most trusted source – around the same as NBC, ABC and CBS combined, and four percentage points above rival network CNN. The survey of more than 2,500 American adults also suggested that Fox News viewers trend religious, especially among Republicans watching the show. Just 5% of Republican viewers of the channel identified as being “religiously unaffiliated” – compared to 15% of Republicans who do not watch Fox News and 25% of the wider American public.
To further explore the relationship between different faiths and the TV news they associate with as part of my research on religion data, I analyzed the result of another survey, the Cooperative Election Survey.
The annual survey, which was fielded just before the November 2020 election, with the results released in March, polled a total of 61,000 Americans over a number of topics. One question was on their news consumption habits. It asked what television news networks respondents had watched in the prior 24 hours.
Percentage of respondents who saw TV news in past 24 hours
Ryan Burge/CES
Some very interesting patterns emerged across religious traditions – and the nonreligious – and the type of media being consumed. For instance, of the the big three legacy news operations – ABC, CBS and NBC – there was no strong base of viewership in any tradition.
In most cases, about a third of people from each religious tradition said that they watched one of those legacy networks in the last 24 hours. PBS scored very low among every tradition. In most cases fewer than 15% of respondents reported watching PBS in the time frame.
However, the numbers for the three major cable news networks – CNN, Fox News and MSNBC – were much higher across the board. In eight of the 16 religious and nonreligious traditions categorized in the poll, CNN viewership was at least 50% of the sample. This was led by 71% of Hindus who watched CNN and 63% of Muslims.
The least likely group to watch CNN was clearly white evangelicals, at just 23%. In comparison, MSNBC scored lower nearly across the board. In fact, in none of the 16 classification groups was viewership of MSNBC greater than it was for CNN.
Fox News viewership was higher than that of MSNBC, but was not as widely dispersed as it is for CNN. It’s no surprise, given its reputation as a conservative news outlet, that 61% of white evangelicals say that they watch Fox News – in the last election, around 80% of white evangelicals voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump. The other three traditions where viewership was at least 50% are white Catholics, Mormons and members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It should come as no surprise, as those are three groups that consistently vote for the Republican Party. Just 14% of atheists watched Fox, which is just about in line with the share of white evangelicals who watch MSNBC.
Fracturing right-wing media
But with the fracturing of conservative media sources seeing more competitors vying for viewers among the right, Fox News could see a drop in viewership from the religious right.
In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Fox News viewership plunged as many Trump supporters believed that the network was not being loyal to their standard-bearer of the GOP.
Given the vast number of news options that people of faith have and the increase in political polarization in the United States, the pressure for networks to deliver the news that people want to hear will only increase as time passes.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Ryan Burge, Eastern Illinois University.
Read more:
Why young Nigerians are returning to masquerade rituals, even in a Christian community
How theater can help communities heal from the losses and trauma of the pandemic
When it comes to media reporting on Israel-Palestine, there is nowhere to hide
Ryan Burge, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Eastern Illinois University
Sat, December 11, 2021,
Fox News has a faithful audience. AP Photo/Richard Drew
Fox News possesses an “outsized influence” on the American public, especially among religious viewers.
That was the conclusion of the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute in a report released just after the 2020 presidential election. It noted that 15% of Americans cited Fox News as the most trusted source – around the same as NBC, ABC and CBS combined, and four percentage points above rival network CNN. The survey of more than 2,500 American adults also suggested that Fox News viewers trend religious, especially among Republicans watching the show. Just 5% of Republican viewers of the channel identified as being “religiously unaffiliated” – compared to 15% of Republicans who do not watch Fox News and 25% of the wider American public.
To further explore the relationship between different faiths and the TV news they associate with as part of my research on religion data, I analyzed the result of another survey, the Cooperative Election Survey.
The annual survey, which was fielded just before the November 2020 election, with the results released in March, polled a total of 61,000 Americans over a number of topics. One question was on their news consumption habits. It asked what television news networks respondents had watched in the prior 24 hours.
Percentage of respondents who saw TV news in past 24 hours
Ryan Burge/CES
Some very interesting patterns emerged across religious traditions – and the nonreligious – and the type of media being consumed. For instance, of the the big three legacy news operations – ABC, CBS and NBC – there was no strong base of viewership in any tradition.
In most cases, about a third of people from each religious tradition said that they watched one of those legacy networks in the last 24 hours. PBS scored very low among every tradition. In most cases fewer than 15% of respondents reported watching PBS in the time frame.
However, the numbers for the three major cable news networks – CNN, Fox News and MSNBC – were much higher across the board. In eight of the 16 religious and nonreligious traditions categorized in the poll, CNN viewership was at least 50% of the sample. This was led by 71% of Hindus who watched CNN and 63% of Muslims.
The least likely group to watch CNN was clearly white evangelicals, at just 23%. In comparison, MSNBC scored lower nearly across the board. In fact, in none of the 16 classification groups was viewership of MSNBC greater than it was for CNN.
Fox News viewership was higher than that of MSNBC, but was not as widely dispersed as it is for CNN. It’s no surprise, given its reputation as a conservative news outlet, that 61% of white evangelicals say that they watch Fox News – in the last election, around 80% of white evangelicals voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump. The other three traditions where viewership was at least 50% are white Catholics, Mormons and members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It should come as no surprise, as those are three groups that consistently vote for the Republican Party. Just 14% of atheists watched Fox, which is just about in line with the share of white evangelicals who watch MSNBC.
Fracturing right-wing media
But with the fracturing of conservative media sources seeing more competitors vying for viewers among the right, Fox News could see a drop in viewership from the religious right.
In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, Fox News viewership plunged as many Trump supporters believed that the network was not being loyal to their standard-bearer of the GOP.
Given the vast number of news options that people of faith have and the increase in political polarization in the United States, the pressure for networks to deliver the news that people want to hear will only increase as time passes.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Ryan Burge, Eastern Illinois University.
Read more:
Why young Nigerians are returning to masquerade rituals, even in a Christian community
How theater can help communities heal from the losses and trauma of the pandemic
When it comes to media reporting on Israel-Palestine, there is nowhere to hide
Pope cites new book on nun abuse in warning to superiors
Nuns wave as Pope Francis delivers his blessing from the window of his studio overlooking St.Peter's Square, at the Vatican, on June 7, 2020. Pope Francis on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021 drew attention to a taboo problem that the Vatican has long ignored or downplayed: the abuses of power by mother superiors against nuns who, because of their vows of obedience, have little recourse but to obey.
Nuns wave as Pope Francis delivers his blessing from the window of his studio overlooking St.Peter's Square, at the Vatican, on June 7, 2020. Pope Francis on Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021 drew attention to a taboo problem that the Vatican has long ignored or downplayed: the abuses of power by mother superiors against nuns who, because of their vows of obedience, have little recourse but to obey.
(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
NICOLE WINFIELD
Sat, December 11, 2021, 10:11 AM·2 min read
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday drew attention to a problem that the Vatican has long sought to downplay: the abuses of power by mother superiors against nuns who, because of their vows of obedience, have little recourse but to obey.
During an audience with members of the Vatican’s congregation for religious orders, Francis cited a new investigative expose of the problem written by a reporter for the Holy See’s media, Salvatore Cernuzio.
Francis noted that the book, “Veil of Silence: Abuse, Violence, Frustrations in Female Religious Life,” doesn’t detail “striking” cases of violence and abuse “but rather the everyday abuses that harm the strength of the vocation.”
The book, published in Italy last month, contains 11 cases of current or former religious sisters who suffered abuses at the hands of their superiors. Most were psychological and spiritual abuses and often resulted in the women leaving or being thrown out of their communities and questioning their faith in God and the church. Some ended up on the streets, others found refuge in a home for abused women.
The book follows an article on the same topic by the Vatican-approved Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica in 2020 and earlier reports in the Vatican’s women’s magazine about the sexual abuse of nuns by priests and exploitation of them by the male church hierarchy for free domestic labor.
The new book peels back another layer of the more insidious forms of psychological abuses committed by superiors against their own nuns, which have long been covered up by a veil of secrecy. It contains a devastatingly essay by one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican, Sister Natalie Becquart, who said the cases must force the church to look at the sometimes toxic reality of life in religious orders, tend to the victims and prevent future abuses from occuring.
She said it also reinforces the need for the Catholic hierarchy to ensure that priests and nuns are trained in the correct way to exercise obedience and authority, saying the erroneous application of both had led to the problem.
Francis has tried to crack down on the near-absolute power enjoyed by religious and lay superiors as well as the proliferation of new religious movements, some of which have seen horrific cases of sexual, spiritual and other forms of abuse committed by their charismatic founders. The Vatican has recently imposed term limits for leaders and is applying a more rigorous process for new groups to be approved in the church.
The Jesuit pope, who knows well the dynamic of religious community life, told the members of the Vatican congregation Saturday that there is always the threat that founders of religious orders or new religious movements will assume too much power and exercise it improperly.
The risk, he warned, is that they claim to be the only ones who can interpret the particular spirit of the movement “as if they were above the church.”
NICOLE WINFIELD
Sat, December 11, 2021, 10:11 AM·2 min read
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday drew attention to a problem that the Vatican has long sought to downplay: the abuses of power by mother superiors against nuns who, because of their vows of obedience, have little recourse but to obey.
During an audience with members of the Vatican’s congregation for religious orders, Francis cited a new investigative expose of the problem written by a reporter for the Holy See’s media, Salvatore Cernuzio.
Francis noted that the book, “Veil of Silence: Abuse, Violence, Frustrations in Female Religious Life,” doesn’t detail “striking” cases of violence and abuse “but rather the everyday abuses that harm the strength of the vocation.”
The book, published in Italy last month, contains 11 cases of current or former religious sisters who suffered abuses at the hands of their superiors. Most were psychological and spiritual abuses and often resulted in the women leaving or being thrown out of their communities and questioning their faith in God and the church. Some ended up on the streets, others found refuge in a home for abused women.
The book follows an article on the same topic by the Vatican-approved Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica in 2020 and earlier reports in the Vatican’s women’s magazine about the sexual abuse of nuns by priests and exploitation of them by the male church hierarchy for free domestic labor.
The new book peels back another layer of the more insidious forms of psychological abuses committed by superiors against their own nuns, which have long been covered up by a veil of secrecy. It contains a devastatingly essay by one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican, Sister Natalie Becquart, who said the cases must force the church to look at the sometimes toxic reality of life in religious orders, tend to the victims and prevent future abuses from occuring.
She said it also reinforces the need for the Catholic hierarchy to ensure that priests and nuns are trained in the correct way to exercise obedience and authority, saying the erroneous application of both had led to the problem.
Francis has tried to crack down on the near-absolute power enjoyed by religious and lay superiors as well as the proliferation of new religious movements, some of which have seen horrific cases of sexual, spiritual and other forms of abuse committed by their charismatic founders. The Vatican has recently imposed term limits for leaders and is applying a more rigorous process for new groups to be approved in the church.
The Jesuit pope, who knows well the dynamic of religious community life, told the members of the Vatican congregation Saturday that there is always the threat that founders of religious orders or new religious movements will assume too much power and exercise it improperly.
The risk, he warned, is that they claim to be the only ones who can interpret the particular spirit of the movement “as if they were above the church.”
Catholic women urge Vatican to sign Europe rights convention
Vatican Pope Air ForcePope Francis delivers his speech during an audience with members of the Italian Air Force, in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021.
Vatican Pope Air ForcePope Francis delivers his speech during an audience with members of the Italian Air Force, in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, Friday, Dec. 10, 2021.
(Vincenzo Pinto/Pool photo via AP)More
NICOLE WINFIELD
Sat, December 11, 2021, 5:10 AM·2 min read
ROME (AP) — A consortium of Catholic women’s groups is calling on the Holy See to join the Council of Europe and to sign the European Convention on Human Rights, arguing that the Vatican should show consistency by expressing its firm commitment to protecting human rights.
In a petition marking the Human Rights Day declared by the United Nations, the groups said the Holy See is recognized internationally as a sovereign state and presents itself as a firm promotor of human rights and dignity. Yet they noted the Vatican hasn’t followed up by adhering to the European Convention, regarded as the gold standard for rights protections around the world.
“For years, the Holy See has acted like a state in its own right. This gives rise to rights, but also to duties,” wrote the signatories, which are European members of the Catholic Women's Council, an international umbrella group, .
The Holy See enjoys observer status at the United Nations and the Council of Europe, and has ratified a host of U.N. and Council of Europe conventions. They include the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the U.N. Convention against Torture, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other weapons conventions.
But it has never signed the European Convention on Human Rights, which to date has been ratified by 47 European states.
The convention obliges signatories to respect human rights, including the right to life, liberty, security, freedom of expression, assembly, religion and conscience. It prohibits torture, slavery, forced labor and discrimination based on race, religion, gender or political beliefs.
Signatories must also ensure that defendants receive fair trials before independent and unbiased judges. The convention provides recourse to the European Court of Human Rights for ultimate appeals after national appeals are exhausted.
The Vatican is an absolute monarchy in which the pope wields supreme legislative, executive, and judicial power. It would be loath to allow European commissions to evaluate its policies forbidding the ordination of women, for example, or to subject decisions of the Vatican’s criminal or ecclesial tribunals to appeals at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights.
Yet the pope frequently lectures European leaders on protecting human rights and human dignity, most recently during a visit this month to Cyprus and Greece where he chided Europe for its failure to welcome migrants.
During that trip, Francis lamented that authoritarian rule was on the rise in Europe as democracy wanes.
The women's groups that participated in the petition include Catholic Women Speak in Britain; We Are Church in Ireland, Germany and Austria; Women for the Church in Italy; Voices of Faith in Rome and Liechtenstein, as well as similar progressive Catholic groups in Spain, France, Croatia and Switzerland.
NICOLE WINFIELD
Sat, December 11, 2021, 5:10 AM·2 min read
ROME (AP) — A consortium of Catholic women’s groups is calling on the Holy See to join the Council of Europe and to sign the European Convention on Human Rights, arguing that the Vatican should show consistency by expressing its firm commitment to protecting human rights.
In a petition marking the Human Rights Day declared by the United Nations, the groups said the Holy See is recognized internationally as a sovereign state and presents itself as a firm promotor of human rights and dignity. Yet they noted the Vatican hasn’t followed up by adhering to the European Convention, regarded as the gold standard for rights protections around the world.
“For years, the Holy See has acted like a state in its own right. This gives rise to rights, but also to duties,” wrote the signatories, which are European members of the Catholic Women's Council, an international umbrella group, .
The Holy See enjoys observer status at the United Nations and the Council of Europe, and has ratified a host of U.N. and Council of Europe conventions. They include the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the U.N. Convention against Torture, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other weapons conventions.
But it has never signed the European Convention on Human Rights, which to date has been ratified by 47 European states.
The convention obliges signatories to respect human rights, including the right to life, liberty, security, freedom of expression, assembly, religion and conscience. It prohibits torture, slavery, forced labor and discrimination based on race, religion, gender or political beliefs.
Signatories must also ensure that defendants receive fair trials before independent and unbiased judges. The convention provides recourse to the European Court of Human Rights for ultimate appeals after national appeals are exhausted.
The Vatican is an absolute monarchy in which the pope wields supreme legislative, executive, and judicial power. It would be loath to allow European commissions to evaluate its policies forbidding the ordination of women, for example, or to subject decisions of the Vatican’s criminal or ecclesial tribunals to appeals at the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights.
Yet the pope frequently lectures European leaders on protecting human rights and human dignity, most recently during a visit this month to Cyprus and Greece where he chided Europe for its failure to welcome migrants.
During that trip, Francis lamented that authoritarian rule was on the rise in Europe as democracy wanes.
The women's groups that participated in the petition include Catholic Women Speak in Britain; We Are Church in Ireland, Germany and Austria; Women for the Church in Italy; Voices of Faith in Rome and Liechtenstein, as well as similar progressive Catholic groups in Spain, France, Croatia and Switzerland.
THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS THE PROBLEM
Guns aren't the problem. People like Rep. Lauren Boebert and the NRA are.Carli Pierson, USA TODAY
Sun, December 12, 2021,
GOP Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia on Oct. 12, 2021.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and I have a few things in common.
We are both white women. We are both mothers. We have both lived in Florida and Colorado (she is from the former; I am from the latter). But that is where the similarities end.
When I saw one of my state's representatives in Congress post a Christmas card from hell with a picture of her and the kids around the tree and clutching their military-style weapons after a deadly school shooting in Michigan – I had to say something.
To be clear: Boebert's brand of outrage is nothing new; she's a wannabee Donald Trump in a dress. Her heartlessness isn't even really worth writing an opinion column about except to point out that people like Boebert and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who don't give a damn about the gun violence and trauma we are constantly cycling through as a nation, are the problem.
Mass shootings are a ubiquitous part of American life. But we don't have to accept that as the status quo. Similarly, we must not accept that our representatives in government threaten other members of Congress and taunt traumatized families with their armed tyranny.
These displays of wanton disregard for peace and security must have consequences.
Founding Fathers
Now, I'm not about to tell you that the Second Amendment doesn't say you can't have guns, because it clearly does, and the U.S. Supreme Court agrees. That question has been asked and answered.
But in our failure to adequately teach American history and civics, we forget that the Second Amendment has an important context that should accompany its interpretation. Specifically, the Founding Fathers were absolutely terrified of standing armies – and gun ownership was common for a variety of practical reasons that didn't always have to do with self-defense.
The American crisis
Where did America go wrong? The problem isn't the guns. The problem is us. Our taste for gun violence is a uniquely American crisis. And I say that as someone who has lived in Switzerland, a country armed to the teeth but with zero school shootings, annually.
A mother and daughter are reunited after a shooting April, 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. Two students killed 12 others and a teacher before dying by suicide.
James Madison tried to save us, from us, back in the late 18th century. He anticipated that the project of American democracy would fail if left entirely in the hands of the people.
It is the sense of exceptionalism our nation is known for, and the reckless interpretation of those 27 words in the Second Amendment by gun lobbyists, the NRA and their supporters that have, since the late 1990s, had a devastating effect on American life. I mention the '90s because it was in 1999, at Columbine High School in Colorado, when two students went on a gun rampage, killing 13 other people.
Every time a Republican posts a picture of themselves and their families snuggled up to the muzzle of a semiautomatic rifle immediately after a mass shooting, I wonder what the Founding Fathers would think if they knew that this was what was to become of the Second Amendment.
Surely they would find it infinitely sad, infinitely pathetic that we have not made necessary changes.
Common sense
Carli Pierson
We are the source of our own tyranny. We are also the solution. We must look to our God-given common sense to solve this uniquely American crisis.
And common sense begs us to do better in electing our representatives and getting rid of them when they cross the line.
Carli Pierson is an attorney and an opinion writer at USA TODAY. Follow her on Twitter: @CarliPiersonEsq
Haiti's Moise was probing officials linked to drug trade when he was killed: NYT
Haitians protest increase in fuel prices, in Port-au-Prince
Sun, December 12, 2021
(Reuters) - Haitian President Jovenel Moise was compiling a list of officials and businessmen linked to the drug trade before he was assassinated in July, the New York Times reported on Sunday, adding he planned to give the names to the U.S. government.
Moise was murdered in a late-night raid on his home by a group of armed men that included former Colombian soldiers. Haitian authorities have arrested 45 people but have not yet charged anyone with the crime.
Some of those who were captured confessed that retrieving the list with names of suspected drug traffickers was a top priority, the Times reported, citing three senior Haitian officials with knowledge of the investigation.
"The document was part of a broader series of clashes Mr. Moise had with powerful political and business figures, some suspected of narcotics and arms trafficking," the Times wrote.
A spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Ariel Henry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moise's murder left Haiti in a political vacuum with no elected president, and further fueled a wave of kidnappings by gangs that now control much of the Caribbean nation's territory.
The government has promised to serve justice in the case, but judicial officials have also reported intimidation and death threats.
(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
Haitians protest increase in fuel prices, in Port-au-Prince
Sun, December 12, 2021
(Reuters) - Haitian President Jovenel Moise was compiling a list of officials and businessmen linked to the drug trade before he was assassinated in July, the New York Times reported on Sunday, adding he planned to give the names to the U.S. government.
Moise was murdered in a late-night raid on his home by a group of armed men that included former Colombian soldiers. Haitian authorities have arrested 45 people but have not yet charged anyone with the crime.
Some of those who were captured confessed that retrieving the list with names of suspected drug traffickers was a top priority, the Times reported, citing three senior Haitian officials with knowledge of the investigation.
"The document was part of a broader series of clashes Mr. Moise had with powerful political and business figures, some suspected of narcotics and arms trafficking," the Times wrote.
A spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Ariel Henry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moise's murder left Haiti in a political vacuum with no elected president, and further fueled a wave of kidnappings by gangs that now control much of the Caribbean nation's territory.
The government has promised to serve justice in the case, but judicial officials have also reported intimidation and death threats.
(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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