Peter 'Snakebite' Wright produces late comeback against Michael Smith to claim PDC World Darts Championship

Peter Wright celebrates with the Sid Waddell Trophy after victory against Michael Smith in the World Darts Championship final. John Walton/PA Wire.

January 03 2022 10:50 PM

Peter Wright has won the PDC World Championship for the second time after beating Michael Smith 7-5 in the final at Alexandra Palace.

'Snakebite', who previously beat Michael van Gerwen to win the title in 2020, claimed glory with a strong finish, winning nine of the last 10 legs to become a double world champion.

The 51-year-old got the job done with a double-16 finish to break Smith’s heart.

Smith was dreaming about being one set away from glory leading 5-4 and 2-0 up with the throw, with Wright on the rack.

But the Scot showed his fighting spirit to reel off three successive legs and level at 5-5 as an undulating battle continued to unfold.

Smith created history on his way to taking a 4-3 lead as in the fifth set he plundered his 72nd 180 of the tournament, breaking Gary Anderson’s previous record set in 2017.

The maximums kept on coming, allowing ‘Bully Boy’ to rattle off back-to-back sets as he gained the advantage for the first time.

However, Wright showed great fighting spirit to battle back and claim the title with three successive sets.

Canadian court awards $84M to families over plane shot down by Iran in 2020

BY OLAFIMIHAN OSHIN - 01/03/22 

An Ontario, Canada, court has awarded $84 million to the families of six people who died when Iranian military forces shot down a Ukraine International Airlines plane in 2020, The Guardian reported.

In a statement on Monday, the families' attorney Mark Arnold said they were awarded compensation by the county for the loss of their relatives aboard flight Flight 752.

The court decision was upheld by Justice Edward Belobaba of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice on Dec. 31, according to The Guardian.

In what Tehran later called a "disastrous mistake," the Iranian Revolutionary Guard shot down the airplane in January 2020, killing all 176 people on board, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.

Arnold also said he will look into seizing Iranian assets in Canada and abroad, adding his team will look to seize whatever it can to pay what the families are owed.

The families also filed a civil lawsuit against Iran and other officials they believe were to blame for the incident, The Guardian reported.

A special Canadian forensic team in a 2021 report accused Iran of incompetence and recklessness over the downing of Flight 752, with Iranian officials criticizing the report as "highly politicized."

The downing of the plane came in the aftermath of U.S. forces killing Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani in a missile strike at Baghdad International Airport in January 2020.

Israel orders demolition of 10 Palestinian structures in West Bank

Israel cites lack of building permits in Area C for demolition orders

Qais Abu Samra |03.01.2022

RAMALLAH, Palestine

Israeli authorities have issued demolition orders for 10 Palestinian structures, including a mosque, in the occupied West Bank, according to a local official on Monday.

Salah Fanoun, the mayor of Nahalin village, west of Bethlehem, said Israeli authorities cited lack of building permits in Area C for the demolition orders.

“Four inhabited houses and a mosque are among the list of structures to be demolished,” he told Anadolu Agency.

Area C is under Israel’s administrative and security control until a final status agreement is reached with the Palestinians.

Under the 1995 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was divided into three portions – Area A, B, and C.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), a total of 768 Palestinian structures in Area C and the occupied East Jerusalem have been demolished by Israel between January and November 2021.

*Writing by Bassel Barakat in Ankara

US to donate $99m in Palestinian aid to UN

December 31, 2021 

Palestinian teachers sit in front of the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza City during a general strike of employees in UNRWA institutions in the Palestinian strip, on November 29, 2021. [MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images]

The United States (US) announced yesterday that it will donate $99 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), as the organisation suffers a major financial crisis.

According to the US State Department's Population, Refugees, and Migrations Bureau, the funds will "provide education, health care, and emergency relief to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children and families during a time of need."

The organisation currently offers its services to about 5.3 million Palestinian refugees in the occupied territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

It has faced severe financial difficulties since the US administration of President Donald Trump stopped donations altogether in 2018. Though some of these funds have been reinstated, they have failed to fill the funding gap.

READ: Majority of UN members back war crimes probe against Israel

In an open letter last week, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said perennial budget shortfalls had forced the agency to introduce austerity measures, stretching the level of aid it could offer Palestinians to the limit.

"For close to a decade now, donor funding to the Agency has stagnated and remained below the amount needed to ensure the continuation of quality services. At the same time, the refugee population has continued to grow while poverty and vulnerabilities have skyrocketed. The financial crisis is of an existential nature," he said.

He added that the resumption of US funding was too little to make up for the deficit, with other donors pulling out.

The United Arab Emirates sharply reduced its funding of the body in 2020, an UNRWA spokesman revealed earlier this year. Sami Mshasha said that the UAE donated $51.8 million to UNRWA in 2018 and again in 2019, but in 2020 it gave the agency just $1 million.

Meanwhile the UK had more than halved its funds to UNRWA from £42.5 million ($57.2 million) in 2020 to £20.8 million ($28 million) in 2021. The UK was the third largest overall donor to UNRWA in 2020, but its latest cut puts it in the second tier of contributors.

Established in 1949 by the UN General Assembly, UNRWA mission is to help Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip achieve their full human development potential, pending a just and lasting solution to their plight.

How a Wartime Newspaper Article Changed Australia Forever

Sunday, 2 January, 2022 - 
Daniel Moss

Australian foreign policy was dramatically recast 80 years ago in ways that still reverberate today. It went hand-in-hand with a far-reaching overhaul of economic life, the contours of which lasted long enough to help drive a recovery from the pandemic recession. These wartime military and financial arrangements live on, in what detractors call an over-dependence on Washington and the Reserve Bank of Australia’s quantitative easing.

With Japanese troops marching down the Malayan Peninsula in the closing days of 1941 and Singapore soon to be overrun, Australia’s then-Prime Minister John Curtin abandoned the notion that the UK would be the island continent’s protector. The bedrock principle of security since the founding of a penal colony in the 18th century was jettisoned. Washington became the fulcrum around which defense and diplomacy was organized — architecture that shapes Australia today.

Asked to contribute an article to the Dec. 27 edition of the Melbourne Herald newspaper, Curtin wrote: “Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.” The column, titled “The Task Ahead,” also called for a revolution in Australian life to gear up industry and finance to meet the demands of the war.

John Edwards, author of the two-volume biography “John Curtin’s War,” spoke to me about what Curtin intended to convey in the remarks and how the sentiments came to be canonized in Australian history and politics. Edwards is a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. He worked as an adviser to former Prime Minister Paul Keating, was chief economist for Australia and New Zealand at HSBC Holdings Plc and served on the board of the Reserve Bank from 2011 to 2016.

Daniel Moss: You called “The Task Ahead” the most celebrated document in Australian foreign policy. Why was it so important?

John Edwards: The significance arose because of what happened subsequently. Turning to the United States had, at the time, a very limited validity. It was limited to the circumstances of World War II. The significance arose from postwar circumstances: The British exit from India, Malaya, Burma, the Middle East and the UK’s impoverishment. Britain’s entire role in the world changed. The Empire vanished and Australia found itself in a world of new nations where Britain was absent. Had the UK emerged from the war differently, Curtin’s remarks may have been just been another wartime speech.

The awkwardness and controversy the text created was not so much Australia turning to America, because Britain had already turned to America. The real annoyance to Britain in the article was its demand that Australia share with the US the direction of allied efforts in the Pacific, rather than going through the UK as imperial arrangements would have dictated. It was awkward for UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill as he was in Washington conferring with President Franklin D. Roosevelt on this very issue. Curtin demanded that the Pacific conflict be treated as a new war and a war of equal status to that waged against Germany, which was contrary to British policy, and the US approach as well.

DM: Is Australia as lopsidedly dependent on America now as the country was on the UK prior to 1941?

JE: Curtin didn’t intend such a shift. Publicly and privately, he urged Britain to return to the Indo-Pacific as a major presence. He wanted a big base for the UK reopened in Singapore after the war with a fleet to support it. He didn’t understand that what had happened temporarily was to become something permanent. In a certain sense it is true that Australian foreign policy and defense is driven by a fear of abandonment by the great powers. We are not comfortable in our own region unsupported by a large external security guarantor. It’s particularly pertinent today. We fear China’s defense capacity, the size of its economy, its regional ambitions and we have re-emphasized our links with the US and, in a limited sense, the UK.

Underlying your question is: Are we doing enough for our own defense? In a way, what we are doing is underrated. We are spending a little more than 2% of gross domestic product on defense. We have quite a formidable undersea and air defense and offense capacity. We have a small but efficient army. Despite the controversy over China, we do not have a threat. And it’s certainly not China, in an offensive sense. China does not have that capability or that intention. It’s not so much that we don’t do enough, but we wrongly imagine American interests are our own.

DM: This leads us to AUKUS — a trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK and the US — and the fracas a few months ago over abandoning the French-built diesel submarines for a deal on nuclear-powered subs. Can you draw a direct line between the debates in Australia in late 1941 and the sub accord?

JE: It’s evocative, but the circumstances are radically different. AUKUS ultimately gives us very little more than our existing defense understandings. It doesn’t add much to our treaty with the US or our understandings with the UK, other than the aspect of agreeing to Australian access to nuclear-propelled sub construction. It’s very, very specific. Were it to come to fruition — we are talking about a program that won’t be completed until 40 years hence — would it be a major addition to our defense capability? Nuke subs are designed for long distance offensive tasks that relate more to our alliance with US than our actual home defense needs.

DM: Curtin talked in his article about a “revolution” in society. What did he mean by that?

JE: Curtin was a bit of a scold at that point in his life. He was offended that Australians continued to go the races and drink beer and so forth. He was incensed by strikes on the waterfront and in coal mines. Curtin wanted a greater appreciation of the challenge Australia faced. He required a mobilized society in the same way that we have edged much closer to during the pandemic: Adherence to the rules in which behavior determined to be for the greater good is the rule. There are resonances with that rhetoric and what politicians have been saying over the last couple of years. Metaphorically, we often describe ourselves as being in a war against Covid. There are links in a kind of mental attitude. But I wonder whether they will be any more permanent this time than during an actual war? People do revert pretty quickly to what they wish.

DM: Curtin overhauled the tax system and central banking during the war. Did he lay the ground for the modern Australian economy?

JE: This was, in a sense, the real revolution that Curtin wrought. Prior to Curtin, the central bank, which was then the Commonwealth Bank, had quite limited powers, limited authority and a limited vision of how it would use those powers. With his treasurer, Ben Chifley, Curtin brought in legislative changes that created a true central bank. More or less, with some organizational and structural changes, it has the same authority over financial institutions as the Reserve Bank today exercises. In fiscal policy, we rely on another wartime innovation that became permanent. That was the effective monopolization of personal income tax and company tax by the federal government. It gave Canberra great revenue and spending power that Curtin’s successors never saw fit to reverse.

DM: Has this federal authority been eroded by Covid? The state governments appear to have been ascendant, establishing their own rules.

JE: It’s true the federal government has had to fight to get its way. On the other hand, our recovery has depended on the RBA and the federal government. We moved from near-balanced budget to the biggest deficit. We have gone from a position where the RBA wouldn’t contemplate buying government debt to one where it is a major bond holder. The exercise of those powers, won by Curtin, has supported our economic resilience and recovery today.


Bloomberg

Trump Endorses Viktor Orbán, His Hungarian Role Model
By Ed Kilgore

Trump’s latest 2022 endorsee. Photo: Laszlo Balogh/Getty Images

Donald Trump has focused a lot of his energies lately on endorsing 2022 candidates for office, particularly in disputed Republican primaries where he can create a Trumpier-than-thou competition or settle old grudges with past detractors. It sometimes seems not a sparrow falls to the ground in GOP politics without the 45th president viewing the development narcissistically and interpreting it in terms of his own preoccupations.

But Trump’s latest endorsement on Monday shows him reaching pretty far:

Viktor Orbán of Hungary truly loves his Country and wants safety for his people. He has done a powerful and wonderful job in protecting Hungary, stopping illegal immigration, creating jobs, trade, and should be allowed to continue to do so in the upcoming Election. He is a strong leader and respected by all. He has my Complete support and Endorsement for reelection as Prime Minister!

Now given Trump’s well-known affinity for political strongmen, this may seem like a dog-bites-Hungarian story. But viewed historically, it’s very unusual, to put it mildly. Sure, presidents make nice with other heads of state in furtherance of foreign policy interests and as a matter of diplomatic protocol, as do former presidents and future presidential aspirants. And in the Cold War era, U.S. leaders often snuggled up to evil people who shared their antipathy toward communists. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had headed up the allied war effort in World War II, got buddy-buddy with Spain’s Francisco Franco, who not only killed an awful lot of innocent people and enslaved many more, but also sent troops (allegedly “volunteers”) to fight for Hitler on the Eastern Front.

Ike and Franco, 1959. Photo: Alamy

Anti-communist solidarity was also the ostensible reason for chumminess between the Nixon and Ford administrations and Chile’s murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet, as well as Reagan’s stubborn support for the apartheid regime in South Africa. In the latter case, Reagan may have also been currying favor with the southern white racists he was luring into the GOP at the time. That’s another rationale for American elected officials picking favorites in other countries’ political battles: a desire to pander to domestic constituencies. For many years pols in northeastern cities were tutored to express love for the “three I’s” — Ireland, Italy and Israel.

Occasionally U.S. leaders have such an obvious ideological and temperamental kinship with a particular foreign leader (e.g., Ronald Reagan with Margaret Thatcher or Bill Clinton with Tony Blair) that they can be described as strong political allies. That may largely explain Trump’s much-professed affection for Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, a similarly fiery and erratic Cult of Personality figure who will almost certainly be the next foreign beneficiary of an explicit Trump endorsement. But in Orbán’s case, the scary thing is that Trump’s admiration of the Hungarian apostle of “illiberal democracy” is most clearly aspirational. As my colleague Jonathan Chait put it a couple of years ago, Orbán is what Trump dreams to become.

Like Trump, Orbán came to power democratically, and his regime still holds elections. But the Hungarian leader is a wizard at giving himself authoritarian powers that distort democracy into something very dissimilar, much like the heads-I-win tails-you-lose system Trump transparently favors where his manifest greatness cannot be legitimately repudiated.

So in Orbán’s Fidesz Party we see Trump’s vision for the GOP: a populist model featuring Christian nationalism seasoned with racism and xenophobia, endless attacks on “globalist elites,” and an ever-heavier thumb on the electoral scales. The only apparent domestic constituency for Orbán-mania is among the right-wing intellectuals seeking to develop a full-scale MAGA ideology, led by the pseudo-intellectual Fox News gabber Tucker Carlson, who in August spent an entire week hosting his show from Budapest.

Adulation for a right-wing authoritarian, central-European Big Man is quite unseemly for Americans with any sense of history. In 2017, former president Barack Obama endorsed the French presidential candidacy of Emmanuel Macron in what was ostensibly a step as unusual as Trump’s. But it really wasn’t the same: Obama has zero future in public office, and Macron was facing right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen, who is an ideological cousin to Orbán and to Trump.

Unlike Obama, Trump is not a retired politician who has been liberated from the usual rules about interfering in other people’s political business. And clearly Orbán doesn’t need his help in hanging onto power for the immediate future. So we can best understand Trump’s endorsement of his Beau Ideal on the Danube as yet another mirror in which can be discerned another image of the endlessly self-regarding Man Who Would Be King. It’s worth pondering, since a second Trump administration — this one without the disciplinary limitations that come with having to face reelection — is now by some accounts a better-than-even bet.

America's rare earth vulnerability deepens
Azhar Azam
Opinion , 04-Jan-2022

CGTN

Rocky Smith, plant manager of Molycorp Inc. Mountain Pass rare earths mining and processing facility, holds a handful of rocks containing rare earth elements during a media tour in Mountain Pass, California, U.S. /Getty

Editor's note: Azhar Azam works in a private organization as a market and business analyst and writes about geopolitical issues and regional conflicts. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Rare-earth elements (REEs), categorized as light and heavy subsets, are the necessary components of our everyday products. The critical minerals and materials have downstream applications in petroleum refineries, hard disk drives, TV and computer screens, wind turbines, electric vehicles (EVs), medical technologies as well as precision guided munitions and a range of military systems.

Over the next two decades, global demand for many rare-earth metals is projected to grow as the world moves to cut down carbon emissions. For example, international demand for lithium and graphite, key elements for EV batteries, is expected to surge by more than 4,000 percent and 2,500 percent in 2040, respectively. According to Reuters, around 70 percent of graphite used in lithium-ion batteries comes from China and it is the only country that can provide the quantity of graphite the U.S. industry needs.

The global trade of REEs is just over 1 percent of $1 trillion world oil trade, according to an article by ChinaPower under the Center for Strategic and International Studies, but the value of goods they generate could be assessed from Apple's strong reliance of these metals to sell iPhones worth over $142 billion a year, or mere $613 million of the U.S. REE imports that unlock roughly $496 billion of economic activity in vital civilian sectors, such as petroleum refining, automotive, electro medical devices and aeronautical instruments.

According to a report by the official website of the Government of Canada, China is the world's largest producer of 15 elements referred to as lanthanide series in the periodic table of elements alongside scandium and yttrium, accounting for 62 percent of global 213,000-tonne production. Even as the U.S. (12.2 percent), Myanmar (10.3 percent) and Australia (9.9 percent) produce these materials, Beijing is also the only producer of the valued heavy REEs used in high-technology and clean energy applications.

Between 2008 and 2018, 42.3 percent of the REE exports came from Beijing. In 2019, about 87.8 percent of these supplies were exported to the world's major economic and technological powerhouses, which shows how the developed countries greatly benefited from the low-cost Chinese REEs, according to ChinaPower.

Molycorp Inc.'s rare earth mining and processing facility in Mountain Pass, California, U.S. /Getty


A document on the official website of the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that the U.S. became almost completely dependent on REE imports from China in late 1990s. Washington was particularly concerned about overreliance on Beijing for metals critical for defense applications, including jet fighter engines, missile guidance systems and electronic countermeasures. About 20 years on, the U.S. defense contractors still can't find any alternative REE source to keep its F-35 aircraft airborne, according to ABC News.

Reports by the United States International Trade Commission suggest that in 2019, America emerged as the top global exporter of REEs by volume in wake of its inability to process the materials, forcing Washington to export 100 percent of domestic production. In 2017, China became the world's largest REE importer by volume as worldwide states continued to ship the newly mined materials to Beijing for processing.

Over the years, Washington has been increasingly dependent on Beijing for processed REEs. The reports also point out that having exported 98 percent of its unmined production to China in 2019, 75 percent of U.S.'s predominantly processed rare earth imports were from China. America also secured materials from Malaysia, Estonia and Japan. These countries exported materials to the U.S. after importing semi-processed products from China. Estimated at 98 percent, America's imports of processed supplies from Beijing reflect the former's reliance on China and the latter's crucial role in global REE processing.

The drive to end the U.S. economic and military dependence on Chinese REEs in 2017 emboldened then-President Donald Trump to issue an executive order, and the country's Interior Department in 2018 added these elements to items deemed critical to the economic and national security. The Biden administration is doubling down on these efforts through its $2-trillion infrastructure bill; the push may stymie for it faces awkward challenges and China isn't ruled out either.

In recent years, the U.S. Defense and Energy Departments gave a myriad of grants and contracts to Las-Vegas headquartered MP Materials to ramp up the domestic REE supply chain from mine to magnet and Australia's Lynas to build a heavy REE facility in Texas. While heavy elements like dysprosium and terbium used in defense, technology and EVs are harder to find and their prices have risen by 50 percent in 2021, demand for light REEs such as neodymium and praseodymium has shot up with tech growth.

Washington's new plan would run into difficulties as Chinese REE processing and refining firm, Shenghe Resources, owns a stake in MP and is one of the largest company's customers. Through Shenghe, also a shareholder in the Australian Greenland Minerals, concentrate produced at the sole U.S. commercial Mountain Pass facility in California is distributed to refiners in Asia because the West simply lags behind in these capabilities.

As the journalist John Koetsier analyzed in his commentary for Forbes, the U.S. needs 10 times the amount of REEs to meet Biden's ambitious goal of selling 50 percent zero-emission EVs by 2030 in addition to 20 to 25 times more to satisfy the ever-growing requirements of the green economy. These grandiose objectives can't be achieved given Washington lacks an "apparatus" like that of Beijing and will rather consume another couple of decades.

An aggressive approach and fraying relations with China is doing an uncontrollable damage to the U.S. economic, industrial and technological future. It won't be wise on the part of Washington to expose its vulnerability to the world and waste the next twenty years in seeking "rare earth sovereignty." Only a truce and cooperation between the two major economies across all domains can fix many of America's predicaments including the REE nuisance and would allow the economic duo make progress on bilateral and global prosperity.

New hi-tech photo brings Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ up close


A microscopic image enlarging a 4x6 millimeter part of the painting on Rembrandt's Night Watch, which will be restored next year in the public eye, is seen on a screen next to the painting at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018. Rembrandt van Rijn's iconic and huge painting "The Night Watch" is now also a supersized museum photo delivered right to your laptop in unsurpassed detail. The Amsterdam Rijksmuseum on Monday Jan. 3, 2022, put on its digital portal what it called "the most detailed photograph of any artwork" ready for assessment by scientists and art lovers alike. It is expected to draw widespread interest especially since the museum is closed because of coronavirus measures.

(AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)


AMSTERDAM (AP) — Rembrandt van Rijn’s iconic and huge painting “The Night Watch” is now also a supersized museum photo delivered right to your laptop in unsurpassed detail.

The Amsterdam Rijksmuseum on Monday put on its digital portal what it called “the most detailed photograph of any artwork” ready for assessment by scientists and art lovers alike. It is expected to draw widespread interest especially since the museum is closed because of coronavirus measures.

The 717-gigapixel photo allows viewers to zoom in on Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and see how the 17th-century master put the tiniest of white dots in his eyes to give life to the painting’s main character. It also shows the minute cracks in his pupils, brought on by the passage of time.



The real canvas measures 379.5 x 453.5 centimeters (149.4 x178.5 inches) canvas and each pixel represents 5 micrometers or 0.005 square millimeters.

Apart from simply showing the dazzling detail, it will also help researchers restore the work and assess its aging process over time.

The Night Watch will be removed from its wooden stretcher in two weeks and placed on a new one to remove rippling that was caused when the world famous painting was housed in a temporary gallery while the Rijksmuseum underwent major renovations from 2003-2013.

The oil-on-canvas painting depicts a group of Amsterdam civil militia and shows off Rembrandt’s renowned use of light and composition to create a dynamic scene filled with characters.

The painting has undergone many restorations over its existence. It was placed on its present wooden stretcher in 1975. Once the painting has been re-stretched, the museum will decide whether further restoration work is needed.

Congress’ doctor wants ‘maximal telework’ amid virus surge

By ALAN FRAM

A winter storm delivers heavy snow to the Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 3, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress’ top doctor urged lawmakers Monday to move to a “maximal telework posture,” citing “unprecedented” numbers of COVID-19 cases at the Capitol that he said are mostly breakthrough infections of people already vaccinated.

The seven-day average rate of infection at the Capitol’s testing center has grown from less than 1% to more than 13%, Brian P. Monahan, the attending physician, wrote in a letter to congressional leaders obtained by The Associated Press.

Monahan said there have been “an unprecedented number of cases in the Capitol community affecting hundreds of individuals.” Citing what he said was limited sampling as of Dec. 15, he said about 61% of the cases were the new, highly contagious omicron variant while 38% were the delta variant.

While providing no figure, he said “most” cases at the Capitol are breakthroughs. Of those testing positive, 35% are asymptomatic, he said.

Monahan’s letter came as the worldwide spread of the omicron variant has prompted a deluge of COVID-19 cases, now averaging 400,000 reported new infections in the U.S. daily. The growing caseloads have caused cascading absentee rates at workplaces around the country including among schools, health care providers, airlines, police and fire departments and other essential workers, sparking concerns that disrupted services will only worsen in the near future.

“The daily case rates will increase even more substantially in the coming weeks,” Monahan warned.

Congress has been in recess since mid-December. The Senate returned Monday and held an abbreviated 17-minute session, but postponed a scheduled evening vote after Washington was hit by several inches of snow. The House was not due to return to the Capitol until next week.

Spokespersons for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., did not immediately have information on whether Monahan’s letter might prompt any changes in Congress’ operations. Regular lunches that Senate Democrats have together were expected to be virtual only for at least this week.

Monahan urged congressional offices and agencies — which employ thousands of food service, custodial and other workers who serve Congress — to reduce in-person activities “to the maximum extent possible” by using electronic communications instead.

Currently, the House requires lawmakers and aides to wear masks in the House chamber except when they’ve been recognized to speak and in most other settings in the Capitol and House office buildings. The Senate encourages mask wearing but doesn’t require it.

Monahan said people should wear properly fitted, medical grade KN95 masks or better. Blue surgical masks and cloth masks “must be replaced,” he said.

Mask wearing is “a critical necessity unless the individual is alone in a closed office space or eating or drinking in a food service area,” he said.

Republican lawmakers and aides from both chambers are markedly less likely than Democrats to wear masks around the Capitol, with some rejecting widespread scientific acceptance that proper mask wearing can reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 infections.

Lawmakers can be fined up to $2,500 each time they don’t wear a mask on the House floor, under a resolution the chamber approved last year. All fines announced publicly so far by the House Ethics Committee for flouting that rule have been against Republicans.

Monahan said breakthrough cases have not led to any deaths or hospitalizations among vaccinated lawmakers or congressional staff.

But he said that while people who’ve received two vaccinations and a booster generally suffer mild symptoms, even those can lead to six to 12 months of “long COVID.” That could include serious cardiovascular, neurological and cognitive problems, he said.

A “reasonable estimate” is that 6% to 10% of cases could end up that way, he added.

Germany calls nuclear power 'dangerous,' rejects EU plan

The Associated Press
 Monday, January 3, 2022

Steam rises from the cooling tower of the nuclear power plant of Gundremmingen, Bavaria, Germany, on Dec. 31, 2021. (Stefan Puchner / dpa via AP)

BERLIN -- The German government said Monday that it considers nuclear energy dangerous and objects to European Union proposals that would let the technology remain part of the bloc's plans for a climate-friendly future.

Germany is on course to switch off its remaining three nuclear power plants at the end of this year and phase out coal by 2030, whereas its neighbour France aims to modernize existing reactors and build new ones to meet its future energy needs. Berlin plans to rely heavily on natural gas until it can be replaced by non-polluting sources for energy.

The opposing paths taken by two of the EU's biggest economies have resulted in an awkward situation for the bloc's executive Commission. A draft EU plan seen by The Associated Press concludes that both nuclear energy and natural gas can under certain conditions be considered sustainable for investment purposes.

"We consider nuclear technology to be dangerous," government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin, noting that the question of what to do with radioactive waste that will last for thousands of generations remains unresolved.

Hebestreit added that Germany "expressly rejects" the EU's assessment of atomic energy and has repeatedly stated this position toward the commission.

Germany is now considering its next steps on the issue, he said.

Environmentalists have criticized Germany's emphasis on natural gas, which is less polluting than coal but still produces carbon dioxide -- the main greenhouse gas -- when it is burned.

Hebestreit said the German government's goal is to use natural gas only as a "bridge technology" and replace it with non-polluting alternatives such as hydrogen produced with renewable energy by 2045, the deadline the country has set to become climate neutral.

He declined to say whether Chancellor Olaf Scholz backs Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck's view that the EU Commission's proposals were a form of "greenwashing."