Hate crimes trial in Arbery killing will put racism up front
By RUSS BYNUM

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Ahmaud Arbery's mother Wanda Cooper-Jones, center, walks out of the Glynn County Courthouse surrounded by supporters after a judge sentenced Greg McMichael, his son, Travis McMichael, and a neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan to life in prison, Friday, Jan. 7, 2022, in Brunswick, Ga. The three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery were sentenced Friday to life in prison, with a judge denying any chance of parole for the father and son who armed themselves and initiated the deadly permute of the 25-year-old Black man. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton)


BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — Sentenced to life in prison for murder, the three white men who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery will soon stand trial on federal hate crimes charges in which jurors will have to decide whether the slaying of the running Black man was motivated by racism.

The sentences imposed by a judge Friday in Glynn County Superior Court concluded the state of Georgia’s criminal case in the slaying of 25-year-old Arbery, in which a jury returned guilty verdicts the day before Thanksgiving.

A month from now, on Feb. 7, a federal judge has scheduled jury selection to begin in the three men’s second trial in U.S. District Court. And evidence of racism that state prosecutors chose not to present at the murder trial is expected to be front and center.

An indictment last year charged father and son Greg and Travis McMichael and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan with violating Arbery’s civil rights when they pursued the running man in pickup trucks and cut off his escape from their neighborhood. Bryan recorded cellphone video of the chase’s deadly end, when Travis McMichael blasted Arbery at close range with a shotgun.

The Feb. 23, 2020, killing just outside the port city of Brunswick became part of a greater national reckoning on racial injustice when the video leaked online two months later. Though an investigator testified at a pretrial court hearing that Bryan said he heard Travis McMichael utter a racist slur as Arbery lay dying in the street, state prosecutors never presented that information to the jury during the murder case.



That evidence should be key in the federal trial, where the McMichaels and Bryan are charged with targeting Arbery because he was Black.

At a hearing Friday, Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley sentenced both McMichaels to life in prison with no chance of parole. The judge sentenced Bryan to life with a possibility for parole once he’s served 30 years.

Despite those severe penalties, Arbery’s family said the hate crimes case remains important. At the time of his death, Arbery had enrolled at a technical college and was preparing to study to become an electrician like his uncles.

“They killed him because he was a Black man,” Arbery’s father, Marcus Arbery, told reporters outside the Glynn County courthouse Friday.

Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arbery’s mother, said it’s important for federal case to expose racist motives behind the killing because “there is an issue of race taking place in this country. It has come front and center and it needs to be discussed.”

Georgia Bureau of Investigation Agent Richard Dial testified in June 2020, more than a year before the state trial, that Bryan told investigators he heard Travis McMichael say “f----ing n---er” after shooting Arbery. Attorneys for Travis McMichael have denied he made the statement.

State prosecutors and investigators never mentioned that during the murder trial. Georgia law doesn’t require establishing motive to convict someone of murder. It merely requires proving a victim was killed with malice or during the commission of another felony.

Regardless, issues of race loomed large in the murder trial over Arbery’s death. The McMichaels and Bryan weren’t charged with crimes in the Black man’s killing until the shooting video became public two month later.

“Today your son has made history, because we have people who are being held accountable for lynching a Black man in America,” Benjamin Crump, a civil attorney for Arbery’s family, told the slain man’s parents after the sentencing hearing.

Defense attorneys during the trial contended the men pursued Arbery because they reasonably believed he had been committing burglaries in the neighborhood. Travis McMichael took the witness stand to testify that he opened fire in self-defense after Arbery ran at him and tried to grab his shotgun.

“He and Greg McMichael thought they were helping their community, thought they were helping police catch someone,” said Robert Rubin, an attorney for Travis McMichael.

Defense attorneys said they planned to appeal the convictions for murder and other state crimes within 30 days.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley called the killing “callous” and noted that when Arbery fell bleeding in the street the McMichaels “turned their backs, to give a disturbing image, and they walked away.”

Biden’s low profile on Guantanamo rankles as prison turns 20

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In this June 5, 2018 photo, reviewed by U.S. military officials, troops stand guard outside Camp Delta at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, in Cuba. The 20th anniversary of the first prisoners' arrival at the Guantanamo Bay detention center is on Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022. There are now 39 prisoners left. At its peak, in 2003, the detention center held nearly 680 prisoners. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Advocates for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center were optimistic when President Joe Biden took office. And they were relieved this summer after the U.S. released a prisoner for the first time in years. Many are now increasingly impatient.

In the months since that release, there have been few signs of progress in closing the notorious offshore prison on the U.S. base in Cuba. That has led to increased skepticism about Biden’s approach as the administration completes its first year and the detention center reaches a milestone Tuesday — the 20th anniversary of the first prisoners’ arrival.

“President Biden has stated his intention to close Guantanamo as a matter of policy but has not taken substantial steps toward closure,” said Wells Dixon, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has long taken a leading role in challenging the indefinite confinement without charge at the base

“There’s a lot of impatience and a lot of frustration among advocates and people who have been watching this,” said Daphne Eviatar, director of the security with the human rights program at Amnesty International USA.

Without a more concerted effort, those who want the center to close fear a repeat of what happened under President Barack Obama. Obama made closing Guantanamo a signature issue from his first days in office, but managed only to shrink it in the face of political opposition in Congress.

“We can’t forget what this country did 20 years ago and is continuing to do today,” Eviatar said. “This administration has a lot on its plate, certainly, but this is such an egregious human rights offense.”

There are 39 prisoners left. It’s the fewest since the detention center’s earliest days, when the initial groups, suspected of having a connection to al-Qaida or the Taliban, arrived on flights from Afghanistan — hooded, shackled and clad in orange jumpsuits — to what at the time was a sleepy U.S. outpost on the southeastern coast of Cuba.

Guantanamo became the focus of international outrage because of the mistreatment and torture of prisoners and the U.S. insistence that it could hold men indefinitely without charge for the duration of a war against al-Qaida that seemingly has no end. The critics grew to include Michael Lehnert, a now retired Marine Corps major general who was tasked with opening the detention center but came to believe that holding mostly low-level fighters without charge was counter to American values and interests.

“To me, the existence of Guantanamo is anathema to everything that we represent, and it needs to be closed for that reason,” Lehnert said.

At its peak, in 2003, the detention center held nearly 680 prisoners. President George W. Bush released more than 500 and Obama freed 197 before time ran out on his effort to whittle down the population.

President Donald Trump rescinded the Obama order to close Guantanamo, but largely ignored the place. He pledged during his first campaign to “load it up with some bad dudes” but never sent anyone there and said the annual cost of operating the detention center was “crazy,” at around $13 million per prisoner.

Of the remaining prisoners, 10 face trial by military commission in proceedings that have bogged down for years. They include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Two others still at Guantanamo have been sentenced and one of them, former Maryland resident Majid Khan, is expected to complete his sentence next month.

The other 27 include 13 who have been cleared for release, including eight under Biden who could now be returned to their homeland or resettled elsewhere. Two dozen have not been cleared and have never been charged, and likely never will be, a status that some Republicans continue to defend, including in a Senate hearing last month.

“We’re not fighting a crime. We’re fighting a war. I don’t want to torture anybody. I want to give them due process consistent with being at war, and, if necessary, I want to hold them as long as it takes to keep us safe or we believe that they’re no longer a threat,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy, said the National Security Council is “actively” working with the Defense, State and Justice departments and other agencies to reduce the population within restrictions imposed by Congress. The restrictions include a ban on returning prisoners to certain countries, including Yemen and Somalia, or sending any to the U.S., even for further imprisonment.

The official said the administration is committed to closing the detention center, an effort it “jump-started” after four years of inaction under Trump.

One sign of progress is the eight approved for release through a review process created under Obama. Under Trump, just one detainee was cleared and the only release was a Saudi sent back to his homeland as part of an earlier military commission plea deal.

Critics want the Biden administration to get busy repatriating or resettling the detainees who have been cleared and to restore a State Department unit devoted to the effort that was eliminated under Trump.

“Until I see some visible signs that the administration is going to do something about it, I am not heartened,” said Lehnert, the retired Marine Corps general. “If there is somebody in charge of closing Guantanamo, I have not talked to anybody that knows who they are.”

Advocates argue the administration could resolve the fate of the rest through plea agreements with those charged in the military commission cases and releasing the rest.

Biden’s low-key approach could be a smart strategy considering the political opposition encountered by Obama, argues Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York who with his students has represented 14 Guantanamo prisoners since 2005.

“President Biden appears to have learned from Obama’s missteps, transferring one prisoner and clearing many without being too loud about it and painting a target on his own back,” Kassem said. “Still, the administration must up the pace because, at the rate of one prisoner a year, it won’t come close to shuttering the prison.”

Sri Lanka 'technically bankrupt', seeks Chinese debt restructuring amid economic crisis

By KRISHAN FRANCIS 

(Associated Press) Jan 10 2022

Fertiliser at the centre of a dispute between Sri Lanka & China

A dispute between Sri Lanka and China is escalating, and it all centres around organic fertiliser.

The president of debt-ridden Sri Lanka has asked China for the restructuring of its loans and access to preferential credit for imports of essential goods, as the island nation struggles in the throes of its worst economic crisis, partly due to Beijing-financed projects that don’t generate revenue.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa told visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that it would be "a great relief to the country if attention could be paid on restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic,” according to a statement from his office.

Rajapaksa asked Wang for a concessionary credit facility for imports so that industries could run without disruption, the statement said. He also requested assistance to enable Chinese tourists to travel to Sri Lanka within a secure bubble.

Wang and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president's brother, later visited Colombo’s Port City, a reclaimed island developed with Chinese investment, where they opened a promenade and inaugurated the sailing of 65 boats to commemorate the 65 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

In his speech at the Port City on Sunday, Wang said a persistent and unchecked pandemic had made economic recovery difficult and the two countries must use the anniversary to work closer together.

He did not elaborate nor announce any relief measures.

Wang arrived in Sri Lanka on Saturday from the Maldives on the last leg of a multinational trip that also took him to Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros in East Africa.

ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, poses for media before his meeting with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka faces one of its worst economic crises, with foreign reserves down to around US$1.6 billion, barely enough for a few weeks of imports. It also has foreign debt obligations exceeding US$7b in 2022, including repayment of bonds worth US$500 million in January and US$1b in July.

The declining foreign reserves are partly blamed on infrastructure projects built with Chinese loans that don’t make money. China loaned money to build a seaport and airport in the southern Hambantota district, in addition to a wide network of roads.

Central Bank figures show that current Chinese loans to Sri Lanka total around US$3.38b, not including loans to state-owned businesses, which are accounted for separately and thought to be substantial.

“Technically we can claim we are bankrupt now,” said Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, principal researcher at the Point Pedro Institute of Development.

“When you have your net external foreign assets have been in the red, that means you are technically bankrupt.”

ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, left, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, center, inspect the Chinese funded sea reclamation Port City project in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

The situation has left households grappling with severe shortages. People wait in long lines to buy essential goods like milk powder, cooking gas and kerosene. Prices have increased sharply, and the Central Bank says the inflation rate rose to 12.1 per cent by the end of December from 9.9 per cent in November. Food inflation increased to over 22 per cent in the same period.

Because of a currency shortage, importers are unable to clear their cargo containing essentials and manufacturers are not able to buy raw materials from overseas.

Expatriate remittances have also fallen after the government ordered the mandatory conversion of foreign currency and exchange rate controls.

Ratings agency downgrades have resulted in Sri Lanka losing much of its borrowing power. In December, Fitch Ratings noted an increased probability of credit default.

The Central Bank has added a currency swap in Chinese currency worth US$1.5b to the reserves, but economists disagree whether it can be part of foreign reserves or not.

Wang’s visit has again highlighted the regional power struggle between China and India, Sri Lanka’s closest neighbour that considers the island part of its domain.

ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
A Chinese national who lives in Sri Lanka photographs the surroundings of Chinese funded sea reclamation Port City project during a ceremony held to mark the visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Before Wang spoke with Sri Lankan leaders, the top Indian diplomat in the country on Sunday morning inaugurated a train service from a station near Colombo to the north using compartments provided through an Indian loan facility.

An Indian embassy statement quoted Vinod Jacob recalling “the priority placed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on ties with Sri Lanka in line with the ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy.”

He said that a recent statement by India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar that India would support Sri Lanka in difficult times was an affirmation of that policy in the current context.

“We can see Sri Lanka being saddled between India and China for a potential bailout package,” said political analyst Ranga Kalansooriya.

“India is dragging its feet for some time while China is trying to manipulate the situation to the maximum,” he added.

China considers Sri Lanka to be a critical link in its Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative. Relations were recently strained over a shipment of Chinese fertiliser that allegedly contained harmful bacteria, and business agreements that were inked with China’s rivals, the United States and India.

Kalansooriya said that China was unlikely to bail Sri Lanka out of its economic crisis. “They will look for more business opportunities, fishing in the troubled waters of economic doldrums in the country,” he said.

Bukharin on State Capitalism and Imperialism - Leftcom
https://www.leftcom.org/.../bukharin-on-state-capitalism-and-imperialism
2020-08-21 · As we have already noted, for Bukharin, imperialism and state capitalism were linked to militarism and the inevitability of more wars. As he says in the article which follows, “Imperialism, militarism, state capitalism – this holy trinity of capitalist barbarism must be blown apart by the proletariat”.
 Imperialism was written in the first half of 1916 and published in mid-1917; Imperialism and World Economy was not published until several months later, but it was …

Ossinsky on Bukharin's Imperialism and the World …
https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2019-09-11/ossinsky-on-bukharin-s...
2019-09-11 · For Bukharin the key features of the new phase of capitalism were imperialism and state capitalism. Lenin borrowed freely from Bukharin in his own “popular outline” in Imperialism – the Highest Stage of Capitalism but did not see that state capitalism was not a stage on the way to socialism. Bukharin made it quite clear in several places that for him state capitalism …

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism ...
https://socialistworker.org/2008/12/02/imperialism-the-highest-stage...
2008-12-02 · According to Bukharin, imperialism is the result of two conflicting tendencies in modern capitalism. Competition tends to give rise to the concentration and centralization of capital, and as this...

Nikolai Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/index.htm
World Economy and the "National" State. Part 3 - Imperialism as the Reproduction of Capitalist Competition on a Larger Scale. 9. Imperialism as an Historic Category 10. Reproduction of the Process of Concentration and Centralisation on a World Scale 11. Means of Competitive Struggle, and State Power. Part 4 - The Future of Imperialism and World ...

Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State - Marxists
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1915/state.htm
Thus, state capitalism is the completed form of a state-capitalist

Stay home or work sick? Omicron poses a conundrum
By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO and DEE-ANN DURBIN


FILE - A medical technician performs a nasal swab test on a motorist queued up in a line at a COVID-19 testing site near All City Stadium Dec. 30, 2021, in southeast Denver. Millions of workers whose jobs don’t provide paid sick days are having to choose between their health and their paycheck as the omicron variant of COVID-19 rages across the nation. While many companies instituted more robust sick leave policies at the beginning of the pandemic, those have since been scaled back with the rollout of the vaccines, even though the omicron variant has managed to evade them. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

As the raging omicron variant of COVID-19 infects workers across the nation, millions of those whose jobs don’t provide paid sick days are having to choose between their health and their paycheck.

While many companies instituted more robust sick leave policies at the beginning of the pandemic, some of those have since been scaled back with the rollout of the vaccines, even though omicron has managed to evade the shots. Meanwhile, the current labor shortage is adding to the pressure of workers having to decide whether to show up to their job sick if they can’t afford to stay home.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” said Daniel Schneider, professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. “As staffing gets depleted because people are out sick, that means that those that are on the job have more to do and are even more reluctant to call in sick when they in turn get sick.

Low-income hourly workers are especially vulnerable. Nearly 80% of all private sector workers get at least one paid sick day, according to a national compensation survey of employee benefits conducted in March by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But only 33% of workers whose wages are at the bottom 10% get paid sick leave, compared with 95% in the top 10%.

RELATED COVERAGE
– A glance at who's getting paid sick days

A survey this past fall of roughly 6,600 hourly low-wage workers conducted by Harvard’s Shift Project, which focuses on inequality, found that 65% of those workers who reported being sick in the last month said they went to work anyway. That’s lower than the 85% who showed up to work sick before the pandemic, but much higher than it should be in the middle of a public health crisis. Schneider says it could get worse because of omicron and the labor shortage.

What’s more, Schneider noted that the share of workers with paid sick leave before the pandemic barely budged during the pandemic — 50% versus 51% respectively. He further noted many of the working poor surveyed don’t even have $400 in emergency funds, and families will now be even more financially strapped with the expiration of the child tax credit, which had put a few hundred dollars in families’ pockets every month.

The Associated Press interviewed one worker who started a new job with the state of New Mexico last month and started experiencing COVID-like symptoms earlier in the week. The worker, who asked not to be named because it might jeopardize their employment, took a day off to get tested and two more days to wait for the results.

A supervisor called and told the worker they would qualify for paid sick days only if the COVID test turns out to be positive. If the test is negative, the worker will have to take the days without pay, since they haven’t accrued enough time for sick leave.

“I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting my co-workers,” said the worker, who is still awaiting the results and estimates it will cost $160 per day of work missed if they test negative. “Now I wish I just would’ve gone to work and not said anything.”

A Trader Joe’s worker in California, who also asked not to be named because they didn’t want to risk their job, said the company lets workers accrue paid time off that they can use for vacations or sick days. But once that time is used up, employees often feel like they can’t afford to take unpaid days.

“I think many people now come to work sick or with what they call ‘allergies’ because they feel they have no other choice,” the worker said.

Trader Joe’s offered hazard pay until last spring, and even paid time off if workers had COVID-related symptoms. But the worker said those benefits have ended. The company also no longer requires customers to wear masks in all of its stores.

Other companies are similarly curtailing sick time that they offered earlier in the pandemic. Kroger, the country’s biggest traditional grocery chain, is ending some benefits for unvaccinated salaried workers in an attempt to compel more of them to get the jab as COVID-19 cases rise again. Unvaccinated workers enrolled in Kroger’s health care plan will no longer be eligible to receive up to two weeks paid emergency leave if they become infected — a policy that was put into place last year when vaccines were unavailable.

Meanwhile, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, is slashing pandemic-related paid leave in half — from two weeks to one — after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reduced isolation requirements for people who don’t have symptoms after they test positive.

Workers have received some relief from a growing number of states. In the last decade, 14 states and the District of Columbia have passed laws or ballot measures requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

On the federal front, however, the movement has stalled. Congress passed a law in the spring of 2020 requiring most employers to provide paid sick leave for employees with COVID-related illnesses. But the requirement expired on Dec. 31 of that same year. Congress later extended tax credits for employers who voluntarily provide paid sick leave, but the extension lapsed at the end of September, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

In November, the U.S. House passed a version of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan that would require employers to provide 20 days of paid leave for employees who are sick or caring for a family member. But the fate of that bill is uncertain in the Senate.

“We can’t do a patchwork sort of thing. It has to be holistic. It has to be meaningful,” said Josephine Kalipeni, executive director at Family Values @ Work, a national network of 27 state and local coalitions helping to advocate for such policies as paid sick days.

The U.S. is one of only 11 countries worldwide without any federal mandate for paid sick leave, according to a 2020 study by the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

On the flipside are small business owners like Dawn Crawley, CEO of House Cleaning Heroes, who can’t afford to pay workers when they are out sick. But Crawley is trying to help in other ways. She recently drove one cleaner who didn’t have a car to a nearby testing site. She later bought the cleaner some medicine, orange juice and oranges.

“If they are out, I try to give them money but at the same time my company has got to survive,” Crawley said. ″If the company goes under, no one has work.”

Even when paid sick leave is available, workers aren’t always made aware of it.

Ingrid Vilorio, who works at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Castro Valley, California, started feeling sick last March and soon tested positive for COVID. Vilorio alerted a supervisor, who didn’t tell her she was eligible for paid sick leave — as well as supplemental COVID leave — under California law.

Vilorio said her doctor told her to take 15 days off, but she decided to take just 10 because she had bills to pay. Months later, a co-worker told Vilorio she was owed sick pay for the time she was off. Working through Fight for $15, a group that works to unionize fast food workers, Vilorio and her colleagues reported the restaurant to the county health department. Shortly after that, she was given back pay.

But Vilorio, who speaks Spanish, said through a translator that problems persist. Workers are still getting sick, she said, and are often afraid to speak up.

“Without our health, we can’t work,” she said. “We’re told that we’re front line workers, but we’re not treated like it.”

___

D’Innocenzio reported from New York and Durbin reported from Detroit.

FILM
Babelsberg: World's oldest large-scale film studio

Many of cinema's greatest names worked in the legendary Babelsberg film studio, located just outside Berlin. In early 2022, it was acquired by a US investment firm.



The birth of a film studio

While independent US producers were already establishing their studios in Hollywood, German filmmakers were shooting in the center of Berlin. Because the hot spotlights kept triggering fire alarms, they were asked to find a more remote location. Film pioneer Guido Seeber picked new premises in Potsdam-Babelsberg, at the southwest outskirts of Berlin, where a first studio was built in 1911.

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Austria's former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz joins anti-racism NGO

Sebastian Kurz has been appointed co-chairman of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, just a few months after leaving office amid a corruption scandal.


Kurz previously announced his departure from politics after serving as Austria's chancellor for several years

Conservative politician Sebastian Kurz, who stepped as Austrian chancellor down amid a corruption scandal last year, was announced on Sunday as the new co-chairman of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR).

The ECTR is an international NGO that describes its goal on its website as fighting "such evils as extremism, racism, antisemitism and xenophobia."

Other noteworthy co-chairmen of the group are former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar — both of whom were in power when their nations joined the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

ECTR founder Moshe Kantor welcomed Kurz's appointment on Twitter.

"We could not have found a better person to lead with passion, wisdom and determination against today's global challenges," he wrote.

Other noteworthy co-chairmen of the group are former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar — both of whom were in power when their nations joined the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Why did Kurz leave office?

Kurz resigned from the top job in October while facing allegations that he and other members of the Austrian People's Party misused public funds to help boost his political rise.

The 35-year-old denies any wrongdoing. He later announced his complete withdrawal from politics.

"It is a great honor to join such an important organisation which works against extremism and for greater tolerance across Europe," Kurz said in a statement issued by the ECTR.

During his time in office, Kurz made efforts to confront Austria's role in the Holocaust and placed himself firmly on the side of Israel in diplomatic affairs.

"Sebastian Kurz is widely known for his dedication in fighting all forms of antisemitism, terrorism, extremism and radicalization with a particular focus on preventing youth radicalization during his almost 10 years in leadership roles," the ECTR said.
What is Kurz's relationship with the far right?

During his political career, Kurz was also instrumental in forming a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party in 2017 — making Austria the only country in Western Europe to have a far-right party in government.

He also opposed the acceptance of refugees from camps in Greece as well as those fleeing Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power.

Since leaving office, he has joined the investment firm led by tech billionaire Peter Thiel whom many see as a far-right figure.

ab/dj (dpa, Reuters)

Former Biden adviser says US won't get more than 70 percent vaccinated 'without a mandate

Sun, January 9, 2022


Ezekiel Emanuel, a former member of the Biden transition's COVID-19 advisory board, said on Sunday that the U.S. will not get more than 70 percent of its population vaccinated "without a mandate."

"We will never get to 70, 80 percent or 90 percent of the American population vaccinated without a mandate. It's just that simple," Emanuel told moderator Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Emanuel, who is currently serving as a vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, said vaccine mandates are "our best tools to get 90 percent" of the population vaccinated.

"They make sure that people who get infected don't get hospitalized at such a high rate and are very, very, very unlikely to die. That's an important protection for people, and we have to make sure that people get it," he added.

Emanuel's comments came after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for President Biden's vaccine-or-test mandate for a large swath of the U.S. workforce. The conservative justices on the bench asked sharp questions regarding whether a decades-old federal workplace law provides the legal authority for the regulation.

A number of states have filed lawsuits to stop the controversial policy from being enacted. It is set to take effect on Jan. 10.

Emanuel on Sunday said the Supreme Court must "recognize that COVID in the workplace is a real health threat and really does affect many people."

"Unfortunately, many front-line workers have died from COVID and contracting COVID in the workplace. They need protection, and ... mandating vaccination is a quite reasonable protection," he added.

The U.S. is currently seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases nationwide driven in part by the highly transmissible omicron variant. Deaths, however, have remained lower than during previous surges.

Early studies suggest that the omicron strain causes less severe illness in vaccinated individuals who contract the virus compared to previous variants.

Massive fire that tore through Bronx building sparked by e-bike battery: FDNY

Thomas Tracy, New York Daily News
Sat, January 8, 2022

A massive fire that tore through a six-story Bronx building early Saturday, seriously injuring a firefighter, was sparked by a charging e-bike battery in a ground-floor restaurant, FDNY officials said.

The e-bike was being charged inside the Caridad Restaurant on Grand Concourse at E. 182nd St. in Fordham Heights about 2 a.m. when the bike’s lithium-ion battery caught fire, the FDNY said.

The fire quickly spread, causing extensive damage.

More than 160 firefighters and EMS members were called in to put out the fire and treat the injured. The blaze was brought under control within an hour.

Two firefighters were injured, one seriously, an FDNY spokesman said. The firefighter was taken to a local hospital for treatment. No residents were injured.

Restaurant workers had several e-bikes charging inside the restaurant overnight.

“One failed and burst into flames,” an FDNY source said.

The Grand Concourse blaze was the first e-bike battery fire in this city this year — but part of a growing concern, FDNY officials said.

E-bike and scooter batteries sparked 104 fires last year across the city, including a fatal fire in the East Village where two teens were forced to shinny down a pipe to safety.

A resident of that building was charging nine e-bike batteries inside his fourth-floor apartment when they caught fire. The explosive force of the blaze blew out the windows and a wall.

Last year’s lithium-ion battery fires caused 79 injuries and four deaths, FDNY officials said.

The batteries sparked 44 fires in 2020 and 28 in 2019, but the number of blazes increase as devices like e-bikes and scooters become more popular.

Factory-installed scooter batteries seem safe and adhere to industry standards, safety experts say. The batteries that tend to combust are “after market” items e-bike users buy online or in scooter stores as supplements or replacements for the battery that came with the device, FDNY officials said.

A lesson from Surfside? Underground assault from sea-level rise puts coastal structures at risk

Kimberly Miller, Palm Beach Post
Sun, January 9, 2022

Subterranean assaults by rising seas on the ill-fated Champlain Towers South more than doubled over a 26-year period, according to a Florida International University study that measured how often water levels rose higher than the building’s basement floor.

The often invisible incursions may or may not have played a role in the horrifying collapse of the Surfside condominium June 24, said FIU geologist and research professor Randall Parkinson, who conducted the study published last month in the journal Ocean and Coastal Management.

But he said quantifying below-ground saltwater sorties on coastal structures has been largely overlooked when climate change and sea level rise-related risks are calculated.

“Prior to June 24, 2021, our primary focus was on a relatively narrow field of future above-ground conditions and related risks,” Parkinson said. “Now we must also consider existing and future below-ground conditions and climate-related risks from a much broader perspective.”

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The condominium collapsed early in the morning of June 24, killing 98 people. The structure was demolished 10 days later.

Parkinson used water-level data collected from a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gauge on Virginia Key, about 10 miles south of Surfside. It showed an accelerated rise of sea levels since 1981 that caused the number of hourly water level elevations above the condominium’s basement floor to reach an average of 244 per year between 1994 and 2006.

That increased to an average of 636 per year from 2007 to 2020. The study attributed the substantial hike to a threefold increase in the rate of relative sea-level rise that occurred after 2006.

“We’re not talking water coming in from above ground,” Parkinson said. “That’s not what was happening. It was coming in through the structure of the basement. Through cracks and points of weakness that may have been there from the beginning or evolved over time.”

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How vulnerable are Palm Beach County coastline structures?

While Palm Beach County’s coastline is at higher elevations than Broward and Miami-Dade counties because of a ridge of coquinoid limestone called the Anastasia formation, Parkinson said barrier islands and underground infrastructure are still vulnerable.

Spalling, where water seeps through concrete pores to damage reinforcing rebar and ultimately dislodges the concrete, is often seen on the balconies of coastal condos that must be repaired. Imagine what it could be doing unseen, Parkinson asked.

Yet, most of the studies he's found on the effects of salt water on concrete were from road studies in winter weather where salt is used as a de-icing agent. "None of them, until recently, were done on saltwater and marine conditions and most of those were done on bridge abutments," Parkinson said.

A climate change vulnerability assessment of seven coastal Palm Beach County cities that was released last summer said rainfall flooding was currently a bigger concern in many areas than tidal flooding or sea level rise.

In the city of Boca Raton, about 80% of residential properties in a southwest pocket of the city between Camino Real and 18th Street and along South Military Trail have a medium-to-high vulnerability to rainfall-induced flooding.

Traffic on South Olive Avenue near Hibiscus Street in West Palm Beach slows to a crawl as cars cope with flooded roads in June 2018 following an afternoon storm.

But the report for the Coastal Resilience Partnership of Palm Beach County noted that future increases in the frequency of tidal flooding caused by sea-level rise should be considered. By 2070, seas could balloon by 33 inches compared to a 2020 baseline, according to the report.

The partnership includes the municipalities of Lake Worth Beach, Lantana, Ocean Ridge, Boynton Beach, Highland Beach, Boca Raton and Delray Beach. Parts of unincorporated Palm Beach County are also included in the study.

“All the flooding threats are interrelated,” said Boynton Beach’s sustainability coordinator, Rebecca Harvey. “Maybe we are not seeing major impacts right now. But we need to look at 2040 and 2070, because if we look at what’s coming, it’s a tenfold increase.”

Related to sea-level rise, the report also evaluated shrinking shorelines — beaches that have fewer dunes to act as a buffer to the ocean, suffer from a lack of regular beach renourishments, or have structures that are closer to the ocean. Delray Beach and Boca Raton were ranked as having good-to-excellent shoreline conditions, but Ocean Ridge, Lantana and Highland Beach fell into the "severe" category — the lowest among the shoreline ratings.

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How do rising sea levels affect groundwater?

Harvey said one of the key takeaways from the report was that the county needs a detailed analysis and modeling of its groundwater tables to better understand how sea-level rise may affect groundwater.

“Our capital planning has been focused on one, two and three years out, and we need to use the study to look longer term and plan for addressing resilience farther into the future,” Harvey said.

Water from the Intracoastal Waterway covers Marine Way in Delray Beach at high tide on September 28, 2019.

After the collapse of the12-story Champlain Towers, which was built in 1981, Palm Beach County officials considered creating their own program to inspect high-rise buildings but has since deferred to state lawmakers to come up with statewide requirements.

Palm Beach County has 125 condominiums that are six to 10 stories high built before 1980. Sixty-one condos built before 1980 are 11 stories or higher, according to county officials who spoke at a July meeting of the County Commission.

The city of Boca Raton became the first Palm Beach County municipality to adopt its own building inspection program in August.

“All of this is going to have to be taken a lot more seriously,” Parkinson said. “We know the collapse hasn’t been attributed to climate change right now, but it opened everybody’s eyes to the fact that there are potential risks that we never thought about and didn’t and don’t have a process to evaluate those risks.”

Kimberly Miller is a veteran journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers weather, climate and the environment and has a certificate in Weather Forecasting from Penn State. Contact Kim at kmiller@pbpost.com

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Surfside condo collapse: Florida tower faced assault by sea level rise

DEMOCRAT

 Maine governor cites rising costs in veto of farmer unionization bill

Sat, January 8, 2022


Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) on Friday vetoed a bill that would have allowed farmers in the state to unionize, the Portland Press Herald reported.

The proposal called for agriculture workers to be able to organize and bargain for wages, hours and working conditions.

"While this bill is well intended, I fear its unintended consequence would discourage the growth of farms in Maine," Mills wrote in her veto statement.

Maine farms are mostly small and family-owned and do not need the same protections as larger factory farms controlled by corporate interests, Mills argued.

She said the bill would "subject our farmers to a complicated new set of laws that would require them to hire lawyers just to understand."

Labor union Maine AFL-CIO criticized Mills's decision, claiming that the bill would protect farm workers from abuses like sexual harassment and wage theft.

"Farmworkers provide the most essential service to our communities by growing, picking and processing the food we eat every day. They perform back breaking labor and are among the most exploited workers in our nation," said Maine AFL-CIO Executive Director Matt Schlobohm.

The AFL-CIO said a lack of unionization rights among farm workers is a result of longstanding racism and fails to protect workers of color.

"This bill would have advanced racial justice and corrected a long-standing injustice," Schlobohm said.

Some agricultural associations opposed the unionization bill while it was still being debated in the Maine Legislature. The Maine Vegetable and Small Fruit Growers Association and the Maine Potato Board both agreed with Mills's decision to veto the bill.

"Legislation that would restrict the ability to plant, care for and harvest our crops would risk the livelihood of Maine farmers and those employees that rely on the jobs Maine farms provide," the Maine Potato Board said in a statement released after the decision.

Maine is the only producer of wild blueberries in the United States. The state also produces potatoes and maple syrup and contains large dairy farms as well as smaller livestock farms.