Biden moving to narrow gender pay gap for federal workers


WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is marking Equal Pay Day by taking new steps aimed at ending the gender pay gap for federal workers and contractors.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is signing an executive order that encourages the government to consider banning federal contractors from seeking information about job applicants’ prior salary history. And a new Labor Department directive is aimed at strengthening federal contractors’ obligations to audit payrolls to help guard against pay disparities based on gender, race or ethnicity.

The Office of Personnel Management also is considering a regulation to address the use of prior salary history in hiring and setting compensation for federal workers.

Equal Pay Day is designed to call attention to how much longer women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year.

Data shows that while the pay gap is at its smallest ever, the coronavirus pandemic has altered women’s labor force participation so that “what we’re seeing is an artificial narrowing,” said Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women’s Law Center.

For instance, women who remained in the labor force during the pandemic and worked full time often had higher earnings than their counterparts who lost low-paying jobs, indicating that 2020 figures cannot be compared with wage gap data from prior years, Tucker said.

Among other issues, the Biden administration wants to combat occupational segregation to get women better access to well-paying jobs, which tend to be male-dominated, according to a senior administration official who previewed the administration's efforts on Monday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Last October, the administration issued a national gender strategy to advance women's and girls' full participation in society.

This year, the administration is looking for new ways to combat pay disparities and drawing attention to high-profile efforts to combat the wage gap, such as the U.S. women’s national soccer team's $24 million February settlement with U.S. Soccer in a discrimination dispute.

The settlement includes a commitment to equalize pay and bonuses to match the men’s team.

“I think we’re going to look back on this moment and just think, ‘Wow, what an incredible turning point in the history of U.S. Soccer that changed the game and changed the world, really, forever,’” star midfielder Megan Rapinoe said at the time.

Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other administration officials planned to mark Equal Pay Day with a Tuesday afternoon event attended by members of the women's soccer team.

Tucker said there is a long way to go to achieve equal pay — especially after the pandemic.

There were in excess of 1.1 million fewer women in the labor force in February 2022 than in February 2020, which means they are neither working nor searching for employment.

“There was a particular shedding among low-paid workers, and what was left was middle- and higher-paid workers who were insulated from the pandemic,” Tucker said.

In 2020, the average woman who worked full-time all year earned 83 cents on the dollar compared with her male colleague doing the same work, according to the White House. The gap is even bigger for Black and Native American women and Latinas.

The issue impacts women even later in life. A 2020 Brookings Institution study on women's retirement found Social Security benefits for women are, on average, 80% of those for men.

Fatima Hussein, The Associated Press

Reel change: AMC's latest bet is in... mining


AMC Entertainment announced a $28 million investment in a mining company as it diversifies from the movie theater business (AFP/SCOTT OLSON) (SCOTT OLSON)


Tue, March 15, 2022, 

AMC Entertainment unveiled Tuesday a new bet likely to prompt a double-take from investors: the movie theater chain is investing $28 million in a precious metal miner.

The theater giant, which was a darling of the so-called "meme" stock frenzy of 2021, announced the purchase of a 22 percent stake in Hycroft Mining Holding Corporation, which owns a mine in Nevada containing gold and silver deposits.

"To state the obvious, one would not normally think that a movie theatre company's core competency includes gold or silver mining," AMC Chief Executive Adam Aron said in a news release.

Aron pointed to a $1.8 billion "war chest to play on offense and grow our company" courtesy of individual investors who bought shares of AMC, GameStop and some other equities last year following an investment campaign partly organized on social media.


The mining investment comes as AMC's core business has shown improvement compared with the worst days of Covid-19, but remains below its pre-pandemic level.

AMC reported a loss of $134.4 million in the most recent three-month stretch, in what the company called its "strongest quarterly result in two full years." The company lost $1.3 billion for all of 2021.

Aron said strong ticket sales of the latest Batman and Spiderman releases heighten confidence the company is "on a glide path to recovery."

"Our strategic investment being announced today is the result of our having identified a company in an unrelated industry that appears to be just like AMC of a year ago," he said.

"It, too, has rock-solid assets, but for a variety of reasons, it has been facing a severe and immediate liquidity issue. Its share price has been knocked low as a result. We are confident that our involvement can greatly help it to surmount its challenges -- to its benefit, and to ours."

Aron categorized the Hycroft investment with other new ventures including the increase of IMAX and Dolby premium screens, NFT programs and the entry into the movie popcorn business.

Shares of AMC fell 0.5 percent to $13.49 in early afternoon trading, while Hycroft surged 23.7 percent to $1.73.

jum-jmb/cs

Small mining firm with troubled history saw big spikes in stock price, trading volume ahead of AMC deal

Hycroft Mining Holding saw big spikes in its stock price and trading volume in the days leading up to the announcement that movie theater chain AMC Entertainment had agreed to purchase a major stake in the company.

Two weeks prior to Tuesday's announcement, on March 1, the 90-day average trading volume of Hycroft shares was around 355,000 according to CNBC analysis of FactSet data.

The day before AMC's announcement, 58.6 million shares exchanged hands and the 90-day average was 10.5 million.

© Provided by CNBC

 View of the huge Gold and Silver Allied Nevada-Hycroft Mine near Sulphur in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, near the small towns of Sulphur and Gerlach.

Hycroft Mining Holding, a small mining firm with a troubled financial history, saw big spikes in its stock price and trading volume in the days leading up to the announcement that movie theater chain AMC Entertainment had agreed to purchase a major stake in the company.

Shares of Hycroft jumped about 12% Tuesday afternoon to $1.55, after previously surging even higher. None of the parties involved have been accused of illegal or unethical activity.

Adam Aron, the CEO of AMC, cited legal advice and Hycroft's volume when he explained why he canceled a live interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer and David Faber on Tuesday morning. "I am excited about our investment in HYMC, but there has been so much volume in that stock today, lawyers insisted I stay off air," Aron tweeted.

Two weeks prior to Tuesday's announcement, on March 1, the 90-day average trading volume of Hycroft shares was around 355,000, according to CNBC analysis of FactSet data. That average would grow dramatically over the next two weeks.
On March 4, the trading volume began to spike. More than 3.7 million shares exchanged hands on that day, pushing the 90-day average to more than 400,000 shares.
On March 7, the trading volume jumped to 6.2 million shares. Then it hit 202.7 million the next day. With that, the 90-day average became 2.8 million shares.
Forty-six million shares of Hycroft changed hands on March 9. The next two days saw extreme increases in volume: 220 million shares were bought and sold on March 10, and 341.4 million were traded on March 11.
By the close on March 11, the 90-average was 9.9 million. Then, on Monday, the day before AMC's announcement, 58.6 million shares exchanged hands, and the 90-day average was 10.5 million.

Between March 4 and March 15, the daily volume average was 144.9 million shares. Comparatively, from Feb 22 to March 3, a period that also includes eight trading days, the daily volume average was under 800,000 shares. Hycroft has over 60.4 million shares outstanding, according to FactSet.

© Provided by CNBC

Representatives from Mudrick Capital, a large shareholder in Hycroft, and AMC did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which is the leading regulator of U.S. stock markets, declined to comment.

Also during the days leading up to AMC's announcement, Hycroft's share price went from around 33 cents on March 7 to $1.88 on March 11. On Monday, the day before the announcement, shares closed at $1.39.

© Provided by CNBC

AMC is spending $27.9 million in cash for the deal and will receive roughly 23.4 million shares in the company and an equal amount of stock warrants. The deal would make AMC the owner of roughly 22% of Hycroft.

The movie theater is purchasing these shares at around $1.19 a piece. Shares of Hycroft closed Monday at $1.39 each, up nearly 400% from the 52-week low of 28 cents seen on March 17, 2021. The stock neared this low on March 3, when shares traded at 29 cents a piece.

Early in the day Tuesday, shares jumped to $2.72 a piece, but settled around $1.60 during midday trading, up 15%.

Aron, the AMC CEO, was slated to appear on CNBC on Tuesday morning, but he canceled his interview, saying he wasn't comfortable making public comments on the move due to volatility in Hycroft's stock.

AMC declined to comment beyond what Aron said in the press release announcing the move, but Aron later tweeted to apologize to Cramer and Faber for canceling his appearance.

Hycroft, meanwhile, said in November that it would likely need to raise additional cash to meet its financial obligations over the next year.

That same month, the company laid off more than half of its workers at its mine in western Nevada, ceasing mining operations there. At the time, the company said it would focus more on processing gold and silver sulfide ore, according to a report from the Elko Daily Free Press. Hycroft's corporate offices are in Denver.

— CNBC's Chris Hayes contributed to this story.

San Andreas Fault's creeping section could unleash large earthquakes

The middle section of the San Andreas Fault may have the capacity to host larger earthquakes than previously believed.

© Provided by Live Science The San Andreas Fault

Stephanie Pappas 
Originally published on Live Science.

Between the towns of Parkfield and Hollister, the famous California fault undergoes something called aseismic creep. Instead of building up strain and then slipping in one earth-rattling moment, the two sections of fault move imperceptibly, releasing stress without causing large quakes. But looking back millions of years in time, researchers have found that this section of fault may have experienced earthquakes of magnitude 7 and higher. That is larger than the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta temblor that killed 63 people in the Bay Area in 1989.

It's not fully clear how long ago the large quakes on the fault occurred, but they were within the last 3 million years, said Genevieve Coffey, an earthquake geologist at GNS Science in New Zealand.

"The central section should be considered as a potential source of earthquake hazard," Coffey told Live Science.

The San Andreas Fault

The San Andreas Fault has three sections. The southern section runs from the Salton Sea to Parkfield, California, and has the capacity for large quakes. In 1857, for example, the magnitude-7.9 Fort Tejon quake shifted the ground at the fault a whopping 29.5 feet (9 meters). The northern section of the fault runs from the town of Hollister, through the Bay Area up to Cape Mendocino, California. This section of the fault is most famous for the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which had an estimated magnitude of 7.9.

Related: See stunning photos of the San Andreas Fault

In between Parkfield and Hollister, though, the fault hasn't given rise to any recorded quakes larger than a magnitude 6. Geoscientists have dug into the fault, looking for signs in the shape of the sediment layers of long-ago earthquakes, and they haven't found any large quakes in the last 2,000 years.

But even if the central San Andreas doesn't build up enough stress to start a large earthquake, it could act as a conduit for quakes originating on the northern or southern section of the fault, Coffey said. She and her colleagues wanted to go back more than 2,000 years.

To do so, the researchers took advantage of the fact that when a fault slips, it generates friction, which generates heat.

"It's like rubbing your hands together," Coffey said.

This heat can spike the temperature of the rocks in the fault by more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius). And those temperature changes can change the structure of organic molecules that accumulate within sediments.
Historical quakes

The researchers analyzed a sediment core from the central San Andreas that was drilled as part of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) project. Deep in the core, about 1.9 miles down (3,192 to 3,196 meters), the researchers found a spot where the biomarkers showed signs of heating.

"That patch of the fault also consisted of these really highly deformed siltstones, mudstones," Coffey said. "It had lots of these small slip layers, so lots of scaley surfaces and shiny surfaces, which is what we would think of as rocks that had hosted lots of earthquakes."

This zone of the fault may have hosted more than 100 quakes, Coffey and her colleagues reported Feb. 25 in the journal Geology.

Next, the researchers analyzed the quake-deformed section of rock with a method called potassium-argon dating. This method takes advantage of the fact that a naturally radioactive variation of potassium, potassium-40, slowly decays into argon gas. When something happens to heat the rock, this gas is released, resetting the "potassium-argon clock" to zero. By looking at the accumulation of argon, the researchers could determine how long it had been since the rocks were heated.

Their results suggested that the heating happened, at the earliest, 3 million years ago. But the quakes could have been far more recent, Coffey said. Part of the ongoing work done by Coffey's collaborators involves improving the potassium-argon method for earthquake dating to narrow down that time span. However, the magnitude of the heating indicates that the central San Andreas can indeed undergo a lot of shaking — it's likely that the earthquakes recorded in this section of the fault ranged from magnitudes in the mid-6s to low-7s, Coffey said.

"The work that we did was the first direct geologic evidence of earthquakes" in this region of the San Andreas, she said.

The quakes probably started on the southern portion of the fault and sped along the faultline like an unzipping zipper. Knowing that the fault has this capacity is important for understanding the earthquake hazard in central California, Coffey said.

The researchers plan to apply the potassium-argon method to other faults, including in the New Zealand bedrock, where there isn't any organic material for traditional carbon-14 dating (which only works back to about 55,000 years) and where there are no sedimentary layers to show the marks of very old quakes.

"The potassium-argon tool is pretty interesting, because it really gives us access to a range of faults that we haven't been able to date in the past," Coffey said.

Shell directors may face lawsuit over climate transition plans


By Simon Jessop, Kirstin Ridley and Shadia Nasralla

A view shows a fuel station of Shell in Moscow

LONDON (Reuters) - Environmental lawyers ClientEarth said on Tuesday they were preparing legal action against the directors of Shell over the company's climate transition plan, in what they said would be the first such case of its kind.

The ClientEarth lawyers said they are seeking to hold the directors personally liable for what they consider to be a failure to adequately prepare for the global shift to a low-carbon economy, claiming an alleged breach of the directors' duties under the UK Companies Act

.

The Royal Dutch Shell logo is seen at a Shell petrol station in London

ClientEarth said it had written to Shell notifying it of its claim and was waiting for it to respond before filing papers at the High Court of England and Wales. For the case to proceed, ClientEarth would then need permission from the court to do so.

In a written response to Reuters, Shell said it was delivering on its global strategy that supported the Paris Agreement on climate, including by "transforming our business to provide more low-carbon energy for customers."

"Addressing a challenge as big as climate change requires action from all quarters. The energy supply challenges we are seeing underscore the need for effective, government-led policies to address critical needs such as energy security while decarbonising our energy system. These challenges cannot be solved by litigation," Shell said.

A Shell logo is seen on a pump at a petrol station in London

Energy companies are facing a challenge to their business model as countries look to cut use of fossil fuels, a major cause of man-made global warming, and reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century.

Shell has pledged to halve the emissions from its operations by 2030, but its net-zero target to https://www.climateaction100.org/company/royal-dutch-shell reduce those from the use of its products - the bulk of emissions from an oil and gas company, was not far-reaching enough, ClientEarth said.

Shell's net-zero target was also not reflected in the company's operating plans or budgets, ClientEarth added.

The quality of the company's climate transition plan has already been challenged by a court in the Netherlands which last year ordered it to go further. Shell is appealing the ruling.

U.N. climate scientists have reiterated the need for faster global action and said failure to hit the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial norms would cause irreparable damage.

ClientEarth said it was pursuing Shell's directors for an alleged breach of the UK Companies Act, which requires them to act in a way that promotes the company’s success, and to do so whilst exercising reasonable care, skill and diligence.

ClientEarth said it was bringing the action as a shareholder in Shell on behalf of all stakeholders to help protect the long-term viability of the company.

(Reporting by Simon Jessop. Editing by Jane Merriman)

MISLEADING HEADLINE 

Senate unexpectedly approves legislation to abolish daylight-saving time 

(ACTUALLY IT ABOLISHES STANDARD TIME)

gpanetta@businessinsider.com (Grace Panetta) 

© AP Photo/Andrew Harnik The U.S Capitol is visible at sunset as a man plays fetch with a dog in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021 AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

The Senate passed a bill to move the United States to permanent daylight-saving time.
Since 1966, most Americans have been used to "springing forward" to begin DST in March.

The Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 would end the bi-annual ritual of changing clocks.





18 SLIDES © Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images
THE IDEA FOR DAYLIGHT-SAVING TIME IS ATTRIBUTED TO THINKERS INCLUDING BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, SCIENTIST GEORGE HUDSON, AND A BRITISH MAN NAMED WILLIAM WILLETT, WHO PUBLISHED A PAMPHLET IN 1907 TITLED "THE WASTE OF DAYLIGHT," WHICH ARGUED FOR AN EXTRA 80 MINUTES OF SUNLIGHT IN THE SUMMER.


The walls might be closing on the United States' twice-a-year ritual of changing clocks.

The US Senate unexpectedly passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021, a bipartisan bill to move the United States to permanent daylight-saving time, on Tuesday afternoon, two days after most of the country "sprung forward" to begin daylight-saving time.

The chamber quickly approved the bill through unanimous consent, which allows legislation to pass the Senate with a simple voice vote if no senator objects.

The legislation heads next to the House of Representatives and if passed by that chamber, to President Joe Biden's desk.

While thinkers as early as the 19th century proposed versions of daylight-saving time, the United States and several European countries first introduced daylight-saving time as a wartime energy conservation measure during World War I.

In the United States, some states kept observing daylight-saving time while others did not for decades, creating a confusing patchwork of time. The Uniform Time Act, passed by Congress in 1966, set daylight-saving time to begin and end at the same time each year throughout the entire country.

Since Congress last amended the Uniform Time Act in 2005, Americans "spring forward" to begin daylight-saving time at 3 am ET on the second Sunday in March and "fall back" to go to standard time at 2 am ET on the first Sunday in November.

But, in addition to the hassle of changing clocks twice a year, the energy-saving benefits of daylight-saving time are negligible. Some studies have additionally linked the loss of an hour of sleep that comes with the beginning of daylight-saving time to negative health effects, such as increases in heart attacks, car accidents, and workplace injuries.

Other states that receive lots of sunlight, like Hawaii and most of Arizona, don't recognize daylight-saving time at all because they prefer to have cooler temperatures and more shade at the end of the day, not more light.

The bill would still allow those states to be exempt from permanent daylight-saving time and stay on permanent standard time.

U$A

A student-loan company that just took over 5 million borrowers' accounts has 'a growing list of scandals and abuses,' report says

asheffey@businessinsider.com (Ayelet Sheffey) 

© Provided by Business Insider College graduates. ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images

The Student Borrower Protection Center said student-loan company Maximus has a history of abuse.
Low-income borrowers allege Maximus engaged in "unfair" debt collection practices.
A Maximus spokesperson says it is not a lender and simply does backend IT support for federal loans.

The largest student-loan company in the world may not be acting in borrowers' best interests, according to a new report.

The Student Borrower Protection Center and the Communications Workers of America released a report on Monday that found student-loan company Maximus, which services federal loans under the name Aidvantage, has been accused of "a growing list of scandals and abuses." Maximus recently took over 5.6 million federal borrowers' accounts from Navient, which was also accused of misleading behavior.

Specifically, the report highlighted litigation filed by low-income borrowers that alleged Maximus engaged in "unfair" debt collection practices. Some also said Maximus caused illegal garnishment of their wages when they stopped paying their bills after being defrauded by the for-profit school they attended.

"When student loan companies cut corners and skirt the law to pad their profits, the most vulnerable people with student debt are always forced to pay the price," Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, said in a statement. "Our investigation offers an early warning to regulators and people with student debt: Maximus and Aidvantage are now running the same failed servicing playbook that left millions of Navient borrowers financially bruised and broken. This newly minted student loan giant must change course before it is too late."

A spokesperson for Maximus told Insider the report is inaccurate and mischaracterizes the work Maximus does for Federal Student Aid, adding that the company's contract with the government is to simply service loans and follow the direction of the Education Department on handling loan defaults.

The spokesperson emphasized that Maximus is only in charge of back-end IT support, and questions or complaints about a borrower's account is referred to the lender, which, in this case is the federal government. Additionally, in response to the nearly 200 complaints borrowers have filed against the company, the spokesperson said 178 of them have been successfully addressed.

A 'newly minted student loan giant'

Last year, student-loan company Navient announced it would be shutting down its federal services, and the Education Department later announced that Aidvantage would be taking over Navient's accounts. While student-loan payments have been on pause for two years as part of pandemic relief, three student-loan companies announced they would be ending their federal services during the pause, causing 16 million borrowers to be transferred to new companies.

Those transfers had some lawmakers and advocates concerned, given the administrative burden successfully and accurately transferring millions of borrowers would be. While Navient had a controversial history with accusations of misleading borrowers, Monday's report suggested those borrowers might not be better off under Maximus.

The report also highlighted several other lawsuits against Maximus. In 2019, a defrauded student accused the company of continuing debt collection efforts despite being directed to halt those efforts while the student's loan forgiveness application was pending, which resulted in the seizure of her tax refunds. More recently, in January, nine borrowers accused Maximus in a lawsuit of misleading them about their ability to get out of loan defaults.

Maximus said 'it is imperative' it gets the repayment transition right

In November, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote a letter to Maximus expressing concerns with how the 5.6 million borrowers it would be servicing would be treated. Following Warren's letter, the company's spokesperson told Insider: "This is a defining moment for student borrowers, and we couldn't agree more with Sen. Warren — it is imperative we get it right."

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, along with Federal Student Aid head Richard Cordray, have spoken out on potential abuses of student-loan companies, and the need to hold them accountable. Cordray told The Washington Post he is reviewing the Student Borrower Protection Center's report and will work to address them.

"All borrowers should be able to count on timely and accurate information about their student loans," Cordray said. "That is why FSA has renewed its partnerships with federal and state regulators, cleared roadblocks to state oversight by clarifying federal preemption rules, and negotiated new accountability terms in our recent contract extensions."

Cordray said last year that student-loan servicers will be held to higher standards, and if they don't meet those standards, they will "face consequences." The CFPB has also launched a series of investigations into accusations of servicers misleading borrowers and pledged it would be increasing oversight.

OILSANDS BY ANY OTHER NAME

Chevron is ready to trade Venezuelan oil in place of Russian oil if US eases sanctions on South American nation, a report says

ujamal@businessinsider.com (Urooba Jamal)

The Chevron logo is displayed at a Chevron gas station. 

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

Chevron is preparing to expand its ventures with Venezuela's state-run oil company PDVSA, Reuters reported.

The company's presence in Venezuela is dependent on political moves between the country and the US.

Chevron's expansion in the country could boost global crude oil supplies.

Chevron is prepared to trade Venezuelan oil in place of banned Russian oil imports if the US eases its sanctions on Caracas, Reuters reported.
The release of more Venezuelan oil would help offset oil losses in wake of the Russia ban, put in place on March 8 over its invasion of Ukraine. However, the move is dependent on fraught political talks with the South American nation.

Still, sources told Reuters that Chevron has been preparing to expand its four ventures with Venezuela's national oil company PDVSA.

It has assembled a trading team to market oil from the South American nation, asked the US government for a license to have greater control over the ventures, and is starting to arrange Venezuelan visas for its employees from Aruba, Reuters reported.

Chevron did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, made outside its normal working hours.

Venezuelan oil is an important alternative to Russian supply

Sanctions were imposed on Venezuela by the Trump administration in 2019 to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to leave power. Since then, the country has allied itself closely with Russia.

Seeking to break the ice and develop alternatives to Russian oil, the US and Venezuela held their first high-level bilateral talks in years on March 5 in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.

Crude oil prices have surged as a result of the supply crunch from sanctions against Russia, jumping nearly 20% on March 7 to almost $140 a barrel for the first time in nearly 14 years. The price appears to now be heading towards a weekly decline of 4%.

Chevron's moves in Venezuela could boost crude supplies to offset the loss. Before US sanctions, its joint ventures with PDVSA produced around 200,000 barrels of oil per day, according to Reuters. They now produce 140,000 barrels per day, Bloomberg reported.

"Since Venezuelan barrels were banned in the United States in 2019, and Colombia and Mexico reduced key exports to the United States, Russian barrels have been feeding the Gulf refiners," one person involved in the bilateral talks told Reuters.
Chevron's expanded presence in Venezuela is still dependent on a number of political moves

Thawing relations between Washington and Caracas in recent weeks appear to have had some impact.

US officials are seeking the release of more jailed Americans in Venezuela, after Maduro released two last week, Reuters reported. Washington also wants more guarantees of free elections and the resumption of talks with Venezuela's opposition, the agency also reported.

During the talks in early March, Maduro had, in turn, pushed for a total lift on sanctions on its oil exports, sanctions on him and other government officials, as well as a return to government control of Citgo Petroleum, a US subsidiary of PDVSA.

Even if sanctions are relaxed, challenges still abound for the Venezuelan oil industry. Years of government mismanagement mean the industry is nowhere near its oil-producing boom days in the 1990s when it produced 3.2 million barrels of oil a day. It now averages around 800,000 barrels a day.

Ancient prairie, home to endangered bees and rare plants, may soon be razed by airport

Illinois, the Prairie State, was once dominated by 22 million acres of grasslands, home to an almost unimaginable diversity of plants and animals. But now, only one-ten-thousandth of the state’s original prairies, or roughly 2,500 acres, remain.

© Photograph by Clay Bolt, Nature Picture Library A rusty-patched bumblebee near Madison, Wisconsin. These endangered bees also call Bell Bowl Prairie home.

Susan Cosier 

 National Geographic

One of the rarest grassland types, dry gravel prairie, is the most endangered: Only 18 high-quality acres remain. Now, Chicago-Rockford International Airport plans to destroy Bell Bowl Prairie, which contains five acres of this precious biome, as part of a planned expansion.

But a growing coalition of environmental groups, scientists, and advocates—including local middle schoolers—are fighting to protect this habitat. Among other reasons, they point out that Bell Bowl hosts nearly 150 plant species and supports a wide variety of birds and insects, including endangered species such as the rusty-patched bumblebee.

“These remnant sites are the most important things in Illinois,” says Paul Marcum, a botanist with the Illinois Natural History Survey. “It bothers me to no end that a site like this could be destroyed.”

The airport says that they could begin construction as early as June 1, as soon as consultations with the Fish and Wildlife Service conclude.

Meanwhile, conservationists are taking action and weighing their options. How could such a rare and important ecosystem be razed?
Balancing growth and protection

© Photograph by Joni Denker A view of Bell Bowl prairie, a unique landscape that faces imminent destruction due to the expansion of the Rockford Airport. But many are fighting back to save it.

Bell Bowl was originally protected thanks to its shape. Naturally carved out of the side of an earthen terrace, it was too steep to farm. Instead, it became part of Camp Grant, where soldiers trained during World War I. In 1957, the Greater Rockford Airport Authority received roughly a thousand acres of the camp, protecting part of it. For the better part of a century, conservationists have been calling for its preservation. Nevertheless, Bell Bowl has gotten smaller and smaller, reflecting the trend in prairies nationally.

© Photograph by Chicago Tribune, Getty Images Cargo planes are visible behind the Bell Bowl Prairie adjacent to Chicago-Rockford International Airport on Oct. 20, 2021. The airport currently plans to bulldoze the prairie.

What remains is a tiny fraction of what existed in the 1800s when settlers arrived. The tallgrass prairie that once covered 170 million acres, a grassland sea in the middle of the continent, takes up just four percent of its original expanse, according to the National Parks Service.

Bell Bowl is rare in that it grows in gravelly rocks, unlike the wetter, loamy soils characteristic of most prairies. It sustains plant species rarely seen in other prairies, including the leadplant, the pasqueflower, and the prairie smoke, a rose with a pink feathery seed head. A survey conducted by the Natural Land Institute lists 146 plant species that thrive there.

The pollinator community is equally diverse. On another prairie in a nearby county, Laura Rericha-Anchor, a biologist with Cook County Forest Preserve District, has found up to a hundred bee species in an area less than half the size of Bell Bowl. At that managed site, only 70 percent or less of the species are the same from one foot to the next. Bell Bowl likely has similar diversity.

For decades, the airport preserved the area, and worked with the Natural Land Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on conserving acreage in northern Illinois, to manage the land by pulling non-native plants and conducting controlled burns.

The airport, however, is growing at record pace. Airports Council International named the Rockford airport the fastest growing airport in the country three years ago.

The second-largest UPS hub in the country, the airport has received millions of dollars from the federal government in the last few years for an expansion project, thanks in part to help from Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin.

In February, Senator Durbin said in a form letter, “I hope that the airport’s plans can be adjusted so that Bell Bowl Prairie can be preserved while allowing Rockford Airport to continue to expand and serve as an economic anchor for the Rockford community.” But Durbin, Duckworth, and Governor J.B. Pritzker all failed to reply to requests to comment for this article.

Yet the airport could expand without ripping up the prairie, conservationists say

“We are not trying to stop the expansion of the airport,” says Kerry Leigh, director of the Natural Land Institute, which is leading the conservation effort. “We really believe that in this century, we can have both/and: We can have both responsible sustainable economic development and protect our natural resources.”

Even the small remaining sections of prairie “should be worshipped in and of themselves,” revered for their 8,000-year ecological history, says Rericha-Anchor. The state government seemed to agree when, last September, the governor established the thirty-by-thirty task force, a coalition to help protect 30 percent of Illinois’ land and water by 2030.

Planned expansion

Last summer, Rockford residents noticed excavating equipment at the airport and notified the Natural Land Institute and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Airport officials explained that the prairie would be bulldozed as part of the facility’s $50 million expansion. The airport had already completed an environmental review and received a finding of no significant impact by the Federal Aviation Administration, a November press release states, a requirement under the National Environmental Policy Act. An environmental consultant who conducted a one-day assessment of the area in August 2018 found no federal or state listed endangered species.

But last August, a Department of Natural Resources biologist saw a rusty patched bumblebee in Bell Bowl. Construction temporarily halted.

The bee itself, however, may not be enough to keep the project from moving forward. Though the bee is listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined in September 2020 to designate critical habitat for the species—areas necessary for its survival and recovery that require protections—meaning those habitats could be destroyed. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental organization, filed a lawsuit against the agency in March 2021 to challenge the decision.

Leigh and representatives from the Natural Land Institute asked to meet with airport officials and pushed them to redesign the expansion but got little traction. The institute filed lawsuits in October to delay construction, saying the original environmental assessment completed by the airport was inadequate. Just before the airport planned to resume the project, officials announced they would reinitiate an environmental review and consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service to determine the proposed project’s potential impact on the bumble bee. (The agency declined to comment on the project because of the ongoing litigation.)

“Until [consultation is] complete and approvals granted,” says Zack Oakley, the deputy director of operations and planning for the airport, “there won't be any construction happening on the areas that are under review.”

This month, airport officials announced they would not start work for another three months. If the project continues as planned, advocates say the state could lose yet another section of prairie that is critically important to the region and defines the state.
Precious habitat

The rusty patched bumble bee, one of the 500 bee species Rericha-Anchor and many others have observed thriving in the region’s prairies, is one of the only bee species listed under the Endangered Species Act. Though they used to be common, they are now only found in five to 10 percent of the areas they used to inhabit.

Prairies are key for the species’ recovery, says Rich Hatfield, a conservation biologist at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, even five acre chunks like Bell Bowl.

In the winter, the queens burrow into soils and emerge in the spring to nest. Yet scientists don’t have much information about where they spend the colder months, says Elaine Evans, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota who has studied the species for 25 years: “What we're really missing is that overwintering habitat.”

But most bees, including the rusty patched bumble bee, nest in the ground close to where they forage. “If you find one worker in that Bell Bowl Prairie, that prairie is valuable because that bee is practically gone,” says entomologist Sydney Cameron, professor emerita at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has spent decades studying native bees.

Leigh would still like to see the airport redesign the expansion—something she says the organization has offered to help with—and permanently protect the prairie so that conservationists don’t have to continually fight to save it.

The lawsuits the institute filed are ongoing, and advocates hope that the governor’s recent commitment to protecting the state’s resources with the thirty-by-thirty task force will help address some of the inadequacies of current laws to protect these important natural areas.

Airport officials have said ecologists will relocate some of the state-listed endangered plants the bees rely on, but they can’t move the entire prairie community. And moving plants alone wouldn’t do much good, says Rericha-Anchor.

“They can transplant them elsewhere, but that's not the Bell Bowl Prairie any longer. The microclimates, the ancient soils in which the plants’ root zones have developed, and those relationships in the soil microbiome, that's destroyed. It would all be broken, the ecology would be completely disrupted.”

USA COULD LEARN A LESSON

Germany to disarm far-right extremists, restricts gun access

BERLIN (AP) — Germany's top security officials announced a 10-point plan Tuesday to combat far-right extremism in the country that includes disarming about 1,500 suspected extremists and tightening background checks for those wanting to acquire guns.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said the far right poses the biggest extremist threat to democracy in Germany and said authorities would seek to tackle the issue through prevention and tough measures.

“We want to destroy far-right extremist networks,” Faeser told reporters in Berlin, saying this included targeting financial flows that benefit such groups, including merchandising businesses, music festivals and martial arts events.

Authorities will work to remove gun licenses from suspected extremists, crack down on incitement spread online through social networks and combat conspiracy theories online.

Faeser said an emphasis will also be put on rooting out extremists who work in government agencies, including the security forces. Reports about far-right extremists among the policeand military in Germany have raised particular concerns because of fears that they could use privileged information to target political enemies.

Parliament’s commissioner for the military, Eva Hoegl, said separately Tuesday that there were 252 “reportable events” among German troops in 2021, an increase compared to previous years that she attributed to heightened sensitivity surrounding extremism in the ranks. She called for swifter court martial proceedings so that soldiers found to have broken the law or breached conduct rules can be fired faster.

Thomas Haldenwang, the head of Germany's BfV domestic intelligence service, said his agency planned to release a report in the coming months about extremists who work for the authorities.

The agency is also monitoring the Alternative for Germany political party after a court ruled last week that it can designate the party as a suspected case of extremism, he said.

Haldenwang said authorities have recorded a small number of far-right extremists traveling to Ukraine as foreign fighters, but most of the chatter online by people saying they planned to do so appeared to be “swagger.”

___

Kirsten Grieshaber contributed to this report.

Frank Jordans, The Associated Press

Germany issues hacking warning for users of Russian anti-virus software Kaspersky

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's cyber security agency on Tuesday warned users of an anti-virus software developed by Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab that it poses a serious risk of a successful hacking attack.

 

© Reuters/MAXIM SHEMETOV FILE PHOTO: 

The logo of Russia's Kaspersky Lab is on display at the company's office in Moscow

The BSI agency said that the Russia-based cyber-security company could be coerced by Russian government agents to hack IT systems abroad or agents could clandestinely use its technology to launch cyberattacks without its knowledge.

Kaspersky said in a statement it was a privately-managed company with no ties to the Russian government. It said that the warning by BSI was politically motivated, adding it was in contact with the BSI to clarify the matter

USING KASPERSKY BEST WAY TO CATCH RUSSIAN HACKERS

The BSI warning comes as Russia's invasion of Ukraine escalates with the Russian army's shelling of the capital of Ukraine.

The BSI said that German companies as well as government agencies that manage critical infrastructure were particularly at risk of a hacking attack.

(Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Nick Zieminski)