'An enormous inspiration': More than 30 Starbucks locations have voted to unionize

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
April 26, 2022

People march in the middle of East Pine Street during the "Fight Starbucks' Union Busting" rally and march in Seattle, Washington on April 23, 2022. 

(Photo: Jason Redmond/AFP)

Overcoming increasingly aggressive opposition from the company's management, workers at more than 30 Starbucks locations across the U.S. have now voted to unionize as the wave of organizing spurred by historic wins in Buffalo just four months ago continues to mount.

On Monday, workers at a Starbucks shop in the township of Hopewell, New Jersey voted unanimously to unionize and join Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. The store was the 30th Starbucks location to unionize in the U.S. and the first in New Jersey.

"Howard Schultz's big anti-union campaign seems like a dud that's backfiring."

"We are incredibly proud of the brave and strong Starbucks workers who voted to join Workers United," Lynne Fox, the international president of the union, said in a statement. "Our collective success in Hopewell today reflects the power that working people have to demand positive changes from their employers."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who rallied with Starbucks workers in Virginia over the weekend, congratulated the Hopewell employees and said that "workers' efforts to demand dignity on the job have been an enormous inspiration to working-class people from coast to coast."

The Hopewell victory was followed by a union win in Baltimore—the first Starbucks location in Maryland to unionize—and announcements from several more shops in California, Washington state, and Texas that they intend to join the rapidly spreading movement.

The growing momentum comes as Starbucks management, led by billionaire CEO Howard Schultz, is working to ramp up a union-busting campaign that has already resulted in several lawsuits from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). On Friday, the NLRB sued the coffee corporation for unlawfully retaliating against three union organizers in Phoenix, Arizona.

"Among other things," the NLRB alleged, "Starbucks disciplined, suspended, and discharged one employee, constructively discharged another, and placed a third on an unpaid leave of absence after revoking recently granted accommodations."

Nevertheless, Starbucks organizing continues to gain steam as workers at the e-commerce behemoth Amazon are also attempting to unionize a second Staten Island warehouse—efforts that advocates hope will galvanize a labor movement that has suffered for decades amid corporate America's concerted offensive.

Last week, after Schultz said that Starbucks and other U.S. companies are "being assaulted" by "the threat of unionization," five Starbucks locations in Richmond, Virginia voted to form a union by a combined margin of 82-14.

"This is just the beginning and we are not going to let a corporation silence our voices."

"This five-for-five yes vote shows that Richmond is a union town, and this is just the beginning and we are not going to let a corporation silence our voices," Starbucks employee Jillian O'Hare told the local Richmond Times-Dispatch. "We are not going to let billionaire union-busters stand in our way."

Longtime labor journalist Steven Greenhouse tweeted Monday that "Howard Schultz's big anti-union campaign seems like a dud that's backfiring." Starbucks has hired the notorious anti-union law firm Littler Mendelson to assist its push to blunt worker organizing, which Schultz has tried to portray as a scheme led by an "outside" group.

"After Starbucks management keeps losing so badly in union vote after union vote, one would think Howard Schultz would decide, 'Hey, our anti-union campaign isn't working. Let's drop it,'" Greenhouse wrote. "But Schultz evidently plans to double down on his anti-union push and make things more divisive."

Starbucks workers who have voted to unionize in pursuit of better pay, benefits, and conditions now face the arduous task of negotiating a contract with a hostile employer—a process that can take years.

An Economic Policy Institute (EPI) study published in 2009 found that "within one year after the election, only 48% of organized units have collective bargaining agreements."

"By two years it increases to 63% and by three years to 70%," EPI noted. "Only after more than three years will 75% have obtained a first agreement."


During a rally in Virginia on Sunday, Sanders said to cheers that "our demand right now is to tell Mr. Schultz and the people who run Starbucks: stop the anti-union activities, stop bringing people into backrooms, stop threatening people, stop intimidating people."

"And, equally important," the Vermont senator added, "start negotiating a first contract with those shops that have voted to form a union.

Second Amazon site in New York kicks off vote on joining union

2022/4/25 

© Agence France-Presse

US Senator Bernie Sanders appeared at a rally to support Amazon Labor Union leader Christian Smalls (R) in his bid to unionize a second Amazon site

New York (AFP) - Workers at an Amazon sorting center in New York began voting Monday on whether to join the Amazon Labor Union, which recently became the first union at the e-commerce giant in the United States.

About 1,800 employees at the center have until Friday to make their way to a tent set up near the site to vote, with the ballot count scheduled for May 2.

The LDJ5 sorting center is in a Staten Island industrial area across the street from the JFK8 warehouse, where 55 percent of workers voted in late March to be represented by the Amazon Labor Union (ALU).

Amazon, the country's second largest employer after Walmart, had successfully staved off efforts to unionize since it was founded in 1994.

ALU president Christian Smalls said on Sunday he was confident about the vote at the LDJ5 sorting center.

"I'm feeling good. We have good vibes with us, a good momentum," he told AFP.

Two prominent figures from the progressive wing of the Democratic party, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, made appearances to support the workers' movement.

"What this struggle is about is not just Amazon Staten Island," Sanders told workers at a rally at the site.

"Working people are sick and tired of falling further and further behind, while billionaires like (Amazon founder Jeff) Bezos become much richer," he said.

"You have been an inspiration for millions of workers all across this country."

If ALU gets a second victory at LDJ5, it could inspire other warehouses to join in. Union members say they already have been contacted by representatives of several dozen warehouses from all over the United States.

Motivated by treatment of workers during the pandemic and more recently by inflation, employees of several multinationals such as Starbucks and Apple are taking steps to organize, but continue to face pushback from management.

Amazon filed an appeal against the result of the vote at JFK8, saying members of the ALU had "intimidated" employees and accusing the agency responsible for supervising the ballot, the National Labor Relations Board, of being biased.

Male spider species evolves high-speed launch to avoid sexual cannibalism

April 25 (UPI) -- A species of male spiders is ditching its cannibalistic female counterparts after sex, to avoid being dined on alive.

The orb-weaving male spiders use their two front legs to launch themselves to safety as soon as they've mated, according to research published Monday in Current Biology.

The lead author of the study wrote he noticed the tiny males were bouncing away after mating with the larger females, using energy stored in their front leg joints.

"Imagine a man with a height of 1.8 meters catapulting himself 530 meters in one second. That's what these male spiders do," said Shichang Zhang, a behavioral ecologist at China's Hubei University. That equates to someone just under 6 feet launching themselves one-third of a mile.

Researchers discovered the male spiders folded their front legs against the female and catapulted off right after mating. The action is so fast it took a high-speed, high-resolution video to catch the action. Analysis of the high-speed videos show the spiders reaching speeds of 2.9 feet per second, which translates to almost 60 mph.

RELATED After sex, female jumping spiders get shy

Orb spiders don't have venom to kill their prey, so females resort to mummifying their male partners by wrapping them in 450 feet of silk that either suffocates or crushes them to death.

The study's findings suggest the male spiders' catapulting behavior evolved over time to avoid the crushing death and sexual cannibalism. The study found the "bounciest males" father more spiderlings.

I helped write the UN climate report. Here’s why it gives me hope

By Sarah Burch | Opinion | April 25th 2022
Special Report:Reports from the Race to a Safer World

The nearly 3,000-page document details a stark, urgent threat — but it also shows a clear path forward, says one of its lead authors. Photo by Bruno Aguirre / Unsplash

This story was originally published by UNDARK and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On April 4, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the final instalment of its Sixth Assessment Report, an epic synthesis of science exploring the causes and consequences of climate change. This latest document focused on the causes — chiefly, the rampant emission of greenhouse gases — and how to reduce them, fast.

As one of the lead authors of the new report, I and more than 230 scientists from around the world collectively reviewed over 18,000 scientific articles and responded to around 60,000 reviewer comments over the course of more than three years. Our goal was to compile the most accurate and nuanced picture of current climate science and social science and to use this to inform international climate change treaty-making and policy design. The result was a nearly 3,000-page document that details a stark, urgent threat — but that also gives us reason for optimism.

First, the grim news: Average annual greenhouse gas emissions were the highest during the past decade than they have been in human history. This, despite escalating social movements, high profile declarations, and splashy vows from political and business leaders to integrate climate into investment and business decisions. Without immediate, deep, and accelerating emissions reductions in all sectors and in all regions of the world, the goal of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 C — the threshold for avoiding the worst, but not all, impacts of climate change — will be out of reach. The human and environmental toll of such a scenario is unfathomable.

But glimmers of hope also emerge from this report. For the first time, we’re seeing evidence of real, sustained decreases in greenhouse gas emissions from some countries. These reductions aren’t blips that can be attributed to the economic recession of 2008 and 2009 or to the hardships inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather, they are the result of effective and, in some cases, targeted efforts to scale up renewable energy, electrify transport, enhance building efficiency, foster compact, sustainable communities, and otherwise reduce society’s carbon footprint. In some countries, these reductions are deep and comprehensive enough to be consistent with limiting global warming to 2 C, the overarching target set in the Paris Agreement of 2015.

These signs of progress also point to a path forward. The solutions to climate change now exist; we just have to adopt them.

In the energy supply sector, which is responsible for around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, a particularly major transition is required. Limiting warming to 2 C will require us to prematurely shut down oil and gas infrastructure by mid-century. In other words, we will have to leave fossil fuels in the ground, and the new infrastructure that continues to be announced in countries like Canada may end up as stranded assets by 2050. Coal, of course, will have to go. Absent effective carbon capture and storage, neither of which is currently used widely or well enough to measurably impact our climate goals, coal use will need to decline by up to 92 percent by 2030.

There are promising indications, however, that a transition in the energy sector is already underway. As we watch the volatility of gas prices, we’ve also seen the price of renewable energy fall. The costs of photovoltaics used to harvest solar energy plummeted by around 85 per cent over the last 10 years, surpassing even the most optimistic projections. Likewise, the price of wind has come down around 55 per cent over the same time span, and the price of lithium-ion batteries — crucial for when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow — has come down by 85 per cent as well. Fuels like hydrogen and biofuels will fill in the gaps to support a transition in aviation and heavy shipping.

Our report also suggests vast potential to shift our cities toward low-carbon, resilient development. Cities are responsible for more than two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is where the transport, building, and infrastructure sectors collide to shape individual decisions. Demand for transport can be reduced by locating homes near workplaces, recreation, and services. The remaining emissions can be dramatically reduced by encouraging a shift toward electric vehicles powered by clean energy sources and toward active transport, like walking and biking. Efficient buildings that use zero net energy or produce zero net carbon emissions will also be critical, and we find evidence that these buildings are springing up in every climate.

But it’s also important not to pin responsibility for mitigating climate change on the individual. We can only choose low carbon transport if the infrastructure is available and affordable; we can more easily make our homes energy efficient if incentives and building codes support these changes. The link between collective decision-making, at all levels of governance, and individual behaviour is a powerful one.

Ultimately, the new IPCC report lays bare the state of our efforts to mitigate the worst harms emerging from the rampant burning of fossil fuels. It shows that we cannot reach our broader sustainable development goals of a vibrant natural environment, clean water, peace, zero poverty, and healthy communities without addressing climate change. It just won’t work. Our report shows that addressing climate change is a matter of justice, and that a stable climate is the foundation upon which our societies thrive. We now have the solutions, and the path ahead is difficult, but clear.

Dr. Sarah Burch is a Canada Research Chair and executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change. She is a lead author of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report.

BC

Protestors gather to stop plan to cut old growth forest near Argenta

People are already standing together to stop a plan to log a section of old growth forest near Argenta.

Last weekend an environmental protest camp was set up near Argenta, with support from local environmentalists and at the invitation of the Autonomous Sinixt, Last Stand West Kootenay (LSWK) — a grassroots collective, non-profit group — intends “to help protect part one of the most significant wilderness areas in southeastern B.C.,” noted a LSWK press release on Monday.

“The Argenta-Johnsons Landing Face is an ecologically diverse mountainside, important to wildlife and home to old growth spruce, cedar and rare 300-plus-year-old western larch,” the release explained.

For several years BC Parks has suggested the importance of protecting this land, according to the release, but Cooper Creek Cedar (owned by Porcupine Wood Products) has been permitted access to five clear-cut blocks, “some of which contain potential priority one old growth.”

LSWK’s Fox Forest said the action started on the weekend isn’t just about the Argenta Face.

“This is about a province-wide need to protect old growth,” Fox Forest said in the press release. “We are asking for the government to follow through with promises to protect B.C.’s remaining old growth forest and to consult fully with First Nations before proceeding with logging of vulnerable areas.”

Beyond the trees

The need to protect the old growth forest goes beyond the trees, said Amber Peters, a biologist with the Valhalla Wilderness Society.

“Connectivity to the lake should be preserved to maintain the integrity of the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy ecosystem,” she said. “A herd of caribou have been known to use the area which may be one of the last refugia not subjected to intensive motorized recreation, which are a serious disturbance to the local and dwindling mountain caribou.”

Important species like grizzly bear, goshawk, mountain caribou, heron and wolverine also call this piece of forest home.

The logging could also affect water sources and ground stability for some residents. Breanne Hope and her family live below where some of the logging is scheduled to happen.

“We are very concerned about the impact this will have on our drinking water, along with the rest of the community’s water,” she said.

The nearby Johnsons Landing community experienced a major landslide in 2012 that killed four people, took out four homes and severely damaged others.

“We have been told that slides are less likely in our area, however, a local biologist surveyed the area and confirmed that the area lies on an inherently weak base,” Hope stated.

Conservancy at work

An independent group of Argenta locals created the Mount Willet Wilderness Forever Proposal to protect the area in question and include it in the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy.

Their efforts have put this mountain face on the map of the provincial government, said Sam Fleming, who calls Argenta home.

“The local MLA, Brittny Anderson, has been there. Aimee Watson of RDCK has been there. Suzanne Simard has studied it. Even John Horgan has been to Argenta and talked to local advocates. They know it’s worth protecting,” Fleming said.

In alignment

LSWK’s action is in alignment with Autonomous Sinixt’s Land Declaration which asserts their sovereignty over unceded təmxʷúlaʔxʷ (homeland).

The declaration calls for a “full stop to proposed resource extraction” within their təmxʷúlaʔxʷ until they have had time to evaluate it and make sure it is in alignment with their traditional laws.

The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) recognizes each nation’s right to make decisions about their own land, recently reinforced by B.C.’s commitment to the 2022-2027 89-point Action Plan.

“Carrying on the legacy of decades of advocacy, and under the jurisdiction of the Autonomous Sinixt, we will stand in the way of industry in peaceful protest until the unique and biologically significant forest is added to the wilderness conservancy,” noted the LSWK release.

Source: Last Stand West Kootenay

Joining in The protest is located 500 metres up Salisbury Forest Service Road — directly across from Davis Creek and Lost Ledge — just past the community of Argenta on the east side of Kootenay Lake.

Before joining the camp, people are asked to message laststandwestkootenay@protonmail.com for a schedule and intake, and to read and abide by their camp protocols.

People can follow them on Facebook or Instagram — @laststandwestkootenay — for letter templates, camp intake information, location and other ways to get involved.

Timothy Schafer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Nelson Daily

Biden's top labor lawyer is pushing for a change that could make it easier for workers to join a union — and achieve one of the movement's biggest goals

insider@insider.com (Juliana Kaplan) - 

© NLRBJennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the NLRB. NLRB

Right now, employers can choose to recognize a union their workers form, or workers have to go to a vote.
Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, wants to change that.
Abruzzo wants to reinstate an old doctrine for union formation, which would be a seismic shift for the movement.

In December 2021, Amazon workers at a Staten Island warehouse asked the tech and retail giant to voluntarily recognize their union so they could begin bargaining right away.

Instead, workers didn't get to vote on their union until more than three months later, ultimately becoming the first warehouse to unionize under the Amazon Labor Union.

The process took so long because, under current law, when workers say that they've formed a union, companies can choose to voluntarily recognize them and start bargaining immediately — but they often don't.

The other option — which has been happening at big names like Starbucks, Amazon, and the New York Times — is having workers go to a secret ballot election.

Both of those processes might change if Jennifer Abruzzo, the Biden administration's general counsel for the NLRB, has her way. The former counsel for the Communication Workers of America, Abruzzo wants to revive a more than 50-year-old process called the Joy Silk doctrine.

Named for Joy Silk Mills, this process can let workers show they want a union by having a majority of union authorization cards signed — what's called card check — instead of a formal voting process. Unless the employer has a "good faith" doubt that it's a true majority, they must begin bargaining with the union. Abruzzo filed a brief in April to the NLRB board saying that Joy Silk should be reinstated.

"Joy Silk is logically superior to current Board law's ability to deter election interference," Abruzzo wrote in her brief. "It directly disincentivizes an employer from engaging in unfair labor practices during organizing campaigns to avoid a bargaining obligation, as doing so will typically result in the imposition of a bargaining order."

After Joy Silk was replaced, Abruzzo wrote, unfair labor practices "increased dramatically," and, "in turn, the number of elections fell precipitously and, as a result, the rate of unionization now rests near all-time lows."

It's a move that's already won support from labor leaders. "Reinstating Joy Silk in its original form would stop employers from playing games and refusing to recognize a union when workers have unquestionable proof of majority support & would deter employers from unlawfully interfering in organizing campaigns," Liz Shuler, the president of the AFL-CIO, the country's largest labor federation, wrote in a tweet.

But Glenn Spencer, senior vice president for employment policy at the right-leaning US Chamber of Commerce, said that "there's a number of reasons why the board abandoned the process," and that the card check process is "inherently unreliable," because there's a whole assortment of reasons that people sign union cards.

"The simple fact is that Congress has repeatedly rejected efforts to make card check the preferred process," Spencer said.

If Joy Silk was reinstated, it would mark a seismic shift in union organizing and how quickly a group of workers can begin bargaining a contract.

Elections can be a drawn out process, and they've gotten longer, as Bloomberg's Ian Kullgren reported in 2021. In 2020, according to Bloomberg's calculations, the median time between filing for an election and the actual voting was 31 days. From 2016 to 2019, it took a median of 24 days. Some of that may have been due to Trump's NLRB board enacting new rules that could lengthen and complicate the time of elections.

Employers also frequently employ anti-union tactics during elections: A 2009 paper from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found that 96% of employers "mounted a campaign against the union" during an election. In cases where employers did mount an anti-union campaign, workers won just 48% of elections — compared to 72% of elections won when there was no campaign.

Currently, employers can make anti-union meetings, called captive audiences, mandatory. That's also something Abruzzo wants to change, urging the board to find mandatory meetings unlawful.

"Workers don't feel that they can leave, even though they have the right to refrain from listening to speech, just as much as they have the right to listen to it, because of the very real fear of retaliation," Abruzzo told Insider.

Philippine Conglomerate Ayala Targets U.S. Wind Projects

Ian Sayson
Tue, April 26, 2022,


(Bloomberg) -- Philippine conglomerate Ayala Corp. plans to acquire wind projects in the U.S. in line with a target to boost its renewable energy capacity to 5,000 megawatts by 2025.

Ayala unit ACEN got board approval to enter the U.S. renewable energy market through a partnership with UPC Solar & Wind Investments LLC and Pivot Power Management. They will acquire operating wind projects and extend their life through repowering, it said in a stock exchange filing.

“Our aspiration is for the U.S. to become a priority market for ACEN outside of the Philippines over time,” ACEN International President Patrice Clausse said in a statement.

The Ayala unit has invested more than $200 million in each of Australia, Vietnam and Indonesia. In early April, the company and ib vogt GmbH of Germany announced setting up a platform to fund solar power plants in Asia.

ACEN has about 3,800 MW of attributable capacity in the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and Australia with a renewable share capacity at 87%, among the highest in the region.

US panel calls on Biden to sanction India over sliding religious freedom under Modi

Alisha Rahaman Sarkar 

A US panel has urged the Joe Biden administration to impose targeted sanctions on India over what it called the erosion of religious freedom under the leadership of prime minister Narendra Modi.

For the third year in a row, the United States Commission on International Freedom (USCIRF) recommended the US state department designate India as a “country of particular concern” for “engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom”.

In its 2022 report, published on Monday, the bipartisan panel asked the Biden administration to “impose targeted sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for severe violations of religious freedom” by freezing their assets and/ or prohibiting them from entering the US.

The Modi administration has previously rejected the panel’s findings, calling it an “organisation of particular concern”.

The report comes at a time when issues of religious beliefs, caste and faith have taken centre stage in India, in both public discourse and politics.

Though minorities make up nearly 20 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion population, they have been facing increasing persecution since 2014, when Mr Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power, according to USCIRF.

“The Indian government escalated its promotion and enforcement of policies — including those promoting a Hindu-nationalist agenda — that negatively affect Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits and other religious minorities,” the report stated.

India’s religious freedom, a principle enshrined in its constitution, has “significantly worsened” in 2021, the report said, citing examples of suppression of critical voices through intimidation, arbitrary arrests and persecution under draconian laws such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

The UAPA allows Indian authorities to detain people without producing any incriminating evidence and keep people in prison without trial by setting stringent requirements for bail.

The panel pointed to the federal government’s unkind treatment of Jesuit priest Stan Swamy, who was the country’s oldest under-trial prisoner arrested in relation to violence at Bhima Koregaon on 1 January 2018.

The champion of human rights for dalits and tribals “was arrested on dubious UAPA charges in October 2020 and never tried”, the report noted.

Having suffered from multiple ailments, including Parkinson's disease, Swamy died at a prison in Navi Mumbai city at the age of 84.

© Provided by The Independent File photo: 

A Christian nun, center, holds a placard and shouts slogans with others demanding the release of tribal rights activist Stan Swamy and other activists during a demonstration in Bengaluru, India, in November 2020 (AP)

The report also raised the arrest of Khurram Parvez, a prominent Muslim human rights activist from India-administered Kashmir, over terror-funding charges.

“The government also broadly targeted individuals documenting or sharing information about violence against Muslims, Christians, and other religious minorities,” it said.

“Numerous attacks were made on religious minorities, particularly Muslims and Christians, and their neighbourhoods, businesses, homes, and houses of worship. Many of these incidents were violent, unprovoked, and/or encouraged or incited by government officials,” the report added.

Examples of tensions between religious communities have continued with clashes at homes and places of worship taking place in more than five states in the past month. In several states this has included the destruction of mostly Muslim-owned properties by state and local authorities

.

© Provided by The Independent

 Hindus participate in a religious procession to mark a festival in Hyderabad on 16 April 2022. India’s hardline Hindu nationalists have long espoused an anti-Muslim stance, but attacks against the minority community have recently occurred more frequently. In many cases, hate-filled and provocative songs that are blared through speakers during Hindu festivals have become a precursor to this violence (AP)

The report also expressed concerns over the Muslim residents of Assam who face being stripped off of their citizenship due to enforcement of a National Register of Citizens (NRC), which aims to identify and deport “illegal” migrants from Bangladesh.

It also briefly touched upon anti-conversion laws that rights groups say have led to dozens of arrests of Muslim men and state overreach in interfaith marriages.

The Biden administration has refrained from directly criticising Mr Modi or his right-wing BJP government. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar asked earlier this month: “What does Modi need to do to India’s Muslim population before we will stop considering them a partner in peace?”

Following a high-level meeting between the Indian and US defence and foreign ministries in Washington two weeks ago, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: “We regularly engage with our Indian partners on these shared values [of human rights] and to that end, we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials.”

He was sharing the stage with Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and defence minister Rajnath Singh. Mr Jaishankar said the state of human rights in India had not been raised at the dialogue.

Apart from India, the USCIRF flagged 14 other countries over religious freedom concerns, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Vietnam, Iran, Syria, Nigeria, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

Rockets fly over Europe’s biggest nuclear plant as Russia warns of nuclear risk

Moldovan president calls urgent security meeting after breakaway region targeted

Russia said its missiles destroyed six facilities powering the railways that were used to deliver foreign weapons to Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region. 

Photograph: Alexey Furman/Getty Images


Ukraine’s state-run atomic energy company said Russian missiles flew at low altitude over Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on Tuesday, and reiterated warnings that Russia’s invasion could lead to a “nuclear catastrophe”.

Energoatom issued its latest warning about the risks caused by the war with Russia on the 36th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident at the now defunct Chornobyl plant, in what was then Soviet Ukraine.

The company said cruise missiles had flown over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant during an air strike which local authorities said hit a commercial building in the city of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least one person.

“Missiles lying at a low altitude directly over the site of the ZNPP (Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant), where there are seven nuclear facilities with a huge amount of nuclear material, poses huge risks,” Petro Kotin, Energoatom’s acting chief, said.

“After all, missiles could hit one or more nuclear facility, and this threatens a nuclear and radiation catastrophe around the world,” he was quoted as saying in a statement issued by Energoatom on the Telegram messaging app.

Energoatom said Russian troops, who have occupied the plant since March 4th, were keeping heavy equipment and ammunition on the site.

“Thirty-six years after the Chornobyl tragedy, Russia exposes the whole world to the danger of a repeat of the nuclear catastrophe” it said.

Russia did not immediately comment on Energoatom’s statement. It has previously offered safety assurances about Ukraine’s nuclear power facilities since launching what it says is a “special military operation” on February 24th.

Russian troops also occupied the decommissioned Chornobyl nuclear power station soon after invading Ukraine but have since left the site.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due to visit Chornobyl on Tuesday, the anniversary of the explosion and fire there on April 26th, 1986.

Russia has told the world not to underestimate the considerable risks of nuclear war and warned that conventional western weapons were legitimate targets in Ukraine, where battles raged in the east.

“The risks now are considerable,” foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Russia’s state television according to a transcript of an interview on the ministry’s website.

“I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it.”

Mr Lavrov had been asked about the importance of avoiding a third World War and whether the current situation was comparable to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, a low point in US-Soviet relations.

Meanwhile, a sixth package of European Union sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine is expected “very soon”, the bloc’s energy policy chief said on Tuesday.

The exact date of the package is not yet confirmed, and as with the previous rounds of EU sanctions it would need approval from EU countries, EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson told a news conference in Warsaw.

During a visit to Kyiv on Sunday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken and defense secretary Lloyd Austin promised more military aid for Ukraine.

The US state department on Monday used an emergency declaration to approve the potential sale of $165 million worth of ammunition to Ukraine. The Pentagon said the package could include artillery ammunition for howitzers, tanks and grenade launchers.

Moscow’s ambassador to Washington told the United States to halt shipments, warning western weapons were inflaming the conflict.

Mr Lavrov said: “Nato, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”

The United States is due to host an expected gathering of more than 40 countries this week for Ukraine-related defence talks that will focus on arming Kyiv, US officials said.

Britain said all tariffs on goods coming into the country from Ukraine under an existing free trade deal will be axed and it would send new ambulances, fire engines, medical supplies and funding for health experts to help the emergency services.

The Russian-backed separatist leader of the Ukrainian breakaway region of Donetsk said on Tuesday that Moscow should launch the next stage of its military campaign in Ukraine after reaching the region’s frontiers.

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said on a Russian talk show broadcast online that the next phase of Russia’s military intervention was crucial following security incidents outside the region.

He cited blasts that hit the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria bordering Ukraine on Monday, as well as Russian allegations of shelling of its border regions by Ukrainian forces.

“The pace at which the [military] operation reaches our borders is important to us in order to launch its next phase, which is needed after what we witnessed in Transnistria and Russia’s border regions,” RIA news agency quoted Pushilin as saying.
Transnistria

Moldova’s president convened an urgent security meeting on Tuesday after two blasts damaged Soviet-era radio masts in the breakaway region of Transnistria, where authorities said a military unit was also targeted.

The Moldovan authorities are sensitive to any sign of growing tensions in Transnistria, an unrecognised Moscow-backed sliver of land bordering southwestern Ukraine. It is home to about 470,000 people.

Russia has had troops permanently based in Transnistria since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are currently about 1,500 troops based there. Kyiv fears the region could be used as a launch pad for new attacks on Ukraine.

“In the early morning of April 26th, two explosions occurred in the village of Maiac, Grigoriopol district: the first at 6.40am and the second at 7.05am,” Transnistria’s interior ministry said.


No residents were hurt, but two radio antennae that broadcast Russian radio were knocked out, it said.

Separately, Transnistria’s Security Council reported a “terrorist attack” on a military unit near the city of Tiraspol, Russia’s TASS news agency reported.

It gave no further details.

The incidents followed a number of blasts that local television reported on Monday hit Transnistria’s ministry of state security in the regional capital, Tiraspol. Local officials said the building had been fired on by unknown assailants with grenade launchers.

Moldovan president Maia Sandu on Tuesday called for a meeting of the country’s Supreme Security Council in response to the incidents.

On Monday, the Moldovan government said the Tiraspol blasts were aimed at creating tensions in a region it had no control of.

Last week, a senior Russian military official said the second phase of what Russia calls its “special military operation” included a plan to take full control of southern Ukraine and improve its access to Transnistria.
Stiff resistance

Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24th in what it called a special operation to degrade its southern neighbour’s military capabilities and root out people it called dangerous nationalists. Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the west has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.

Russia has yet to capture any of the biggest cities. Its troops were forced to pull back from the outskirts of Kyiv in the face of stiff resistance.

“It is obvious that every day – and especially today, when the third month of our resistance has begun – that everyone in Ukraine is concerned with peace, about when it will all be over,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Monday.

“There is no simple answer to that at this time.”

Having failed to take the capital Kyiv, Moscow last week launched a massive assault in an attempt to capture eastern provinces known as the Donbas, which if successful would link territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the east with the Crimea region that Moscow annexed in 2014.

Russia’s defence ministry said its missiles destroyed six facilities powering the railways that were used to deliver foreign weapons to Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region. Reuters could not verify the report.

The head of Ukraine’s state rail company said that one railway worker had been killed and four injured by Russian missile strikes on five Ukrainian railway stations on Monday.

Ukrainian forces have repelled five Russian attacks and killed just over 200 Russian servicemen, said the Ukrainian military command in the southern and eastern sectors.

Five tanks were also destroyed, along with eight armoured vehicles, it said in a statement.

Reuters was not able to immediately verify the reports.

Russian forces were continuing on Monday to bomb and shell the vast Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol where fighters are hunkered down in a city ravaged by a siege and bombardment, Ukrainian presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych said.

Moscow said it was opening a humanitarian corridor to let civilians out of the plant but Kyiv said no agreement had been reached. – Reuters

Oil and gas will be around a lot longer than some think, despite climate change goals: RBC


Tue, April 26, 2022

Climate change policies are being thrust into competition with energy security as countries and consumers grapple with energy shortages and high fuel and utility bills, a new RBC report notes. (Kyle Bakx/CBC - image credit)

Global ambitions to tackle climate change are being confronted by rising concerns about energy security, according to a new report by RBC, which is why oil and natural gas are going to be used for quite a while.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sent energy prices soaring, as there are supply concerns for many commodities such as oil, natural gas and coal. As many countries grapple with energy security and affordability issues, there is less emphasis on climate change.

That's why the authors of the report say countries like Canada now have to figure out how to produce more oil and gas in the short term, all the while trying to meet climate goals.

"Short of major additional action, oil and gas will likely remain critical and contentious energy sources for longer than some think," the report notes.

In the last few months, there has been a renewed push by countries like Canada and the United States for more oil and natural gas production. At the same time, some countries in Europe are investing in liquefied natural gas terminals to import more natural gas and also looking at coal and oil-fired electricity to reduce reliance on Russian gas.

Global demand for oil keeps rising and is expected to increase for several more years, according to the International Energy Agency.

The RBC report highlights how many governments around the world are also offering subsidies to offset high gasoline and power prices, including "usual climate leaders" such as Germany, California, and British Columbia.

Kyle Bakx/CBC

Climate change is still a priority, said RBC economist Colin Guldimann, but there isn't as much momentum as compared to six months ago after the UN climate conference.

"Many will admit that things have changed markedly, especially in the energy space, in the last couple of months," he said in an interview.

Canada must now thread the needle of meeting climate goals while also meeting energy needs.

Even after oil demand peaks, Guldimann said "the pace of that decline, and the steepness of how quickly that decline happens, is fundamentally uncertain."

Investments in clean energy are happening, but instead of replacing fossil fuels, much of that energy is offset by rising consumption around the world as the population grows.

"We think energy demand is set to surge over the next couple of decades and how we meet those energy needs is really the critical question today," he said.

"I think countries are going to struggle to switch their energy systems over to ones that are non-emitting extremely quickly. Green infrastructure takes time to build, and technologies that can replace oil are still sort of coming to the fore."

The RBC report calls for more ambition to curb emissions, not only from the oilpatch, but other sectors too such as building retrofits, zero-emission vehicle subsidies and more transmission lines to move clean power around the country.

On Monday, credit ratings agency Moody's said it expects oil producers to generate record profits and free cash flow this year — and oil prices could remain high for the next 12 to 18 months.

Oil prices dropped by more than five per cent at one point on Monday as lockdowns in China are dampening economic activity. As commodity prices fluctuate so wildly, some oil companies could delay production increases.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see if a lot of these companies say 'You know what, let's defer this decision where we have to expand our spending," said Jeremy McCrea, an analyst with Raymond James, "which ultimately will keep oil and gas prices higher, longer."

Kyle Bakx/CBC

India’s Sprng Energy Nearing $1.8 Billion Sale to Shell


Baiju Kalesh
Mon, April 25, 2022



(Bloomberg) -- Sprng Energy Pvt is nearing a deal for Shell Plc to acquire the Indian renewable power producer for about $1.8 billion including debt, people with knowledge of the matter said.

An agreement between Sprng’s private equity owner Actis and the energy giant could be signed in two to three weeks after Shell beat out rival bidders, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.

No final decision has been made and talks could still fall apart, the people said. A representative for Shell declined to comment while representatives for Actis didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Shell was among the bidders for Sprng, along with Adani Group and renewable energy firm Greenko, Bloomberg News reported in March.

Sprng Energy is a renewable energy platform set up by Actis with a commitment of $450 million from one of the firm’s funds, according to its website. It has about 2,503 megawatt-peak of solar projects and roughly 498 MW of wind projects operating or in development, the website shows.

Pivoting to renewable energy after more than a century of pumping oil, Shell is aiming to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. It is not progressing quickly enough for some activists, and the company plans to put its energy transmission progress report to a non-binding vote at its annual shareholder meeting scheduled for May 24.

Shell’s shares in Amsterdam fell 5.6% on Monday, their largest decline since November, giving the company a market value of nearly $200 billion.