CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Behind the Scenes, McKinsey Guided 

Companies at the Center of the Opioid 

Crisis

Chris Hamby and Michael Forsythe

Thu, June 30, 2022

The consulting firm McKinsey & Company offered clients "in-depth experience in narcotics," from poppy fields to pills more powerful than Purdue's OxyContin. *(Mark Weaver/The New York Times)

In patches of rural Appalachia and the Rust Belt, health authorities were sounding alarms that a powerful painkiller called Opana had become the drug of choice among people abusing prescription pills.

It was twice as potent as OxyContin, the painkiller widely blamed for sparking the opioid crisis, and was relatively easy to dissolve and inject. By 2015, government investigations and scientific publications had linked its misuse to clusters of disease, including a rare and life-threatening blood disorder and an HIV outbreak in Indiana.

Opana’s manufacturer, the pharmaceutical company Endo, had scaled back promotion of the drug. But months later, the company abruptly changed course, refocusing resources on the drug by assigning more sales representatives.

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The push was known internally as the “Sales Force Blitz” — and it was conducted with consultants at McKinsey & Co. who had been hired by Endo to provide marketing advice about its chronic-pain medicines and other products.

The untold story of McKinsey’s work for Endo was among the revelations found by The New York Times in a repository of more than 100,000 documents obtained by a coalition of state attorneys general in a legal settlement related to McKinsey’s opioid work.

Much has been disclosed over the years about McKinsey’s relationship with Purdue Pharma, including the consulting firm’s recommendation that the drugmaker “turbocharge” its sales of OxyContin. But the Times found that the firm played a far deeper and broader role in advising clients involved in the opioid crisis than was publicly disclosed.

The newly released McKinsey records include more than 15 years of emails, slide presentations, spreadsheets, proposals and other documents. They provide a sweeping and detailed depiction of a firm that became a trusted adviser to companies at the core of an epidemic that has claimed half a million American lives.

While the firm held remarkable sway at Purdue, it also advised the largest manufacturer of generic opioids, Mallinckrodt. It worked with Endo on marketing Opana and helped it grow into a leading generics manufacturer. It advised Johnson & Johnson, whose subsidiary Tasmanian Alkaloids was the largest supplier of the raw materials extracted from poppies used to make many top-selling opioids. Then, as the full brunt of the epidemic became apparent, it counseled government agencies on how to address the fallout.

McKinsey’s opioid clients already wanted to grow their businesses. What the firm offered was know-how and sophistication, the documents show, and, as it noted in one presentation, “in-depth experience in narcotics.”

The Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healey, who helped craft the settlement, said in a statement that “as Americans were dying from the opioid epidemic, McKinsey was trading on its reputation and connections to make the crisis worse.” She added that the newly released documents “expose McKinsey’s role in the opioid crisis and will inform policymakers’ efforts to prevent this from happening again.”

Drawing on reams of data and proprietary tools, McKinsey vetted deals and advised on corporate strategy. It developed tactics for dealing with regulators and helped secure approval for new products.

The firm helped clients adopt more aggressive sales strategies, which, on at least two occasions, led companies to shift resources to more potent products. It profiled and targeted physicians, in some instances trying to influence prescribing habits in ways that federal officials later warned heightened the risk of overdose.

And when opioid prescriptions began to decrease during a government crackdown, the records show, McKinsey devised new approaches to drive sales.

McKinsey agreed to provide the documents to the attorneys general last year as part of a nearly $600 million settlement in which it admitted no wrongdoing. The firm has since apologized for its advice to opioid makers but, in a statement on Wednesday, suggested that its work with companies other than Purdue was “much more limited” and that it “did not counsel or recommend to Endo that it promote Opana more aggressively.”

“We recognize the terrible consequences of the opioid epidemic and have acknowledged our role in serving opioid manufacturers,” said a McKinsey spokesperson. “We stopped that work in 2019, have apologized for it and have been focused on being part of the solution.”

An Endo spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s work with McKinsey, citing litigation. She instead referred to a company statement saying that in September 2016 Endo had “stopped promoting opioid products to health care professionals” and eliminated its opioid-focused sales force.

Mallinckrodt declined to comment. Johnson & Johnson, in a statement, maintained that all its actions were appropriate, while Purdue said that it was focused on ending bankruptcy proceedings so it could reorganize into a new, more “public-minded” company that would “deliver billions of dollars of value” toward abating the opioid crisis and compensating victims.

‘Opana Patients’

Dr. Steven Butler, a kidney specialist serving a largely rural stretch of east Tennessee, helped with an unusual case in fall 2012. A woman in her 20s had arrived at the Holston Valley Medical Center in Kingsport with an array of symptoms — she was anemic, and her kidneys appeared to be failing — that resembled a rare blood disorder.

A few days later, another patient with similar symptoms arrived at the hospital. Then a third. Butler called the Tennessee Department of Health, which launched an investigation. Over the following months, more patients appeared.

As they underwent time-consuming treatments, some acknowledged they had dissolved and injected a pill whose name Butler had never heard before: Opana ER.

“Locally, it became a very well-described phenomenon,” he recalled. “They were just called ‘Opana patients,’ as though that was a real common thing.”

The tangled path that led to Opana’s rise illustrates McKinsey’s deep involvement in the opioid business, with its work for one client rippling out with consequences for others.

Years earlier, McKinsey had helped usher the drug onto the market, advising Endo’s partner, Penwest Pharmaceuticals, on its launch in 2006. Two years later, the documents show, McKinsey performed a project for Purdue that paved the way for Endo to extend Opana’s reach.

Purdue was seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration for a new version of OxyContin that would be more difficult to snort or inject. After the FDA denied its application in 2008, Purdue enlisted McKinsey’s help. The consultants interviewed a former drug dealer about OxyContin abuse, oversaw scientific studies, prepared regulatory documents and coached company officials on how to deal with the FDA, which had been a McKinsey client. The agency gave its approval in 2010, and later allowed Purdue to claim the new pills were resistant to abuse.

Soon, OxyContin sales declined — while Opana sales rose. In an internal document, Endo attributed the uptick in part to “patient dissatisfaction with new OxyContin formulation.” Data on abuse showed similar trends: a decline for OxyContin and a rise for Opana.

Endo later developed a new version of Opana it wanted to promote as abuse-resistant. The FDA found that the new pills “demonstrated a minimal improvement in resistance to tampering by crushing,” and that they were “readily abusable” by injection. The agency allowed the drug to enter the market in early 2012, but without being labeled as resistant to abuse.

Within months, Butler saw his first Opana patient. In October 2012, both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out health alerts about the blood syndrome. Then another cluster appeared, in North Carolina, and other cases in Arkansas, Florida, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

To make matters worse, according to the FDA, the new version of Opana drove many users to switch from snorting to injecting, considered a riskier form of abuse. The likely cause of the blood disorder, researchers determined, was the very substance that Endo had added to make the pills harder to crush. When dissolved and injected, it could trigger rapid red blood cell destruction and organ damage.

As concerns about Opana grew, Endo hired a new chief executive in 2013: Rajiv De Silva, a former leader within McKinsey’s pharmaceutical practice who soon tapped the firm to help chart a growth strategy.

A few months after De Silva took over, McKinsey helped Endo execute a complicated maneuver known as a “tax inversion” — a legal form of tax avoidance that the Obama administration would decry as an “abuse” of the system. For tax purposes, the Pennsylvania company was now based in Ireland, where the rate was substantially lower.

The move, which sent Endo’s stock price climbing, was “a tax play to set up doing a lot of deals,” according to a 2014 email from a McKinsey partner named Dr. Arnab Ghatak, who also helped lead the firm’s work with Purdue.

Endo went on a buying spree and would soon become one of the largest U.S. manufacturers of generic opioids.

‘The Narcotics Franchise’

The production of pills by companies like Endo and Purdue depended on a complex and tightly regulated global supply chain stretching from the fields of Tasmania to factories in the American heartland.

Here, too, was McKinsey.

Long before a patient in the United States filled a prescription for OxyContin, a farmer on another continent harvested a poppy rich in a substance called thebaine. Tasmanian Alkaloids, the Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, controlled the majority of this market.

From far-flung fields and extraction facilities, the raw materials made their way to U.S. processing plants. The top U.S. producers at this stage were another Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, Noramco, and Mallinckrodt, the big generics manufacturer.

The documents reveal McKinsey’s work advising them behind the scenes. By the firm’s own account, it had deep expertise in the international trade of legal narcotics. “We serve the majority of the leading players,” the consultants wrote in a 2009 memo.

That year, the firm oversaw a project for Johnson & Johnson titled “Maximizing the Value of the Narcotics Franchise.” In a presentation set against an image of a poppy field, the consultants advised the company on how it could invest to further strengthen its already-dominant position or sell the business if the price was right.

For Mallinckrodt, McKinsey consultants walked factory floors and monitored production data, recommending how the company might coax greater yields from the same base of raw materials and speed up manufacturing lines.

In 2016, McKinsey prepared Mallinckrodt for negotiations with companies that sourced generic drugs for Walmart and CVS, and advised on dealing with the Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA had set production limits to prevent an oversupply of pills, and McKinsey counseled Mallinckrodt on how it could use logistical tactics to secure a higher quota while maintaining a “friendly relationship” with the agency.

“To suggest this work was intended to undermine relevant laws or regulations would be false,” the McKinsey spokesman said.

McKinsey consultants also took jobs at the opioid manufacturers themselves. A partner in the firm’s pharmaceutical practice, Frank Scholz, became Mallinckrodt’s senior vice president of global operations in 2014 and later was promoted to president of its generics business.

But it was the arrival of De Silva at Endo that brought a particular opportunity for McKinsey. In late 2014, the company asked the consultants to provide advice on structuring the company’s sales force. This soon evolved into a more detailed project in an area where McKinsey excelled: how to dispatch hundreds of sales representatives to maximum effect.

Shifting to Offense

McKinsey had a playbook for seemingly any problem a pharmaceutical company might face, from production snags to generic competition to inquisitive regulators. But the firm had a particular penchant for sales and marketing.

In the years leading up to its work on Opana, McKinsey had built increasingly powerful tools for getting the right messages in front of the right physicians, and the firm had honed them in numerous opioid-marketing projects, including two for Johnson & Johnson.

While the broad strokes of these efforts have been known, the documents provide an unprecedented look inside McKinsey’s tool kit. The records related to the firm’s work for Purdue are particularly detailed, providing insight into the strategies that consultants used for other companies.

In 2009, the firm recommended a technique known as segmentation. The best marketing campaigns — whether for food, cars or electronics — divided consumers into segments based on how they acted and thought, then developed tailored messages to win them over, the consultants said.

In Purdue’s case, the customer was a physician with a license to prescribe controlled substances, and the product was OxyContin.

The consultants interviewed dozens of physicians and solicited the views of hundreds more in a survey. Four groups of doctors emerged, each with a distinct profile. The consultants then developed messages to appeal to each group’s practical and emotional needs.

McKinsey identified a particular opportunity in doctors who were hesitant to prescribe OxyContin because of worries about abuse, addiction and possible scrutiny from the DEA. These physicians often tried to treat chronic pain with less powerful drugs.

Persuading them to switch to OxyContin could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, McKinsey advised. To do this, McKinsey proposed tactics to “raise physician comfort levels through appropriate education and support.” Sales representatives, McKinsey said, should reassure doctors that many of their colleagues prescribed OxyContin and that the drug need not be reserved for extreme pain.

In 2014, the FDA introduced new labeling requirements for OxyContin and similar opioids, limiting their use to cases of severe chronic pain in which less risky treatments had proved ineffective. But McKinsey’s strategy had long since been rolled out.

Another McKinsey approach, known as targeting, tried to identify doctors who would provide the greatest return on sales representatives’ time.

Purdue, dissatisfied with dipping OxyContin sales in 2013, had enlisted McKinsey’s help. Revenues were down, the consultants advised, in large part because of government actions to tamp down the opioid epidemic. Doctors were writing prescriptions for fewer tablets and lower doses, and wholesalers and pharmacies were imposing new controls.

McKinsey recommended a more aggressive response than the one Purdue’s vice president for sales and marketing, Russell Gasdia, had been pursuing. Gasdia had accepted that OxyContin revenue was dropping in part “due to less abuse,” one McKinsey consultant wrote, and he was focused on promoting a less potent opioid.

McKinsey called for a shift “to offense”: Purdue needed physicians to start new patients on OxyContin. Drawing on an array of data — more than just a list of high prescribers, which had been the focus of Purdue and other drug companies — the consultants identified specific doctors to target.

In a statement, McKinsey said that this advice pertained to the reformulated OxyContin, which “was believed to be a safer version of the product.”

Purdue’s board endorsed the plan, and soon Gasdia stepped down as head of sales and marketing. In an internal self-assessment, Ghatak, the McKinsey partner who helped lead its Purdue business, basked in the firm’s success.

“Overall,” he wrote, “we are now deeply involved in nearly every facet of the company.”

An Outbreak and a Blitz

When a cluster of HIV cases appeared in a small southeastern Indiana community in 2015, it didn’t take the CDC long to identify the cause. Most of the patients had injected Opana.

The governor declared a public health emergency, and the list of those infected eventually surpassed 180.

Disease often followed incidents of injecting opioids, but Opana posed a higher risk, the CDC later determined. When injected, it was 10 times as potent as morphine. The high was intense but short-lived, and the withdrawal was particularly agonizing. As a result, users injected more frequently.

And because Opana commanded a high street price, users often split pills, shared equipment and shot up multiple times in one sitting. It was a recipe for what a CDC-led research team called “explosive transmission.”

If any of this caused alarm among the McKinsey consultants working for Endo, their presentations did not reflect it.

In summer 2015, McKinsey helped launch the “Sales Force Blitz,” which the firm said in a statement applied to a range of Endo’s products. “The small portion of our work that concerned Opana was done at the client’s request,” the spokesman said, “not by our recommendation.”

While the company had pulled back its marketing of the painkiller, McKinsey now advised it on how to do the opposite, emails and presentations show, by reallocating sale representatives from a migraine drug to Opana.

A consultant, Sherin Ijaz, expressed her excitement in an email to the head of Endo’s pain business unit, John Harlow. The next step “is to identify the sweet spot of docs so we can do targeting,” she wrote, adding that the “fun” begins “on Monday!”

“Agreed,” Harlow replied, “and the fun is just beginning!”

When two Endo executives proposed shifting some sales calls to promote the company’s arthritis gel, McKinsey was opposed. Doing so would be a distraction “at a time when we want to drive Opana,” wrote another McKinsey consultant, Nicholas Mills.

Ultimately, the consultants directed Endo to focus on more than 3,000 additional physicians with promotional messages about Opana.

In 2017, less than two years later, the FDA took the rare step of demanding that Endo pull Opana from the market, citing the grave public health consequences of its abuse. The company complied.

Over the five years from the appearance of the blood-disease cluster in Tennessee to the drug’s withdrawal from the market, the painkiller had brought in more than $844 million in revenue, according to corporate filings.

In Indiana, law enforcement officials broke up a drug-trafficking ring in 2016. One man admitted obtaining Opana in Detroit and selling it in bulk to a dealer. He was sentenced to six years in prison.

“Health care, the schools, the welfare department, the whole thing is crumbling because of drugs, drugs that you helped make available,” said the judge in the case, scolding him.

“You’re not responsible for all of that, of course, but you did your part.”

‘Opioid Crisis Is Horrible’

In June 2017, Tom Latkovic rose to speak at a health care conference in Chicago sponsored by his employer, McKinsey.

“I start today by asking, ‘Why do we continue to prescribe, dispense, pay for opioid prescriptions to people that we know, or at least we could know, have an incredibly high propensity to abuse them?’”

Latkovic, a senior partner, was not a member of McKinsey’s pharmaceutical practice. Instead, his team focused on using data analysis tools to address complex health care problems, and it had increasingly homed in on the opioid epidemic.

In the hopes of broadening this work, Latkovic told the audience, “We are launching a new center focused on opioids and insights.”

The client list for the new venture came to include state governments, insurers and health systems. One of McKinsey’s more ambitious efforts was in Philadelphia, a city that had one of the highest death rates in the country from opioid overdoses.

In 2019, consultants spent almost two months working with the city government, according to two people who were local officials at the time. Both praised McKinsey’s work, which came at no cost to the city but was later shelved after COVID-19.

Yet as Latkovic’s team tried to combat the opioid epidemic, the firm did not stop serving the company often blamed for sparking it, Purdue. And on at least two occasions, the documents show, drafts of publications prepared by Latkovic’s team were given to consultants for pharmaceutical clients to review. The purpose, a manager in the pharmaceutical practice wrote, was to assess “whether this could create any waves on social media or from journalists that could be harmful to our Pharma clients.”

As negative news coverage and lawsuits against Purdue mounted, some of the consultants fretted internally that scrutiny might extend to McKinsey.

In 2019, around the time of the Philadelphia project, McKinsey decided to stop advising companies on opioids — after the firm’s 15-year relationship with Purdue became public as part of a court filing by the Massachusetts attorney general’s office. Since Latkovic’s 2017 speech, McKinsey had collected $7.8 million in fees from Purdue, the documents show.

The disclosure that McKinsey had advised Purdue led to debate within the firm. “We may not have done anything wrong, but did we ask ourselves what the negative consequences of the work we were doing was, and how it could be minimized?” one consultant wrote.

Ghatak, a driving force behind McKinsey’s work for Purdue and Endo, found himself in the spotlight. Much as he had done for pharmaceutical executives, he crafted talking points, this time for himself.

“Opioid crisis is horrible,” he wrote. “Acknowledge that up front.” But by advising clients to develop products that would be more difficult to abuse, “we were directly working on a solution to a public health crisis, not a silver bullet but definitely a solution.”

In 2020, documents released as part of a Purdue legal case indicated that Ghatak and another consultant, Martin Elling, had discussed destroying records. McKinsey soon fired them.

The firm settled with the state attorneys general in early 2021, and the documents it turned over are housed in an archive managed by the University of California, San Francisco, and Johns Hopkins University.

Some of McKinsey’s former clients faced potentially crushing damages in court. Purdue filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019, and Mallinckrodt did the same the following year. Johnson & Johnson had previously sold its narcotics business to a private investment firm and has settled a number of lawsuits related to its marketing of opioids, which the company said in a statement was “appropriate and responsible.”

Endo has also floated the possibility of bankruptcy amid a wave of litigation over its marketing of opioids, especially Opana. The company said in a regulatory filing that it had received a subpoena in 2020 from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia, which years earlier had won guilty pleas from Purdue executives. This time, according to Endo’s disclosure, the office wanted information on McKinsey.

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Thames Water shareholders to inject £1.5bn as part of business overhaul

todayuknews

Thames Water shareholders will inject as much as £1.5bn into the company as the UK’s biggest water utility seeks to accelerate a shake-up of its business amid regulatory scrutiny over its treatment of sewage.

Investors will provide an initial £500mn of new equity during this financial year, the group said, which serves almost a quarter of the UK population with water and wastewater services. Thames Water is working with investors on plans to provide a further £1bn of equity.

“[The funding] will be subject to certain conditions, to drive Thames Water’s turnaround over the remainder of the current regulatory period, and establish a solid foundation for Thames Water’s long-term growth,” the water utility said on Thursday.

Ofwat, the industry watchdog, raised “serious concerns” in March over the sector’s treatment of sewage. The regulator said it is pursuing “enforcement action” against Thames Water and four other groups.

“We have made good progress in fixing the basics and tackling the structural challenges in our business as well as laying the foundations for our long-term recovery,” said chief executive Sarah Bentley.

Thames Water has approved an £11.5bn business plan for the period ending March 31 2025, which aims to improve outcomes for customers, and tackle leakage and river health.

The latest plan includes a £2bn increase in expenditure from the £9.6bn that was previously allocated. Thames Water launched an overhaul of its business in March 2021.

A detailed three-year analysis that came to light in October showed Thames Water illegally discharged the equivalent of two years’ worth of untreated sewage into rivers.

Thames Water/utilities:

investors tapped for cash after

deluge of complaints

todayuknews

Removing the dead hand of the Treasury was meant to boost investment in the water companies privatised in 1989. But after an initial surge, investment slumped as owners engineered lavish returns. That sowed the seeds of operational and financial problems in parts of the sector. As anger mounts over sewage discharges into rivers, investors are now being asked to shore up strained balance sheets.

On Thursday, the UK’s biggest water company Thames Water announced it was raising as much as £1.5bn in extra capital from investors, including the UK’s biggest private pension fund USS. Painful but at least all investors participated. When Southern Water received a £1bn emergency equity injection from the Australian infrastructure manager Macquarie last year, existing investors were heavily diluted.

Thames Water is also being pursued by the regulator over its treatment of sewage, after repeated illegal discharges. It is not alone. A majority of wastewater companies in England and Wales now face enforcement action. This week regulator Ofwat added Pennon-owned South West Water to the list.

The frequency of illegal spills might suggest water companies view penalties as simply the cost of doing business. But investors do take the issue seriously. After Ofwat’s move on Pennon was announced, £185mn was wiped from its market value. That is more than six times the maximum fine, which is 10 per cent of relevant revenues.

Significant investment — between £23bn and £80bn — might be needed to cut down on river pollution, says Jefferies. Passed on to customers, that would put bills up between 16 per cent and a third. That would be unacceptable given the cost of living crisis. Companies might have to take some of the strain.

Water investors will get the first inkling of their post-2024 returns after Ofwat publishes its draft methodology next month. JPMorgan expects the allowed cost of equity to be 20-40 basis points lower than the 2019 review. Every 25 basis points of allowed cost of equity is worth 2-3 per cent of earnings per share for quoted companies United Utilities, Severn Trent and Pennon.

Investing in monopolies with inflation-linked revenues has obvious appeal. But mounting public anger over pollution will force the slowpokes to clean up their act. Shareholders should be braced for higher investment and lower returns.

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Supply chains: West Coast dockworker contract expires as high stakes labor talks continue

Dani Romero

Fri, July 1, 2022 

Supply chains wait as unionized dockworkers and the shipping operators at the U.S. West Coast ports negotiate a new labor contract after the previous contract expired on Friday.

"While there will be no contract extension, cargo will keep moving, and normal operations will continue at the ports until an agreement can be reached between the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU)," the two sides said in a joint statement ahead of the 8:00 PM ET expiration of the current contract. "Both sides understand the strategic importance of the ports to the local, regional and US economies, and are mindful of the need to finalize a new coast-wide contract as soon as possible to ensure continuing confidence in the West Coast."

Negotiations can exceed deadlines without seriously disrupting operations. The alternative would be costly: Data commissioned in 2014 by the National Association of Manufactures (NAM) and the National Retail Federation (NRF) estimated that port operations stopping for five days would cost the U.S. economy $1.9 billion — a sum that would certainly be higher nowadays amid elevated inflation and supply chain disruptions.

A container ship is shown at the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 22, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Blake

"We've outsourced as far as we can to places that can provide the product at a lowest production price," Larry Parker, a logistics expert at the Dr. Wallace Boston School of Business at American Public University System, told Yahoo Finance. "What we're starting to experience now is the results of the increasing supply costs or supply chain costs."

The expiring ILWU contract was signed in 2015 after nine months of negotiations. In 2019, the ILWU agreed to a three-year extension that increased wages, maintained health benefits, and increased pensions. In November 2021, the ILWU declined an offer to extend the contract, noting that they had not been at the negotiating table since the contract was signed in 2015.

The current talks, which began on May 10 in San Francisco, are unfolding at a moment when the U.S. labor movement has shown leverage amid election victories at dozens of Starbucks (SBUX) locations and “the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.”

U.S. President Joe Biden walks after speaking during a visit to the Port of Los Angeles, during the Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 10, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Negotiation topics include avoiding work disruptions, offering best-in-class employee benefits, safety protocols, technology to drive efficiency in ports, and ESG regulations. The PMA is also committed to introducing automated systems to its marine terminals, which the ILWU argues would eliminate jobs and create a greater cybersecurity risk for port operations.

"For every robotic or every system that removes a worker from the supply chain process, that's reduction in hours and reduction in needed workforce longterm," Parker said.

He added that delayed PMA-ILWU negotiations could lead to "more of the backed up cargo until it can be redirected. We won't come to a complete stop because there's other ports in the United States."

Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @daniromerotv

Russia moves to take control of Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project

Fri, July 1, 2022 

The Sakhalin-2 project supplies about 4% of the global liquefied natural gas market

Russia has moved to take over a major oil and gas project in which Shell has a 27.5% stake.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Thursday to take charge of the Sakhalin-2 project.

The move could force Shell and Japan's Mitsui and Mitsubishi to abandon their investments as the economic fallout of the Ukraine war spreads.

Oil giant Shell said: "We are aware of the decree and are assessing its implications."

The decree said a new firm would take over all rights and obligations of Sakhalin Energy Investment.

Shell said in February that it would to sell its Russian investments due to the conflict in Ukraine, including the flagship Sakhalin 2 facility in Russia's far east.


It said in April it would take a £3.8bn hit by leaving Russia.

The project, which supplies about 4% of the world's current liquefied natural gas (LNG) market, is 50% owned and operated by Gazprom.

According to the decree, Gazprom will keep its stake, but other shareholders must ask the Russian government for a stake in the new firm within one month.

The government will then decide whether to allow them to keep a stake.

Shell has been in talks with potential buyers for its stake in the project, including some from China and India, according to previous reports by The Daily Telegraph and Reuters.

The firm's chief executive Ben van Beurden said on Wednesday Shell was "making good progress" in its plan to exit the joint venture.

"I cannot tell you exactly where we are because it's a commercial process so I have to respect confidentiality, but I can tell you when I got an update last week, I was really pleased with where we are," he said.

Analysis box by Theo Leggett, business correspondent

This appears to be a deeply political move. The impact is likely to be felt most keenly in Japan, which has been heavily involved in sanctions against Russia.

Three foreign companies hold significant stakes in Sakhalin-2 - Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

But Shell has already written off the value of its Russian assets, and said it will exit the country.

Japan, meanwhile, is heavily reliant on imports of liquid natural gas.

Competition for shipments globally is currently intense - and the Sakhalin project alone currently meets about 8% of its needs.

So the prospect of Russia potentially appropriating Japanese interests in the project is certain to generate a queasy response in Tokyo - although ministers there insist it will not make imports "immediately impossible".

If Russian supplies to Japan are cut off, it will have to find new sources elsewhere - increasing competition for available supplies.

That could push up prices globally, at a time when rising energy costs are already fuelling inflation.
Japan measures

The five-page decree, which comes amid Western sanctions on Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine, says that it is up to the Kremlin to decide whether foreign shareholders should to remain in the consortium.

Japan has previously said it would not give up its interests in the Sakhalin-2 project, which is important for its energy security, even if asked to leave.

Shares in Mitsui and Mitsubishi fell 6% in trading on Friday on concerns about losses, with the broader Nikkei index dropping 1.9%.

A Mitsubishi spokesperson said the company was in discussions with its partners in Sakhalin Energy and the Japanese government about how to respond to Putin's decree.

Mitsui did not immediately respond to a request from the BBC for comment, but told Nikkei Asia it was "in the process of confirming the facts".

Mitsui has a 12.5% stake in the project and Mitsubishi 10%, while Shell holds 27.5%, minus one share. Russian gas giant Gazprom has 50%, plus one share.

Japan, South Korea and China are the main customers for oil and LNG exports, according to Shell.

Japanese deputy chief cabinet secretary Seiji Kihara said the country's government was examining the decree's contents and analysing Moscow's intentions.

"Generally speaking, our country's interests in resources should not be hurt," he told a regular news conference, declining to say whether Japan was in contact with Moscow over the matter.

Japanese industry minister Koichi Hagiuda said the government did not consider the decree a requisition.

"The decree does not mean that Japan's LNG imports will become immediately impossible, but it is necessary to take all possible measures in preparation for unforeseen circumstances," he said.
Gas squeeze

Saul Kavonic, head of Integrated Energy and Resources Research at Credit Suisse, said Russian LNG production from projects like Sakhalin-2 was likely to suffer over time as foreign expertise and parts became unavailable.

"This will tighten the LNG market materially this decade," he said.

Any increase in Russian government involvement will only make procurement from these projects more difficult for many buyers, he said.

Japan was urgently seeking alternative supply options, he added.

Zoroastrians confront depletion of their ancient faith




Zoroastrians-World Congress People light wish lanterns while celebrating Chaharshanbe Souri, or Wednesday Feast, an ancient Festival of Fire, on the eve of the last Wednesday of the solar Persian year, in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 15, 2022. Among the world’s present-day religions, Zoroastrianism is one of the most ancient and historically influential. It was founded more than 3,000 years ago and became the major religion in Persia. 

AP Photo/Vahid Salemi,

DAVID CRARY
Fri, July 1, 2022 

NEW YORK (AP) — Among the world’s present-day religions, Zoroastrianism, founded more than 3,000 years ago, is one of the most ancient and historically influential. Yet even though its adherents maintain vibrant communities on four continents, they acknowledge their numbers are dauntingly small — perhaps 125,000 worldwide.

Starting Friday, about 1,200 attendees from 16 countries will be assessing their faith’s prospects during the four-day World Zoroastrian Congress in New York City, the first one held in the United States since 2000.

The agenda reflects a keen awareness of the challenges facing their religion. Prospects for growth are limited, given that Zoroastrians don’t seek to convert outsiders and — in many cases — don’t consider the children of mixed marriages to be members of the faith. Yet there’s also some cause for optimism.

“Have we ever been in a time like this?” wondered Arzan Sam Wadia, a Mumbai-born, New York-based architect who is co-chair of the congress.

“Should we all despair and give up — ‘We can’t do anything, let’s just die peacefully’ — or do we have hope for the future?” he told The Associated Press.

Here’s some basic information about the faith:

HISTORY

Founded more than 3,000 years ago, Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest monotheistic religions still in existence, predating Christianity and Islam by many centuries. Details of its origin are imprecise, however.

The prophet Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra, is revered as the founder of the faith, which became dominant in Persia before Arab Muslims conquered the region in the 7th century.

Wary of persecution, many Zoroastrians left for destinations in western India, notably Mumbai and Gujarat. India’s Zoroastrian population — known as Parsis — is larger than that of any other country, though the numbers there are declining while they increase in North America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

BELIEFS

At its core, Zoroastrianism emphasizes a never-ending battle between good and evil — a contest between the religion’s God, Ahura Mazda, and an evil spirit, Ahriman. Believers have the freedom to make good or bad choices; they were exhorted by Zoroaster to think good thoughts, say good words and do good deeds.

Scholars say these tenets and other aspects of Zoroastrianism had significant influence on other religions, notably Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism.

“You have these ideas that have fundamentally shaped Western society,” said Jamsheed Choksy, a professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. “Fighting the good fight, a purpose of existing to do good, to make the world flourish, to work together, to respect and love each other ... all that goes back to Zarathustra.”

Traditional temples house a sacred fire intended to burn perpetually. Another ancient custom: raised, circular structures known as Towers of Silence, where dead bodies were placed to decompose rather than being buried.

CULTURE

The Nowruz holiday, which incorporates ancient Zoroastrian traditions and marks the Persian New Year, remains a major event on the Iranian calendar. It is widely celebrated, on or around March 21, in other regions that once were part of the Persian empire.

For Zoroastrians who left Iran and settled in India or eventually in more distant regions, their communities became renowned for producing entrepreneurs and philanthropists. Becoming wealthy was encouraged within the faith, but with the proviso that riches should be used to help others.

Jamsetji Tata, born in India in 1839, became one of the most prominent industrialists and philanthropists of the 19th century, and the Tata Group that he founded is one of the world’s largest multinational conglomerates.

Another flourishing conglomerate, the Wadia Group, was founded by Parsi shipbuilder Lovji Wadia in 1736. The company built scores of war vessels for Britain; its holdings today include a fashion magazine, a cricket team and manufacturers of textiles and biscuits.

However the most famous Parsi of modern times was neither an entrepreneur nor industrialist: Freddie Mercury, the legendary lead vocalist of the rock band Queen, was born Farrokh Bulsara in 1946 to parents from Gujarat who were living in Zanzibar.

FUTURE

The possibility of further shrinkage of the global Zoroastrian community will be very much on the minds of attendees at the New York congress.

Several sessions will focus on Zoroastrians in their 20s and 30s. In describing the gathering, organizers promised that participants will come away “reassured that the destiny of the faith is secure in the hands of passionate and visionary young Zoroastrians.”

Other topics on the agenda include entrepreneurship, interfaith collaboration and the role of women.

Wadia, the congress' co-chair, who is not related to the family behind the Wadia Group, has leading roles in two separate initiatives aimed at strengthening the religion’s prospects.

One is a global survey being conducted by SOAS University of London that aims to shed light on factors that are promoting or inhibiting Zoroastrianism's growth and vitality.

Wadia also is program director of Zoroastrian Return To Roots, which organizes trips to India for young Zoroastrians who want to learn more about their religion’s history and culture.

Wadia is convinced the faith will survive, but perhaps while undergoing major changes. In North America, for example, he believes that adherence to specific cultural traditions might diminish, even as Zoroastrians maintain a basic set of spiritual guidelines.

SOAS University’s Almut Hintze, a professor of Zoroastrianism, has described the global community as “microscopically small” and worries about the decline of Parsis in India.

“However, Zoroastrians are doing well in the global diaspora,” she said via email. “It could well be that numbers are going to stabilise, although secularisation and the marriage laws pose threats.”

Choksy, the Indiana University professor, sees North America as the most promising region for growth. He estimates that the United States and Canada are now home to more than 30,000 Zoroastrians, higher than the latest figure for Iran.

“North America is where there’s hope,” Choksy said. “It’s partly due to immigration, but also the communities have more children, they feel more stable. It’s the bright light.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

New recycling method could eliminate the climate impact of plastic


Gianna Melillo
Fri, July 1, 2022

Story at a glance

Plastic pollution is one of the more pressing issues for conservationists and environmentalists alike.

Researchers in Sweden harvested a byproduct of plastic disposal and used it to create a new sustainable plastic.

By incentivizing collection of this byproduct, experts hope to scale the process and create a more sustainable plastic recycling process.

Declining plastic recycling rates coupled with increased plastic pollution on the Earth’s surface and within its oceans spell concern for the planet’s health.

In an effort to combat these trends, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden developed a recycling method that replaces all fossil raw materials used in new plastic production with carbon atoms from mixed waste. The technique has the potential to eliminate the climate impact of plastic and may rid the air of carbon dioxide.

“While fossil fuel use is the main cause of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and a transition away from the use of such fuels is essential to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 [degrees celsius], the production and use of materials such as plastics, cement and steel entail significant GHG emissions,” researchers explained in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

They hypothesized carbon atoms in plastic waste serve as an important untapped resource. These existing resources are currently incinerated or find their way to landfills. Thermochemical technologies can target this wasted carbon and use it as a raw material to produce plastics of similar quality to those created with fossil fuels.

According to investigators, enough of these atoms already exist to meet the needs of all global plastic production. The atoms can be harvested from waste with or without food residue.

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

“If the process is powered by renewable energy, we also get plastic products with more than 95 percent lower climate impact than those produced today, which effectively means negative emissions for the entire system,” said co-author Henrik Thunman in a press release.

To complete the process, the carbon atoms would need to be heated to 600 to 800 degrees celsius, converting the material to gas. Adding hydrogen to this gas can replace the building blocks of plastics and researchers are working to ensure the gas can be used and converted in the same factories currently used to manufacture plastic.

This process can also be powered by renewable sources like solar, wind or hydro power, making them more energy efficient than current systems in use. Experts would also be able to harvest excess heat produced in the process to offset heat production from waste incineration, thereby eliminating carbon dioxide emissions resulting from energy recovery, they explained.

Creating an economic structure to collect and use these carbon atoms can help incentivize this new form of recycling.

The process has already proven successful in one Swedish plant in collaboration with Borealis, a plastic manufacturer.

“Global application of advanced thermochemical recycling technologies has great potential: less energy than used in today’s material system may likely be required, and carbon emissions can be reduced using different energy sources, leading to near-zero carbon emissions with renewable energy,” authors concluded.

More research is needed to better understand best deployment strategies and determine their economic and energy implications.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.

ABOLISH SCOTUS
US Supreme Court says EPA can’t regulate carbon pollution under Clean Air Act

Tim De Chant
Thu, June 30, 2022

In a move that by now surprises absolutely no one, the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the authority to regulate carbon pollution from existing power plants.

The 6-3 decision, with the three liberal justices dissenting, makes it increasingly likely that an act of Congress will be required to create regulations to rein in planet-warming emissions.

“Congress did not grant EPA in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by the five other conservative justices on the bench.

“On EPA’s view of Section 111(d), Congress implicitly tasked it, and it alone, with balancing the many vital considerations of national policy implicated in the basic regulation of how Americans get their energy,” Roberts wrote. “There is little reason to think Congress did so.” In instances like this, he said, “[a] decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body.”

The dissenting justices did not agree with Roberts’ assessment, arguing instead that the EPA has clear authority in this case under the Clean Air Act.

“Congress charged EPA with addressing those potentially catastrophic harms, including through regulation of fossil fuel-fired power plants,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the dissenting opinion. “Section 111 of the Clean Air Act directs EPA to regulate stationary sources of any substance that ‘causes, or contributes significantly to, air pollution’ and that ‘may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.’ Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases fit that description.”

The case originated when the state of West Virginia sued the EPA, challenging its authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal- and natural-gas-fired power plants under the Clean Power Plan, a 2015 Obama administration policy. The rule would have required states to implement their own plans to cut carbon pollution starting this year before reaching full force in 2030. It was projected to cut carbon emissions by 32%.

The Obama EPA estimated that the rule would create $26 billion to $45 billion in net benefits, including $14 billion to $34 billion in health benefits.

The Trump administration sought to gut the rule, mostly by changing how the agency assessed the health impacts of pollution-mitigating policies. That change was rejected in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, though the court did not reinstate the Clean Power Plan itself.

The Biden administration hasn’t sought to bring back the Clean Power Plan, either, but instead create its own rules. This latest Supreme Court decision will no doubt throw a wrench into those plans.

In her dissent, Kagan pointed to the potential fallout created by the majority’s decision. “Climate change’s causes and dangers are no longer subject to serious doubt. Modern science is ‘unequivocal that human influence’—in particular, the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide—‘has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,’” Kagan wrote, citing the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“If the current rate of emissions continues, children born this year could live to see parts of the Eastern seaboard swallowed by the ocean,” she said. Heat waves and severe weather could force mass migrations, civil unrest, and the failure of governments around the world. By the end of the century, she said, 4.6 million people could die as a result of climate change-related causes.

As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old girl travels to Indiana for procedure



Shari Rudavsky and Rachel Fradette
Fri, July 1, 2022 at 11:24 AM·4 min read

On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.

Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.

Could Bernard help?

Indiana lawmakers are poised to further restrict or ban abortion in mere weeks. The Indiana General Assembly will convene in a special session July 25 when it will discuss restrictio ns to abortion policy along with inflation relief.

Ohio abortion update: Ohio Supreme Court rejects attempt to immediately block six-week abortion ban

Abortion ban election impact: After Roe v Wade overturned, Ohio Democrats shift message to abortion, GOP to economy

But for now, the procedure still is legal in Indiana. And so the girl soon was on her way to Indiana to Bernard's care.

Indiana abortion laws unchanged, but effect still felt across state

While Indiana law did not change last week when the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking Dobbs decision, abortion providers here have felt an effect, experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of patients coming to their clinics from neighboring states with more restrictive policies.

Since Friday, the abortion clinics where Dr. Katie McHugh, an independent obstetrician-gynecologists works have seen “an insane amount of requests” from pregnant people in Kentucky and Ohio, where it is far more difficult to get an abortion.

A ban on abortions after six weeks took effect on last week in Ohio. Last Friday the two abortion providers in Kentucky shut their doors after that state’s trigger law banning abortions went into effect.

Indiana soon could have similar restrictions.

That pains doctors like Bernard.

“It’s hard to imagine that in just a few short weeks we will have no ability to provide that care,” Bernard said.

What to know about abortion in Ohio: Who can be charged? What about ectopic pregnancy?

For now, Indiana abortion providers have been fielding more calls from neighboring states. Typically about five to eight patients a day might hail from out of state, said McHugh, who works at multiple clinics in central and southern Indiana. Now, the clinics are seeing about 20 such patients a day.

Kentucky patients have been coming to Indiana in higher numbers since earlier this spring when more restrictive laws took effect there, McHugh said.
Indianapolis abortion clinics seeing surge in patients from Ohio, Kentucky

A similar dynamic is at play at Women’s Med, a medical center that performs abortions in Indianapolis that has a sister center in Dayton, Ohio. In the past week, they have doubled the number of patients they treat for a complete procedure, accepting many referrals from their Ohio counterpart.

More than 100 patients in Dayton had to be scheduled at the Indianapolis facility, a representative for Women’s Med, wrote in an email to IndyStar.

Women and pregnant people are “crying, distraught, desperate, thankful and appreciative,” the representative wrote.

The two centers are working together to route patients to Indianapolis for a termination after a pre-op appointment in Dayton. In recent months, they have also had people from southern states, like Texas, come north for a procedure.

Many patients, particularly from Ohio and Kentucky, are seeking care through Women’s Med while also making multiple appointments in other states so if one state closes down, they will still have some options, the representative wrote.

The center is advising pregnant people with a positive pregnancy test to book an appointment even though prior to the Supreme Court ruling they asked people to wait until their six-week mark to do so.

For years people have traversed state lines for abortions, particularly if a clinic across the border is closer to their home than the nearest in-state facility.

In 2021, 465, or about 5.5% of the more than 8,400 abortions performed, were done on out-of-state residents, according to the Indiana Department of Health's most recent terminated pregnancy report. More than half, 264, lived in Kentucky and 40 in Ohio.

Midwestern residents can also travel to Illinois, where abortion is likely to remain legal even in the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling but for many Indiana is closer and until the lawmakers pass any measure to the contrary, abortion will be legal here.

Still, it remains murky what the future holds.

Thursday a lower court ruled that abortions could resume, at least for now, in Kentucky. On Wednesday abortion clinics in Ohio filed suit, saying that state’s new ban was unconstitutional.

In Indiana lawmakers have declined to provide specifics of what measures any abortion legislation considered here might contain.

For now, then, abortion providers are doing their best to accommodate all Hoosier patients as well those from neighboring states.

“We are doing the best we can to increase availability and access as long as we can, knowing that this will be a temporary time frame that we can offer that assistance,” McHugh said.


This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio girl, 10, among patients going to Indiana to get abortion

GOP Senator in 2010 deposition: 13-year-olds can consent to sex

FILE - Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., speaks during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing May 19, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Before Lankford became a leading voice for conservative causes on Capitol Hill, he spent more than a decade as the director of youth programming at the Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center, a sprawling campground about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City that attracts more than 50,000 campers in grades six through 12 each year. 

(AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)

SEAN MURPHY
Sat, June 25, 2022 

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Before he became a leading voice for conservative causes on Capitol Hill, U.S. Senator James Lankford spent more than a decade as the director of youth programming at the Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center, a sprawling campground about 80 miles south of Oklahoma City that attracts more than 50,000 campers in grades six through 12 each year.

The Republican lawmaker's tenure at the camp is a prominent feature of his political profile, noted in the first paragraph of his official Senate biography. That experience is also coming under renewed scrutiny as the Southern Baptist Convention, which is affiliated with the group that owns the camp, faces a reckoning over its handling of sexual abuse cases.

In 2009, while Lankford worked at the camp, the family of a 13-year-old girl sued a 15-year-old boy who was alleged to have had sex with her at the camp. Lankford, who was not in Congress at the time, is not alleged to have had any direct knowledge of the alleged assault, has not been accused of any wrongdoing and was not a defendant in the lawsuit, which was settled for an undisclosed amount before it was scheduled to go to trial.

But in a 2010 deposition in the case, given a week after he was elected to his first term in the U.S. House, Lankford testified that he believed a 13-year-old could consent to sex.

“Yes, I think they can,” Lankford told Kenyatta Bethea, a lawyer for the girl's family, according a 155-page transcript of the deposition obtained by The Associated Press.

The age of consent in Oklahoma is 16, and although there is an exception in the law for minors between the ages of 14 and 17 who have sexual contact, there is no provision under which a 13-year-old could consent to sex. When Bethea pressed if his answer was still the same “if I ask you that question in terms of your position as a father,” Lankford maintained his stance.

“Yes, they can,” he said.

Under additional questioning about whether he would allow his two daughters to consent to sex at the age of 13, Lankford gave a more expansive answer.

“No, I would not encourage that at all," he said. "Could she make that choice? I hope she would not, but I would not encourage that in any way with my own daughter.”

It’s unclear whether Lankford, who has no formal legal training, was aware of the legal age of consent at the time of his deposition. It's also uncertain whether any criminal charges were filed against the 15-year-old boy. Telephone messages left with Murray County District Attorney Craig Ladd were not returned.

The testimony is surfacing before Tuesday's primary for the GOP Senate nomination that would allow Lankford to seek another term. After early concerns that he could be vulnerable to a challenge from the right, he enters the election in a strong position. The primary winner will head into the fall general election as the overwhelming favorite in this deeply Republican state.

Aly Beley, a spokeswoman for Lankford’s reelection campaign, declined to comment for this story.

The revelation of Lankford’s testimony comes at a difficult moment for the Southern Baptist Convention.

A scathing investigative report, conducted by an independent firm, found that top SBC leaders stonewalled and denigrated survivors of clergy sex abuse while seeking to protect their own reputations. In response, the SBC voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to create a way to track pastors and other church workers credibly accused of sex abuse and launch a task force to oversee further reforms in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

This is not the first case of alleged sexual assault at Falls Creek, a 400-acre campground nestled in the Arbuckle Mountains. The camp is owned by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, which is now called Oklahoma Baptists and is part of the SBC.

Benjamin Lawrence Petty pleaded guilty in 2018 to raping a 13-year-old Texas girl at the camp. Petty, who was a cook at the camp, tied a rope around the girl's wrists, raped her and threatened to hurt her if she told anyone, according to investigators. Petty was ultimately sentenced to probation in the case, and a civil case filed by the girl's family against the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma was settled. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Lankford no longer worked at the camp when the attack occurred.

Court records show that Rev. Lori Walke, an attorney and senior minister at Mayflower Congregational Church in Oklahoma City, served as a guardian ad litem for the Texas girl during the civil case. Walke declined to talk about details of the case, but said she attended Falls Creek as a young girl and has serious concerns about how the camp operates.

“Even as a kid, you recognize some things that feel off," Walke said. “This real obsession with the purity culture is overwhelming. The rules around clothing, particularly for girls, were just obsessed over."

“And then, the real lack of oversight, generally speaking, in all other matters," she added. "It was absolutely due to the fact that there’s just not enough adults around."

Oklahoma Baptists did not respond to questions about how many cases involving sexual misconduct at Falls Creek have been settled. In a statement, Executive Director-Treasurer Todd Fisher said the recent vote to approve recommendations from the SBC’s task force will bring about needed national reforms.

“I am thankful Oklahoma Baptists already made significant steps toward preventing abuse in Oklahoma, implementing a number of best practices in all areas of our ministries, including at our encampments,” Fisher said.

Oklahoma Baptists spokesman Brian Hobbs said some of those best practices for Falls Creek include mandatory background checks for anyone 18 and older, increased security, professionally developed safety training for all camp staff and church leaders bringing groups to the camp and protocols for reporting abuse or suspected abuse.

During his deposition, Lankford said he had no problem sending his daughters to the camp, including in instances when he was not present, though he acknowledged that supervision wasn't perfect.

“I know that our adults are watching out for our kids, but the process of that, obviously I can't guess for every adult how they're going to handle it,” Lankford said.

A 100 YEAR REICH

After Roe fell, Steve Bannon called for an 'army of the awakened' to 'shatter' Democrats

Cheryl Teh

Sun, June 26, 2022 

In a Gettr post, Steve Bannon urged "patriots" to take advantage of the "Roe momentum" to win the MAGA movement a "massive victory" at the midterm elections.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

• Steve Bannon has called for an "army of the awakened" to rise in post-Roe America.

• Bannon posted on Gettr touting the SCOTUS ruling as a victory over the "pro-abortion movement."

• He called on the MAGA movement to capitalize on the situation to win big at the midterm elections.

Right-wing figure Steve Bannon has called for an "army of the awakened" to "shatter" the Democratic party in post-Roe America.

Bannon made a post on Gettr on Saturday lauding the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, a controversial decision that has led to abortion being halted in some states.

In his post, Bannon called on "the army of the awakened" to rally and capitalize on the verdict.

"This is the key take-away for MAGA … the pro-abortion movement is shattered and is now turning in on itself — because for 50 years they didn't have to work— the Courts and Regime Media covered for them — now The Abyss," Bannon wrote.

"That's the Democratic Party in November— we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shatter it into a million small pieces," Bannon added, referring to the upcoming midterm elections.

In another post on Sunday, Bannon urged "patriots" to take advantage of the "Roe momentum" and "flood the zone" to win the MAGA movement a "massive victory" in the midterms.

The Gettr posts were not the first occasion that Bannon, a former Trump strategist, has alluded to a MAGA "army" of some sort taking over the government.

In a December 2021 episode of his podcast, "War Room: Pandemic," Bannon and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz floated the possibility of an "army of patriots" and "shock troops" taking over the US government.

Bannon was also seen ranting outside a courthouse in Washington, D.C., in June, claiming that MAGA will "destroy the Democratic Party" and "govern for 100 years."

"We will govern for a hundred years after we win a hundred seats," Bannon said, baselessly claiming that MAGA candidates will sweep wins in the Senate, school boards, and state legislatures and take the seats for "all the Secretaries of State."

Bannon's comments, however, come at a tense moment in the political landscape. Protests have erupted across the US over Roe v. Wade, at times culminating in tense and violent confrontations.

Read the original article on Business Insider