AOC, Lieu to Senate Dems: Say on the record whether Gorsuch and Kavanaugh lied

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
July 12, 2022

Reps. Ted Lieu and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanded Monday that Senate Democratic leaders say on the record whether they believe U.S. Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath about their views on Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that both judges voted to overturn last month.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Lieu and Ocasio-Cortez noted that neither Gorsuch nor Kavanaugh contended during their Senate confirmation hearings that Roe was "egregiously wrong from the start," a position that both justices assented to last month by joining Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization—a ruling that ended the constitutional right to abortion.

"We cannot have a system where justices lie about their views in order to get confirmed."

"They expressed the exact opposite position," the Democratic lawmakers wrote. "While several justices made misleading statements during their confirmation hearings, two examples are particularly egregious."

Lieu and Ocasio-Cortez went on to cite Gorsuch's under-oath comment in 2017 that Roe "is a precedent of the United States Supreme Court" that "has been reaffirmed."

"A good judge," he added, "will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other."

Kavanaugh, for his part, similarly told senators in 2018 that "the Supreme Court has recognized the right to abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade case" and has "reaffirmed it many times."

"It is not as if it is just a run-of-the-mill case that was decided and never been reconsidered, but Casey specifically reconsidered it, applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it," Kavanaugh said. "That makes Casey a precedent on precedent."

Senators who voted to confirm both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh—including Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—have cited such statements as evidence that the judges duped them into believing they viewed Roe as established precedent and would therefore be unwilling to cast it aside as they did on June 24.

In their letter on Monday, Lieu and Ocasio-Cortez argued that "we cannot have a system where justices lie about their views in order to get confirmed," warning that such a system "makes a mockery of the confirmation power, and of the separation of powers."

"We respectfully request the Senate issue a finding—through a resolution or another kind of public statement—on whether these justices lied under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee," added Lieu and Ocasio-Cortez. The New York Democrat has also urged the House to launch impeachment investigations into Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and other right-wing justices.

"We must call out their actions for what they were before the moment passes," Lieu and Ocasio-Cortez wrote Monday, "so that we can prevent such a mendacious denigration of our fundamental rights and the rule of law from ever happening again."

World's Oldest Martian Meteorite Traced to Precise Crater It Came From

BY DARKO MANEVSKI, ZENGER NEWS 

ON 7/12/22 

The world's oldest Martian meteorite has been traced to the precise crater where it originated.

Named Black Beauty, it formed almost 4.5 billion years ago and adds to evidence the Red Planet was once habitable.

The famous space rock found in the western Sahara of Africa formed part of a primordial crust that hosted oceans of water.

Now, an international team has pinpointed its exact home.

The world's oldest Martian meteorite has been traced to the precise crater where it originated. Scientists used a supercomputer to track its creation on the red planet in a province known as Terra Cimmeria-Sirenum, seen circled on the graphic.

STEVE CHATTERLEY, SWNS/ZENGER

They used a supercomputer to track its creation on the red planet in a province known as Terra Cimmeria-Sirenum.

The location in the southern hemisphere of the planet has many gullies that could have been carved by flowing rivers. Black Beauty contains more water than other Martian meteorites.

The crater Black Beauty is from has been named Karratha after a city in the Pilbara area of western Australia renowned for its remarkably preserved rock formations.

The meteorite named "Black Beauty" formed almost 4.5 billion years ago and adds to evidence that Mars was once habitable.

STEVE CHATTERLEY, SWNS/ZENGER

"For the first time, we know the geological context of the only brecciated Martian sample available on Earth, 10 years before the NASA's Mars Sample Return mission is set to send back samples collected by the Perseverance rover currently exploring the Jezero crater," said lead author Dr. Anthony Lagain, of Curtin University in Perth, Australia.

The international team want NASA to prioritize the area around Karratha Crater as a future landing site on Mars.

Perseverance landed on Christmas Day and is currently drilling for potential past signs of life.

"Finding the region where the 'Black Beauty' meteorite originates is critical because it contains the oldest Martian fragments ever found, aged at 4.48 billion years old, and it shows similarities between Mars' very old crust, aged about 4.53 billion years old, and today's Earth continents," Lagain said.

"The region we identify as being the source of this unique Martian meteorite sample constitutes a true window into the earliest environment of the planets, including the Earth, which our planet lost because of plate tectonics and erosion."


The study in the journal Nature Communications offers never-before-known details about the Black Beauty, known scientifically as NWA 7034.
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It is the only brecciated Martian sample on Earth - meaning angular fragments of multiple rocks cemented together. All others contain single types.


A machine learning or AI (artificial intelligence) algorithm identified about 90 million impact craters.

Black Beauty's ejection site was found through analyzing thousands of high-resolution images from a range of Mars missions.

Black Beauty's ejection site on the Red Planet was found through analyzing thousands of high-resolution images from a range of Mars missions. The Karratha crater was formed 5 to 10 billion years ago when an asteroid smashed into Mars. It propelled the chunk of ancient Martian crust into space which eventually crashed into the African desert.

STEVE CHATTERLEY, SWNS/ZENGER

Lagain and colleagues found the Karratha crater was formed 5 to 10 billion years ago when an asteroid smashed into Mars. It propelled the chunk of ancient Martian crust into space which eventually crashed into the African desert.

Remains of Black Beauty were discovered in Western Sahara, Africa, in 2011. It was made when the crusts of both Earth and Mars were still young.

Now that we know the source, researchers can compare the formation of both planets. The technology will identify the source of other Martian meteorites - and billions of impact craters on Mercury and the Moon.

It paves the way to locate the ejection site of other Martian meteorites to assemble the most exhaustive view of the Red Planet's geological history.

More than 300 Martian meteorites have been found on Earth to date.

Co-author Professor Gretchen Benedix, also from Curtin, said: "We are also adapting the algorithm that was used to pinpoint Black Beauty's point of ejection from Mars to unlock other secrets from the Moon and Mercury.

"This will help to unravel their geological history and answer burning questions that will help future investigations of the Solar System such as the Artemis program to send humans on the Moon by the end of the decade or the BepiColombo mission, in orbit around Mercury in 2025."

Black Beauty is less than 2 inches long and weighs about 11 ounces. It is owned by a private collector - and valued at up to $118,900.

Produced in association with SWNS.

Michigan voters say court's abortion ruling will influence their vote, poll finds

Beth LeBlanc, The Detroit News on Jul 12, 2022


The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn a half-century of abortion rights is likely to drive more Michigan voters to the polls in November as they consider where candidates stand on the controversial issue and weigh enshrining a right to abortion in the state constitution.

About 58% of Michigan voters said they opposed the June 24 U.S. Supreme Court order overturning Roe v. Wade, with 52% strongly opposing the ruling to move abortion rights decisions back to the states, according to a July 5-8 poll of 600 likely general election voters. The poll, commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4), has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

About 86% of respondents said a candidate's position on Roe would be important in deciding their vote compared with 13% who said it would not be important, according to the poll. About 57% said a candidate's position on abortion would be very important.

Among likely independent voters — a key voting bloc that traditionally decides Michigan elections — 68% said they oppose the Supreme Court order and 23% said they do not. Women opposed the court's decision 63% to 30%.

The polling results — combined with a record number of more than 750,000 signatures submitted Monday for a petition initiative to enshrine a right to abortion in the state constitution — show building motivation among voters of all stripes on abortion and especially among Democrats and independent voters, said Richard Czuba, a pollster for the Glengariff Group, which conducted the survey.

"These women who disagree with the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, they are going to be marching to the polls en masse. This isn’t 1972 anymore,” said Czuba, referring to the defeated 1972 ballot initiative seeking to make abortion legal in Michigan.

In the past, Republican candidates have addressed issues on the margins of abortion rights, such as limits on late-term abortions or parental consent. But the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization has forced the question of abortion in its totality into every race in Michigan, the pollster said.

"There is not a candidate running for office who will escape having to say where they stand on this issue," Czuba said.

The poll also found widespread voter opposition to the Supreme Court overturning decades of legal precedent in the 1965 landmark ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut that protected a marital couple's right to contraception.

Nearly 90% of respondents surveyed said they support the constitutional right of couples to purchase and use contraception to prevent pregnancies without government restriction. Fewer than 6% of voters said the government should be able to regulate the use of contraceptives.

That question was polled after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion to the decision overturning Roe that the high court "should reconsider" its 57-year-old ruling that nixed state laws regulating the use of birth control. Other justices said the Dobbs decision should be applied to other court precedents.

Abortion a priority issue?

The poll results appear to be in step with the experience of Planned Parenthood of Michigan as it spearheaded a lawsuit that led to a preliminary injunction stopping enforcement of Michigan's abortion ban and submitted with the ACLU of Michigan on Monday a record number of signatures for a wide-ranging ballot initiative seeking to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, said Nicole Wells Stallworth, executive director for Planned Parenthood of Michigan.

The group has seen a groundswell of support since the U.S. Supreme Court opinion was leaked in May and that support, Wells Stallworth said, has come from all corners of the state, from all walks of life.

"Roe was something that we thought was settled and it has been for the last 50 years," she said. "That’s an entire generation where this was a right for all.

"The record signatures we turned in were a record for a reason, and that is because it’s a new time and a new day."

While the high court's June 24 decision appears to be driving voter opinion, it didn't rank at the top of the list of issues with which voters are most concerned in the Detroit News-WDIV poll this month.

When asked about the most important issues facing the U.S., 22% of those surveyed ranked inflation, prices and gas costs as the top issue and nearly 20% named the economy and jobs. Abortion, Roe v. Wade and women's rights ranked third, with 14% of likely general election voters saying it's the nation's most important current issue.

That seems to be in line with the stance of Jennifer Hodge, a 40-year-old Traverse City Republican who participated in the poll. Hodge said she strongly disagreed with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling but said education policy and the content taught in schools ranked higher in her list of priorities.

Those priorities, she said, would cause her to vote for Republicans at the end of the day. But she was still torn on the matter Monday and noted the topic of abortion is discussed frequently at her home since her husband doesn't share her views on the matter.

"I do think that it’s a big deal because I think every day our rights as women are being taken away from us," Hodge said.

Genevieve Marnon, legislative director for Right to Life of Michigan, said abortion is only staying on the radar because of constant press releases from Democratic leaders on the matter and the media's complicity in writing about them. The issues individuals are really concerned about ahead of the November election, she said, are inflation and gas prices.

Marnon argued that if the survey question was phrased differently to reflect that the U.S. Supreme Court sent the abortion question back to states to decide, it's likely more people would be amenable to the decision.

Still, Marnon acknowledged that Right to Life of Michigan is fighting along three fronts this year: Elections, the ballot initiative seeking to make abortion a constitutional right, and two lawsuits seeking to overturn Michigan's abortion ban.

"If we lose any one of those, we’re in trouble," Marnon said. "We’ve been very cognizant of that all along. I don’t think it changes our strategy. It just means we’re all going to have to work hard.”

Supreme disapproval

Voters' disapproval with the June 24 U.S. Supreme Court opinion bled into other dispositions toward the high court, suggesting the justices have a "credibility problem," Czuba said.

Nearly 53% of voters, largely split along party lines, said they disapproved of the job being done by the U.S. Supreme Court, with independent voters disapproving by a margin of 54% to 33%, according to the survey. Another 67% said there should be term or age limits imposed on Supreme Court justices, who get lifetime appointments to the nation's highest court.

Nearly 60% said the U.S. Supreme Court makes decisions based on politics while 26% contended those decisions are rooted in "sound legal reasoning."

But voters were split 46% to 41% respectively on whether the U.S. Supreme Court should make decisions that "reflect what they believe the founders meant when they wrote and passed" the Constitution or "reflect modern society."

Republicans tended to support an interpretation in line with the founders while Democratic voters supported decisions in line with modern society. The divide is "eye-opening" in that it gives individuals a peek into the philosophies driving a wedge in politics, Czuba said.

"That seems to me to go to the very core of what is dividing the country right now," the pollster said. "There is this issue of modernity versus the intent."

____©2022 www.detroitnews.com. Visit at detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Breakenridge: Maybe Kenney was right after all about anti-vaxxers hijacking the UCP

Jason Kenney’s recent comments about anti-vaxxers being the author of his downfall were widely seen as self-serving and unhelpful.


Jason Kenney speaks at an event at Spruce Meadows in Calgary on Wednesday, May 18, 2022.

Rob Breakenridge, for the Calgary Herald - Yesterday 

After all, there were many factors in Kenney’s demise. It’s less damaging to his ego to blame sinister forces conspiring against him than to have to confront his own missteps and shortcomings. But suggesting that the UCP has been hijacked by the anti-vaccine movement is just going to scare voters away. Not a great parting gift from an outgoing leader.

However, six weeks after those comments, they now seem much less paranoid and off-base. In fact, maybe the outgoing premier had a point.

Otherwise, it’s hard to explain the odd and creepy fixation on vaccines that’s emerged in the UCP leadership race. Kenney’s warning about “huge” numbers of memberships purchased by those “motivated primarily by their anger and hostility to vaccines” is not so easily dismissed anymore.

Leadership candidate Danielle Smith, for example, has been especially focused on issues around vaccines and vaccine mandates (to which she has previously drawn parallels to the Nuremberg trials). Last week she vowed that if elected, Alberta would not enforce any federal vaccine mandates.

Of course, there are no longer any federal vaccine mandates, and even if there were, there’s nothing for any province to “enforce.” It’s an empty slogan, but it’s an excuse to keep pushing the issue.

Being against vaccine mandates is not the same thing as being anti-vaccine. Although, it’s fair to say that everyone who is the latter is also the former.


© Azin GhaffariUCP leadership candidate Danielle Smith.

Smith’s bona fides on this issue were established well before the leadership campaign. Last year, for example, she hosted on her internet show a pathologist who has claimed that vaccines are killing people by the thousands and an Ontario doctor who has been disciplined for spreading misinformation about vaccines.

It’s quite a commentary on her own judgment that she would undermine vaccination despite the overwhelming evidence of its success while also touting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin despite the overwhelming evidence of their ineffectiveness against COVID. Unfortunately, there’s an audience for this.

In fact, there’s apparently enough of a constituency for this type of message that other candidates are trying to compete for their own share.

Enter Brian Jean. So far his campaign hasn’t focused too much on these issues, but they must sense the need for a pivot. In a speech earlier this month in Olds, Jean made the claim , “COVID killed … a lot of people. But, so did the vaccine.”

It is, of course, an outrageous and irresponsible thing to say, especially for someone campaigning to be Alberta’s next premier. That he would feel such a statement could help his campaign is quite alarming, indeed.


© Greg Southam

Brian Jean speaks during his official campaign launch for the UCP leadership on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 in Edmonton.

Even Travis Toews, who seemed to reside on the party’s more sensible side, felt compelled to get in on the act. Last week, Toews posted a tweet that included an unattributed quote to “Ottawa” saying that “two doses are no longer enough.” Toews’ response to that was “enough is enough.”

Again, this seems completely out of step with Toews’ campaign as well as his time as finance minister. That he, too, feels the need to pander only serves to reinforce the notion that the anti-vaccine crowd wields considerable clout in the party.

Let’s hope that’s not the case. But even if this all does play well in the leadership race (which, sadly, it appears to), this is a dead-ender as far as a general election is concerned. Not to mention the very troubling implications for Alberta’s public health approach this fall and winter.


© Provided by Calgary Herald

Travis Toews, candidate for leader of the United Conservative Party held a media availability and news conference at the Westley Hotel in Calgary on Tuesday, June 28, 2022.

And while Kenney’s own political judgment might be forever tainted, he wasn’t wrong when he urged leadership candidates to “focus on the mainstream concerns of ordinary Albertans which revolve around jobs, economy, strong public services and a strong province.”

For whatever reason, some of his would-be successors are taking a much different — and worrying — approach.

“Afternoons with Rob Breakenridge” airs weekdays 12:30-3 p.m. on 770CHQR and 2-3 p.m. on 630CHED rob.breakenridge@corusent.com Twitter: @RobBreakenridge

​​Former Twitter employee: Twitter considered new content restrictions after Trump told Proud Boys to 'stand back and standby'

By Clare Duffy and Holmes Lybrand, CNN Business
 July 12, 2022



New York (CNN Business)A former Twitter employee told the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection that the company considered imposing a stricter content moderation policy following a September 2020 comment by then-President Donald Trump telling the right-wing extremist group the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."

Trump's comment to the Proud Boys came during a 2020 presidential debate, after Joe Biden called for Trump to condemn the group. "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by," Trump said, adding that, "somebody has to do something about Antifa and the left because this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing."

The former Twitter (TWTR) employee, who was on the company's content moderation team through 2020 and 2021, according to the committee, said their "concern was that the former President, for seemingly the first time, was speaking directly to extremist organizations and giving them directives," according to an interview aired during the House committee hearing Tuesday. Twitter did not end up imposing the policy — the details of which were not shared during the hearing — following Trump's comment, the employee said.

In their interview with the committee, the Twitter employee said that while the company was worried about Trump using the platform to talk to people who could incite violence, Twitter "relished in the knowledge that they were also the favorite and most used service of the former President and enjoyed having that sort of power."

Takeaways from the January 6 hearing day 7

"If former President Donald Trump were any other user on Twitter, he would have been permanently suspended a very long time ago," the employee said.

"We are clear-eyed about our role in the broader information ecosystem in regards to the January 6th attack on the US Capitol, and while we continue to examine how we can improve moving forward, the fact remains that we took unprecedented steps and invested significant resources to prepare for and respond to the threats that emerged during the 2020 US election," Twitter Vice President of Public Policy for the Americas Jessica Herrera-Flanigan said in a statement, adding that the company is engaging directly with the House committee.

Herrera-Flanigan added that Twitter "deployed numerous policy and product interventions to protect the public conversation" before and after the 2020 election, and said that on January 6 the company "leveraged the systems we had built leading up to the election to respond to the unprecedented attack in real-time."

Twitter designated the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers as violent extremist groups in July 2018 and September 2020, respectively, and says it has permanently suspended accounts associated with the groups in line with its policy prohibiting violent organizations, according to a company spokesperson. The spokesperson added that many of the groups and individuals responsible for organizing the January 6 insurrection had been suspended from Twitter prior to the attack.

Among its efforts following the 2020 election, Twitter's teams began in December 2020 observing tweets about a large protest in Washington, DC, set for January 6, and started monitoring related content, taking action against election misinformation, references to "last stands" and few direct violent threats, according to the company.

As for Trump, after saying in 2019 it would place a disclaimer on tweets by world leaders that broke its rules but are in the "public interest," Twitter began in May 2020 labeling some tweets by the then-President as "potentially misleading," in an effort to provide context around his remarks. In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, Twitter suspended and then permanently banned Trump's account, citing a "risk of further incitement of violence."

But in their testimony, the Twitter employee suggested the company should have done more ahead of the attack. On the night of January 5, 2021, the employee said they "sent a Slack message to someone that said something along the lines of, 'when people are shooting each other tomorrow, I will try and rest in the knowledge that we tried.' ... I don't know that I slept that night."

The employee continued: "For months, I had been begging and anticipating and attempting to raise the reality that if ... we made no intervention into what I saw occurring, people were going to die. And on January 5, I realized no intervention was coming, even as hard as I had tried to create one or implement one, there was nothing and we were at the whims and the mercy of a violent crowd that was locked and loaded."

 

People were going to die': Former Twitter employee on flagging potential Jan. 6 violence

The House Select Committee investigating January 6 heard testimony from a former Twitter employee who says they begged the social media platform to do something about potential violence connected to former President Dondald Trump's election lies. Twitter spokesperson Jessica Herrera-Flanigan responded, "Leading up to and following the election, we deployed numerous policy and product interventions to protect the public conversation. We declared the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers violent extremist groups in 2018 and 2020 respectively, and permanently suspended accounts associated with the organizations under our violent organizations policy, as well as many of the organizers of the attack for violations of our policies."

Food processing is target of latest promise by Alberta NDP

The Opposition NDP wants to create a special incentive program for companies to build or expand food processing facilities in Alberta.

Lisa Johnson -Edmonton Journal

Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley speaks at a news conference outside Calgary city hall on June 1, 2022.

In the party’s latest platform proposal released Tuesday , it promises, if elected, to offer either loan guarantees, grants, or tax credits that would be decided by a newly created task force.

Leader Rachel Notley said at a news conference in Calgary the plan represents a different approach than when the NDP was elected to government in 2015.

“One of our bigger mistakes was we didn’t take enough time to listen and consult with families, residents, business owners across rural Alberta, so I’m determined to do a better job,” Notley said, adding the proposal will require more consultations.

While in government, the NDP sparked an outcry in rural Alberta by bringing in a bill that changed labour rules for farmers.

The price tag for the plan will come as it develops, Notley said, adding the UCP’s eight per cent corporate tax rate doesn’t necessarily help agri-food entrepreneurs, and a targeted investment that competes with programs in Saskatchewan and Manitoba will cost less and have a better return.

It comes after the UCP announced last week it had exceeded its own targets by attracting almost $1.5 billion in new investment and creating about 3,000 jobs for Albertans since 2019. The government has highlighted several recent projects, including a planned $72-million INCA Renewtech hemp factory in Vegreville, and a $225-million Phyto Organix Foods Inc. pea processing facility in Strathmore.

Mackenzie Blyth, press secretary to Agriculture Forestry and Rural Economic Development Minister Nate Horner, said in a Tuesday email to Postmedia the ministry is also actively working on around 100 additional projects, with the potential of facilitating $5 billion more in investment.

“It’s great to see the NDP has been following our lead and are looking at programs that we are already working on,” he said.

In its June Define the Decade report , the Business Council of Alberta highlighted the importance of expanding value-added processing, like making potato chips from potatoes, and creating an agri-food program modelled after the Alberta Petrochemicals Incentive Program (APIP), which offers government grants of up to 12 per cent of petrochemical project capital costs.

Team Alberta, a group of eight crop commissions, last month called for the UCP government to do more to help attract commercial agri-food value-added processors to Alberta, noting that large investments are landing in other jurisdictions instead.

Blyth said the department has heard concerns about competitiveness and will take a close look before developing the next provincial budget. He noted Alberta’s approach combines several grant programs and business services in a “concierge model” that aims to foster growth and diversification in the sector.

The New Democrats called for lower borrowing costs for municipalities and irrigation districts to help them build infrastructure such as water lines and roads, saying the UCP has made it more difficult by increasing borrowing rates.

Notley also said a lack of capacity in the province’s regulatory agencies leaves projects waiting for years instead of months, and her party would add department staff to speed up the process.

Blyth said the government has worked hard to get spending under control, and won’t make decisions that threaten to erase that progress.

“It is important that we examine this comprehensively, from understanding ways to reduce red tape and make it easier for the sector to do business in Alberta, as well as to understanding where any competitiveness gaps may exist in the agri-food sector.”

lijohnson@postmedia.com

Bank of England deputy governor compares cryptocurrency crash to the Hindenburg airship disaster

By JOHN-PAUL FORD ROJAS FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED 12 July 2022 


A Bank of England deputy governor has likened the crash in cryptocurrencies to the Hindenburg airship disaster as he called for regulation to ensure the technology’s potential benefits are not lost.

Bitcoin, the best-known cryptocurrency, has lost more than two-thirds of its value since hitting nearly $69,000 in November as investors fret over weakening global growth, high inflation and rising interest rates.

But Sir Jon Cunliffe said in a speech in Singapore that it does not mean ‘that crypto is somehow over and we do not need to be concerned about it any more’.

Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe called for tech industry pioneers to work with regulators and other authorities to develop the right regulation for cryptocurrencies

In the past, he said innovations have been abandoned because of dramatic failures, citing the deadly disaster in 1937 when a hydrogen-powered German airship crashed in New Jersey.

‘While the causes of the Hindenburg Zeppelin disaster are still debated, it is very probable that the general development of the use of hydrogen in transport was put aside for decades as a result.’

Cunliffe argued that some of the technologies being developed in the crypto world could mean lower costs, greater speed and more transparency for investors.

‘A succession of crypto winters will not, in the end, help the development and adoption of these technologies and the reaping of the benefits that they may offer,’ he added.

Cunliffe called for tech industry pioneers to work with regulators and other authorities to develop the right regulation.

And he also drew an analogy with the dotcom crash two decades ago when the valuations of early online firms slumped.

‘The technology did not go away but rather re-emerged in a different form, focused on the development of platforms which have now come to dominate internet commerce,’ he said.

Market values are destroying nature: 

UN report

July 13, 2022

PARIS (AFP) – A major United Nations (UN) report warned on Monday that a global economy focussed on short-term profit is wrecking the planet and called for a drastically different approach as to how we value nature.

Without this shift, universally accepted goals of sustainable development and greater equity will remain out-of-reach, the science advisory panel for biodiversity, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), found.

“The way we understand economic growth is at the core of the biodiversity crisis,” ecological economist at the University of Bern, and co-chair of a 139-nation meeting in Bonn that approved the report, Unai Pascual, told AFP.

“The new assessment aims to bring different types of values into the decisions leading us to transformative change.”

Some 80 experts combed through more than 13,000 studies, looking at how market-based values have contributed to the destruction of ecosystems that sustain us, and what other values might best foster sustainability.

A 34-page Summary for Policymakers comes as the UN steers an international process to stem species loss and protect nature.

In December, nations gather to finalise a treaty tasked with halting the decline of biodiversity and setting humanity on a path to “live in harmony with nature”.

“Nature is what sustains us all,” commented Head of the UN Environment programme Inger Andersen. “It gives us food, medicine, raw materials, oxygen, climate regulation and much more.”

But a five-fold increase in per-capita GDP since 1950 has maimed the natural world that made such growth possible. A million species are threatened with extinction and global warming is on track to make swathes of the planet unlivable.

Two landmark UN reports – in 2018 and 2019 – concluded that only a wholesale transformation of the way we produce, distribute and consume almost everything can stave off runaway global warming and a collapse of ecosystems.

 18-year oil spill in Gulf: 1M gallons collected since 2019

Janet Mcconnaughey, The Associated Press

• 
  

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — One million gallons of oil have been collected since April 2019 from the site of the nation’s longest oil spill, in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana, the Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday.

The spill began when when Hurricane Ivan caused an underwater mudslide in September 2004, collapsing an oil production platform 11 miles (27 kilometers) from shore. Owner Taylor Energy Co. LLC capped nine wells but said it couldn't cap the other 16 at Mississippi Canyon Block 20, or MC-20 for short. They have now been leaking for nearly 18 years.

“As of July 12, 2022, 1,016,929 gallons of oil have been collected from the MC-20 site" over more than three years, the Coast Guard said in a news release. That amount — more than 3.8 million liters — would fill about 1.5 Olympic swimming pools.

The Coast Guard said that the containment system it ordered is collecting an average of about 900 gallons (3,400 liters) of oil a day.

Neither agency estimated the 18-year total.

Some earlier estimates put the daily maximum at 33 times the current daily amount, but that figure is also far above early government estimates of 7.5 gallons (28 liters) a day in 2012 and 12 gallons (45 liters) a day in 2015.

Estimates were even lower from Taylor, which unsuccessfully took the Coast Guard and its contractor to court over the containment system.

The New Orleans-based company agreed in December 2021 to drop three lawsuits, turn over a $432 million cleanup trust fund and pay an additional $43 million to settle a federal lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Greg Gerard Guidry signed the settlement in March, according to online court records.

The trust fund money went to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to pay for continuing efforts to plug the well and stop the spill, NOAA said in its press release.

“Experts continue to work on a permanent solution,” the agency said.

___

To follow AP's coverage of the environment, see https://apnews.com/hub/environment.

Janet Mcconnaughey, The Associated Press

European countries reject Israel's claims against Palestinian NGOs

Israel backlisted the groups as terrorist organisations last year but has provided little evidence to support its claims.


Shawan Jabarin, director of Al Haq human rights group, at its offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah. AP
Soraya Ebrahimi

Jul 12, 2022

Nine European countries said on Tuesday they would not change their policies on supporting six Palestinian NGOs as they had seen “no substantial evidence” to support Israel’s accusations that they are terrorist organisations.

Israel backlisted the groups last October but has provided little evidence to support its allegations.

The rights groups denied the allegations and accused Israel of escalating a long-standing crackdown on Palestinian opposition to its decades-long military rule.

“Accusations of terrorism or links to terrorist groups must always be treated with the utmost seriousness,” said a statement issued by Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

“No substantial information was received from Israel that would justify reviewing our policy towards the six Palestinian NGOs on the basis of the Israeli decision to designate these NGOs as ‘terrorist organisations’.

“Should evidence be made available to the contrary, we would act accordingly."

Israel’s Foreign Ministry and Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Israel accused the groups of serving as a front for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a left-wing movement that has a political party and an armed wing.

It has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis for decades. Israel and western nations consider the PFLP a terrorist organisation.

The blacklisted organisations are the Al Haq human rights group, the Addameer rights group, Defence for Children International-Palestine, the Bisan Centre for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

In its October 22 announcement, the Israeli Defence Ministry said the organisations were “controlled by senior leaders” of the PFLP and employ its members, including some who have “participated in terror activity".

It said the groups serve as a “central source” of financing for the PFLP and had received “large sums of money from European countries and international organisations.”

The terror declaration initially appeared to pave the way for Israel to raid their offices, seize assets, arrest staff and criminalise any public expressions of support for the groups. But all six have continued operating.

The Dutch government announced in January that it would stop funding the Union of Agricultural Work Committees after it found evidence that individual staffers were linked to the PFLP.

But it said it found no evidence the group had “organisational ties” to the PFLP or was involved in funding or carrying out terrorism, as Israel had claimed.

Israel has long accused human rights groups and international bodies of being biased against it and of singling it out while ignoring graver breaches by other countries.

Most of the organisations document claims of human rights breaches by Israel and the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel and the PA routinely detain Palestinian activists.