Vance’s anti-drug charity enlisted doctor echoing Big Pharma

By JULIE CARR SMYTH

Ohio Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, JD Vance, takes the stage to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Aug. 5, 2022. Vance founded a new charity called "Our Ohio Renewal" a day after the 2016 presidential election, promising to use it to help solve the scourge of opioid addiction, Vance's Senate rival, Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, has targeted "Our Ohio Renewal" as a failure. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)


COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When JD Vance founded “Our Ohio Renewal” a day after the 2016 presidential election, he promoted the charity as a vehicle for helping solve the scourge of opioid addiction that he had lamented in “Hillbilly Elegy,” his bestselling memoir.

But Vance shuttered the nonprofit last year and its foundation in May, shortly after clinching the state’s Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, according to state records reviewed by The Associated Press. An AP review found that the charity’s most notable accomplishment — sending an addiction specialist to Ohio’s Appalachian region for a yearlong residency — was tainted by ties among the doctor, the institute that employed her and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin.

The mothballing of Our Ohio Renewal and its dearth of tangible success raise questions about Vance’s management of the organization. His decision to bring on Dr. Sally Satel is drawing particular scrutiny. She’s an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar whose writings questioning the role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis were published in The New York Times and elsewhere before she began the residency in the fall of 2018.

Documents and emails obtained by ProPublica for a 2019 investigation found that Satel, a senior fellow at AEI, sometimes cited Purdue-funded studies and doctors in her articles on addiction for major news outlets and occasionally shared drafts of the pieces with Purdue officials in advance, including on occasions in 2004 and 2016. Over the years, according to the report, AEI received regular $50,000 donations and other financial support from Purdue totaling $800,000.

Longtime Ohio political observer Herb Asher cast the charity’s shortcomings, including Satel’s links to Big Pharma, as a “betrayal.”

“A person forms a charity presumably to do good things, so when it doesn’t, for whatever reason, that really is a betrayal,” said Asher, an emeritus professor of political science at Ohio State University. “That’s something voters can get their arms around.”

Vance’s campaign said the nonprofit is simply on temporary hold during Vance’s Senate run against Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan. It also said Vance was unfamiliar with Satel’s connection to Purdue when she was selected for the residency.

“JD didn’t know at the time, but remains proud of her work to treat patients, especially those in an area of Ohio who needed it most,” the campaign said in a statement.

In an email to the AP this week, Satel said that she “never consulted with” or ever “took a cent from Purdue” and that she didn’t know that Purdue had donated money to AEI because the institute maintains a firewall between its scholars and donors. She said she relies “completely on my own experience as a psychiatrist and/or data to form my opinions.”

Phoebe Keller, spokesperson for AEI, said the institute’s scholars “have academic freedom to follow their own research to conclusions without interference from management.”

Purdue Pharma did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Vance has described Our Ohio Renewal’s mission variously over the years as “to bring interesting new businesses to the so-called Rust Belt,” “to fill some of the (area’s) treatment gaps in mental health” and “to combat Ohio’s opioid epidemic.”

He has acknowledged at points that the charity fell short of his vision, though he has more recently suggested it remains active — including listing himself on a financial disclosure filed this week as “honorary chairman” of the canceled organization.

In his book, Vance recounts the hardship and heartbreak he and his family experienced as a result of his mother’s battle with drug addiction, which ravaged Appalachian areas of Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia when the 38-year-old was growing up. She used both OxyContin and heroin.

Ohio remains one of the hardest-hit states for deadly drug overdoses, with about 14 people dying each day, according to the most recent statistics.

Vance expressed hopes in media interviews about the time Satel arrived in struggling Ironton, Ohio, in September 2018, that she would use her experience to develop better treatment methods for addiction that could be “scaled nationally” or perhaps to produce “a paper or book-length publication” detailing her findings. She has yet to do either.

“I am working on a book,” Satel told the AP in an email exchange this week, nearly three years after she wrapped up her residency.

D.R. Gossett, CEO of the Ironton-Lawrence County Community Action Organization, who helped oversee Satel’s roughly $70,000 residency, said she “helped people who were struggling in southern Ohio” and “to this day, people are thankful for her presence.” That included treating an unspecified number of patients in a region long designated a health care shortage area and what Gossett described as “community planning efforts.”

After the residency ended, Satel’s public remarks suggested she remained as convinced as ever that addiction stems from combined behavioral and environmental forces — not the documented overprescribing and aggressive marketing of OxyContin and other opioids that helped families and state, local and tribal governments ultimately secure a $6 billion national settlement against Purdue in March.

“The data are completely clear that the decline in opioid prescribing had no effect on the overall opioid overdose rate,” she said in the email to the AP, blaming the number of growing overdoses on heroin and fentanyl.

It’s a familiar position for Satel, whose opinion columns in national publications included an October 2004 Times article, “Doctors Behind Bars: Treating Pain is Now Risky Business,” a February 2018 Politico article, “The Myth of What’s Driving the Opioid Crisis - Doctor-prescribed painkillers are not the biggest threat” and the March 2018 Slate article, “Pill Limits Are Not a Smart Way to Fight the Opioid Crisis.”

Jack Frech, a senior executive in residence at Ohio University who headed an Appalachian Ohio welfare agency for more than 30 years, said there is no doubt that the region was targeted with prescription opioids in the early days of the epidemic. He said the path to addiction to heroin and fentanyl for many residents “started with the overabundance of easily accessible pain pills.”

Ryan and his allies are already targeting Our Ohio Renewal in television ads, citing recent Business Insider reporting that called into question the charity’s payments to a Vance political adviser and on public opinion polling.

A year after Satel finished up her residency, a friend emailed Vance in October 2020 to express concern that Satel was headlining an AEI event on the origins of the U.S. opioid crisis “without a splash banner saying how much money AEI takes from Purdue Pharma.”

“Yeah. It’s not good,” Vance replied, according to a copy of the email obtained by the AP. “I have a minor affiliation with AEI. Thinking about dropping it because of this and other things.” He did. Keller, the AEI spokesperson, said Vance ended his nonresident fellowship at the institute that year and did not renew the affiliation.

Medical professionals and others on the front lines of the drug crisis say the scourge of addiction in Appalachia still needs advocates.

“There’s definitely still a major problem,” said Trisha Ferrar, who directs The Recovery Center in Lancaster, at the edge of Appalachian Ohio. “Things are very tough and people who are sick are having a lot of challenges. There’s just a lot of uncertainty in the world right now that kind of adds to that.”

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Empowering 'She-Hulk' role made a 'real fighter' out of Jameela Jamil

By Karen Butler


Jameela Jamil will soon be seen in the Marvel comedy, "She-Hulk." 

File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo


NEW YORK, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- The Good Place, The Misery Index and DC League of Super-Pets star Jameela Jamil says she was surprised by how physically challenging and empowering her She-Hulk: Attorney at Law character would become.

"I thought I would hate it! I previously said publicly, many, many times, that I would never do action, and I didn't actually know this was an action role when I signed up for it," the 36-year-old British-born, Indian and Pakistani actress told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.

"So, when they told me, I thought it would be a disaster."

Jamil -- who has hearing loss and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects her connective tissue -- said Marvel did everything it could to make a positive experience out of the grueling martial-arts training she endured to play the villain Titania.


"They were just amazing," Jamil said of the movie studio.

"They should be the example for all of the other companies in the world," she added. "When they found out I had this disability, they worked around me, they worked with me.

"They brought out the best in me. I was able to do 90% of my own stunts because of their training and because of their support system. They made a real fighter out of me. It was so empowering."

She recommended that all women try martial arts because it "completely changes the way that you feel."

"I'm almost, like, too brave," she said, recalling how she once ran toward a scary noise in her house because she could handle whatever it was, and then realized "I need to calm down."

Premiering Thursday on Disney+, She-Hulk is a half-hour comedy that follows Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) as she navigates the life of a single, 30-something attorney with the ability to transform into a green, 6-foot-7 superpowered hulk. Titania is a social-media monster with whom she crosses paths.

The show co-stars Mark Ruffalo, Ginger Gonzaga, Tim Roth, Benedict Wong and Rene Elise Goldsberry.



"Jessica Gao wrote the script of the century. It's honestly one of the best scripts I've ever read," Jamil said. "And having an Asian woman at the helm of a show like this feels like everything is happening in such an exciting and exhilarating way."

The actress also applauded Marvel for its inclusion of many different faces and social issues in its projects.

"We've never, ever, ever had a media giant like this, and it's really important when media giants and corporations take stands for things like diversity," she said. "This makes a statement to the greater public that this is important.

Jamil also had high praise for her co-stars, including Maslany and Ruffalo.

"Worked with them all, obsessed with them all, I'm madly in love, I am marrying everyone," she joked.

"I had the best time. It was an extraordinary crew and cast and we became incredibly close friends. I will never forget that experience as long as I live. I am so glad they tricked me into doing an action role."

Jamil chooses a project based on if she feels like it is moving a bigger societal conversation forward or doing something that someone like her doesn't typically get to do.

"So, I can crack a window for the next person who looks like me," Jamil said.

"With South Asian people, we were never deemed the love interest or the one who was admired for the way that they looked or even the villain. I really loved Tahani [in The Good Place] for that reason," she said.

"I was playing all of these facets that had nothing to do with me being South Asian, but I was a South Asian woman getting to do these things that we hadn't been doing before."

Titania, on the other hand, is a character "with an invisible disability, as well as being a South Asian woman in the Marvel Universe," she said.

Jamil, who also is a popular voice actress for animated series like DuckTales and Camp Cretaceous, said she loves trying new things so she can broaden her skills as an actress.

"Any time I have the opportunity to try something that scares me or I am nervous I won't be able to do, it is my duty to try it and to be vulnerable and to prove something to myself," she said.

During a time of what seems to be peak negativity, particularly online, Jamil finds happiness in using her celebrity to promote causes in which she believes.

"It's a necessity, otherwise, I am complicit. My industry is so guilty of putting so much toxicity out into the world," the actress said.

She noted that the main reason she went into show business was to fix the things she felt were broken.

"I grew up as a very sick kid, and I never had role models that had disabilities or health issues that weren't just the tragedy in a sob story, played by non-disabled actors. That's what I thought my story was," she said.

"That's all I thought I would be to the world -- an inconvenience and a tragedy. Twenty years later, we still don't really have many role models for young people."

As an artist who has achieved a successful career despite her physical challenges, she also is a tireless advocate for disability rights, and recently participated in the podcast, Equal Too: Achieving Disability Equality.

"We have really stigmatized the conversation around disability and made it so awkward and uncomfortable that we don't even bother learning about it because it feels too intimidating and we don't know where to start," Jamil said.


"This podcast creates this really fun, funny, accessible, warm, interesting, inspiring starting point for anyone who wants to learn about the lives of people with disabilities or anyone with a disability who would like to finally be seen or heard."

Jamil described the coronavirus pandemic, which began in early 2020, as a "huge wake-up call."

"People have realized that illness, disability, lack of access, lack of freedom can come to anyone at any time," Jamil said. "For tens of millions of people with disabilities, this has been their existence forever."

National Academy of Sciences sanctions White House climate official for ethics violation 

The National Academy of Sciences said the violation occurred before Jane Lubchenco joined President Joe Biden's administration as deputy director for climate and environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Photo courtesy Jane Lubchenco/website

Aug. 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has sanctioned White House official Jane Lubchenco, and barred her from working on publications or programs for the academy for five years, for violating its ethical code of conduct.

The NAS took the punitive action because it said Lubchenco violated the code when she edited a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal that included her brother-in-law as an author.

The academy said Lunchenco violated a rule that says members "shall avoid those detrimental research practices that are clear violations of the fundamental tenets of research."

The ban extends to Lubchenco's work with the National Research Council.

RELATEDBiden signs bill to fight climate change, lower drug prices, reduce federal deficit

The NAS said the violation occurred before Lubchenco joined President Joe Biden's administration as deputy director for climate and environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

"I accept these sanctions for my error in judgment in editing a paper authored by some of my research collaborators -- an error for which I have publicly stated my regret," Lubchenco said according to Science.org.

The punishment stems from a paper that was retracted last fall, which the academy said was not based on the most recent data available and included a personal relationship between Lunchenco and the author.

Congressional Republicans on the House science committee expressed concern earlier this year about Lubchenco's editing of the PNAS paper.

"Dr. Lubchenco demonstrated a clear disregard for rules meant to prevent conflicts of interest in publishing peer-reviewed studies," they wrote in a letter to Biden in February.

"Now, Dr. Lubchenco is playing a leading role in developing and overseeing this administration's best practices for scientific integrity."

Lubchenco has been a professor at Oregon State University and was administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during President Barack Obama's administration.

Man finds rare purple pearl in his clam at Delaware restaurant

Aug. 17 (UPI) -- A Pennsylvania man eating with his family at a Delaware restaurant made a surprising discovery inside of a clam: a purple pearl.

Scott Overland of Phoenixville was eating at the Salt Air restaurant in Rehoboth Beach with his wife and children when the discovery was made inside a northern quahog clam.

"At first my wife thought it was, like, a bead, or one of those -- it looked like one of those 'Dot' candies on the paper," Overland told WCAU-TV. "We thought the chef dropped something in there."

The family soon realized the object was a pearl.

"We had never heard of a pearl in a clam. I always thought they came in oysters," Overland told Delaware Online.

Ballard Clams and Oysters spokesman Tim Parsons said both oysters and clams are known to produce pearls. He said he hears of diners making similar discoveries two or three times a year.

"Usually, it's over a dentist claim," he joked. "But you can definitely get it graded and they are worth money."

Overland said he is planning to have the pearl appraised.

Scientists believe second asteroid may have contributed to dinosaur extinction



Scientists now believe more than one asteroid could have impacted Earth around the same time, contributing to the extinction of dinosaurs, according to new research published on Wednesday.

 File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Scientists now believe more than one asteroid could have impacted Earth, contributing to the extinction of dinosaurs, according to new research.

Researchers discovered evidence of an asteroid impact crater on the floor of the North Atlantic Ocean, outlined in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday.

Named the Nadi Crater after a nearby underwater mountain or seamount, the site is located around 250 miles off the coast of Guinea in West Africa. The crater is buried up to 1,300 feet below the seabed.

If confirmed, it would become one of less than 20 positively identified known marine impact craters on Earth.

Scientists believe the crater was created around 66 million years ago, putting in roughly the same timeframe as the Chicxulub asteroid, which collided with Earth off the coast of what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

The impact of the Chicxulub asteroid is believed to be what caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.

Now, the Nadir Crater opens up the possibility of more than one impact contributing to the end of that era. Researchers believe the crater may have been formed by the breakup of a larger asteroid or by a collection of smaller asteroids.

"This would have generated a tsunami over 3,000 feet high, as well as an earthquake of more than magnitude 6.5," said study co-author Veronica Bray, a research scientist in the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.

"Although it is a lot smaller than the global cataclysm of the Chicxulub impact, Nadir will have contributed significantly to the local devastation. And if we have found one 'sibling' to Chicxulub, it opens the question: Are there others?"

Her co-author agrees.

"The Nadir Crater is an incredibly exciting discovery of a second impact close in time to the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction," said Sean Gulick, an impact expert at the University of Texas at Austin.

"While much smaller than the extinction causing Chicxulub impactor, its very existence requires us to investigate the possibility of an impact cluster in the latest Cretaceous."

'Cannibal' solar burst headed for Earth could make northern lights visible in U.S.


Two coronal mass ejections launched from the sun are set to merge on Thursday, causing a geomagnetic storm that can result in aurora borealis as far south as Illinois and Oregon. 

Photo courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Wikimedia Commons

Aug. 18 (UPI) -- A plume of "dark plasma" from the sun is expected to be overtaken by a "cannibal" solar burst that may cause an aurora display visible throughout large portions of the United States on Thursday.

The first "dark plasma explosion" was first seen on Sunday after erupting from a sunspot on the sun's surface at a speed of 1.3 million mph, tearing through the sun's atmosphere and creating a coronal mass ejection, or CME, Spaceweather.com wrote.

CMEs are clouds of charged matter known as plasma that are ejected by the sun when tangled magnetic field lines abruptly shift and release large amounts of energy. They occur frequently, but can interact with the Earth's magnetic field and cause geomagnetic storms if they're launched in our direction.

Geomagnetic storms can interfere with radio navigation and cause power grid fluctuations.

On Monday, a second CME was created by the collapse of a gigantic magnetic filament and was also launched from the sun.

The second eruption is forecast to become more energetic and ultimately faster than the first, overtaking it in a process known as CME cannibalization.

When the cannibal CME reaches Earth, it was expected to cause a G3 geomagnetic storm -- which occurs when planets with strong magnetic fields, such as Earth, absorb solar debris from CMEs.

Geomagnetic storms are classified from G1 to G5 according to severity. A G3 is considered a strong storm.

G3 storms can cause intermittent problems for low-frequency and satellite navigation, increased drag on low-Earth orbit satellites and may require some power systems to make voltage corrections.

The storms don't usually cause much trouble for humans' ordinary lives, but severe storms can create things like power grid blackouts. Earlier this year, a geomagnetic storm affected several SpaceX satellites and effectively led them to fall back to Earth.

Britain's national weather service, the Met Office, predicted that Thursday's geomagnetic storm will be minor and will not cause significant disruption.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also forecast that the storm could cause visible northern lights, or aurora borealis, to be visible in the U.S. mainland.

The northern lights could be seen as far south as Illinois and Oregon, which is well outside their normal realm.

India: Muslim rape victim aghast at attackers' release

The survivor of a 2002 gang rape during communal violence in Gujarat state has said she is "bereft of words" at her attackers' release after serving 14 years in jail. 

Narendra Modi was the state's governor at the time.

HINDUTVA; ARYANISM, FASCISM,

MISOGYNY, CASTEISM, RACISM   

Bilkis Bano was the only survivor of an attack on 17 people, several of them her relatives

A Muslim woman who was gang-raped when pregnant during communal violence in India in 2002 has issued a statement via her lawyers criticizing the Gujarat state government for releasing her attackers earlier this week. 

Bilkis Bano, who is now in her 40s, was the only person in a group of 17 Muslims to survive the attacks. Seven of her relatives, including her then 3-year-old daughter, were killed.

She said in the statement that her attackers' release left her "bereft of words. I am still numb." 

"How can justice for a woman end like this? I trusted the highest courts in our land," Bano said in a letter published late on Wednesday, adding that authorities had not reached out to her before releasing the men. "Please undo this harm. Give me back my right to live without fear and in peace." 

A group of women also protested in New Delhi against the men's release. Maimoon Mollah of the All India Democratic Women's Association told the Associated Press news agency that they were demanding the state roll back its decision. 

"Bilkis and other survivors should be allowed to live in peace and dignity," Mollah said. 

The 2002 Gujarat attacks have an additional political significance in India, given that current Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the state at the time of the attacks.

How did authorities in Gujarat explain the release? 

Gujarat's state government, run by Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), defended the decision to release the men by saying that they had served India's most common life imprisonment term of 14 years, among other factors. 

"The remission of the 11 convicts was considered after taking various factors like life imprisonment term in India which is typically of 14 years or more, age, behavior of the person and so on," senior Gujarat official Raj Kumar was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times. 

According to Kumar, the men were eligible for release on this basis thanks to a 1992 remission policy that was in effect when they were convicted but that became defunct in 2014. Now, rape and murder are among crimes for which remission after 14 years is no longer granted to people serving a life sentence. 

The announcement of the men's release also coincided with celebrations of India's 75th anniversary of independence from colonial Britain. 

PM Modi led Gujarat state at time of the attacks

In the western state of Gujarat in 2002, the deaths of 59 Hindu pilgrims in a train fire sparked communal violence and riots targeting Muslims. 

The train fire was blamed on a Muslim mob, and dozens were later convicted for it, though its cause remains disputed. 

This 2002 train fire that killed more than 50 Hindus sparked riots in which about 20 times as many people died

According to the official tally, about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were hacked, beaten, shot or burned to death in the riots that followed. 

The riots — some of the worst communal violence in India since its independence — took place while Modi was the state's chief minister. The Hindu nationalist faced allegations of turning a blind eye to the violence, and was even refused a US visa in 2005. 

But Modi always argued that he was not complicit and did not turn a blind eye. In 2012, around a year before he was named candidate for national leader, the Indian Supreme Court declared he did not have a case to answer. 

Opposition politicians continued to pressure the government over the decision. 

The Congress Party's Rahul Gandhi, grandson of former premier Indira Gandhi, asked what message the men's release sent to women in India: "Prime Minister, the whole country is seeing the difference between your words and your deeds," he wrote on Twitter. 

Will fracking make a comeback in Germany in face of gas crunch?

As the Ukraine war continues, Germany is scrambling to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. Could fracked gas, long taboo in the country, creep into the energy mix?

After war derailed new Russian-German gas pipelines, could domestic fracked gas be a last resort?

Temperatures might be soaring across Germany but staying warm this winter without Russian gas — which until the start of the Ukraine war supplied over 50% of annual demand — is already a pressing concern. 

If Russian supplies run dry, plans to make up the shortfall are already in place: Higher liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports, restarting dormant coal plants, and even delaying the nuclear power phaseout.

But most surprising is talk of exploiting domestic shale gas deposits through fracking, a practice banned in Germany and in a number of European countries due to its potential environmental and climate impacts.

Yet members of Germany's coalition government want fracking to be reconsidered as a potential solution to the coming gas crunch. 

Germany loves gas, but fracking is banned  

Germany is already building infrastructure and terminals to facilitate the flow of LNG from the United States that comes primarily from fracked sources, which is the result of an EU-US gas deal struck in March. But Europe's largest economy banned shale gas fracking at home in 2017.

The ban, which was due to be reviewed in 2021 but remains in place, extends to deep-lying "unconventional" shale gas deposits that can only be extracted through hydraulic fracturing.

Here fracking fluid made up of water, sand and chemicals is injected up to 5 kilometers (3 miles) under the earth to break up the bedrock and extract gas. The process uses vast amounts of water and could contaminate groundwater that is already receding due to persistent drought in Germany. 

Fracking also leaks the greenhouse gas methane — the global heating impacts of which are over 80 times higher than CO2 over a 20-year period, noted Sascha Boden, an energy and climate advisor at NGO, Environmental Action Germany.

Methane leakage from tens of thousand of wells in the Permian Basin in the US states of Texas and New Mexico, for example, has helped create a "climate bomb" that is nullifying mitigation measures.

Yet drilling for gas in "conventional" and more accessible sandstone gas seams is permitted under strict regulations in Germany, and currently provides around 5% of supply — even if critics say the extraction method is akin to fracking and was simply labeled conventional to imply "good" fracking is possible.

German shale gas is primarily found in the northwestern states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia and has the potential to provide 3 to 20 times (between 320 and 2,030 billion cubic meters) the amount of conventional gas, according to the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).

Shale deposits could cover 20% of current demand, as estimated by German Federal Association of Natural Gas, Petroleum and Geoenergy (BVEG). But for Sascha Boden, only half might be economically viable due to the high drilling infrastructure costs, for example. 

"This is hardly enough to make Germany independent of Russian gas," he said.

Fracking divides Germany's coalition

A recent German poll showed that just 27% of respondents embraced fracking as a short-term energy solution — compared to 81% support for an expansion of wind energy.   

"Germany is densely populated and developing the necessary tens of thousands of drilling wells would be nearly impossible without major resistance," Boden said. 

Such views have not stopped the pro-business FDP party — one third of Germany's governing coalition — from talking about fracking as a way out of the crisis.

"Fracking does not cause any relevant environmental damage under modern safety standards," Torsten Herbst, parliamentary director of the FDP, opined in a June interview with German weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

He added that it's contradictory to support the import of fracked gas from the US while opposing domestic fracking.

Holger Weiß, member of the German parliament's expert committee on the technology, told the Sunday edition of German daily FAZ that fracking can be done "nowadays with an acceptable residual risk."

Robert Habeck, Germany's vice chancellor and a Green Party member disagrees with his coalition partners that fracking is a potential energy crisis solution. "The debate about fracking is of no use to us at all right now," he said in July, explaining that this is in part due to the difficulty of getting approval.

Kjell Kühne, climate activist and director of the Germany-based Leave it in the Ground Initiative, said the new fracking push was "opportunistic."

"It would take several years to get any fracked gas out of the ground in Germany," he said. "Fracking is not going to do anything about this winter or the next."

Tens of thousands of fracking wells have helped create a 'carbon bomb' in the Permian Basin in Texas

Another solution: Renewables and cutting energy consumption 

In response to the fracking advocates, calls are growing for a quicker transition to renewable energies.

"Crucial to the gas phase-out are energy savings and a renewable heat transition," said Gerald Neubauer of Greenpeace Germany, adding that gas heating systems should be banned in favor of "a massive expansion campaign for heat pumps, solar thermal energy and home insulation."

The European Union's emergency gas plan that went into force on August 9 intends to cut gas use by 15% over the next 9 months. 

"We have a clear task: reduce the amount of energy we consume, at all levels," said Robert Habeck.

Meanwhile, German climate campaigners are articulating broader opposition to fracking.  

"The gas industry is unscrupulously exploiting Russia's war of aggression to advance its interests and make even more profits," said Charly Dietz from German climate activist group Ende Gelände, who last week blocked the construction of a terminal in Hamburg where fracked LNG gas will be delivered.

Edited by: Jennifer Collins

HOW EU COUNTRIES ARE REACTING TO HIGH GAS PRICES

France: Fresh protests feared 

An eco tax on fuels led to violent protests in France back in 2018 and 2019. This is why Paris intends to allow for no more than a 4% increase in electricity costs this year. State-owned utility EDF has been forced to provide cheaper power to households, with the state paying €8 billion ($8.9 billion) in compensation.          1234567

Pope rules out sex assault inquiry into Canada cardinal


Alice RITCHIE
Thu, August 18, 2022 


Pope Francis has ruled out a formal church investigation into a sexual assault claim against Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet after a preliminary inquiry found no basis for one, the Vatican said Thursday.

Ouellet, himself once considered a strong candidate to be pope, was named in court documents this week relating to a class action suit targeting more than 80 members of the clergy in the archdiocese of Quebec.

The 78-year-old is accused of abusing a female intern, identified only as "F", from 2008 to 2010, when he was archbishop of Quebec.

In the Vatican's first public response to the civil suit, spokesman Matteo Bruni said a "preliminary investigation" already ordered by Pope Francis had found there were "no elements to initiate a trial".

He said the pontiff again consulted the author of that probe, a Father Jacques Servais, and was told again that there were no grounds for opening a formal investigation.

"Following further relevant consultations, Pope Francis declares that there are insufficient elements to open a canonical investigation for sexual assault by Cardinal Ouellet against person F," the statement said.
- 'Chased after' -

Ouellet is a prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, one of the most important functions within the Curia, the government of the Vatican.

The claims against him in the civil suit, which the Quebec supreme court ruled could go ahead in May, are among the testimonies of 101 people who say they were sexually assaulted by members of the clergy and church staff from 1940 to today.

They emerged just weeks after Pope Francis visited Canada, where he apologised for the decades-long abuse of Indigenous children in Catholic-run residential schools.

So far, the cardinal is not facing criminal charges.

Ouellet's accuser claims the cardinal assaulted her multiple times -- kissing her, "forcefully" massaging her shoulders, and once sliding his hand along her back to her buttocks.

She says she had the feeling of being "chased after", according to the documents. When the woman tried to raise the issue, she was told she was not the only woman to have such a "problem" with Ouellet, documents show.

It was not until 2020 that F., who says she was also sexually abused by another cleric, spoke to the Quebec church's sex abuse advisory committee.

It recommended she write to the pope, who in 2021 responded by nominating Servais to look into the case. She had not yet been told of his conclusions.

According to Thursday's Vatican statement, Servais said he had interviewed the woman via Zoom in the presence of a member of the committee.

He was quoted as saying that neither in her report to the pope, nor in the testimony he heard, "did this person make an accusation that would provide material for such an investigation".

In February, Ouellet opened a Vatican symposium on the priesthood by apologising for "unworthy" clergy and the cover-up of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, before an audience that included Pope Francis.

"We are all torn and humbled by these crucial questions that every day question us as members of the Church," Ouellet said at the time.

He said the symposium was an opportunity to express regret and ask victims for forgiveness, after their lives were "destroyed by abusive and criminal behaviour" that was hidden or treated lightly to protect the institution and the perpetrators.

Since becoming pope in 2013, Francis has sought to tackle the decades-long sexual abuse scandals, although many activists against paedophilia insist much more needs to be done.

bur-ar/har

Drought blamed for dozens of cow poisoning deaths in Italy

Dead cows on a farm in Sommariva del Bosco, near Italy's Turin, 

after around 50 cows were poisoned by young sorghum plants.

 PHOTO: AFP

SOMMARIVA DEL BOSCO, ITALY (AFP) - An Italian farm became an open-air morgue earlier this month after around 50 cows were poisoned by young sorghum plants, an accident experts blame on drought.

The Piedmontese cattle on the farm in Sommariva del Bosco, near Turin in northwest Italy, died suddenly due to acute prussic acid poisoning on Aug 6, according to the local IZS animal welfare body.

This acid comes from dhurrin, which is naturally present in young sorghum plants, although not in the same high concentrations as those found in samples taken at the site.

"We suspect that the drought caused this very large quantity of dhurrin within the sorghum plants," said Stefano Giantin, a vet at the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale for northwest Italy, who is on the case.

With normal growing plants, the amount of dhurrin would lower as the plants grew larger. But since the ongoing drought has stunted the growth of sorghum plants, dhurrin has concentrated inside them.

Prussic acid poisoning in cattle is quick and brutal, with symptoms occurring 10-15 minutes after ingestion and death some 15-30 minutes later. It causes respiratory, nervous and muscular disorders.

Dhurrin naturally occurs in sorghum, particularly in young shoots that use it as a defence against herbivores, but when digested, releases prussic acid, also known as hydrogen cyanide.

But "normally, it doesn't cause death", Giantin told AFP.

In the samples taken from Sommariva del Bosco, the concentration of dhurrin in the shoots was at an unusually high level, which Giantin said appeared to be the result of the drought that has hit Italy and much of Europe this summer.



A dose of more than 700 mg/kg of prussic acid is considered fatal for cattle, but the animals at Sommariva were found to have quantities of more than 900 mg/kg in their blood.

The only way of saving affected cows is to inject them with sodium thiosulfate, to neutralise the hyrogen cyanide.

With this, experts were able to save around 30 cows on Aug 11, when three more farms in Piedmont were hit by the same phenomenon - although not before 14 died.

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