Crypto Exchange Binance Helped Iranian Firms Trade $8 Billion Despite Sanctions
by i24 News


A representation of virtual currency Bitcoin is seen in front of a stock graph in this illustration taken January 8, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

i24 News – Crypto giant Binance processed Iranian transactions with a value of $8 billion since 2018 despite US sanctions intended to cut Iran off from the global financial system, blockchain data show.

Almost all the funds, some $7.8 billion, flowed between Binance and Iran’s largest crypto exchange, Nobitex, according to a review of data from leading US blockchain researcher Chainalysis. Nobitex offers guidance on its website on how to skirt sanctions.

Three-quarters of the Iranian funds that passed through Binance were in a relatively low-profile cryptocurrency called Tron that gives users an option to conceal their identities. In a blog post last year, Nobitex encouraged clients to use Tron – a mid-tier token – to trade anonymously without “endangering assets due to sanctions.”

The scale of Binance’s Iranian crypto flows – and the fact that they are continuing – has not been previously reported.

These new findings came as the US Justice Department is pursuing an investigation into possible violations of money-laundering rules by Binance, which dominates the $1 trillion crypto industry, with over 120 million users.

The transactions put the company at risk of falling afoul of US prohibitions on doing business with Iran, lawyers, and trade sanctions, experts said.

New life possible for British nuclear energy

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak adheres to Boris Johnson's nuclear power ambitions.

By Daniel J. Graeber

Even as it searches for ways to trim costs, the British government said it was still pursuing nuclear power as part of its energy transition strategy. 

File photo by Focke Strangmann/EPA-EFE

Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Despite looking for cost-cutting measures, the British governments said Friday it has no plans to scrap the development of a new nuclear power plant that carries a $33 billion price tag.

Nuclear power fell out of favor in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011. But the so-called energy transition -- the pivot away from fossil fuels -- has put it back in play.

During his tenure, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he wanted to see eight new nuclear facilities built within the next eight years, putting nuclear power at the center of his energy transition strategy. Most of the operational nuclear power stations in the U.K. were expected to reach the end of their planned life span by the end of this decade.

Faced with a $56 billion gap in financing, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is working to trim spending. A spokesperson for his office told the BBC that every major project was now under review as part of the cost-cutting efforts, but nuclear power would be spared.

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Talks with private developers for the planned Sizewell C facility -- slated for the Suffolk coast -- have been "constructive" and the government "hoped to get a deal over the line as soon as possible," the government spokesperson said.

The British taxpayer will provide about 20% of the bill for Sizewell C, The Guardian newspaper added in a separate report.

If built, the 3.2 gigawatt, two-reactor Sizewell C facility would provide enough power to meet 7% of the nation's energy needs, though it might not be ready until at least 2030.

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Sunak on the campaign trail championed reforms on licensing laws that would permit more nuclear energy as part of an effort to achieve energy independence by 2045.

As a prime minister inheriting crises ranging from energy-related issues to financial ones, he said initially he was too distracted by domestic affairs to attend next week's environmental summit in Egypt, but changed his tune amid pressing energy security measures.

The COP27 climate summit gets underway next week in Sharm El-Sheik.

Catholic Diocese of Rochester reaches $55M settlement for sexual abuse
By Patrick Hilsman


A wooden cross is held and leads the way at the Way of the Cross event that leads a procession over the Brooklyn on March 30, 2018 in New York City. the Catholic Diocese of Rochester has reached a $55 million settlement with survivors of sexual abuse. 

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 4 (UPI) -- The Catholic Diocese of Rochester has reached a $55 million settlement with survivors of clergy abuse.

Under the terms of the settlement the Diocese and "related entities" will pay $55 million into a trust for survivors. There have been over 450 sexual abuse claims filed against the Diocese of Rochester in the past three years.

The 2019 Child Victims Act, which temporarily extends the statute of limitations for sexual abuse, has prompted a flood of survivors to come forward with abuse claims against clergy in New York State. The sheer volume of claims has prompted four of the eight New York State Dioceses, including the Catholic Diocese of Rochester, to file for bankruptcy.

The Child Victims Act also lead to historic multi-million dollar settlements from the Boy Scouts of America, who have faced a flurry of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse in recent years. The Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy in February 2020.

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The settlement will require a bankruptcy court to approve a restructuring plan to move the Diocese out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

"The Diocese of Rochester has filed a motion seeking approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Western District of New York, of a Restructuring Support Agreement," read a statement from the Diocese on Thursday.

"We believe that this Restructuring Support Agreement represents the fairest approach for the survivors and the most viable path forward for the Diocese," said Bishop Salvatore Matano.

RELATED N.Y. diocese files for bankruptcy due to wave of sex abuse lawsuits

In addition to requiring the approval of a Restructuring Support Agreement, the more than 450 victims will have to vote on whether or not to go ahead with the settlement.

"While I know my words may seem hollow, simply repeating a rehearsed apology, I renew with sincerity my deep apology to survivors of sexual abuse," said Matano.

US Supreme Court agrees to hear Navajo Nation water battle
By Matt Bernardini


The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a case involving a water dispute between the Navajo Nation and the federal government. File Photo by Jemal Countess/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 4 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a water dispute between the U.S. government and the Navajo Nation.

The case arises from the Navajo Nation's efforts to draw water from the Colorado River. In February, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Navajo Nation, saying it could sue the government for an alleged failure to carry out its duties on behalf of the tribe.

The tribe has argued that under a treaty it signed with the United States, the government has a duty to provide water for the tribe.

Legal precedent is clear that "when the United States creates an Indian reservation, it also promises and reserves for the tribe the amount of then-unappropriated water necessary to fulfill the reservation's purposes," the tribe's lawyers said in court papers, according to NBC News.

Many tribal members rely on wells and other local sources for their water.

The Biden administration has argued that it never entered any treaties with the Navajo Nation covering the Colorado River.

"Nothing in the supposed sources the court of appeals cited imposes any specific and affirmative duties on the federal government on behalf of the Navajo Nation with respect to the water of the Colorado River," Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said.

However, the 9th Circuit disagreed, ruling that the federal government owes "an affirmative trust duty ... to ensure that the Nation has an adequate water supply," including from the Colorado River.

The high court will also hear an appeal from the states of Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado.

Conflict, crisis fuel cholera surge across Mideast hot spots

By KAREEM CHEHAYEB

November 4, 2022

1 of 10

Children play near open sewage in the Salaheddine camp in northwestern Syria on Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. In recent weeks, thousands of cholera cases have swept across the crisis-stricken countries of Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)


BHANINE, Lebanon (AP) — Shadia Ahmed panicked as rainwater flooded her shack one night, drenching her seven children. The next morning, the kids were seized by vomiting, diarrhea and other symptoms.

After an aid group administered tests for cholera in Ahmed’s Syrian refugee encampment in the northern Lebanese town of Bhanine, her youngest, 4-year-old Assil, tested positive.

Cholera has swept across Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq as the countries struggle with devastated infrastructure, turmoil and housing large populations of people who have been displaced by conflict. Lebanon last month reported the first cholera case in nearly 30 years.

The bacterial infection has surged globally across dozens of countries this year, with outbreaks in Haiti and across the Horn of Africa as well as the Mideast. The outbreaks of hundreds of thousands of cases driven by conflict, poverty, and climate change are a major setback for global efforts to eradicate the disease.

“Cholera thrives in poverty and conflict but is now turbocharged by climate change,” said Inas Hamam, a regional spokeswoman for the World Health Organization. “Regional and global health security is in jeopardy.”

Anti-cholera efforts focus on vaccination, clean water and sanitation. Last month, WHO announced the temporary suspension of a two-dose vaccination strategy because production couldn’t meet surging demand. Officials are now administering single doses so that more people can benefit from the vaccine in the short term.

A cholera infection is caused by consuming food or water infected with the Vibrio cholerae bacterium. While most cases are mild to moderate, cholera can cause death if it’s not treated correctly.

“I would spend the whole night taking her to the bathroom, giving her medication, washing and sterilizing her,” Ahmed, 33, said of Assil, her child who got cholera. “I couldn’t sleep, and was up all night just looking at her. I feared the worst.”

Assil and her siblings eventually got better; she was the only confirmed cholera case in the family.

Across the border in Syria, officials and U.N. agencies announced last month that a cholera outbreak was sweeping the entire country. The outbreak in Syria is due to people drinking unsafe water from the Euphrates River and using contaminated water to irrigate crops, according to the U.N. and the Syrian Health Ministry.

In the government-held areas of Syria and in the country’s northeast, held by U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces, there have since been roughly 17,000 cases of cholera and 29 deaths.

In the rebel-held Idlib province of Syria, most of the 4 million residents are displaced from the conflict. They depend on international aid and live in tent camps.

Over half of Idlib does not have regular access to water. Many families use polluted water from wells that are close to sewage.

There have been 3,104 cholera cases and five deaths in Idlib province. Dr. Abdullah Hemeidi of the Syrian American Medical Society anticipates a surge this winter.

“The health care system in the area is weak,” Hemeidi said. “Medical organizations and local councils are trying to sanitize water and they are holding workshops to limit the spread.”

In the Salaheddine camp in the opposition-held countryside northwest of Aleppo, children play near sewage. Community workers hold awareness sessions for residents.

“We’re worried it will spread in our camp,” resident Jamil Latfo said.

Iraq has struggled with cholera outbreaks for years. In Lebanon, the disease was rare for decades.

Three years ago, Lebanon fell into an economic crisis. Most Lebanese now rely on water trucked in by private suppliers, and private generators for electricity. Utilities can’t buy fuel and pump water into households.

Since last month, Lebanon has reported 2,421 cases and 18 deaths. About a quarter of these cases are children under the age of five. The Vibrio cholerae bacteria has been found in drinking-water, sewer systems, and irrigation water.

The country hosts more than a million Syrian refugees. Most cases of cholera have been detected in refugee camps, Lebanon’s Health Ministry says.

In Bhanine, Ahmed and her children are tucked between apartment buildings, along with dozens of other Syrian refugees. The families live in weak wooden shacks with tarp walls and ceilings. They share three toilets and three sinks.

Like most households in Lebanon, camp residents buy water trucked in by private suppliers. The state does not test the water for safety.

“The water was contaminated but we had no choice but to use it,” resident Ali Hamadi said. “There was no drinking water, let alone water to clean, wash the dishes, wash our clothes or for the shower.”

U.N. aid agencies started providing clean water for the camp, while disinfecting walls and doors and holding information sessions. They’re also donating fuel to the Lebanese government so that authorities can pump water again.

“The support we offer cannot replace the service lines and the national electricity grid, which is basically not functioning most of the time,” said Ettie Higgins, deputy representative for Lebanon of the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF.

WHO has been working with Iraqi health authorities to help bolster their cholera response, visiting water-treatment plants and testing laboratories in Baghdad last month.

UNICEF said it urgently needs $40.5 million to continue its work in Lebanon and Syria for the next three months.

“These camps are fertile ground for the outbreak of an illness,” said Hemeidi, of the Syrian American Medical Society. “We won’t be able to properly respond to it unless there is an intervention with medical equipment and aid.”

___

Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Ghaith Alsayed in Idlib, Syria, contributed to this report.

THIRD WORLD U$A
When destitute small towns mean dangerous tap water
By MICHAEL PHILLIS, LEAH WILLINGHAM and CAMILLE FASSETT

November 4, 2022

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Mitoya Wilson sits in her car with her daughter Charleigh Wilson, 8, as she talks about the history of troubles with the town drinking water, in Ferriday, La., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022. In many places, people struggle to find water or else drink water that isn't clean. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

KEYSTONE, W.Va. (AP) — Donna Dickerson’s heart would sink every time she’d wake up, turn on the faucet in her mobile home and hear the pipes gurgling.

Sometimes it would happen on a day when her mother, who is 86 and has dementia, had a doctor’s appointment and needed to bathe. Sometimes it would be on Thanksgiving or Christmas when family had come to stay.

“It was sickening, literally a headache and it disrupted everything,” she said. “Out of nowhere, the water would be gone, and we’d have no idea when it’d be back.”

It is hard enough to care for someone with dementia. Caring for someone with dementia with no safe water takes the stress to another level.

Donna Dickerson drinks a cup of tap water on the porch of her trailer in Keystone, W.Va., on June 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)

While failures of big city water systems attract the attention, it’s small communities like Keystone, West Virginia, that more often are left unprotected by destitute and unmaintained water providers. Small water providers rack up roughly twice as many health violations as big cities on average, an analysis of thousands of records over the last three years by The Associated Press shows. In that time, small water providers violated the Safe Drinking Water Act’s health standards nearly 9,000 times. They were also frequently the very worst performers. Federal law allows authorities to force changes on water utilities, but they rarely do, even for the worst offenders.

“We’re talking about things that we’ve known in drinking water for a century, that we have an expectation in this country that everybody should be afforded,” said Chad Seidel, president of a water consulting company.

The worst water providers can have such severe problems that residents are told they can’t drink the water. For 10 solid years Dickerson and 175 neighbors in the tiny, majority Black community of Keystone had to boil all their water. That length of time is nearly unheard of — such warnings usually last only for days. The requirement added gas and electricity costs on top of the water bill. In addition, residents would lose water outright for days or even weeks at a time with no warning.

A coal company had built the original system, but since left, leaving no one in charge.

When Dickerson’s water went out, she would drive the dying county’s winding mountain roads to the food bank, or buy water at Dollar General – one of the area’s only stores. She’d haul containers back home and heat up pots on the stove to fill the tub, so her mother could bathe. She stored water in containers in her mobile home’s two bathrooms to flush toilets. Dishes and laundry would pile up.

There was the cost of gas, the cost of 5 gallon water jugs, the cost of washing clothes at the laundromat. There was also an emotional cost.

“It drains you,” she said. “You have to learn how to survive.”

Toney Lewis shows a bottle of tap water he saved, before his neighborhood was recently switched to the current Ferriday, La. water system, in Ridgecrest, La., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

When President Gerald Ford signed the landmark Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974, he said “nothing is more essential to the life of every single American,” than clean water to drink, also mentioning clean air and pure food. The law protected Americans against 22 contaminants, including arsenic. Nearly half a century later, evolving science has broadened the coverage to more than 90 substances, and strengthened standards along the way.

The miracle is that most water systems keep up – 94% comply with health standards.

But Dickerson lives in one of the places that didn’t, the AP found, that struggles and fails repeatedly.

After years of problems, Keystone finally got hooked up to a new water system last December, McDowell Public Service District, which focuses on upgrading systems in coal communities. The deteriorating water mains were replaced, and a nonproft called DigDeep helped pay to connect homes to the new infrastructure.

When a water utility doesn’t treat water properly or has high levels of a contaminant, states are supposed to enforce the law. They usually give communities time to fix problems, and often they do. But if there is intransigence or delay, the state can escalate and impose fines. In many towns, that doesn’t go well.

“Giving them a penalty is not going to get you anywhere. It’s just going to make the situation worse in most cases,” said Heather Himmelberger, director of the Southwest Environmental Finance Center at the University of New Mexico. The towns can’t afford the work.

Some 3% of all systems the AP analyzed landed on the EPA’s enforcement priority list last year. Even worse are the 450 utilities that stayed on the list for at least five of the last 10 years. Four million Americans rely on these systems.

Regulators rarely step in to force change.

“Mostly what regulators have is moral appeal and they’ll wag their finger,” said Manny Teodoro, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who focuses on public policy and water.

The EPA says the vast majority of systems do provide safe water and for those that struggle, the agency has increased technical assistance, inspections and enforcement. Those efforts have decreased the number of systems consistently committing health violations, according to Carol King, an attorney in the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.

Teodoro said originally water systems sprouted up when communities did, giving rise to a fragmented drinking water sector dominated by small providers. School districts in America formed the same way, but went through a period of consolidation. That’s happened far less with community water systems.

The top concern of the sector is funding for infrastructure, according to a survey.

Deborah Elaine-Jones, tax clerk for the Town of Ferriday, talks with water plant operator Mike Gandy inside the newer water plant facility in Ferriday, La., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Josiah Cox has a special view of which towns end up in the worst trouble. He spent years working on water issues and noticed many small utility owners failed to save money for maintenance or struggled when experienced staff members left.

So he started a business, Central States Water Resources, buying up problem utilities, doing upgrades and billing customers for the costs over time.

Terre Du Lac, Missouri was one. It’s a private, 5,200-acre community of roughly 1,200 homes nestled around 16 lakes. It advertises a relaxed atmosphere an hour south of St. Louis where people come to golf or water ski.

But rust coated the water tower. The community drinking water well was pulling up naturally-occurring radioactive material that can cause cancer.

He has seen a lot: bird feces in drinking water and one place that treated its water with chlorine tablets meant for swimming pools.

“You start what we call the death spiral of these utilities” where they don’t have the resources to pay for what regulators are demanding, Cox said.

Michael Tilley, who was slammed by regulators for how he operated the Terre Du Lac system before Cox took over, spent most of his life in the community and knows many residents. He said he felt a responsibility to serve them well, but repeatedly faced hurdles finding grant money.

“I think if I had any claim to fame it was just keeping the rates low and trying to operate this thing on a shoestring,” he said. “I look back a lot of times and that was my problem.”

Calbrial Smith, center, holds her son Torosiay Smith, Jr., 9 months, outside her home with family and friends, as she talks about what she believes are the effect of the drinking water on her children's health, in Ferriday, La., Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022.

 (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Recruitment of professionals to run small water system is also a major issue. The largely white, male workforce is aging, according to surveys.

Earlier in his career, Tim Wilson, a water project manager, spent time running the treatment plant in Wahpeton, Iowa, a community of just over 400 that expands when vacationers rush in during the summertime.

Small, rural communities have a “ridiculously hard” time recruiting certified operators, he said. Then once they trained, they can be lured away by better pay and benefits elsewhere.

The job demands can also be overwhelming. In Wahpeton, Wilson was the lone employee responsible for the treatment plant. He doubled as a snow plow driver and zoning expert at local government meetings. His crowning achievement, he says, was convincing officials to hire another person to help. It took six years.

Nearly 1,000 miles south in Ferriday, Louisiana, staffing is one problem, but the water has failed people in every major way.

You know your water is in trouble when it’s being distributed by the National Guard. That’s where residents of Ferriday took their bottles and buckets for four months back in 1999.

Jameel Green speaks to The Associated Press about the drinking water in Ferriday, La., on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Michael Phillis)

“I haven’t drunk the water since,” said Jameel Green, 42, who has lived in town most of his life. He now makes sure his two girls, ages 16 and 8, don’t drink Ferriday water either, even if it costs $60 a month.

He held up a garden hose caked with a white film from the water.

It wasn’t always like this. In the 1950s and 1960s, Ferriday had a vibrant music scene – Jerry Lee Lewis was a local and acts like B.B. King stopped by. Some 5,200 people called Ferriday home. There are about 40% fewer people now, and Ferriday is a mainly Black community. The Delta Music Museum that celebrates the town’s place in music history is surrounded by mostly empty shops.

The Rev. James Edward Smith, Sr., who is a consultant to help improve the water system in Ferriday, La., speaks at the town water plant in Ferriday, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022

In 2016, the water situation was supposed to change. The U.S. Department of Agriculture helped fund a new treatment plant that went into operation.

But when the company that built the plant walked away after completion, the people operating it were left with little training on how to run it. Staff have struggled to find the right mix of chemicals, according to the Rev. James Smith Sr., who was brought in to help with the issue.

“That’s the big problem. Everybody is still doing trial and error,” Smith said.

Ferriday’s water problems represented “a system in total breakdown,” according to Sri Vedachalam, director of water equity and climate resilience at Environmental Consulting & Technology Inc, who reviewed public files.

Water disinfection in Ferriday is leaving behind levels of carcinogens that are too high. For failing to fix its problems, the state issued Ferriday a $455,265 fine in November 2021.

Water plant operator Mike Gandy takes a water sample of the Ferriday water system from neighboring Ridgecrest, La., which is now in the Ferriday system, Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Smith said the water is now significantly improved. It’s tested regularly and plant operators are working on new treatment methods.

But Ferriday never responded to the fine and the Louisiana health department is threatening to ask a judge to impose a timeline for improvements and force payment.

Without a lot more money and more aggressive intervention in the worst places, experts say many Americans will continue to endure an expensive search for drinkable water, or else they’ll drink water that is potentially unsafe.

“In my view, this is a desperate problem,” Teodoro said.

___

Phillis reported from Ferriday, Louisiana, and St. Louis. Fassett reported from Seattle.

___

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

Influencers debate leaving Twitter, but where would they go?

By ALEXANDRA OLSON and MARYCLAIRE DALE

yesterday

Pariss Chandler, of Randolph, Mass., founder of the recruitment platform website Black Tech Pipeline, sits for a photograph at her home, Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022, in Randolph. Chandler built a community for Black tech workers on Twitter that eventually became the foundation for her own recruitment company. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Pariss Chandler built a community for Black tech workers on Twitter that eventually became the foundation for her own recruitment company.

Now she’s afraid it could all fall apart if Twitter becomes a haven for racist and toxic speech under the control of Elon Musk, a serial provocateur who has indicated he could loosen content rules.

With Twitter driving most of her business, Chandler sees no good alternative as she watches the uncertainty play out.

“Before Elon took over, I felt like the team was working to make Twitter a safer platform, and now they are kind of not there. I don’t know what’s going on internally. I have lost hope in that,” said Chandler, 31, founder of Black Tech Pipeline, a jobs board and recruitment website. “I’m both sad and terrified for Twitter, both for the employees and also the users.”

Those qualms are weighing on many people who have come to rely on Twitter, a relatively small but mighty platform that has become a digital public square of sorts for influencers, policy makers, journalists and other thought leaders.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, took over Twitter last week in a $44 billion deal, immediately making his unpredictable style felt.

Just days later, he had tweeted a link to a story from a little-known news outlet that made a dubious claim about the violent attack on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at their California home. He soon deleted it, but it was a worrying start to his tenure for those concerned about the spread of disinformation online.

Musk has also signaled his intent to loosen the guardrails on hate speech, and perhaps allow former President Donald Trump and other banned commentators to return. He tempered the thought after the deal closed, however, pledging to form a “content moderation council” and not allow anyone who has been kicked off the site to return until it sets up procedures on how to do that.

Yet the use of racial slurs quickly exploded in an apparent test of his tolerance level.

“Folks, it’s getting ugly here. I am not really sure what my plan is. Stay or go?” Jennifer Taub, a law professor and author with about a quarter million followers, said Sunday, as she tweeted out a link to her Facebook page in case she leaves Twitter.

For now, Taub plans to stay, given the opportunity it provides to “laugh, learn and commiserate” with people from across the world. But she’ll leave if it becomes “a cesspool of racism and antisemitism,” she said in a phone call.

“The numbers are going down and down and down,” said Taub, who has lost 5,000 followers since Musk officially took over. “The tipping point might be if I’m just not having fun there. There are too many people to block.”

The debate is especially fraught for people of color who have used Twitter to network and elevate their voices, while also confronting toxicity on the platform.

“As a user of Twitter — as a power user in a lot of ways — it has had a great utility and I’m very concerned about where people go to have this conversation next,” said Tanzina Vega, a Latina journalist in New York who once received death threats on Twitter but also built a vital community of friends and sources there.

A software engineer, Chandler hoped to counter the isolation she felt in her white-dominated field when she tweeted out a question and a selfie four years ago: “What does a Black Twitter in Tech look like? Here, I’ll go first!” The response was overwhelming. She now has more than 60,000 followers and her own company connecting Black tech workers with companies large and small.

She also received hate message and even some death threats from people accusing her of racism for centering Black technologists. But she also had connections with Twitter employees who were receptive to her concerns. Chandler said those employees have either left the company or are no longer active on the platform.

Chandler’s company also uses Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn but none can replicate the type of vibrant community she leads on Twitter, where people mix professional networking and light bantering.

Instagram and TikTok are fueled more by images than text exchanges. Facebook is no longer popular with younger users. LinkedIn is more formal. And although some developers are trying to rush out alternative sites on the fly, it takes times to develop a stable, user-friendly site that can handle millions of accounts.

Joan Donovan, an internet scholar who explores the threat that disinformation poses to democracy in her new book, “Meme Wars,” said it’s not clear if Twitter will remain a safe place for civic discourse. Yet she called the networks that people have built there invaluable — to users, to their communities and to Musk.

“This is the exact reason that Musk bought Twitter and didn’t just build his own social network,” Donovan said. “If you control the territory, you can control the politics, you can control the culture in many ways.”

In his first few hours at the helm, Musk fired several top Twitter executives, including chief legal counsel Vijaya Gadde, who had overseen Twitter’s content moderation and safety efforts around the globe. And he dissolved the board of directors, leaving him accountable, at least on paper, only to himself. On Friday, Twitter began widespread layoffs.

European regulators immediately warned Musk about his duty under their digital privacy laws to police illegal speech and disinformation. The U.S. has far more lax rules governing Twitter and its 238 million daily users. But advertisers, users and perhaps lenders may rein him in if Congress does not first tighten the rules.

“If the advertisers go and the users go, it may well be that the marketplace of ideas sort of sorts itself out,” said Cary Coglianese, an expert on regulatory policy at the University of Pennsylvania law school.

That could leave Twitter to be just another magnet for extremists and conspiracy theorists — a concern driving some to urge their network of friends to stay, in order to counter those narratives.

Chandler said she can only “walk on eggshells” and take a wait-and-see approach.

“I’m personally going to stay on Twitter until there is really not a reason to stay anymore. I don’t know what the future holds, I’m kind of hoping for some sort of miracle,” she said. “For now, I won’t be going anywhere.”

___ Follow Maryclaire Dale on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Maryclairedale.

Equipment that’s designed to cut methane emission is failing

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ

yesterday

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Sharon Wilson sets up a thermal imaging camera near a compressor station in Arlington, Texas, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022. Wilson, a field advocate for Earthworks, which promotes alternatives to fossil fuels, uses the high-tech camera to detect methane leaks at oil and gas facilities. (AP Photo/LM Otero)


As Sharon Wilson pulled up to the BP site in Texas last June, production tanks towered above the windblown grass roughly 60 miles southeast of San Antonio. Cows and pumpjacks lined the roadsides.

All looked placid. But when Wilson flipped on a high-tech video camera, a disquieting image became visible: A long black plume poured from a flare pipe. Her camera, designed to detect hydrocarbons, had revealed what appeared to be a stream of methane — a potent climate-warming gas, gushing from the very equipment that is supposed to prevent such emissions.

“It’s very discouraging and depressing, but mostly it’s infuriating,” said Wilson, a field advocate for Earthworks, which promotes alternatives to fossil fuels. “Our government is not taking the action that needs to be taken.”

Methane is the main ingredient in natural gas. Measured over a 20-year period, scientists say, it packs about 80 times the climate-warming power of carbon dioxide. And according to the International Energy Agency, methane is to blame for roughly 30% of the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Aerial surveys have documented huge amounts of methane wafting from oil and gas fields in the United States and beyond.

It’s a problem the Biden administration has sought to attack in its recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act. One of the law’s provisions threatens fines of up to $1,500 per ton of methane released, to be imposed against the worst polluters. Perhaps most crucially, the law provides $1.55 billion in funding for companies to upgrade equipment to more effectively contain emissions — equipment that could, in theory, help the operators avoid fines.

Yet some of the best equipment for reducing emissions is already installed on oil and gas infrastructure, including at the BP site that Wilson filmed. And critics say such equipment is failing to capture much of the methane and casting doubt on whether the Biden plan would go far to correct the problem.

What Wilson saw at the BP site was an unlit flare. It’s among the types of equipment the EPA recommends companies consider installing to reduce methane emissions. Resembling a tall pipe, a flare is supposed to burn off methane before it can escape. Flames typically burn from the top of the flares.

But in this case, the flame had gone out, so methane was pouring from the pipe. The flare’s mechanisms are supposed to alert the operator if it stopped working. That didn’t happen in this case, according to a report by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

“Energy companies have made pledges, but I’ve got to tell you, I haven’t seen anything from a practical standpoint that makes me believe there’s any reality to reductions on the ground,” said Tim Doty, an environmental scientist and former air quality inspector for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. “Maybe they’re making progress, but are they making enough progress to slow down climate change? I don’t think so.”

The spewing methane that Wilson detected was among more than a dozen such scenes she documented over three days in the Eagle Ford Shale, an oil and gas field in south Texas. The methane poured from unlit or broken flares, storage tanks, vapor recovery units and compressors. She found it escaping at sites owned by companies including BP and Marathon Oil, both of which have pledged to reduce methane emissions.

“They have the technology, but for some reason, whether they don’t maintain it, whether the technology doesn’t work, I don’t know, but if find it not working,” Wilson said.

BP did not respond to questions about the methane leaks Wilson documented. The company says it plans to eliminate routine flaring in U.S. onshore operations by 2025 and is advocating for policies to reduce methane emissions.

Marathon Oil disputed that it violated any regulations. A spokeswoman said the company recognizes the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate and prioritizes concern for the environment.

Sometimes, methane escapes because the equipment designed to contain it hasn’t been properly calibrated or maintained. Emissions aren’t immediately stopped once new equipment is installed. Companies must still invest in properly designing the system and continuously monitoring and maintaining the equipment. This requires money and staff, which experts say many companies neglect.

The Biden administration hasn’t yet specified which types of equipment it recommends. But the EPA, which is working with the administration on the law’s methane reduction program, has recommended technologies for reducing methane emissions. Whether that equipment actually succeeds in capping emissions is an open question.

“There’s lots of technologies, but the reality in the field is it just doesn’t work,” Doty said.

That’s frequently also the case with another type of equipment the EPA recommends: vapor recovery units. These are systems of pipes and seals that are supposed to capture methane before it can escape from tanks. In Doty’s field work, which spans decades, he estimates that he’s seen vapor recovery units leaking some amount of methane or other hydrocarbons 75% to 85% of the time.

And hydrocarbons like methane, because they are corrosive, inevitably degrade the tanks, pipes and equipment that are supposed to contain them.

“All this stuff is going to be prone to leak — that’s just the way it is,” said Coyne Gibson, who spent about two decades as an engineer inspecting oil and gas equipment. “That’s mechanics. And there’s there’s not really any way to avoid it.”

One reason it’s hard for the industry to control methane emissions is that many leaks come from the nation’s vast gas distribution network. Millions of miles of pipelines are next to impossible to completely monitor. What’s more, Gibson said, pipelines are often buried, making leaks harder to detect.

That gas distribution network, which includes pipelines and compressor stations, is responsible for most methane emissions in the energy industry, said Antoine Halff, chief analyst at Kayrros, an energy analytics company. Using satellite data, Kayrros identified one compressor station — which adjusts the pressure of gas to move it through pipelines — that emitted methane continuously for eight days.

“It’s way too common,” Halff said.

Some large companies have invested in infrared cameras, like Wilson’s, that can detect methane leaks at facilities. They use them on the ground, or on drones or aircraft.

The process can help operators find and fix leaks. But it’s typically done only periodically, with cameras that don’t run continuously. Every few months, some companies will send a team with an infrared camera to check for leaks from the ground or a helicopter.

Much of the time, though, there is no such surveillance. Leaks or even planned methane releases can occur during these periods, as when companies open a stretch of pipeline to release methane before doing repairs. The staffing it would take to continuously survey the nation’s 3 million miles of natural gas pipelines would likely be prohibitively expensive.

Malfunctioning flares like the one Wilson found are also a major contributor to methane pollution. Flaring is supposed to burn off 98% of the methane that would otherwise shoot directly into the atmosphere. But whether because of malfunctions or poor design, flares are releasing five times that amount of methane into the atmosphere, according to a study by the University of Michigan.

“Flares often go out,” said David Lyon, senior scientist with Environmental Defense Fund. “They’ll be unlit and venting all the gas. Or they’ll just not be burning the gas properly. So that’s that’s a really big source of methane. And often I think the operators are not aware that the flare’s out.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is writing rules on methane reduction that will further detail what would be required of companies starting in 2024 under the Inflation Reduction Act.

The American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, says methane emissions intensity declined by nearly 60 percent across the nation’s major producing regions from 2011 to 2020. But companies base their reported methane emissions on estimates, not actual measurements, another custom that the Inflation Reduction Act seeks to change.

Climate scientists have shown, using satellite data, that methane emissions are often two or three times above what companies reported. Under the new law, companies would have to actually measure and report their methane emissions. But it’s still unclear how such a measurement program would work.

“Us and many others in this field, over and over again, have shown the huge gap between reporting by countries and companies and what can actually be detected,” Halff said.

Even so, he thinks there’s reason to hope that the methane provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act will make some difference.

“Emissions keep going up,” he said. “We’re moving in the wrong direction…but the potential, the conditions, to change course seem to be here.”

Russia strips climate advocate of citizenship

By Francesca Ebel
November 5, 2022

 

Climate activist Arshak Makichyan plays his violin in front of the Russian Embassy in Berlin. (Monika Skolimowska/Associated Press)

Climate activist Arshak Makichyan built a reputation as the Russian answer to Greta Thunberg, staging lonely weekly protests in central Moscow and often getting arrested.

Makichyan, 28, who fled Russia to Berlin in March following the invasion of Ukraine, is still pushing for climate action, but as of last week, the government says he is no longer Russian. In an unusual case, a Moscow court has decided to strip Makichyan along with his father and brother, who both remain in Russia, of their citizenship, in what appears to be payback for his public antiwar statements.

Makichyan, who is Armenian by birth, emigrated to Russia as a baby in 1995 and holds only a Russian passport, meaning the decision has rendered him effectively stateless. “I am at a loss as what to do going forward,” Makichyan told The Washington Post in a phone interview, saying that a refugee passport in Germany could restrict his climate activism.

After the February invasion of Ukraine, Makichyan, like many Russian activists, made the difficult decision to flee their country. He and his young wife, a fellow activist, had married the very same day Russian troops poured into Ukraine. They both continued to speak out against the war from Germany.

A trial to review his citizenship began in his absence over the summer, and a Moscow court decided to revoke it last month, accusing Makichyan of having provided false information to immigration authorities, despite being just 10 years old when his father made the citizenship application. The court only informed his lawyer of their decision a week later.

“This is my identity. I have engaged in activism in Russia for four years. I have lived all my life in Russia, and despite everything, I see myself in its future, when Russia becomes free,” Makichyan said. The court also revoked the citizenship of his father and brother. Like Makichyan, neither his father or brother hold any other passport and it is unclear what fate awaits them in Moscow.

“The court applied the law very liberally in this case,” Olga Podoplelova, a lawyer for Makichyan, told The Post, saying that they plan to appeal the decision. “Under normal circumstances, we could easily defend the citizenship of Arshak, his father and brother.”

But these are not normal circumstances. Since the invasion, Russian authorities have blatantly and repeatedly disregarded the law, arresting people simply for standing in the vicinity of an antigovernment protest, and forcing people ineligible for military service to sign up for the army. Ethnic minorities have also come under fire.

“Since I was a kid, I felt, well, not totally Russian,” said Makichyan. “I felt that I had no right to participate in political life, because if I said anything, people would say immediately that I am Armenian and that I should go back to my own country.”

“But I continued because I somehow felt responsible. I understood that if there are no changes in Russia, then we would not be able to fight the climate crisis,” he said. “Russia is part of the global world and needs a voice.”

To a certain extent, he succeeded. He drew media attention to his weekly protests and was invited to speak at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2019. He also helped inspire other climate protests in cities across Russia.

Makichyan said Russian authorities were concerned about any form of youth protest no matter how small. “It seems to me that the main threat was that I stood there and simply existed. Now they want to officially say that I do not exist at all, at least not on paper,” he said.

The Russian parliament passed a new bill amending citizenship rules this spring. The new law created what political analyst Ekaterina Schulman calls an “inequality” between two types of citizenship, enabling authorities to easily move against citizens who had previously held a foreign passport.

“When Makichyan became a nuisance, the authorities evidently checked his documents. They asked, what can be done with him? The answer: His citizenship can be annulled. It is much simpler than opening a criminal case,” said Schulman.

Lawyers say there is a practice that precedes the 2022 amendment of “catching out” citizens of predominantly former Soviet states with minor administrative faults. There have been alleged instances of officials claiming to have lost such passports and forcing the individuals to reapply for citizenship.

“This is a form of ethnic discrimination,” said Podoplelova. “Many migrants believe that Russian citizenship gives them more rights or protects them. But this is an illusion,” noted Valentina Chupik, the director of Tong Jahoni, a nonprofit organization that helps Central Asian migrants in Russ

Makichyan warned that his case could signal the emergence of a new tool of political repression against Kremlin critics. “The Arshak case is a very dangerous precedent, given the Soviet experience of depriving dissidents of their citizenship,” said Podoplelova.

This spring, Russian lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin called critics of the invasion “traitors” and suggested they be stripped of their citizenship. He lamented there was “no procedure for revoking citizenship and preventing them from entering our country.”

Schulman said it is unlikely Makichyan’s case signals a new wave of repression, highlighting the rigidity of Russia’s legal framework. “If you are born the Russian citizen, if you have the citizenship from birth, then there is no way, at least for now, that the state can legally divest you of this status,” said Schulman.

Putin’s War On Ukraine Is Also A War On Dolphins



By Kelsey Vlamis

Dolphins. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

We all know the war in Ukraine started by Russian President Putin earlier in the year was a war of conquest and destruction. And yet, we don’t talk enough about the damage modern war does to the environment and fragile ecosystems.

Along with the thousands of men, women, and children who have died since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, there have been hundreds of casualties in the Black Sea among the resident dolphin and porpoise populations.

Scientists who study the region reported an “unusual increase” in strandings and bycatch — when animals are unintentionally caught by fishermen — of dolphins, porpoises, and whales, in the spring and summer of 2022, according to a recent report from ACCOBAMS, or the Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans of the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and Contiguous Atlantic Area.

“Russia’s war against Ukraine escalated in February 2022 puts the entire Black Sea basin under a huge threat. Military activities in the marine and coastal areas may affect the marine biota in the region, including cetaceans,” the report said.

More than 700 deaths, primarily in dolphins and harbor porpoises, have been recorded on the coasts of countries that border the sea, including Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, and Ukraine, according to Erich Hoyt, a research fellow at the UK-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation who consulted with the ACCOBAMS scientists.

Researchers are working to determine the cause of the deaths that have been observed, but the ongoing war — and the potential threat posed by drifting mines — make data collection and boat surveys difficult.

There have been reports of dolphins washing ashore with physical injuries, like burns, which could be a direct result of being caught in the crossfire. Ivan Rusev, research director at Ukraine’s Tuzla Estuaries National Nature Park, said earlier this year dolphins were washing ashore with burn marks from bombs or mines, while others appeared unable to navigate or like they had not eaten in days.

But the increase in strandings and dolphins caught in bycatch could be a direct consequence of the loud noises associated with warfare.

“Dolphins and porpoises rely on sound to navigate, find their food, and communicate with each other,” Hoyt told Insider. “Noise from increased ship traffic can have some impact but the sounds of explosions at the surface or underwater could disorient, wound, or kill dolphins and porpoises within a few mile range or cause increased numbers of strandings or bycatch.”

Dolphins, porpoises, and whales have an acute sense of hearing and use echolocation to map out their environment. They emit short, pulsing “clicks,” similar to a finger snapping, which travel through the water until they encounter an object and bounce back to the dolphin. But the dolphin’s uncanny ability to interpret the returning sound to identify food and understand their environment can be disrupted by loud noises.

Dolphins also use sound, similar to a whistle, to communicate with each other, and have even been documented using verbal labels to address one another — in a word: names.

Sounds also travel much further and about four and half times faster through water than air, making the impact of explosions in the sea all the more damaging.

Though scientists are working to confirm the reasons for the increased deaths, Hoyt said the noise disruptions could be disorienting the dolphins, leading to an increase in them getting stranded on shore or caught in a fisherman’s net.

Another factor could be that the fighting is driving the mammals away from familiar Ukrainian waters and bringing them to unfamiliar areas in search of food, where they may be more likely to end up in a net or stranded onshore.

The situation is also worsened by the fact that experts have identified coastal areas near Ukraine as vital for some dolphin and porpoise populations. Hoyt co-chairs the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force, which seeks to identify areas that are important to marine mammal conservation.

Several locations around Ukraine — including some that have been subject to fighting — have previously been designated as important habitats, including areas around the Crimean peninsula, the Kerch Strait, and the Sea of Azov, as shown in this interactive map.

The areas were identified as important habitats for three species that the IUCN classifies as threatened or endangered: the Black Sea common dolphin, the Black Sea harbor porpoise, and the Black Sea bottlenose dolphin.

“Of course, there are fears that the dolphins and porpoises known to use these areas year-round will have been killed or driven out,” Hoyt said. “But because no research can take place there now, we simply will not know until after the war ends.”

Kelsey Vlamis is a breaking news reporter for Insider (where this first appeared), where she also covers stories about the environment, religion, politics, and Indigenous communities. She previously worked on the world news desk at the BBC in London and received a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University.