New York to open first legal pot dispensary by year's end


Marijuana plants for the adult recreational market are seen hanging in a drying room at a farm in Suffolk County, N.Y., Oct. 4, 2022. The first legal dispensary for recreational marijuana in New York is set to open Thursday, Dec. 29, marking a long-awaited launch of a cannabis industry that could become one of the country's most lucrative. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

Wed, December 21, 2022


NEW YORK (AP) — The first legal dispensary for recreational marijuana in New York is set to open Dec. 29, marking a long-awaited launch of a cannabis industry that could become one of the country's most lucrative.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday that Housing Works, a minority-controlled nonprofit in Manhattan that serves people with HIV and AIDS, will be the first of 36 recently licensed dispensaries to begin selling cannabis to the general public — even though dozens of illegal shops have been in operation for many months.

The announcement was made one month after the state's Cannabis Control Board took a monumental step in establishing a legal marketplace for marijuana by issuing the first round of licenses. In the coming months, the state is expected to issue an additional 139 licenses, with about 900 applicants waiting to learn their fate.

“The industry will continue to grow from here, creating inclusive opportunity in every corner of New York State with revenues directed to our schools and revitalizing communities," Hochul said in her announcement.

New York legalized recreational use of marijuana in March 2021.

Housing Works, which also serves homeless and formerly incarcerated people, was one of eight nonprofits among the initial licensees.

“This opportunity will not only give our team the resources to further our overall mission, but to feature and elevate products coming from LGBTQ+, BIPOC and women-led cannabis brands across the state," said Charles King, chief executive officer of Housing Works.

The state reserved its first round of retail licenses for applicants with marijuana convictions or their relatives, plus some nonprofit groups. It also planned a $200 million public-private fund to aid “social equity” applicants.

___ See AP's complete coverage of marijuana issues here: https://apnews.com/hub/marijuana

INDIA

Billionaire Adani to control nearly 65% of NDTV as founders sell stake
 

Prannoy Roy, Indian journalist

Gautam Adani, Indian businessman

Fri, December 23, 2022 

BENGALURU (Reuters) -New Delhi Television Ltd's founders said on Friday they have decided to transfer most of their shares in the company to billionaire Gautam Adani, giving his conglomerate control over nearly 65% of the news network.

Radhika and Prannoy Roy will sell a 27.26% stake in NDTV to an entity owned by Adani, giving it 64.71% of NDTV, regulatory filings by NDTV showed.

Adani already held more than 37% in NDTV after an open offer and an earlier acquisition of a company owned by the founders.

"The AMG Media Network, after the recent open offer, is now the single largest shareholder in NDTV. Consequently, with mutual agreement we have decided to divest most of our shares in NDTV to the AMG Media Network," the founders said in a statement.

"Since the open offer was launched, our discussions with Gautam Adani have been constructive; all the suggestions we made were accepted by him positively and with openness," they added.

Radhika and Prannoy Roy will retain a combined 5% stake in NDTV.

(Reporting by Chris Thomas in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

India 'deeply engaged' in developing GM seeds for 13 crops


A woman works inside her mustard field on the outskirts of Srinagar

Fri, December 23, 2022 

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Indian institutions are "deeply engaged" in the development Of genetically modified seeds for 13 crops, including rice, wheat and sugarcane to improve their yield and quality, the government said on Friday.

The environment ministry in October granted clearance for indigenously developed GM mustard seeds, potentially paving the way for a commercial release of the country's first food crop in about two years.

Cotton is the only GM crop currently allowed for cultivation in India.

Research is also being done by the state-run Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and other organisations to develop GM seeds for potato, pigeon pea lentils, chickpeas and banana, the agricultural ministry said in a statement.

"ICAR institutions and universities are deeply engaged in the development of GM crops for different traits such as biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, yield and quality improvement in 13 crops," it said.

India is keen to adopt farming technologies like GM crops to ensure food security and cut a reliance on imports, as it tries to boost the output of items like edible oils for its nearly 1.4 billion people, the most in the world after China.

India spent a record $19 billion importing vegetable oils last fiscal year that ended on March 31. Russia's invasion of Ukraine also disrupted imports and raised prices, before supplies improved.

Scientists say India's growing population and shrinking cultivable land mean it needs to adopt more efficient ways of farming.

The government statement warned "administrative procedures required in public interest" against any former or current ICAR officials speaking against GM mustard.

Activists have said that GM mustard would require widespread use of herbicides and pose a threat to honey bees.

India's Supreme Court is hearing a challenge to the decision to allow an environmental release of mustard hybrid "DMH-11" for seed production and other tests before commercial release.

India, set to overtake China's population next year, in 2010 blocked the release of a GM eggplant variety following opposition from environmentalists and some farmers.

(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly; Editing by Krishna N. Das)

These California programs steer solar+batteries to low-income households

Jeff St. John
Wed, December 21, 2022 

Rooftop solar and home batteries are already too expensive for most low-income California residents. Last week’s decision by the California Public Utilities Commission to radically alter the state’s net-metering policy will put them even further out of reach.

Last week Canary Media explained how California’s new rooftop-solar policy will dramatically reduce the moneymaking potential of stand-alone rooftop solar and incentivize customers to install batteries that can store and shift their output to the grid when it’s most needed. We also explored how solar and battery vendors, utilities, community energy providers and state agencies are looking for ways to expand access to these technologies for low-income and disadvantaged communities.

That won’t be easy. Even after federal tax credits, a typical residential rooftop-solar system in California costs between $15,000 and $25,000, and adding a battery can increase the total by $10,000 to $20,000. Without access to financing or other structures to lower those upfront costs — and without clear pathways to pay those costs back within less than a decade through utility-bill savings and export credits — few low-income households will be able to afford it.

The CPUC’s new rooftop-solar policy offers little to ease those cost barriers for low-income customers. It does, however, open up a potential pathway that could be used to help expand access.

Under the new policy, households with solar-plus-battery systems will be able to earn more money than they could previously for allowing their systems to be used to support the grid by storing rooftop-solar power in batteries and exporting it when power demand is high. And other California policies are incentivizing the adoption of efficient electric-powered heating systems, appliances and other equipment that can tamp down energy usage when the grid is stressed or shift usage to when the grid is awash in low-cost clean power.

Public agencies, private companies and community organizations are pioneering limited-scale programs designed to help low-income households take advantage of these opportunities. Their tactics include finding as many channels as possible to reduce the upfront cost of installing the solar, batteries and efficient electric appliances, and then making those incentives pay off by capturing as many revenue streams as possible for using the equipment to support the grid. Another approach is installing rooftop solar and batteries that are owned by third parties instead of by low-income households, so the households get some of the key benefits — lower electric bills, backup power during grid outages — without the costs.

These kinds of programs are still in their infancy, and it’s unclear if they can get to scale. But models like these are needed for California to meet its policy imperative to expand access to clean energy and efficiency to low-income and disadvantaged communities. In this piece, we’ll explore a few examples.

The barriers to adoption of solar and batteries by lower-income households

First, let’s walk through the challenges involved in bringing rooftop solar to low-income customers in California. Solar nonprofit Grid Alternatives knows the hurdles well, having deployed nearly 10,000 solar systems as the administrator for a series of state-mandated programs that cover the cost of installations for low-income households.

The main state program now financing rooftop solar for low-income single-family homes has a budget of $8.5 million per year. It’s enormously helpful for those customers it serves, but it reaches only a small fraction of eligible households. Those who aren’t served by it face underlying barriers that make rooftop solar and storage even more costly for them than for wealthier families, said Stephen Campbell, Grid Alternatives’ senior policy manager.

For one, “many lower-income customers don’t have the option to finance” a new solar or battery system, he said. Solar financing today is largely structured for customers with higher incomes or better-than-average credit scores. People without those advantages can struggle to obtain financing at all, let alone financing that’s affordable in a time of rapidly rising interest rates.

Some lower-income customers need to repair their roofs or upgrade their home wiring and electrical panels before solar can be installed. Others live in rural areas far from where most solar installers work, complicating the sale and installation process.

Such barriers tend to drive up the cost of serving these markets. The average cost of solar installations for the low-income programs Grid Alternatives manages is $4.28 per watt, well above the $3.30-per-watt average cited by the CPUC’s new rooftop-solar decision.

To overcome these barriers, low-income and disadvantaged households need incentives and financing structures that can defray higher upfront costs and encourage more solar and battery companies to serve those markets, advocates say. They need assurance that the solar-plus-battery systems they’re installing will reduce their electricity bills and give them a clear path to paying back their investments in a reasonable timeframe. And they need help accessing incentives to make their homes and their appliances more efficient.

Revitalizing communities with solar, batteries and more

One example of a program offering this kind of support comes from MCE, the community choice aggregator serving Marin and Napa counties and surrounding areas. This summer, MCE launched a virtual-power-plant program for low-income residents of the economically and environmentally distressed city of Richmond, aimed not only at providing low-cost distributed energy but also at revitalizing its residential housing market.

Community choice aggregators like MCE are city- and county-based entities that have taken over the role of supplying electricity to millions of California’s utility customers over the past decade. Many have also been taking innovative approaches to deploy rooftop solar, batteries, electric appliances and efficiency upgrades.

Backed by a $3 million grant from the California Energy Commission and with a host of corporate, nonprofit and community partners including Grid Alternatives, the Richmond project is targeting up to 100 homes and an undetermined number of commercial sites for solar, batteries, smart thermostats, heat-pump water and space heating, and EV charging.

Participants will get zero-interest loans to finance the equipment and installation costs, plus monthly credits in exchange for allowing MCE to tap that equipment to reduce its need to buy high-priced energy during the peak hours of 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. The program is open to households that currently lack rooftop solar as well as households that have already had solar installed by Grid Alternatives and want to take advantage of that self-generated power to heat their homes or charge their cars, said Alexandra McGee, MCE’s manager of strategic initiatives.

MCE and its partners are also tapping social-impact bonds raised by the city of Richmond to buy abandoned homes and renovate them with solar, batteries, electric appliances and efficiency retrofits. “We are leveling floors, ripping out Sheetrock, putting in new roofs,” McGee said. Plus, they’re installing “all the gizmos — the batteries, the EV charging, the solar panels, the heat-pump water heaters.”

To finance the upfront cost for both newly renovated and existing homes, MCE and partners are “throwing everything we have at this project,” McGee said, including MCE’s existing energy-efficiency and distributed-energy incentives, zero-interest loans for income-qualified homebuyers, and state grants matched by the city of Richmond.

Thanks to this creative use of grants, bonds, incentives and zero-interest loans to get the projects done, the partners will be able to sell the homes at a discount to lower-income first-time homebuyers, she said. And the monthly payments from MCE to homeowners for participating in the virtual power plant will keep down household energy costs. So far, one home has been renovated and sold, and more are on their way, she said.

While the project is still in its early stages, the goal is to aggregate 1 megawatt of solar capacity and 2.5 megawatts of energy storage and loads that can be reduced during times of peak grid demand, McGee said.

“Once that size is reached, that’s where the real value can be realized for MCE,” she said. Much of the power that community choice aggregators (CCAs) deliver to customers comes from contracted clean-energy resources, but they also have to secure additional energy and capacity for those times during the year when grid supply is scarce. That’s the most expensive power, and anything that CCAs can do to hedge against exposure to those high costs — such as enrolling more customers in virtual power plants — can make a big difference.

Sachu Constantine, executive director of the nonprofit Vote Solar, said MCE’s work in Richmond represents a novel alignment of efforts to expand clean and reliable energy with the goal of community revitalization. “It’s a pathway to ownership” of homes for the customers involved. In terms of its value to the grid, “it’s clearly visible to the utility — they can incorporate it into their planning,” he said.

MCE’s project in Richmond is just one of many virtual power plants being developed across the state. Others are run by California’s three big investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — as well as by public utilities including the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and CCAs like East Bay Community Energy and Clean Power Alliance.

Some of these programs offer incentives for a certain number of solar-and-battery systems to go to lower-income customers. How generous those incentives are can depend on the value batteries and other controllable devices can provide the CCAs and their corporate partners — values that can change depending on underlying regulatory structures and shifting energy-market conditions.

It also depends on how the ownership of these assets is structured. MCE’s virtual power plant in Richmond is designed around boosting customer ownership of these assets. Other approaches are putting the costs and risks of owning these assets in the hands of third parties.

Bringing third-party-owned batteries to low-income Californians

For more than a decade, the Self-Generation Incentive Program has been California’s premier policy to help homeowners and businesses afford their own batteries. This summer, state lawmakers boosted the budget for the program by $900 million, with $630 million of that earmarked for low-income customers. Given that previous funding authorizations of the program have already been depleted for the most in-demand portions of the market, that money will likely go fast.

Over the past few years, California regulators have refocused this decades-old program on making batteries available to people most at risk from the state’s increasingly frequent wildfire-prevention power outages. For medically vulnerable customers or disadvantaged communities, the incentives are high enough to cover nearly the entire cost of a new battery installation, allowing partnerships like those between Grid Alternatives and Sunrun and PG&E and Enphase to offer free batteries to customers in high-fire-threat parts of the state.

But that’s just one way to get batteries into low-income customers’ homes. Sunrun also acts as a third-party owner of solar and battery systems that Grid Alternatives installs for customers that can’t or don’t want to borrow money to finance it. Third-party owners can monetize the value of federal tax credits for low-income households that don’t pay a large enough federal tax bill to take advantage of the credits themselves.

Residential battery company Electriq Power is working with the city of Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara Clean Energy, the county’s community choice aggregator, on another version of this third-party ownership model, one aimed specifically at homeowners who lack high-enough credit scores to finance installations themselves.

Despite its reputation as a wealthy coastal haven, the city and county of Santa Barbara are home to many lower-income residents, including those working in the agricultural and service industries, Electriq CEO Frank Magnotti said. The county also has relatively few grid connections to the rest of the state, and many of its longer lines run through areas at high threat from wildfires. Third-party-owned solar-plus-battery systems can help those lower-income residents and help the grid. They reduce demand on overloaded grid circuits and provide backup power when the circuits have to be shut off to reduce the threat of sparking wildfires.

Under Santa Barbara Clean Energy’s Home Power Program, Electriq owns the batteries installed in low-income customers’ homes, and the company has lined up other financial parties interested in long-term ownership as well as the federal tax-credit value of the projects, Magnotti said. Participants will be able to sign up for power-purchase agreements to buy solar from the systems on their roofs at rates that are 10 to 20 percent below utility rates.

In exchange, customers agree to let Electriq tap the battery capacity a certain number of hours per year to serve grid needs, Magnotti said. That grid value will “take a little time to get to enough scale to be meaningful” to utilities, he said. But as the program grows, it could become significant enough to allow what he refers to as “sustainable communities” to enter into bilateral agreements with utilities to defer the cost of building grid infrastructure. (For homeowners who are in a position to buy their own systems, Santa Barbara Clean Energy also offers rebates on solar systems from Brighten Solar and batteries from SimpliPhi, two local companies.)

It’s important to remember that California’s fast-rising electricity rates are being driven up primarily by the cost of hardening utility grids against wildfire risks and building new transmission lines to supply needed clean power. Distributed solar and batteries can reduce those costs if utilities and regulators can devise methods of rewarding their owners and users for deploying them where they’re needed most and using them to provide grid services during key times.

It remains to be seen whether approaches like these can become economically self-sustaining ways to put solar and batteries within reach of a broader range of customers. But for the city of Santa Barbara and its CCA, bringing the distributed clean-energy future to lower-income residents is core to their mission, Magnotti said. “We’ll only do this if we can do it across all customer classes, and not just pick and choose the largest homes.”


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West Virginia plant to make batteries for US energy grid


West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice delivers his annual State of the State address in the House Chambers at the state Capitol in Charleston, W.Va., Jan. 8, 2020. Justice announced Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022, that Form Energy, which plans to make batteries for the U.S. energy grid, will locate its first full-scale manufacturing plant in a former steel town in West Virginia. 

(AP Photo/Chris Jackson, File)


JOHN RABY
Thu, December 22, 2022


CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A company that plans to make batteries for the U.S. energy grid will locate its first full-scale manufacturing plant in a former steel town in West Virginia, creating at least 750 jobs in a $760 million investment, Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday.

Massachusetts-based Form Energy will build the plant on a 55-acre site once occupied by Weirton Steel in the Northern Panhandle. Construction is expected to begin next year with manufacturing of battery systems set to start in 2024, the company said.

Form Energy focuses on energy storage technology and manufacturing. It has developed a battery whose active components are iron, water and air and is capable of storing electricity for 100 hours, said company co-founder and CEO Mateo Jaramillo, who led automaker Tesla ’s powertrain business development program until 2016.

Over the next decade, the company's goal for the battery is to unlock demand for multi-day energy storage in the United States and "accelerate the country’s trajectory toward a fully decarbonized and more reliable and resilient electric grid,” Jaramillo said in joining Justice at the announcement at the state Culture Center in Charleston.

The Weirton site along the Ohio River is about an hour from the company’s pilot manufacturing facility in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Weirton Steel, which operated a nearly 800-acre property, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003. Cleveland-Cliffs now makes tin-plated products on the site, where employment tumbled from 6,100 in 1994 to less than 900 now.

“Weirton is a historic steel site with strong natural infrastructure and in a region of the country with the know-how to make great things out of iron,” Form Energy said in a statement.

Justice has made several job-related announcements this year aimed at helping to soften the loss of thousands of coal industry jobs in the state over the past decade. Among them included plans for a steel mill, a lithium-ion battery plant and a facility that makes electric school buses.

"This today is further testimony to us moving into an economy where we’re diversified even more,” Justice said. “We want West Virginia to be known evermore as that energy state that always figured it out.”

The announcement came as U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Thursday show that West Virginia lost residents for the 10th straight year. The estimates show the state’s population fell by 10,370 residents over the past year. The 0.6% decline was the fourth highest rate in the nation.

Form Energy to build novel iron batteries in West Virginia steel town



Julian Spector
Thu, December 22, 2022 at 1:42 PM MST·4 min read

The West Virginia town of Weirton lost its steel industry years ago. But on Thursday, it gained a new kind of iron industry.

Startup Form Energy picked Weirton from among 500 possible locations to manufacture its forthcoming long-duration energy-storage technology. The novel iron-air battery is designed to store clean energy, affordably, for 100 hours, far more than the four or six hours of storage that lithium-ion batteries provide today.

The factory complex will create 750 jobs and invest $760 million in the community, a figure that includes $290 million of planned incentives from the state of West Virginia. The state Economic Development Authority greenlit $75 million to purchase 55 acres and build the facility; the state will retain ownership of land and buildings as a form of collateral for its other incentive contributions.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice (R) announced the deal with a childhood reminiscence about watching his hometown team play Weirton in the state basketball finals in 1962, when Weirton’s steel industry employed thousands and the town thrived. Since then, Weirton has experienced “tough, tough times.” The new factory will change that, he said, while continuing West Virginia’s legacy as a crucial energy-producing state.

“We want West Virginia to be known forevermore as that energy state that always figured it out,” Justice said.

It’s hard to get more cutting-edge than iron-air batteries, a technology that has not yet been installed in a full-scale power plant. Form co-founder and CEO Mateo Jaramillo left Tesla’s energy-storage business to tackle the problem of long-duration storage: How can we take renewable power, which doesn’t flow around the clock, and turn it into a reliable 24/7 power source?

“To reach renewable energy independence, to meet supply-chain challenges, to run the grid reliably and affordably, we need new, domestically manufactured energy-storage technologies capable of cost-effectively storing electricity for multiple days,” Jaramillo explained at the announcement event in West Virginia Thursday.

Form assembled an impressive team of experts, many of them hailing from MIT, and scoured the periodic table for materials that could not just store energy but do it cheaply. They chose iron, which is abundant and low-cost relative to other storage materials. And the company’s prototypes advanced quickly enough that investors poured in increasingly large sums to fund the precommercial development.

Just in October, Form raised $450 million; Jaramillo told Canary Media at the time that this money would go to doubling headcount, finishing validation and testing for the product, and building the first factory.

“It became abundantly clear that Weirton, West Virginia, that historic steel community that sits on a river and has the rich heritage, raw infrastructure and know-how to make great things out of iron, would be the ideal location for our first commercial battery production facility: Form Factory One,” Jaramillo said.

He also thanked West Virginia’s leadership for cultivating a “pro-business landscape” and supporting workforce development. Geographically, Weirton sits in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, nestled amid a historic industrial region. It’s just 36 miles west of Pittsburgh, and across the river from Ohio; Youngstown sits 60 miles to the north.

West Virginia’s pro-business attitudes historically focused on the coal and gas sectors. Coal and gas plants compete with the cheap renewable power that Form promises to store; indeed, unlocking long-duration storage would allow renewables to compete more directly with the gas plants that deliver on-demand power today.

Justice, the governor, resolved that potential tension by embracing Form’s factory as a means to diversify West Virginia’s economy.

“We need to embrace all the renewables, all the alternatives, while never forgetting — never, ever forgetting — our coal miners, our gas workers, and all the goodness that we have with our natural resources,” Justice said.

Fellow West Virginian Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator, adopted a similar perspective in the climate legislation that he brokered as the Inflation Reduction Act. He stripped language that would have pushed coal and gas plants to close but created a decade of federal tax credits to encourage clean energy deployment.

The law includes the first stand-alone credit for energy storage installations, such as the ones Form will supply. And there is an added bonus for projects utilizing domestic content, like what Form will manufacture in Weirton.

Form Energy is the latest in a string of companies announcing new domestic factories in response to the supportive policies in that legislation. Justice recalled a not-so-distant time when “we were really, really excited when we had an announcement of eight jobs at a water bottling plant.” Now Form is bringing 750 jobs, to start.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Treasurer allegedly transferred $340,000 from Kentucky arts non-profits to himself



Bill Estep
Fri, December 23, 2022 at 7:19 AM MST·1 min read

The former treasurer of two non-profit organizations in southern Kentucky switched more than $340,000 from their accounts to his, a federal grand jury has charged.

Charles Davis, 56, of Russell Springs, faces two counts of wire fraud.

According to the indictment, Davis switched a total of $224,142 to his account from Artworks, in Jamestown, between April 2017 and December 2020 while serving as treasurer.

The organization provides programs that include classes and workshops in music, dance, visual art and theater, summer camps for children and early-childhood arts education, according to its site.

Davis also transferred $116,688 to his account from the Russell County Arts Council between July 2019 and December 2020 while he was treasurer there, the indictment said.

Davis used the money to make payments on his credit cards, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Michael A. Bennett and Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI in Kentucky.

Davis was indicted Dec. 14, but the indictment was sealed this week until he was arrested in Florida. He was released under a $45,000 bond, according to the court record.

Each wire fraud charge is punishable by up to 40 years in prison.

Former Kansas lawmaker convicted of COVID-19 relief fraud


 Kansas state Rep. Michael Capps, R-Wichita, testifies during a committee hearing in favor of his bill to require the national motto of "In God We Trust" to be posted in public buildings and schools, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. A jury has found the former Kansas state lawmaker guilty, Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2022, of 12 felonies for lying on applications for federal COVID-19 relief. Federal prosecutors said Capps filed forms inflating the number of employees he had at two businesses and a sports foundation, and then applied for loans to pay the non-existent employees.

 (AP Photo/John Hanna, File) 

Thu, December 22, 2022
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A former Kansas state lawmaker was found guilty by a federal jury Wednesday of 12 felonies for lying on applications for federal COVID-19 relief.

Federal prosecutors said Wichita Republican Michael Capps, 44, filed forms inflating the number of employees he had at two businesses and a sports foundation, and then applied for loans to pay the nonexistent employees. A federal grand jury indicted Capps in September 2021 and he pleaded not guilty.

The Wichita Eagle reported that Capps was found guilty of three counts of making false statements on loan applications, one count of bank fraud, four counts of wire fraud and four counts of money laundering. Capps could face millions of dollars in fines and decades in prison at sentencing.

Capps was acquitted Wednesday on six other counts, and a 19th count was dismissed before trial.

Prosecutors said the fraud involved the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program and Emergency Injury Disaster Loan programs, which were designed to provide assistance to businesses that struggled during the pandemic.

Capps and his defense lawyer Kurt Kerns did not respond to questions from reporters after the verdict.

Head of Turkish medical group stands trial on terror charges

Fri, December 23, 2022 

ISTANBUL (AP) — The president of the Turkish Medical Association denied in court on Friday accusations that she disseminated “terrorist propaganda” by calling for an investigation into allegations that the Turkish military used chemical weapons against Kurdish militants.

Dr. Sebnem Korur Fincanci, 63, is on trial accused of engaging in propaganda on behalf of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. She was arrested in October after she gave an interview during which she spoke of the need for an “effective investigation” into the allegations.

Fincanci, a forensic expert, is the latest activist to be prosecuted under Turkey’s broad anti-terrorism laws, which human rights groups say have led to a crackdown on the freedom of expression. She faces up to seven and a half years in prison if found guilty.

The charges are based on a recording of the interview with a pro-Kurdish media outlet where Fincanci is heard saying that she had reviewed a video purporting to show the use of chemical weapons in Iraq.

“What I expressed during the broadcast was a preliminary diagnostic. It was not a definitive conclusion but a request for an effective, independent investigation,” Dokuz 8 Haber website quoted her as telling the court during the first hearing of her trial. “My words cannot be considered a crime within the scope of science or freedom of expression.”

The trial was adjourned until Dec. 29.

The interview followed allegations by Kurdish militants that Turkey’s military had used chemical weapons against the PKK in northern Iraq. Turkish officials strongly rejected the allegations, insisting the military doesn’t have such weapons in its inventory.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Fincanci of slandering Turkey’s armed forces and of insulting her country. He vowed to take actions to clear the Turkish Medical Association and other professional organizations of “supporters of the terrorist organization.”

A nationalist party that is allied with Erdogan’s ruling party demanded that she be stripped of her Turkish citizenship and for her association to be shut down.

Hundreds of people gathered outside to courthouse in a show of support for Fincanci who has spent much of her career documenting torture and ill-treatment, and is a leading human rights activist in Turkey. She has also served as president of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.

On Friday, the German government’s human rights commissioner, Luise Amtsberg, expressed “full solidarity” with Fincanci, describing her as “one of Turkey’s most courageous voices.”

“The trial against Sebnem Korur Fincanci shows us once again what price human rights defenders in Turkey pay for their commitment,” she said.

The PKK has led an armed insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984. The group is considered a terrorist organization in Turkey, Europe and the United States.

 $4 Billion India Fund Is Clashing With Its Government Backer




Preeti Singh and Ruchi Bhatia
Thu, December 22, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- When India launched its first state-backed investment fund in 2015, the project was met with great enthusiasm. Officials hoped to raise billions of dollars to improve the nation’s infrastructure and attract foreign manufacturers, angling for the success of funds started in places like Singapore.

But India’s lofty expectations for the National Investment & Infrastructure Fund are now in question. A chilly relationship has developed between NIIF’s team and the government over investment choices, according to interviews with officials and fund managers. Critics inside and outside the government complain that NIIF — which handles about $4.3 billion in assets — lacks vision, decisiveness and the ability to win over investors.

In September, when Sujoy Bose, the fund’s first chief executive, informed the board he would step down a few years before the end of his term, many saw the shakeup as evidence of frustration in New Delhi. Just a few days earlier, Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s finance minister, remarked at a business conference that NIIF needed to become more “robust.”

“NIIF appears to have fallen between the cracks,” said Vinayak Chatterjee, the chairman of CII National Infrastructure Council, a lobbying group that supports India’s development goals.

With Bose out, NIIF’s defenders worry that heavy-handed government oversight could ultimately derail the fund, even though officials can’t directly influence decision-making. Deep-pocketed investors from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to Temasek Holdings Pte are backing NIIF. Missteps jeopardize Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s quest to steer more foreign money into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Though other sovereign funds pump money into India through direct investments, and increasingly in infrastructure and renewables, NIIF represents the first big attempt to develop a capital-raising structure on home soil. Between 2015 and Sept. 2020, NIIF made equity investments of 47 billion rupees ($568 million) and 71 billion rupees of co-investments, according to Indian news reports.

NIIF didn’t respond to a request for comment or updated figures. A finance ministry spokesperson didn’t respond to a text message seeking comment.

Promising Start

The Indian government created NIIF in late 2015 with a clear mandate: maximize economic impact through developing commercially viable projects, both greenfield and brownfield.

Officials envisioned NIIF as a board-run organization that would function like a sovereign equity fund and raise capital for India’s infrastructure sector, which needs over $1 trillion in financing by 2025. The government carved out a 49% stake in NIIF and committed an initial allocation of 200 billion rupees. The fund was expected to raise money from other investors who would jointly own the other 51%.

Bose was also brought in as chief executive. Drawing on a 25-year stint at the International Finance Corporation, where he held a variety of capital-raising and investing roles, Bose helped recruit talent and lock-down institutional investors.

Government officials were instrumental in pitching NIIF to the world, including to a skeptical ADIA. After a five-hour meeting, where concerns from state interference to the quality of investments were discussed, ADIA was ultimately on-boarded, one person familiar with the conversation said.

Other marquee funds eventually joined, including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and Australian Super. Local investors like HDFC Asset Management Company Ltd., ICICI Bank Ltd. and Axis Bank Ltd. also committed capital.

Souring Relations

But the relationship between NIIF and the government took a turn in the last few years. Disagreements about resource allocation deepened during the pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter.

Politicians including Nitin Gadkari, India’s roads and highways minister, complained that money wasn’t flowing to key infrastructure projects. Formal meetings between the two sides were sporadic. Since 2015, the NIIF governing council, which is chaired by India’s finance minister, has convened only five times. The government has recently pushed for more regular meetings.

NIIF’s investments in commercial companies raised eyebrows. The fund’s plan to acquire a stake in FirstCry.com, an e-commerce site for baby products, rankled the government, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal was ultimately scrapped.

Investment in Manipal Hospitals, one of India’s leading hospital chains, prompted similar concerns, since it didn’t directly fit NIIF’s mandate to spend money on projects that attract more resources for a company or sector.

“The issue is that NIIF has tended to look at its investments predominantly through the lens of a private equity fund,” Chatterjee said, even though spending was intended to align with “national economic interest and not be purely commercially return-driven.”

An Uncertain Future

The government is now pushing for more sweeping change. Instead of buying assets from private equity firms, authorities want NIIF to commit to ventures that drive capital into underserved sectors.

At a recent governing council meeting in New Delhi, the government pushed NIIF to support large infrastructure projects like PM Gati Shakti, a $1.2 trillion initiative aimed at digitally linking more than a dozen ministries.

Three NIIF investors said the fund is already delivering on that front. One said over 70% of the capital was, in fact, spent on infrastructure. Another added that private equity returns benefit the largest shareholder, which in this case is the government.

The direction NIIF takes may ultimately rest with Bose’s successor, who is likely to be chosen in early 2023. Three investors, who were not authorized to speak to the media, worried that the fund’s future is increasingly on the line. The morale inside NIIF is low. And they said top talent might leave if the government appoints an outsider rather than someone with investment experience.

NIIF generated 236 million rupees of profits for the fiscal year that ended in March, down from 625 million rupees the previous year, according to an annual general meeting in September. Bose attributed the dip to investments in expanding teams and other “one time charges.”

Amit Goenka, a managing director of Nisus Finance Services Co., said it’s crucial that the government and NIIF overcome “teething troubles” and settle their differences — or risk watching the whole project fizzle.

“NIIF is a key vehicle to finance the narrowing of the wide infrastructure deficit in the country,” he said. “Missteps could affect the government’s lofty ambitions in the sector.”

--With assistance from Anto Antony.

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Texas Judge Rules Teens Need Their Parents' Permission for Birth Control

Kylie Cheung
Thu, December 22, 2022

Photo: Cris Cantón (Getty Images)

It turns out, Texas officials are nowhere near done inflicting all kinds of cruelty on pregnant-capable people in the state: Just days before Christmas, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Trump, ruled that minors should be required to seek parental consent to get birth control because parents have “a fundamental right to control and direct the upbringing” of their minor children.

Already in the state, minors nearly always have to obtain parental consent to get birth control—Title X clinics are the only exception to this, as they aren’t allowed to require parental permission or notify parents about minors getting birth control. Title X is a federal program that offers cost-free and confidential contraception to anyone regardless of age or income. The state has just 176 Title X clinics serving its 254 counties, and teens without access to a car or money to travel may struggle to access them.

But Kacsmaryk’s decision explicitly challenged Title X’s confidentiality policy which allows it to serve minors, arguing it violates the Texas Family Code (which accords parents the “right to consent” to their kids’ “medical and dental care”), and even the 14th Amendment by denying parents’ fundamental rights… to own their children, I guess? Cool!

In Texas, minors who already have kids still need parental permission for birth control, which may contribute to the state having the highest repeat teen birth rate in the nation. But this rule, apparently, still isn’t enough for anti-abortion activists in the state.

Kacsmaryk’s ruling hasn’t yet taken effect as he didn’t issue an injunction to immediately prohibit all minors from getting birth control without parental permission. Per the Texas Tribune, his ruling is expected to be challenged.

Every Body Texas, which oversees Title X in the state, has said in a statement that it’s waiting for guidance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and will continue to provide birth control to minors without parental consent in the meantime. According to the Tribune, most Title X clients in Texas are below the poverty line. Data from Every Body shows about five percent of Title X patients in the state are minors.

This decision from the district court was prompted by a lawsuit from Alexander Deanda, a father of three whose complaint says he’s “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.” Deanda is legally represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general who’s also the architect of the state’s 2021 abortion ban that was enforced by bounty-hunter-like, costly civil lawsuits designed to bankrupt abortion providers. Both seem like a couple of swell dudes.

In a statement provided to Jezebel, Nan Whaley, director of external affairs at the Texas-based youth reproductive justice group Jane’s Due Process (JDP), said the district court ruling “violates young people’s self-determination and bodily autonomy,” at a time when “the demand for birth control skyrocketed amongst young people in the wake of the [Supreme Court’s] decision overturning Roe v. Wade.”

Whaley says the decision will carry disparate harm for Texas teens thanks to Texas’ abortion ban and young people’s “especially limited ability to travel out-of-state for care,” all while JDP “hears from thousands of Texas teens a year who want information on birth control access.” According to Whaley, the parental permission requirement specifically excludes teens with trusted adults in their life who may not be their parents, and, of course, excludes all the many teens with parents who don’t support their reproductive decisions.

Earlier this year, I talked to Anna, a 21-year-old organizer with JDP who sought the group’s help to get an abortion in Texas at 17 years old. Prior to the state’s near-total abortion bans, a Texas law required minors to get parental permission or special permission from a judge (judicial bypass) to get an abortion. She said she only became pregnant after she wasn’t able to get birth control and was denied Plan B due to the state’s varying restrictions.

“All the adults that had the power to help me used it against me, and put me in a position where I would be forced to become a mother,” Anna told Jezebel. Her story is a gutting reminder of what’s at stake for teens in the state post-Roe, and with anti-abortion extremists like Kacsmaryk packing the courts.

Jezebel

Rand Paul Blocks Bill That Would Ensure New Moms Are Allowed to Breastfeed at Work

Kylie Cheung
Thu, December 22, 2022 

Photo: Anna Moneymaker (Getty Images)

UPDATE at 4:10 pm: The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act passed the Senate on Thursday afternoon, through an amendment vote to add it to the 2023 government funding bill. It passed by a 92-5 margin. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), and Patrick Toomey (R-Penn.) voted against it.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act also passed the Senate on Thursday after being blocked earlier this month when Democratic senators sought to pass it through unanimous consent. Like the PUMP Act, it was added to the year-end funding package by a 73-24 vote, with 24 Republican senators blocking the bill, which guarantees bathroom breaks for pregnant workers.

EARLIER: Earlier this month, Senate Republicans—many of whom have endorsed a federal 15-week abortion ban, which would force people to stay pregnant against their will—blocked a bill to let pregnant workers take bathroom breaks without being fired. And on Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blocked a bill to ensure new parents are allowed to breastfeed on the job.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act and sought unanimous consent for the Senate to vote on the bipartisan bill, which would allow it to pass through the chamber swiftly. But Paul decided to block a vote on the PUMP Act because Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), the sponsor of the bill, didn’t include Paul’s amendment that would study the impact of increased regulations on businesses, a source familiar with his decision told Jezebel. Paul did not provide a comment.

On the Senate floor on Tuesday, Murray called the bill a matter of “common sense and basic human decency.”

“This is really straightforward. When new moms return to work, they should have the time and space they need to pump and breastfeed their baby,” Murray said. Speaking on the Senate floor, the Washington senator said the PUMP Act would have extended protections for breastfeeding while at work to about nine million potentially nursing working parents. The bill would close a loophole in the 2010 Break Time for Nursing Mothers Law, which mostly only covers hourly workers and excludes most salaried occupations, per the Economic Policy Institute.

Murray and Merkley’s bill would also ensure nursing workers receive reasonable break time and a private place to pump, and if they lose their jobs for pumping while working, they’ll have the rights to back pay and reinstatement.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) had previously blocked the PUMP Act in August, claiming employers in the transportation industry wouldn’t be able to provide these accommodations and that the bill would somehow further hurt the supply chain amid an ongoing baby formula shortage. That a Republican is again blocking the PUMP Act, which senators reportedly hoped would pass before the holidays, is pretty much in line with what we’ve seen from anti-abortion lawmakers post-Roe v. Wade. Earlier this month, Paul joined Tillis in opposing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which affords pregnant workers basic protections like bathroom and water breaks, inexplicably equating the bill with “abortion on demand.” It’s almost as if Republicans want to force people to give birth and then refuse to give them one ounce of protection or support once they do.


Tillis claimed companies would somehow misuse the law to give workers paid time off for abortions (which sounds great!), citing how some companies have offered coverage of abortion-related costs—which wouldn’t have happened were it not for Republicans’ abortion bans. As the adage goes, the cruelty is the point—but it increasingly seems like the stupidity is too.

Jezebel