Comet to Approach Earth for First Time since Neanderthals Lived

Story by Aristos Georgiou • Friday

A comet that only orbits the sun once every 50,000 years is expected to be visible from Earth with the naked eye. The last time the comet visited, the Sahara desert was wet and fertile, Neanderthals and woolly mammoths still walked the Earth, and humans were—as far as we know—yet to reach North America.


Stock image: An illustration of a comet. A recently discovered comet could become visible with the naked eye from Earth soon.© iStock

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was first spotted by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) on March 2, 2022 and is set to reach its closest point to the sun, or perihelion, on January 12, 2023. ZTF is an astronomical survey conducted by the Palomar Observatory in California.

Comets are "cosmic snowballs" made up of frozen gases, dust and rock that orbit the sun. As they approach our star, these fragile constructs are blasted with increasing amounts of radiation, a process that can produce two vast tails of gas and dust.

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is currently located around 117 million milesfrom Earth. It is scheduled to make a close approach to our planet in early February, 2023, coming within roughly 26 million miles of us on the first day of the month. This is equivalent to more than 109 times the average distance between the Earth and the moon.

Predicting the brightness of comets with accuracy is very challenging. But current data indicates that C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is expected to reach at least magnitude +6 by around the time of its close approach to Earth.

When measuring the brightness of astronomical objects, the brighter a given object is, the lower its magnitude. For example, an object with magnitude +2 is brighter than one that has a magnitude of +8.

"It's notoriously hard to predict the brightness of comets, however, sky watchers everywhere have been keeping track of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) since it was discovered in March 2022, and the current prediction is that it might reach magnitude +6—the limit of what the naked eye can see—or even slightly brighter when it's at its closest approach to the Earth on the 1st of February," Tania de Sales Marques, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in the United Kingdom, told Newsweek.

Robert Massey, deputy executive director of the U.K. Royal Astronomical Society, told Newsweek under very good conditions the comet, which is estimated to complete one orbit around the sun every 50,000 years, might be visible to the naked eye as soon as the second half of January. The predicted peak brightness of the object is around magnitude 4.7 around February 1.


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If current brightness predictions are correct, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) will be the first naked eye comet since NEOWISE put on a spectacular show in 2020. But expectations for C/2022 E3 (ZTF) should be lower, Massey said.

"I've seen rising interest in this comet, though it won't be anything like NEOWISE," he said.

C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is currently visible with good binoculars or a telescope in the early hours of the morning before dawn and is passing through the constellation of Corona Borealis, in the north-west direction. It will get easier to spot the comet over the next few weeks as it gradually brightens.

"It's traveling in the general direction of Polaris, the North Star, where we'll be able to find it in early February," Marques said. "By then, it should be visible throughout the night."

Massey said the comet will not be the easiest object to find. He recommends looking on a clear night from a dark site—away from light pollution—when the moon is not in the sky, so it is best to avoid the days around the full moon on February 6.

"I would recommend the use of a finder chart like this one to help find it with binoculars," Massey said. "Binoculars are ideal for beginners trying to find a comet as they're easy to use, whereas a telescope has a much smaller field of view. If you can see it with binoculars then try with your naked eye."

Since the comet will still be quite faint around the time of its close approach, people in areas with dark skies might be able to spot it with their own eyes, but a pair of binoculars will improve your chances of success, Marques said.

"Although it's unlikely that it will be as impressive as comet NEOWISE, it's still worth trying to catch a glimpse of C/2022 E3 (ZTF) since it won't return for another 50,000 years," Marques said.

The comet will likely fade below naked eye visibility by the second week of February next year. And by April it will be close to the sun in the sky and significantly fainter, so will be very hard to find even with a telescope.

The countries launching missions to the Moon and beyond in 2023

Fri, December 23, 2022 

Picture of nose cone of Artemis-i SLS rocket and Orion capsule on launch gantry with moon above

In 2023, Russia, India and the European Space Agency will be launching missions to the Moon, and further into deep space.

This follows Nasa's Artemis I mission, which recently made a lunar orbit, using a spacecraft designed to put people back on the Moon's surface.
Who is launching missions to the Moon?

India plans to launch the Chandrayaan 3 mission to the Moon in June 2023, taking a landing module and robotic rover to explore the surface. India first reached the moon in 2008 with Chandrayaan 1.

Russia plans to launch its Luna 25 mission in July 2023, putting a probe on the Moon to gather samples from its southern polar region.


SpaceX plans to take Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and eight other passengers on the dearMoon voyage around the Moon in late 2023. This would be the first mission for its Starship vehicle, which is capable of carrying 100 people.

Starship after separation from rocket

Nasa, the United States space agency, plans to launch its next Moon mission in 2024. Called Artemis II, it will take astronauts to orbit the Moon.

The US Agency is due to launch the Artemis III mission in 2025 or 2026, landing the first woman and the first person of colour on the Moon.

It will be the first time that people have walked on the Moon since the last of Nasa's Apollo missions in 1972. Nasa has said it will use the Space X Starship for the mission.

China has announced plans with Russia to set up a joint base on the Moon by 2035, but no timeline has been drawn up for the project.

Nasa outlines plan for first woman on Moon

Nasa expects human habitats on Moon this decade

China and Russia to build lunar space station

Why are nations going back to the Moon?

The aim of space powers, such as the US, Russia and China, is to set up bases on the Moon for astronauts to live in, says Dr McDowell, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the US.

"The Moon is being used as a stepping stone to places like Mars," he says. "It's a great place to test out deep space technologies."

It also takes less fuel to launch a spacecraft from the Moon than from Earth to travel into deep space, says Dr Lucinda King, space project manager at the University of Portsmouth.

And, she adds, a fuel source has been discovered on the Moon.

The Moon's southern polar region contains an estimated 600 billion kilograms of water ice

"It's known there's water at the south pole of the Moon," says Dr King. "This could be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen, which could be used to refuel craft for journeys to Mars and elsewhere."

"That's one reason why there's a rush to get back to the Moon - to stake a claim to the water there."

Water ice 'detected on Moon's surface'

Water on the Moon could sustain a lunar base

What other space missions are planned in 2023?

Nasa will launch its Psyche spacecraft in summer 2023 to explore an asteroid called 16 Psyche, thought to be the remnant of a planet created in the earliest days of the solar system.

The European Space Agency (Esa), an organisation backed by 22 European countries, plans to launch its Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) in April 2023.

The probe will look for signs of life in the water ice believed to lie under the surface of three of Jupiter's moons - Ganymede, Callistro and Europa.

However, in protest at Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Esa will no longer use a Russian rocket to put its Euclid space telescope into orbit next year. It will instead use a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

It has also stopped working with Russia on its ExoMars mission to send a rover to Mars, delaying the launch until 2028.

China plans to put a telescope called Xuntian into low Earth orbit in December 2023, to map distant stars and black holes.

It has already landed probes and robotic rovers on the Moon and Mars, and it has put a scientific research station into space, called Tiangong.

China's Tiangong, or "Heavenly Palace", space station will carry out scientific research

"There's been a vision emerging in recent years of humanity spanning out to Mars and beyond," says Dr McDowell.

That is why countries like China and India have become space powers in recent years, alongside the US, Russia and Europe, he says.

"Their governments are thinking: if that's what the future looks like, we don't want our country to be left behind."

Mexico's newest oil refinery now seen working at half capacity in mid-2023


Mexico's Pemex inaugurates Dos Bocas refinery


Fri, December 23, 2022
By Adriana Barrera

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican state oil company Pemex's newest refinery will reach half of its crude processing capacity in July, the national president said on Friday, marking the latest shift in timing for the project's operations.

The Olmeca oil refinery, being built next to the Dos Bocas port, is set to be Pemex's eighth when it comes on line. It is key to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's plan to make the country self-sufficient in gasoline and diesel, ending longstanding heavy dependence on imports, mainly from U.S. refiners.

Describing the construction of the refinery in his home state, Tabasco, as having happened in "world record time," Lopez Obrador said "on July 1, it will begin to process 170,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil."

By September 15, the day before Mexican Independence Day, it would process its full capacity of 340,000 bpd and yield 280,000 bpd of gasoline and diesel, Lopez Obrador said, posting on Twitter.

The president did not specify whether the refinery would produce gasoline or diesel before July 1 or whether the date would mark the first barrels of crude processed there.

Last July, at the Gulf Coast facility's symbolic inauguration, Energy Minister Rocio Nahle said the first barrel of fuel from Olmeca would be produced this month, December.

The president has put run Pemex at the center of his energy agenda, even as critics have questioned the economic logic of the new facility, the cost of which was initially budgeted at about $8 billion but has since ballooned to more than $15.4 billion.

The Olmeca refinery has been one of the leftist president's signature public works projects since he took office in late 2018. He initially said it would begin producing this year.

(Reporting by Adriana Barrera; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Bradley Perrett)

Hyundai Is Now the World's Third-Largest Carmaker

José Rodríguez Jr.
Thu, December 22, 2022 

Photo: Hyuundai

Hyundai is now the third largest automaker in the world by volume, behind only Volkswagen and Toyota, which are often at odds for first and second place among the biggest car companies in the world. In a little over half a century, the South Korean carmaker has leapt over American auto giant General Motors, as well as the multinational conglomerate Stellantis, according to Bloomberg.

The company’s steady growth stalled in 2020 during the global pandemic, but so did everyone else’s; the auto industry as a whole took a big hit, but grading on a curve, Hyundai was not far behind its rivals. Then in 2021, Hyundai saw production and sales increase, and it closed out the year with 6.6 million cars sold. Volkswagen sold 8.9 million cars that year, while Toyota sold 10.5 million.

While Hyundai is still far from Toyota, the carmaker has borrowed a page from Toyota’s playbook, and leveraged its production and manufacturing strengths to grow. Hyundai’s CEO explained it this way to Bloomberg:

“We are on the right track, and this year we were very strong,” President and co-Chief Executive Officer Jaehoon Chang, 58, said in an interview from a library at Hyundai’s Seoul headquarters last week. “Our supply chain management was key. We’re trying to be flexible, and optimize and protect production as much as we can in spite of the chip shortage.”

Hyundai currently operates the largest auto assembly plant in the world. Hyundai’s Ulsan Plant in South Korea has five smaller plants built into the complex and its own shipment dock. Bloomberg says Hyundai’s conglomerate expands to the production of steel used to make the cars at Ulsan, as well as the steel used to make the shipping vessels that ferry the company’s cars abroad.

Jack Donaghy called that vertical integration. Of course, volume and sales figures for 2022 have yet to be tallied in full, but Hyundai is on track to make 21 percent more revenue than in 2021, or about $108 billion overall; Bloomberg claims that’s the highest average growth rate among major automakers.

That means Hyundai could easily keep it’s place among the top three biggest carmakers, and it’s partially thanks to its popularity in North America. The U.S., Canada and Mexico accounted for 21 percent of Hyundai’s sales last year, which is notably more than the 17 percent of from its home market in South Korea.

Photo: Hyuundai

It took Hyundai just 55 years after being founded to outpace General Motors, and the carmaker’s popularity in the U.S. had a lot to do with its growth.

Hyundai is expecting that popularity to keep growing in America — although recent accusations that the company has broken labor laws could change that. Barring that, the company is betting billions through investments and a possible EV plant in the U.S. as it moves on to its new EVs, including the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Ioniq 6 and Kia EV6. Hyundai is vying for Ford’s place as the second-biggest EV seller in the U.S., behind only Tesla.

The company is also challenging luxury marques like Mercedes-Benz and BMW with its Genesis brand, which has brought the carmaker a long way from it’s economy vehicle roots. China’s carmakers are usually seen as the upcoming challengers to Japanese, European and American auto giants, but it looks like it was South Korea’s carmakers all along.

Photo: Hyuundai

Jalopnik

IRS Routinely Audited Obama and Biden, Raising Questions Over Delays for Trump

Charlie Savage and Alan Rappeport
Thu, December 22, 2022

The House Ways and Means Committee holds a meeting, where it voted to make six years of former President Donald Trump's tax returns public, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 20, 2022. 

(Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — The IRS subjected President Donald Trump’s predecessor and his successor to annual audits of their tax returns once they took office, spokespeople for Barack Obama and President Joe Biden said Wednesday, intensifying questions about how Trump escaped such scrutiny until Democrats in the House started inquiring.

Late Tuesday, a House committee revealed that the IRS failed to audit Trump during his first two years in office despite a rule that states that “the individual tax returns for the president and the vice president are subject to mandatory review.” But its report left unclear whether that lapse reflected general dysfunction or whether Trump received special treatment.

The disclosure of routine audits of Obama and Biden during their time in office suggested that the agency’s treatment of Trump was an aberration.

“I’m absolutely flabbergasted,” said Nina E. Olson, the national taxpayer advocate from 2001 to 2019. “It’s disturbing. You have a process where you’re auditing the president, you better be auditing the president.”

Reports issued by the House Ways and Means Committee, which obtained Trump’s tax data last month after a yearslong legal battle, said the IRS initiated its first audit of one of his filings as president in April 2019, the same day that Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the committee’s chair, had inquired about the matter.

The IRS has yet to complete that audit, the report added, and the agency started auditing filings covering Trump’s income while president only after he left office. Even after the agency belatedly started looking, it assigned only a single agent to examine Trump’s returns, going up against a large team of lawyers and accountants who objected when the IRS added two more people to help.

The committee’s discovery that the IRS flouted its rules is bringing new scrutiny to concerns about potential politicization at the IRS during the Trump administration and spurring calls for the inspector general who oversees the agency to investigate what went wrong. It has also raised questions about why the IRS devoted so few resources to auditing Trump, who, as a business mogul, had far more complicated tax filings than any previous president.

Under Trump, the IRS was run for most of 2017 by a commissioner appointed by Obama, John Koskinen, and — after about 11 months being overseen by an acting head, David J. Kautter — a successor appointed by Trump, Charles P. Rettig. None ensured that the agency followed its rules requiring presidential audits.

Rettig, who left in October, said in an email Wednesday evening that he did not attempt to intervene in Trump’s audit.

“I am not aware of any taxpayer receiving special treatment at any time, before or during my term as commissioner,” he said. “Further, at no time did I make, nor am I aware that anyone else made, any decision to somehow limit resources available to conduct examinations under the mandatory examination process.”

He added: “I had no involvement in the process of selecting for examination or the conduct of an examination of any return regarding any taxpayer.”

Koskinen said that his only involvement in Trump’s tax returns was working to ensure that they were kept in a secure location.

“The good thing about being commissioner is that you never know who is being audited,” Koskinen said, adding that it would have been inappropriate to ask about the status of any examination.

Kautter did not respond to a request for comment.

The committee’s reports left many questions unanswered given that it had little time to act: While Neal had sought Trump’s tax records since 2019, Trump fought that request for nearly four years. The Ways and Means Committee only received access to the information last month, with Republicans set to take control of the House in January.

Spokespeople and associates of several other former presidents over the past three decades either did not respond Wednesday to queries about whether those presidents had been audited every year they were in office or said they did not recall.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, on Wednesday called the House panel’s findings a “blockbuster” that required further attention.

“The IRS was asleep at the wheel, and the presidential audit program is broken,” he said. “There is no justification for the failure to conduct the required presidential audits until a congressional inquiry was made.”

The IRS has already been the subject of repeated controversy.

The New York Times reported this year that the IRS had initiated particularly invasive audits of two of Trump’s perceived enemies, former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe. Trump also repeatedly told his chief of staff that he wanted his perceived rivals, including those two, to face tax investigations.

Despite the low odds of both being singled out, an inspector general’s report concluded that both had been randomly selected for the initial pools from which the agency drew to carry out the examinations. But it is unclear how the IRS made final selections from those pools.

In 2019, Trump raised eyebrows by telling Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, to prioritize a confirmation vote for a longtime associate, Michael J. Desmond, as general counsel of the IRS over the nomination of William Barr as attorney general. Desmond had advised a subsidiary of the Trump Organization and worked with two of its tax lawyers.

And in 2018, Trump appointed as commissioner Rettig, who had written a Forbes column in 2016 defending Trump’s refusal to release his taxes as a candidate and portrayed the IRS as fully engaged in auditing very wealthy people.

“Teams of sophisticated tax advisers were likely engaged throughout Trump’s career to assure the absence of any ‘bombshell’ within the returns,” Rettig wrote. “His returns might actually be somewhat unremarkable but for the fact they are the returns of Donald Trump.”

In fact, the few glimpses of Trump’s taxes have shown much to talk about. The Trump Organization was convicted of a tax fraud scheme this month. The New York attorney general has sued Trump and three of his children, accusing them of fraudulently overvaluing his assets.

The Times gained access to years of his tax information and published a report in September 2020 that raised numerous questions about the legality of write-offs and deductions he had used to avoid paying any taxes most years. The article prompted the IRS to consider looking at Trump’s 2017 tax returns, the committee report said.

The IRS has had scant resources for years because Republicans have sought to cut its funding. The report highlighted the agency’s broader struggles in dealing with complicated tax returns filed by wealthy people and criticized its willingness to trust that returns filed by big accounting firms contained accurate information.

Congress has approved an $80 billion overhaul of the IRS intended in part to hire more specialists capable of auditing high-income filers.

The committee released the reports after a party-line vote, exercising a rarely used power to obtain and make public any U.S. taxpayer’s private information.

Congress invoked it in 1974, when a committee released a report about President Richard M. Nixon’s taxes after a scandal about whether he was underpaying what he owed. That scandal led the IRS in 1977 to create its rule mandating audits of presidents and vice presidents, ensuring that agency officials are not put in the awkward position of deciding whether to audit their boss.

The Ways and Means Committee again used that authority in 2014, when Republicans accused the IRS of political discrimination because it used conservative terms like “tea party” when selecting groups to scrutinize for political activities that would make them ineligible to receive tax-deductible donations. But an inspector general determined that the agency had also used liberal terms, like “progressive” and “occupy,” for the same purpose.

Commissioners of the agency are political appointees of presidents. Koskinen — who had also run the agency several of the years that it was routinely auditing Obama — was not the only one to say he avoided involvement in presidential audits.

Charles O. Rossotti, who served as IRS commissioner from 1997 to 2002, said that he was aware that presidents were audited as a matter of practice but that he played no role in the process.

“I kept away from that with a 10-foot pole,” Rossotti said.

The requirement that presidential returns be audited is included in the tax agency’s Internal Review Manual, which offers few details. A 2019 IRS document accompanying the committee report said the examinations were conducted by experienced revenue agents.

“The IRS is not aware of any reports of improper bias or partiality in the conduct of an officeholder’s examination in the more than 40-year history of the mandatory procedures,” it said.

The House committee report also documented an extraordinary lack of resources the IRS dedicated to auditing Trump’s returns when it belatedly started doing so, initially assigning just one staff member to the matter despite the unusual complexity of his business entities and partnerships.

The committee cited internal IRS memos stating that “it is not possible to obtain the resources available to examine all potential issues” raised by the more than 400 pass-through entities cited in Trump’s taxes.

“To do a thorough review of these returns, we would need a team much larger than the current team,” it said.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

SIR KEIR KEEPS PURGING THE LEFT
Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘Jewish liaison officer’ expelled by Labour in anti-Semitism row

Dominic Penna
Fri, December 23, 2022 

Jeremy Corbyn Heather Mendick Labour anti-Semitism - Geoff Pugh for The Telegraph/YouTube/Heather Mendick

A woman appointed by Jeremy Corbyn to rebuild Labour’s relations with the Jewish community has been expelled by the party after accusations she “undermined” its fight against anti-Semitism.

Heather Mendick, who is Jewish, was appointed as a stakeholder officer by the former opposition leader in spring 2019, working one day a week liaising with the Jewish community.

Labour’s investigation into Ms Mendick lasted more than a year and found that she broke party rules in a number of tweets sent at the height of the party’s anti-Semitism crisis that she subsequently refused to apologise for.

On her suspension, the party had said her behaviour “undermines the party’s ability to campaign against racism, and/or makes mendacious, dehumanising, demonising or stereotypical allegations about Jews... and/or may reasonably be seen to involve anti-Semitic actions, stereotypes and sentiments”.

Ms Mendick’s comments included a tweet that read: “The weaponisation of anti-Semitism against the Left and how it is used to silence criticism of Israel are well-rehearsed.”

In Aug 2018, she claimed the row in the party “was neither a rational not a proportionate response to incidences [sic] of anti-Semitism”, while a tweet in Jan 2019 said: “The false narrative of anti-Semitism being rife in Labour needed to be challenged from the start.”

In a post the following month, she said: “Key [Labour] people said there’s a big problem and education’s needed. This supported the narrative of those weaponising anti-Semitism.”

Ms Mendick was also found to have disclosed “confidential matters” by publicly sharing the detailed investigation notices she was sent last year, which set out the accusations against her.

During a 25-minute video posted on YouTube this week, she said: “I feel relieved. The Labour Party is a cesspit. It’s been tiring to be a member in these circumstances, and I don’t have to do that anymore. In fact, I can’t do that anymore.”

Ms Mendick told The Telegraph: “This is not just about me. So many people I know who worked really hard for the Labour Party, often giving years of their lives to it, are being treated appallingly by the party we loved.”

Mr Corbyn was suspended from Labour in 2020 after refusing to retract his claims that anti-Semitism in the party was “dramatically overstated” for political reasons.

An Equality and Human Rights Commission report examined the situation under his leadership identified serious failings in addressing anti-Semitism and an inadequate process for handling complaints.

The Labour Party confirmed Ms Mendick’s expulsion, but declined to comment further.

Pope's vicar for Rome seeks full truth about Jesuit abuse

The Vatican came under pressure Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022, to explain why it didn’t prosecute a famous Jesuit artist and merely let his order restrict the priest's ministry following allegations that he abused his authority over adult women. Mosiacs by Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik decorate several churches and chapels, including the Lourdes basilica. (AP Photo/Bob Edme, File)More


NICOLE WINFIELD
Fri, December 23, 2022 

ROME (AP) — The pope’s vicar for Rome called Friday for the full truth to come out about a famous Jesuit priest accused of sexual and spiritual abuses against adult women, and said he was evaluating what to do with the priest’s Rome-based community and diocesan positions.

Cardinal Angelo De Donatis became the latest church official to weigh in about the scandal involving the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik, a sought-after artist, preacher and retreat leader whose mosaics grace churches and basilicas around the world. In Rome, where the Slovene priest has lived since the mid-1990s, Rupnik decorated the diocesan seminary chapel as well as the Redemptoris Mater chapel inside the Vatican.

Technically speaking De Donatis, who is Pope Francis' day-to-day manager for the Rome diocese, has little direct oversight over Rupnik because he is a Jesuit and reports to his immediate Jesuit superior. But in an indication of his influence in the pope's diocese, Rupnik was also rector of an important Rome church and is a member of the diocesan arts council — two jobs that De Donatis said Friday were now up being evaluated.

The scandal involving Rupnik erupted earlier this month when Italian blogs and websites reported claims by several women that Rupnik sexually, spiritually and psychologically abused them while they were living as consecrated women in a Jesuit-affiliated community in Slovenia in the 1990s.

The Jesuits initially insisted there was a single allegation lodged against him in 2021 that the Vatican’s sex abuse office shelved because it was too old to prosecute. Only under questioning did the Jesuits acknowledge that Rupnik was convicted and excommunicated a year earlier for committing one of the most serious crimes in the church — using the confessional to absolve someone with whom he had engaged in sexual activity. That charge stemmed from 2015, while Rupnik was in Rome, and included allegations of false mysticism that apparently weren't prosecuted.

The Jesuits subsequently acknowledged that the 2021 case actually involved allegations by nine women.

The case has become problematic for both the Vatican and the Jesuits because many questions remain unanswered, including what role, if any, Pope Francis had in a case involving a famous fellow Jesuit. In addition, the Vatican's sex abuse office hasn't explained why it didn't waive the statute of limitations to prosecute the 2021 allegations, given it routinely makes such exceptions for abuse-related cases, and given the prior conviction for a grave, confession-related crime.

The Jesuits say Rupnik has been under restricted ministry since 2019, and he is now barred from hearing confessions, giving spiritual direction or leading spiritual exercises. But the enforcement of those restrictions seems questionable; Rupnik is still scheduled to lead spiritual exercises in February at the Loreto shrine on Italy’s Adriatic coast, according to the Loreto website.

In a statement Friday, De Donatis said the diocese would provide “every support necessary” to both help the victims heal and to “lead as far as possible to the full light and truth about what happened.”

He also warned that he might have to take unspecified action at Rupnik’s Aletti Center, an art studio and study center that concentrates on the interaction of culture and the Christian faith. The community, which has a strong following, is currently overseen by the diocese of Rome but is also under the Jesuits' Rome superior.

PRINCIPLED STAND

Ocasio-Cortez only Democrat to vote ‘no’ on spending package




Mychael Schnell
Fri, December 23, 2022 


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) was the only House Democrat to vote against a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package on Friday, voting “no” on the measure because of increased funding for defense and federal agencies that oversee immigration.

The House passed the sprawling measure in a 225-201-1 vote, sending the bill to President Biden’s desk. The Senate passed the bill in a bipartisan 68-29 vote on Thursday.

In a statement Friday afternoon, Ocasio-Cortez said she was concerned about funding in the bill for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in addition to the $858 billion in defense spending.

“I campaigned on a promise to my constituents: to oppose additional expansion and funding for ICE and DHS — particularly in the absence of long-overdue immigration reform. For that reason, as well as the dramatic increase in defense spending which exceeds even President Biden’s request, I voted no on today’s omnibus bill,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

The appropriations bill passed by Congress includes $8.42 billion for ICE, which is $161.1 million more than what was enacted in 2022 and $319.4 million more than what the president requested.

DHS received $86.5 billion in discretionary resources.

Ocasio-Cortez said the “dramatic increase” in spending for those two agencies “cut[s] against the promises our party has made to immigrant communities across the country,” adding that it is the case “especially in light of the lack of progress on DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], TPS [Temporary Protected Status], and expanding paths to citizenship.”

The New York Democrat was not the only member of the caucus to not vote for the omnibus package: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) voted present. The Hill reached out to the congresswoman for comment on her vote.

Ocasio-Cortez also took issue with the process by which Congress funded the government for the rest of the fiscal year. Typically, the chambers will vote on appropriations bills for each agency. This year, however, appropriators opted for a single omnibus package to fund all corners of the government.

“From the beginning of this negotiation, we made clear to Democratic leadership that we must keep the practice of voting on funding bills by agency — particularly controversial agencies like DHS — so that Members would not be forced to betray one part of their district in service of expediency,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We were successful in this approach last year, and looked forward to supporting such a package this year.”

The congresswoman touted provisions included in the omnibus that she helped craft — including an increase in the National Labor Relations Board and funding for community projects in her district — but said she could not vote for them because of her overarching concerns with the bill.

“These victories and many more – such as the inclusion of PUMP [Providing Urgent Maternal Protections] and PWFA [Pregnant Workers Fairness] Acts – are hard-fought wins that we proudly support and would proudly vote for. But tying these provisions to dramatic increases in surveillance, border patrol forces, and militarized spending after years of deeply disturbing misconduct and lack of any meaningful accountability is decision we find deeply objectionable,” she said.

“Our constituents have made clear that they would like to see objections to these measures represented in Congress, and that is what I will do,” she added.

Here's what's in the new $53B retirement bill now headed to President Biden's desk

Ben Werschkul

·Washington Correspondent

Fri, December 23, 2022 

Nestled inside the $1.7 trillion government spending bill, which has passed Congress and is headed to President Biden's desk for a signature, is a suite of significant reforms to the private retirement system.

The changes to come will push businesses to get more of their employees enrolled in savings plans and also give current retirees a break. The bill also has provisions that help people saddled with student loans, military spouses, part-time workers who are eager to save for retirement.

Many of the changes — totaling $53 billion — begin next year with supporters hoping it will help avert what many call a burgeoning retirement savings crisis in the U.S., especially among poorer Americans who are too often left out of the system altogether.

“This is historic,” House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA) said on Thursday, adding that the new rules will help provide Americans with “considerable independence down the road.”

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA). (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)

Neal was one of many lawmakers behind the bill alongside figures like Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), and others. The bill was finalized over two years of debate across multiple congressional committees in what all sides are hailing as a model of bipartisanship.

“As the economy deals with the effects of the worst inflation in nearly 40 years, working families need all the help they can get when it comes to saving for the next chapter in their lives and we are now one step closer to making that possible,” Sen Rob Portman (R-OH) added this week.

Here are a few of the key provisions from the bill.

Breaks for current savers

The bill is a follow up to 2019’s SECURE Act, which represented the first major retirement legislation since 2006.

One closely watched provision will change the age when people must start taking mandatory distributions from their private retirement plans. The SECURE Act increased the so-called RMDs from age 70 to its current level of 72. Now, the requirement will rise again to 73 starting on Jan. 1, 2023 and then up to 75 in 2033.

The new rules reflect the fact that Americans are living longer and increasing the age allows them to hold their money tax free for longer and keep earning returns.

The Senate Finance committee - led by Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and ranking member Mike Crapo (R-ID) held retirement hearing this summer to push the legislation forward. (Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Some want Congress to go even further in the years ahead. Rep. Brady said in 2020, during an event simulcast on Yahoo Finance, that “my goal is to get rid of it completely.”

The bill also increases the so-called “catch-up” contributions that are allowed for older savers who are behind on savings and want to put extra money away in their final working years. Those provisions will kick in in 2024.

Provisions to get more people to save

Another giant swath of the bill includes a variety of attempts to prod businesses to get more people enrolled into retirement plans.

The key provision, according to many lawmakers, is the new rule around automatic enrollment.

It is the first section of the bill and will mandate businesses to automatically sign up new employees for the employer-sponsored a retirement plan (if one is offered) as part of the onboarding process. The rule would take effect in 2025 and would apply to businesses that offer a 401(k) or 403(b) plan.

New hires could opt out, but the default would be savings. Studies have shown that employers with auto-enrollment retirement plans have much higher rates of participation.

“We've decided to begin with automatic enrollment and make it difficult to opt out,” Rep. Neal said. “I think automatic enrollment is a big deal for eligible participants.”

There are also a host of sections in the bill focused on small businesses, which have a harder time offering retirement plans because of their size. These employers will access to startup tax credits and new inducements to pool their resources into multi-employer plans in the years ahead.

The bill also aims to help part-time employees at companies of all sizes. These employees often have to wait three years before they can enroll in a retirement plan. The new rules lessen the wait to two years beginning in 2025.

All told, Chris Littlefield, the president of retirement and income solutions at Principal, estimates that "SECURE 2.0 will help generate approximately $40 billion in retirement savings for new participants over the next 10 years."

Novel ideas around student loans and emergency savings

Also in the bill is treating student loans as deferrals for the purpose of retirement savings. What that means in practice is that student loans and retirement savings will now effectively be linked if an employer chooses to offer the benefit.

Beginning in 2024, an employee could pay their student loan, but in the process earn a “match” from their employer with that money heading into a 401(k) or 403(b) or SIMPLE IRA account.

There is also a similar idea in the bill around linking retirement and emergency savings. Employers could offer their employees an option of putting money into an emergency fund alongside their retirement account. Employees would be able to save up to $2,500 in an emergency fund — which they can tap anytime — with extra savings and possible matches going toward retirement.

Student loan debt holders take part in a demonstration outside of the White House in July. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million)

Another part of the bill would make it easier for people to access their existing retirement plans for emergencies without paying the onerous tax penalties that often come with withdrawing early. The bill provides an “exception for certain distributions used for emergency expenses,” according to a summary of the legislation.

“I’ve heard from so many people who had to raid savings meant for the future, not to mention countless others who have never had access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan," Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the chair of the Senate’s HELP committee, said this week. “That’s why these reforms are so important.”

As for the big picture, “there's some folks that have been left on the sidelines of the retirement savings game,” American Council of Life Insurers Vice President Kathleen Coulombe recently told Yahoo Finance Live. She represents one of many outside groups that helped push the bill over the finish line.

“It really seeks to help a lot of these vulnerable populations,” she said.

Other notable parts of the soon-to-be law

Other changes coming soon include updates to the SAVERS credit to make it more generous and increase awareness of the benefit. The credit allows certain lower-income workers to get additional tax breaks when they save for retirement.

Another provision aims to make it easier for military spouses who sometimes are not employed long enough to be eligible to save to quickly join a workplace savings plan when they enter or re-enter the workforce. The provision also offers a tax credit of up to $500 to help these spouses jumpstart their savings.

Another top-line provision would create a national “lost and found” database run by the Department of Labor for retirement accounts. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) pushed this provision alongside Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), and she said this week that the provision will “make it easier for Americans to keep track of their retirement savings and for employers to connect their former employees with the accounts they have left behind.”

What the bill won’t address is the challenge of Social Security, which could run low on funds as early as 2034. But lawmakers have long been wary of any changes to Social Security itself, often referred to as “the third rail of American politics.”

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

Suddenly Everyone Is Hunting for Alternatives to the US Dollar

Michelle Jamrisko and Ruth Carson
Thu, December 22, 2022 

Tired of a too-strong and newly weaponized greenback, some of the world’s biggest economies are exploring ways to circumvent the US currency.

Smaller nations, including at least a dozen in Asia, are also experimenting with de-dollarization. And corporates around the world are selling an unprecedented portion of their debt in local currencies, wary of further dollar strength.

No one is saying the greenback will be dethroned anytime soon from its reign as the principal medium of exchange. Calls for “peak dollar” have many times proven premature. But not too long ago it was almost unthinkable for countries to explore payment mechanisms that bypassed the US currency or the SWIFT network that underpins the global financial system.

Now, the sheer strength of the dollar, its use under President Joe Biden to enforce sanctions on Russia this year and new technological innovations are together encouraging nations to start chipping away at its hegemony. Treasury officials declined to comment on these developments.

“This will simply intensify the efforts in Russia and China to try to manage their part of the world economy without the dollar,” said Paul Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England in a Bloomberg podcast.

Writing in a newsletter last week, John Mauldin, an investment strategist and president of Millennium Wave Advisors with more than three decades of markets experience said the Biden administration made an error in weaponizing the US dollar and the global payment system.

“That will force non-US investors and nations to diversify their holdings outside of the traditional safe haven of the US,” said Mauldin.

Bilateral Payments

Plans already underway in Russia and China to promote their currencies for international payments, including through the use of blockchain technologies, accelerated rapidly after the invasion of Ukraine. Russia, for example, began seeking remuneration for energy supplies in rubles.

Soon, the likes of Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Laos were also stepping up negotiations with China to boost their use of the yuan. India began talking up more loudly the internationalization of the rupee and just this month, started securing a bilateral payment mechanism with the United Arab Emirates.

Progress however appears to be slow. Yuan accounts haven’t gained traction in Bangladesh for example due to the nation’s wide trade deficit with China. “Bangladesh has tried to pursue de-dollarization in trade with China, but the flow is almost one-sided,” said Salim Afzal Shawon, head of research at Dhaka-based BRAC EPL Stock Brokerage Ltd.

A major driver of those plans was the move by the US and Europe to cut off Russia from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT. The action, described as a “financial nuclear weapon” by the French, left most major Russian banks estranged from a network that facilitates tens of millions of transactions every day, forcing them to lean on their own, much smaller version instead.

That had two implications. First, the US sanctions on Russia stoked concern that the dollar could more permanently become an overt political tool — a concern shared especially by China, but also beyond Beijing and Moscow. India, for example, has been developing its own homegrown payments system that would partly mimic SWIFT.

Second, the US decision to use the currency as part of a more aggressive form of economic statecraft puts extra pressure on economies in Asia to choose sides. Without any alternative payments system, they’d run the risk of being compelled into compliance with, or enforcement of, sanctions they may not agree with — and losing out on trade with key partners.

“The complicating factor in this cycle is the wave of sanctions and seizures on USD holdings,” said Taimur Baig, managing director and chief economist at DBS Group Research in Singapore. “Given this backdrop, regional steps to reduce USD reliance are unsurprising.”

Just as officials across Asia are loath to pick a winner in US-China tussles and would prefer to keep relations with both, the US penalties on Russia are pushing governments to go their own way. Sometimes the action takes a political or nationalist tone — including resentment of Western pressure to adopt sanctions on Russia.

Moscow looked to convince India to use an alternative system to keep transactions moving. Myanmar’s junta spokesman said the dollar was being used to “to bully smaller nations.” And Southeast Asian countries pointed to the episode as a reason to trade more in local currencies.

“Sanctions make it more difficult – by design – for countries and companies to remain neutral in geopolitical confrontations,” said Jonathan Wood, head of global risk analysis at Control Risks. “Countries will continue to weigh economic and strategic relationships. Companies are caught more than ever in the crossfire, and face ever more complex compliance obligations and other conflicting pressures.”

It’s not just the sanctions helping to accelerate the de-dollarization trend. The US currency’s rampant gains have also made Asian officials more aggressive in their attempts at diversification.

The dollar has strengthened about 7% this year, on track for its biggest annual advance since 2015, according to a Bloomberg index of the dollar. The gauge reached a record high in September as dollar appreciation sent everything from the British pound to the Indian rupee to historic lows.

Huge Headache

The dollar’s strength is a huge headache for Asian nations who’ve seen prices of food purchases soar, debt-repayment burdens worsen and poverty deepen.

Sri Lanka is a case in point, defaulting on its dollar debt for the first time ever as a soaring greenback crippled the nation’s ability to pay up. Vietnamese officials at one point blamed dollar appreciation for fuel-supply struggles.

Hence moves such as India’s deal with the UAE, which accelerates a long-running campaign to transact more in the rupee and to set up trade settlement agreements that bypass the US currency.

Meanwhile, dollar-denominated bond sales by non-financial companies have dropped to a record low 37% of the global total in 2022. They’ve accounted for more than 50% of debt sold in any one year on several occasions in the past decade.

While all these measures may have a limited market impact short term, the end result may be an eventual weakening of demand for the dollar. The Canadian dollar and Chinese yuan’s shares of all currency trades, for instance, are already slowly edging higher.

Technological progress is another factor facilitating efforts at moving away from the greenback.

Several economies are chipping away at dollar use as a by-product of efforts to build new payment networks — a campaign that pre-dates the surging greenback. Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand have set up systems for transactions between each another in their local currencies rather than the dollar. Taiwanese can pay with a QR code system that’s linked with Japan.

All-in, the efforts are driving momentum further away from a West-led system that’s been the bedrock for global finance for more than half a century. What’s emerging is a three-tier structure with the dollar still very much on top, but increasing bilateral payment routes and alternative spheres such as the yuan that seek to seize on any potential US overreach.

And for all the agitation and action afoot, it’s unlikely the dollar’s dominant position will be challenged anytime soon. The strength and size of the US economy remains unchallenged, Treasuries are still one of the safest ways to store capital and the dollar makes up the lion’s share of foreign-exchange reserves.

The renminbi’s share of all foreign-exchange trades, for example, may have climbed to 7%, but the dollar still makes up one side of 88% of such transactions.

“It’s very hard to compete on the fiat front — we have the Russians doing that by forcing the use of rubles, and there’s wariness with the yuan as well,” said George Boubouras, three-decade markets veteran and head of research at hedge fund K2 Asset Management in Melbourne. “At the end of the day, investors still prefer liquid assets and in this sense, nothing can replace the dollar.”

Nevertheless, the combination of moves away from the dollar are a challenge to what then-French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing famously described as the “exorbitant privilege” enjoyed by the US. The term, which he coined in the 1960s, describes how the greenback’s hegemony shields the US from exchange-rate risk and projects the nation’s economic might.

And they may ultimately test the entire Bretton Woods model, a system that established the dollar as a leader in the monetary order, which was negotiated at a hotel in a sleepy New Hampshire town at the close of World War II.

The latest efforts “do indicate that the global trade and settlement platform that we’ve been using for decades may be beginning to fracture,” said Homin Lee, Asia macro strategist at Lombard Odier in Hong Kong, whose firm oversees the equivalent of $66 billion.

“This entire network that was born out of the Bretton Woods system — the Eurodollar market in the 1970s and then the financial deregulation and the floating rates regime in the 1980s — this platform that we have developed so far may be beginning to shift in a more fundamental sense,” Lee said.

Valuable Lesson

The net result: King Dollar may still reign supreme for decades to come, but the building momentum for transactions in alternate currencies shows no sign of slowing — particularly if geopolitical wild cards continue to convince officials to go their own way.

And the US government’s willingness to use its currency in geopolitical fights could ironically weaken its ability to pursue such methods as effectively in the future.

“The war in Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia will provide a very valuable lesson,” Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said last month at the Bloomberg CEO Forum on the sidelines of the G-20 meetings in Bali.

“Many countries feel they can do transactions directly — bilaterally — using their local currencies, which I think is good for the world to have a much more balanced use of currencies and payment systems.”

--With assistance from Shruti Srivastava, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Adrija Chatterjee, Daniel Flatley, Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen, Yujing Liu, Anirban Nag, Claire Jiao, Grace Sihombing, Philip J. Heijmans, Jeanette Rodrigues, Arun Devnath and Finbarr Flynn.