THE FIFTY FIRST STATE
Biden faces Israel quandary with new Netanyahu government




MATTHEW LEE
Fri, January 6, 2023 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government is little more than a week old but it's already giving the Biden administration headaches.

Just days into its mandate, a controversial member of Netanyahu’s right-wing Cabinet riled U.S. diplomats with a visit to a Jerusalem holy site that some believe may be harbinger of other contentious moves, including vast expansions of Jewish settlement construction on land claimed by the Palestinians.

And, Netanyahu's government adopted punitive measures against the Palestinians that run in direct opposition to several recent Biden moves to boost U.S.-Palestinian relations, including restoring assistance to the Palestinian Authority that had been cut during the Trump administration and allowing Palestinian officials to visit the United States.

The new government is an unwelcome complication for a Biden national security team seeking to shift attention away from the Middle East and toward rivals like China and Russia. It also comes as Republicans take control of the House of Representatives and are eager to cast Biden as unfriendly to Israel ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Bracing for more turmoil, Biden is dispatching his national security adviser to Israel in mid-January in a bid to forestall potentially deepening rifts between his administration and its top Mideast partner. That visit by Jake Sullivan may be followed by other high-level trips to Israel, including one by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to administration officials.

Their message goes beyond warnings about inflaming tensions with Palestinians: It's also about not cozying up with Russia, particularly now that Moscow is relying on Israel's main enemy, Iran, in its war on Ukraine; and not upsetting the delicate Middle East security balance.

Since Netanyahu won hotly contested elections last year with huge support from the Israeli right, U.S. officials have sought to tamp down predictions of a collision course, saying they will judge his government on actions rather than personalities. Biden himself spoke of his years-long relationship with Netanyahu.

“I look forward to working with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has been my friend for decades, to jointly address the many challenges and opportunities facing Israel and the Middle East region, including threats from Iran,” Biden said when Netanyahu took office Dec. 29.

Yet while Biden and Netanyahu have known each other for years, they are not close. Biden and former Obama administration officials who now work for Biden still harbor resentment toward the prime minister who, during his previous iteration as Israel’s leader, sought to derail their signature foreign policy achievement: the Iran nuclear deal.

Still, the administration is signaling it will engage with Netanyahu while avoiding more extreme members of his government. That approach wouldn't be unprecedented in the region: The U.S. deals with Lebanon's government while shunning members from the Hezbollah movement, a designated foreign terrorist organization that is nonetheless a domestic political power. But, it would be remarkable for the U.S. to take a similar approach with such a close ally.

“We will be dealing directly with Prime Minister Netanyahu,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said this week when asked about possible contacts with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's, whose visit to the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary prompted a major outcry.

The inclusion of Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler leader, and other extreme right-wing figures in Netanyahu’s government who are hostile to the Palestinians and opposed to a two-state resolution has put Israel and the United States on opposite paths.

On Thursday, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Robert Wood, at an emergency meeting of the Security Council called by Arab states to condemn Ben-Gvir's holy site visit, underscored Biden's firm support for “the historic status quo,” especially the “Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount.”

Wood noted that Netanyahu had pledged to preserve the status quo — “We expect the government of Israel to follow through on that commitment,” he said — and stressed that the administration placed a priority on preserving the possibility of a two-state solution.

But on Friday, Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet approved a series of punitive steps against the Palestinian leadership in retaliation for the Palestinians pushing the U.N.’s highest judicial body to give an opinion on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Those moves underscored the hardline approach to the Palestinians that Netanyahu's government has promised at a time of rising violence in the occupied territories.

The Security Cabinet decided to withhold millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority and transfer those funds to a compensation program for the families of Israeli victims of Palestinian militant attacks. And, it will deny benefits, including travel permits, to Palestinian officials who "are leading the political and legal war against Israel.”

Meanwhile, Biden's administration is moving in a diametrically opposed direction. Since taking office, the administration has reversed the Trump ban on aid and provided more than $800 million in economic, development, security, and other assistance to the Palestinians and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

In the fall, the State Department obtained a Justice Department opinion that allows Palestinian officials to visit the United States and spend money in the U.S. despite laws barring such travel and transactions and a Supreme Court ruling that Congress has an enforceable role in the foreign policy process.

The administration “may reasonably assess that being prevented from hosting the PLO delegation in Washington would seriously impair the president’s diplomatic efforts,” the Justice Department said in a little-noticed Oct. 28th opinion.

Then, exactly one week before Netanyahu took office in late December, the State Department imposed but immediately waived terrorism sanctions against the Palestinian leadership, saying engagement with the Palestinians is a critical U.S. national security interest.

On Dec. 22, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman notified Congress that she had imposed travel bans on senior leaders of the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization because they “are not in compliance” with requirements to tamp down and publicly condemn terrorist attacks against Israelis.

But, in the same notification, the State Department said Sherman had waived the travel bans “based on her determination that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States.”

“An enduring and comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians remains a longstanding goal of U.S. foreign policy,” the department said. “A blanket denial of visas to PLO members and PA officials, to include those whose travel to the United States to advance U.S. goals and objectives, is not consistent with the U.S. government’s expressed willingness to partner with the PLO and PA leadership.”

Despite a more-than-$3 billion annual assistance package to Israel and diplomatic backing in international forums, U.S. sway with Netanyahu appears limited.

The Biden administration has not yet followed through on its pledge to re-open the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, which had historically served as the main contact point with the Palestinians, and it has made no move to re-open the Palestinian embassy in Washington. Both facilities were shut down during the Trump administration.

Alon Liel, a former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said further U.S. rapprochement with Palestinians may be the only way to influence Netanyahu. “If they really want to inflict pressure (on Israel), Biden tomorrow should say in the coming months, we will consider reopening the Palestinian embassy in Washington. Then they will see the earth shaking here,” Liel said.

“But there is no sign of that,” he said. “As long as they say, ‘We’re worried about your democracy,’ those words are meaningless because there were so many words. There’s nothing behind the words.”

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Laurie Kellman contributed from Jerusalem.

Netanyahu’s ‘Big Lie’ Will End Rule of Law in Israel


Noga Tarnopolsky

The Daily Beast
Thu, January 5, 2023



JERUSALEM—Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, who is on trial for corruption, ended his first week back in office embroiled in two new legal entanglements of his own creation.

On Thursday at the Supreme Court, he was forced to defend appointing a convicted tax fraud to two key posts, that of minister of interior and of minister of health.

A few hours earlier, across a Jerusalem rose garden at the Knesset, Israel's parliament, Netanyahu’s justice minister announced a colossal judicial overhaul widely viewed as an attempt to overthrow Israel’s system of government, and save Netanyahu’s skin.


Former prime minister Ehud Barak, an opponent of Netanyahu, told The Daily Beast that the judicial reform was “a big lie covering up régime change.”

“He is trying to blackmail the country with threats to save himself from trial,” Barak said, adding that “it’s a straight line from [Al] Capone to where we are today.”

In an assessment echoed in some Israeli political and legal spheres, Haaretz, a liberal daily, declared that Netanyahu’s “judicial reform” amounted to “a régime coup in prime-time.”

Enacting the new judicial review, Haaretz’s political analyst wrote, will result “in a government without any checks and balances, morals or reins, that will do anything and everything that crosses its crude mind.”

In a speech on Wednesday night, Netanyahu himself said he would undertake a “fundamental revision” of all the powers of government.

Israel Is Now a Province of Red State America

Justice Minister, Yariv Levin, said that an urgent correction was necessary after years of “rampant judicial overreach.”

“There are not only judges in Jerusalem,” Levin said, reaching for a Biblical phrase, “but the Knesset is here, too.”

At the heart of Israel’s crisis is the fate of an indicted prime minister, in the midst of a trial, whose hold on power depends on a coalition with another party leader, Aryeh Deri, a convicted criminal, who served two years in jail for corruption in the early 2000s. He was also convicted of tax fraud in February, 2022, and escaped jail as part of a plea deal in which he committed to remaining out of public life.

“The problem is the Knesset is granting itself unlimited power,” said Amir Fuchs, a professor of law affiliated with the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent Jerusalem think tank.

The result of Netanyahu’s proposed reforms would grant a simple majority of 61 out of the Knesset’s 120 members almost absolute power, with no judicial review.

Thursday’s fiery Supreme Court hearing, with an unusually large panel of eleven justices helmed by Chief Justice Esther Hayut, addressed multiple petitions against Deri’s appointment to the top jobs of interior minister and health minister.

“I think we need violence,” said Oren Moda’i, 62, a techie who took a day off work on Thursday to join a few hundred protesters outside the court. “We have no other recourse. Not murder, not that kind of violence, but breaking storefronts like the ‘gilets jaunes’ did in France. The problem is, the opposition has no leadership.”

Former Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, left for a weekend in Paris on Thursday morning, to significant criticism from his camp. He said on Wednesday night that the government, “like a gang of crooks,” had “put a loaded gun on the table. Yariv Levin did not propose reform, but a threat. They threaten to destroy the entire constitutional structure of the State of Israel.”

A major anti-government rally is scheduled for Saturday night, in Tel Aviv.

Among the reforms announced in a hurried last-minute press conference held on the eve of the Supreme Court’s hearing Thursday is a law allowing a parliamentary majority to overrule supreme court decisions, and another eliminating the “reasonability standard,” Israel's version of a court ruling determining unconstitutionality.

Under current Israeli law, for example, the courts can disqualify as “unreasonable” any law that violates basic rights, such segregation among school children.

The coalition agreements underpinning Netanyahu’s new coalition, which includes radical extremists and religious nationalists, contain a U.S.-inspired “discrimination law” which would explicitly allow businesses and physicians to refuse service to individuals who offend their religious beliefs.

In addition, Levin—in office under a week—announced his intention to transform the Judicial Selection Committee into a largely political entity, convert ministries legal counsels (currently career civil servants) into political appointments and pass yet another law, precluding the supreme court from striking down Basic Laws, Israel’s constitutional foundations.

Netanyahu’s new coalition numbers 64 members, a majority of whom serve in double roles, as legislators and as ministers or officials of the executive branch. It is a position to pass the proposed changes into law within weeks.

Despite his victory in the November, 2022 election, Netanyahu risks losing public support over the radical changes proposed by his cabinet, which are rejected by a solid majority of Israelis. Sixty-four percent expect street demonstrations to take hold against the government.

In a Twitter Space late Wednesday night, Professor Ido Baum, Director of the Brandeis Institute for Society Economy, and Democracy near Tel Aviv, said that Netanyahu's judicial revolution “will amount to nothing less than a coup d'état. Poland and Hungary will be here. It will transform Israel’s DNA from its foundations.”

Netanyahu’s Right-Wing Blitz Is the ‘Most Corrupt’ Day in Israeli History

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Fuchs said the outcome of Netanyahu’s reforms “is that the majority coalition will be able to do what it wants, turning Israel into a questionable, illiberal democracy like what you see in Poland and in Hungary, in which the only remaining safeguard is a majority of the public, public opposition. The courts will no longer be able to protect LGBTQ rights, for example. The public will have to express its opinion.”

Fuchs said Israel’s future if the reform passes was akin to “mob rule. Absolute majority rule. A hollowed-out democracy with elections as its only defining characteristic.”

Under Israeli law, a minister, if indicted on criminal charges—cannot remain in post. Netanyahu retained his ability to serve as prime minister by arguing the role of prime minister differed essentially from the role of minister, granting him a loophole, but he remains liable to charges of conflict of interest due to his trial and involvement in the judicial review.

In a second phase of reforms, Levin is expected to create a new position, that of a public prosecutor who could decide no longer to pursue Benjamin Netanyahu’s trial, and to decriminalize fraud and breach of trust, two of the three charges for which he was indicted, along with bribery.

“We are in a state of emergency—Netanyahu has to decide if he wants to break the rules of the game or preserve the State of Israel,” said Benny Gantz, the head of another opposition party, who said the “state of emergency” triggered by the announced judicial reform demanded the formation of a committee composed of coalition and opposition legislators.

The secret ingredient in Roman concrete that means buildings can last for millennia

Sarah Knapton
Fri, January 6, 2023

The Pantheon - Loop Images

The durability of Roman concrete, which has allowed structures such as the Pantheon in Rome to remain standing for nearly 2,000 years, has long baffled experts.

But scientists now believe they have rediscovered a secret ingredient in the ancient recipe that makes the building material self-healing – quicklime.

Experts at MIT and Harvard have found that adding quicklime to the mix creates a super-hot chemical reaction that leaves calcium deposits peppered throughout the concrete.

Crucially, if cracks begin to appear at a later stage and water seeps through, it causes these calcium deposits to recrystallise into calcium carbonate, filling in the gaps. The reactions take place spontaneously, healing the cracks before they spread further and compromise the integrity of a structure.

It explains how the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome in the Pantheon, which was dedicated in 128AD, is still intact, while many modern concrete structures crumble after a few decades.

Some ancient concrete aqueducts still supply Rome with water, while large parts of Hadrian’s Wall, its core bolstered by ancient concrete, survive.

Pliny the Elder, writing in Naturalis Historia in 79AD, noted that concrete structures in harbours “become a single stone mass, impregnable to the waves, and every day stronger” despite being battered by seawater.

Hadrian’s Wall - Peter Mulligan/Getty Images Contributor

The new finding could enable modern engineers to build structures that can last millennia. It was made after experts started studying calcium deposits, known as lime clasts, in the ancient concrete. They had previously been disregarded as a product of sloppy mixing practices.

“The idea that the presence of these lime clasts was simply attributed to low quality control always bothered me,” said Admir Masic, a professor of civil and environmental engineering.

“If the Romans put so much effort into making an outstanding construction material, following all of the detailed recipes that had been optimised over the course of many centuries, why would they put so little effort into ensuring the production of a well-mixed final product? There has to be more to this story.”

To prove that the lime clasts were responsible for the durability, the team produced samples of hot-mixed concrete that incorporated both ancient and modern formulations, deliberately cracked them and then ran water through the cracks.

Within two weeks the cracks had completely healed and the water could no longer flow. An identical chunk of concrete made without quicklime never healed, and the water kept flowing through the sample.

The team is working to bring Roman concrete back as a commercial product.

“It’s exciting to think about how these more durable concrete formulations could expand not only the service life of these materials, but also how it could improve the durability of 3D-printed concrete formulations,” said Prof Masic.

The research was published in Science Advances.

India approves $2.3 billion to develop green hydrogen

Marking its biggest effort yet to make India a global hub for production, use and export of green hydrogen, the Indian federal government on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023, approved $2.3 billion funding with an aim to grow various segments of the green hydrogen sector in India. India hopes that this investment will abate 50 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)More

Thu, January 5, 2023

BENGALURU, India (AP) — The government has approved $2.3 billion to support production, use and exports of green hydrogen, aiming to make India a global hub for the nascent industry.

The funding, announced late Wednesday, i s a first step toward establishing the capacity to make at least 5 million metric tons of green hydrogen by the end of this decade.

Green hydrogen is hydrogen that is produced through the electrolysis of water, powered by electricity generated from renewable sources of energy. Most of the world’s hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels, especially natural gas.

The aim of the funding initiative is “to make green hydrogen affordable and bring down its cost over the next five years. It will also help India reduce its emissions and become a major exporter in the field,” said Anurag Thakur, India's minister for information and broadcasting.

He said the financing would also help add about 125 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. As of October, India had about 166 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity.

Other aims are to create more than a half million new jobs, attract more private investment into the sector, reduce fossil fuel imports and cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50 million metric tons.

Many of India’s leading renewable energy companies, including companies owned by the Adani Group, Reliance Industries and JSW Energy; public sector companies like Indian Oil and NTPC Limited; and renewable-only companies such as Renew power are investing in production of green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen now amounts to a small fraction of global hydrogen use, estimated to be about 70 million tons per year. Most commercially produced hydrogen is grey hydrogen, produced using fossil fuels, and blue hydrogen that is also made using fossil fuels but with the use of carbon capture systems to reduce emissions. The production of green hydrogen results in the emission of little to no greenhouse gases.

In providing policy incentives for green hydrogen production, India is following the lead of many other countries such as China, the European Union and the United States. Energy analysts expect manufacturing costs for green hydrogen to fall significantly in the next few years and estimate the green hydrogen market will grow 20-fold to $80 billion by the year 2030.

“A robust policy framework, requisite financial support and an enabling ecosystem for technology development are essential to displace the country’s conventional fuel mix with green hydrogen and enhance its industrial competitiveness in an increasingly decarbonizing world,” said Shreyans Jain, an India-based sustainable business strategy consultant who closely tracks developments in the green hydrogen industry.

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Follow Sibi Arasu on Twitter at @sibi123

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Factbox-From BlockFi to Genesis, crypto firms reel from exposure to FTX


Thu, January 5, 2023 

(Reuters) - After the collapse of major cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the industry has felt a ripple effect due to the exposure of many companies to FTX and its affiliated trading firm Alameda Research. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Jan. 3 pleaded not guilty to criminal charges that he cheated investors and caused billions of dollars in losses.

Here are some firms that have given information about their exposure to FTX.

BLOCKFI

BlockFi filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 28, weeks after the crypto lender said it was pausing client withdrawals. In July, FTX had signed a deal with an option to buy BlockFi for up to $240 million.

GENESIS

Genesis is working to preserve client assets and strengthen liquidity, it said in a letter to clients in December, adding that it would take "weeks rather than days" to form a plan.

The crypto lending arm of U.S. digital asset broker Genesis Trading suspended customer redemptions last month, citing the sudden failure of FTX.

Genesis said in a tweet on Nov. 10 that its derivatives business has approximately $175 million in locked funds on FTX.

However, Genesis had no material exposure to FTX's native token FTT, or any other tokens issued by centralized exchanges, the firm said in a tweet on Nov. 9.

BINANCE

Binance Chief Executive Changpeng Zhao sparked concerns among investors on Nov. 6 when he said in a tweet that the crypto exchange would sell its holdings of FTT.

Zhao told a Twitter spaces event that Binance had previously held $580 million worth of FTT, of which "we only sold quite a small portion, we still hold a large bag."

Binance said on Nov. 13 that it had stopped accepting deposits of FTX's FTT token on its platform, urging other rival exchanges to do the same.

CELSIUS NETWORK

New York's attorney general filed a civil lawsuit accusing Celsius Network founder Alex Mashinsky of scheming to defraud hundreds of thousands of investors by inducing them to deposit billions of dollars in digital assets with his cryptocurrency company.

Between 2020 and 2022, under Mashinsky’s watch, Celsius made loans totaling roughly a billion dollars to Alameda Research, according to a filing.

COINBASE

Coinbase Global Inc said in a blog post on Nov. 8 that it had $15 million worth of deposits on FTX. It said it had no exposure to FTT or Alameda Research and no loans to FTX.

COINSHARES

Crypto asset manager CoinShares has $30.3 million worth of exposure to crypto exchange FTX, it said in a statement on Nov. 10.

CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti said the group's financial health remains "strong."

CRYPTO.COM

Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com said on Nov. 14 it had moved about $1 billion to FTX over the course of a year, but most of it was recovered and exposure at the time of FTX's collapse was less than $10 million.

CEO Kris Marszalek said the firm would prove wrong all naysayers who thought the platform was in trouble, adding it had a robust balance sheet and took no risks.

GALAXY DIGITAL

Crypto financial services company Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd said in its third-quarter earnings statement on Nov. 9 - the day after FTX froze withdrawals - that it had $76.8 million worth of exposure to FTX, of which $47.5 million was "in the withdrawal process."

GALOIS CAPITAL

Hedge fund Galois Capital had half its assets trapped on FTX, co-founder Kevin Zhou told investors in a recent letter, the Financial Times reported on Nov. 11, estimating the amount to be around $100 million.

The firm on Nov. 13 confirmed that it had up to $45 million in exposure to the now collapsed FTX cryptocurrency exchange, Bloomberg News reported.

KRAKEN

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken said on Nov. 10 that it held about 9,000 FTT tokens on the FTX exchange and was not affected "in any material way".

SILVERGATE CAPITAL CORP

Silvergate Capital Corp reported a sharp drop in fourth-quarter crypto-related deposits as investors spooked by FTX's collapse pulled out more than $8 billion in deposits.

The company said on Nov. 11 FTX represented less than 10% of $11.9 billion in deposits from all digital asset customers as of Sept. 30.

The financial solutions provider to digital assets also said Silvergate has no outstanding loans or investments in FTX.

VOYAGER DIGITAL

Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital, which was set to sell its assets to FTX after a $1.42 billion deal bid by the exchange in September, had a balance of approximately $3 million at FTX.

GRAYSCALE

Crypto asset manager Grayscale, whose flagship Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is the world's largest bitcoin fund, told investors that the recent market events have had no impact on its product operations or the security of the holdings in its funds.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft in London, Mehnaz Yasmin, Medha Singh Niket Nishant, and Manya Saini in Bengaluru and Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by Jan Harvey and Matthew Lewis)

U.S. prosecutors launch website for Bankman-Fried alleged fraud victims

Fri, January 6, 2023 
By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government plans to launch a website for victims of FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried's alleged fraud to communicate with law enforcement.

In court papers filed on Friday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan asked U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan for permission to use the website to notify victims, rather than contacting each individually.

FTX could owe money to more than 1 million people, making it "impracticable" to contact each, the papers said.

Federal law requires prosecutors to contact possible crime victims to inform them of their rights, including the rights to obtain restitution, be heard in court and be protected from defendants.

Kaplan has yet to rule on the request, but the website had gone live by Friday afternoon.

"If you believe that you may have been a victim of fraud by Samuel Bankman-Fried, A/K/A/ 'SBF,' please contact the victim/witness coordinator at the United States Attorney's office," the website read.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bankman-Fried, 30, has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of wire fraud and conspiracy over November's collapse of FTX.

Prosecutors have said he stole billions in FTX customer deposits to pay debts for his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and lied to investors about FTX's financial condition.

The onetime billionaire has acknowledged risk management shortcomings, but said he did not consider himself criminally liable.

Bankman-Fried's lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York Editing by Leslie Adler)

Stellantis CEO warns of more auto plant closures

The logo of Stellantis is seen on a company's building in Velizy-Villacoublay near Paris

Thu, January 5, 2023 
By Joseph White and Aishwarya Nair

(Reuters) -Chrysler parent Stellantis NV Chief Executive Officer Carlos Tavares said on Thursday that more auto plant closures will happen if high prices for electric vehicles (EV) cause vehicle markets to shrink from pre-pandemic levels.

Automakers will risk losing pricing power as chip supplies recover, Tavares said at the CES technology trade show in Las Vegas.

The comments come as lack of affordability looms over the U.S. EV market at a time when top EV makers are raising prices amid high inflation.

More U.S. consumers want to buy an electric vehicle but are concerned about rising prices, a survey by consulting firm Deloitte showed on Wednesday.

"Nearly 7 in 10 prospective EV buyers in the United States expect to pay less than $50,000 for their next vehicle," according to the survey conducted between September and October 2022.

Stellantis said last month it would indefinitely idle an assembly plant in Belvidere, Illionois, citing high EV costs. Tavares told reporters said similar actions "will happen everywhere as long as we see high inflation of variable costs."

The auto industry must absorb 40% higher costs for EVs, he added.

The company had flagged that increasing costs related to the electrification of the automotive market as the most impactful challenge affecting the auto industry.

"If the market shrinks we don't need so many plants," Tavares said. "Some unpopular decisions will have to be made."

(Reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru and Joe White in Detroit; Editing by Rashmi Aich)

More than 100 writers sign letter in solidarity with jailed UK climate activists

Damien Gayle
Thu, 5 January 2023 



Ben Okri, Simon Schama, Helen Pankhurst and AL Kennedy are among more than 100 writers who have signed a letter in solidarity with UK climate protest prisoners.

“That the UK now has political prisoners, incarcerated for defending sustainable life on Earth is yet another national disgrace,” Kennedy said.

At least 13 environmental activists began the year behind bars in UK jails, after a year of “civil resistance” against climate policies led by the Just Stop Oil campaign. More than 100 spent time in jail, either convicted or on remand, for environmental protest in 2022.

“We stand with all those who are trying to sound the alarm and to protect our beautiful world,” said the letter, coordinated and published by the group Writers Rebel.

Invoking the urgency of the crises affecting the world’s climate and ecosystems, it continues: “Right now, many people who are deeply concerned about the climate and environment are turning to civil disobedience.

“While it is understandable that the state wishes to limit the disruption this may cause, it is vital that the right to protest is protected. Protest plays an essential part in our society in raising public awareness and enabling change.”

In 2022, parliament passed a host of anti-protest laws written specifically to tackle climate protesters, and more are proposed in a public order bill being considered by MPs.

Among the new laws was a statutory offence of causing a public nuisance, which was used to convict Jan Goodey, a university lecturer from Brighton, after he climbed a gantry over the M25 to stop traffic. He is serving a six-month sentence.

Also behind bars are Abigail Percy-Ratcliff, Alexander Wilcox, Callum Goode, Daniel Shaw, Ian Bates, Karen Matthews, Louis McKechnie, Marcus Decker, Morgan Trowland, Paul Bleach, Roger Hallam and Samuel Price, according to a list provided by Just Stop Oil.

Many are on remand for long periods. Decker and Trowland were remanded on 20 October after pleading not guilty to causing a public nuisance for scaling the Dartford Crossing, closing the motorway bridge over the Thames for two days. They are not due to stand trial until 27 March.

McKechnie has been in prison since last July, after a string of protests including interrupting a football game by tying himself to a goalpost.

Climate activists were the present day’s suffragettes, Pankhurst said. She added: “At Bow Street magistrate courts in 1908 my great-grandmother Emmeline Pankhurst defended the suffragettes’ actions by saying: ‘We are here, not because we are lawbreakers; we are here in our efforts to become lawmakers.’

“The same applies to the actions of climate activists today. They have my support both because the barriers to protest that they are increasingly facing demonstrates the dangers to democracy when protest is silenced and because climate change is an existential threat that those with power must do more to confront.”

Okri said: “Why is it easier to punish people who are trying to save our world than to face the causes of the environmental disaster hanging over the human race?”
Full list of signatories

Saleh Addonia
Patience Agbabi
Amir Amirani
Josh Appignanesi
Chloe Aridjis
Ros Barber
Devorah Baum
Ned Beauman
Ian Bostridge
Frankie Boyle
Susie Boyt
Valerie Brown
Julie Christie
Noam Chomsky
Joe Corré
Lindsey Coulson
Jill Dawson
Jeremy Deller
Tishani Doshi
Cath Drake
Stella Duffy
Joe Dunthorne
Sharon Eckman
Rachel Edwards
Inua Ellams
Brian Eno
Paul Ewen
Jane Feaver
James Flint
Bella Freud
Uri Fruchtmann
Romola Garai
Maggie Gee
Zoe Gilbert
David Gilmour
Linda Grant
Neil Griffiths
Anouchka Grose
Xiaolu Guo
Mark Haddon
Chris Hedges
Peter Hobbs
Stewart Home
Nick Hornby
Philip Horne
Tansy Hoskins
Andrew Hurley
Bianca Jagger
Carsten Jensen
Liz Jensen
Alice Jolly
Sadakat Kadri
AL Kennedy
Roman Krznaric
Olivia Laing
Nick Laird
Deborah Levy
Daniel Lismore
Toby Litt
Alex Lockwood
Dara McAnulty
Adam McKay
Tom McCarthy
Robert Macfarlane
Diana McCaulay
Jarred McGinnis
Jean McNeil
Tessa McWatt
Adam Marek
James Miller
Blake Morrison
Timothy Morton
Tom Mustill
Julie Myerson
Courttia Newland
Gregory Norminton
Andrew O’Hagan
Ben Okri
Susie Orbach
Chris Packham
Ruth Padel
Cindy Palmano
Helen Pankhurst
Laline Paull
Marie Phillips
Joanna Pocock
Max Porter
Chris Power
Irwin Rappaport
Kate Raworth
Miranda Richardson
Adam Roberts
Monique Roffey
Meg Rosoff
Minoli Salgado
Polly Samson
Roc Sandford
Sir Simon Schama
Anakana Schofield
Kamila Shamsie
Shelley Silas
Lemn Sissay
Ali Smith
Simon Stephens
Juliet Stevenson
Clover Stroud
Peter Tatchell
Nick Taussig
Adam Thirlwell
Rupert Thomson
Dame Emma Thompson
Matt Thorne
Jeremy Till
Matthew Todd
Jessica Townsend
Dale Vince
Ed Vulliamy
Dame Harriet Walter
Natasha Walter
Dame Marina Warner
Alex Wheatle
Sarah Winman
Karen McCarthy Woolf
Naomi Wood
Louisa Young

Noam Chomsky

Joe Corré

Jeremy Deller

Uri Fruchtmann

Maggie Gee

Chris Hedges

Sadakat Kadri

Daniel Lismore

Dara McAnulty

Adam McKay

Timothy Morton

Chris Packham

Irwin Rappaport

Peter Tatchell

Nick Taussig

Jeremy Till

Matthew Todd

THE ORIGINAL COLONIALISM

The amazing system plants use to shape their roots and why it could help protect crops from climate change

Malcolm Bennett, Professor of Plant Sciences, University of Nottingham and Poonam Mehra, Postdoctoral fellow in Biosciences, University of Nottingham
Thu, 5 January 2023

lewan/Shutterstock

Plants have colonised the vast majority of the Earth’s surface. So what is the key to their success?

People often think of plants as simple, senseless life forms. They may live rooted in one place, but the more scientists learn about plants, the more complex and responsive we realise they are. They are excellent at adapting to local conditions. Plants are specialists, making the most of what is close by to where they germinate.

Learning about the intricacies of plant life is about more than inspiring wonder in people though. Studying plants is also about making sure we can still grow crops in the future as climate change makes our weather increasingly extreme.

Environmental signals shape the growth and development of plants. For example, many plants use day length as the cue to trigger flowering. The hidden half of plants, the roots, also use signs from their surroundings to ensure their shape is optimised to forage for water and nutrients.

Roots protect their plants from stresses such as drought by adapting their shape (branching to increase their surface area, for example) to find more water. But until recently, we didn’t understand how roots sense whether water is available in the surrounding soil.

Water is the most important molecule on Earth. Too much or too little can destroy an ecosystem. The devastating impact of climate change (as recently seen in Europe and east Africa) is making both floods and droughts more common. Since climate change is making rainfall patterns increasingly erratic, learning how plants respond to water shortage is vital for making crops more resilient.

Taking root

Our team of plant and soil scientists and mathematicians recently discovered how plant roots adapt their shape to maximise water uptake. Roots normally branch horizontally. But they pause branching when they lose contact with water (such as growing through an air-filled gap in the soil) and roots only resume branching once they reconnect with moist soil.

Our team found that plants use a system called hydrosignalling to manage where roots branch in response to water availability in the soil.

Barley uses hydrosignalling to form root structure. Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH/Shutterstock

Hydrosignalling is the way plants sense where water is, not by measuring moisture levels directly but by sensing other soluble molecules that move with the water within plants. This is only possible because (unlike animal cells) plant cells are connected to one another by small pores.

These pores enable water and small soluble molecules (including hormones) to move together between root cells and tissues. When water is taken up by the plant root, it travels through the outermost epidermal cells.

The outer root cells also contain a hormone that promotes branching called auxin. Water uptake triggers branching by mobilising auxin inwards to inner root tissues. When water is no longer available externally, say when a root grows through an air-filled gap, the root tip still needs water to grow.

So when roots can’t take in water from the soil they have to rely on water from their own veins deep inside the root. This changes the direction of water movement, making it now move outwards, which disrupts the flow of the branching hormone auxin.

The plant also makes an anti-branching hormone called ABA in its root veins. ABA moves with the flow of water too, in the opposite direction to auxin. So when the roots draw down on water from the plants’ veins, the roots are also drawing the anti-branching hormone towards themselves.

ABA stops root branching by closing all the small pores that connect root cells – a bit like blast doors on a ship. This seals off root cells from each other and stops auxin freely moving with water, blocking root branching. This simple system allows plant roots to fine tune their shape to local water conditions. It’s called xerobranching (pronounced zerobranching).

Flower power

Our study also found that a plant’s roots use a similar system to reduce water loss as its shoots. Leaves stop water loss during drought conditions by closing micro-pores called stomata on their surfaces. Stomata closure is also triggered by the ABA hormone. Similarly, in roots ABA reduces water loss by closing nano-pores called plasmodesmata that link every root cell together.

Leaf stomata under the microscope. Barbol/Shutterstock

Roots from tomato, thale cress, maize, wheat and barley all respond to moisture in this way, despite evolving in different soils and climates. For example, tomatoes originated in a South American desert, whereas thale cress comes from central Asian temperate regions. This suggests xerobranching is a common trait in flowering plants, which are over 200 million years younger than non-flowering plants such as ferns.

Roots from ferns, an early evolving land plant species, don’t respond to water in this way. Their roots grow more uniformly. This suggests flowering species are better at adapting to water stress than earlier land plants such as ferns.

Flowering plants can colonise a wider range of ecosystems and environments than non-flowering species. Given the rapid changes in rainfall patterns across the globe, the ability of plants to sense and adapt to a wide range of soil moisture conditions is more important now than ever.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Malcolm Bennett receives funding from UK Research Council BBSRC and hosts EU MCSA and EMBO fellow Poonam Mehra.

Poonam Mehra receives funding from EMBO and Horizon 2020

THE NEED FOR A REVOLUTIONARY ORG

Extinction Rebellion says 'we quit' – why radical eco-activism has a short shelf life

Marc Hudson, Research Fellow in Industrial Decarbonisation Policy, University of Sussex
Thu, 5 January 2023 

Margarita Young / shutterstock

The protest group Extinction Rebellion (XR) has released a statement with the clickbait headline “We Quit”. Dashing the hopes of climate denialists everywhere, the group is not shutting up shop (yet), it is merely changing tactics. XR is keeping its options open, saying there is “a controversial resolution to temporarily shift away from public disruption as a primary tactic”.

The statement comes at a time when activists from affiliated groups Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil are still serving jail terms.

As someone who has been involved in these sorts of movements for 20 years, both as an activist and through my All Our Yesterdays climate history project, XR’s move doesn’t really surprise me. The truth is that such movements rarely last more than a few years, even if their cause remains just as urgent. It’s simply too hard to retain committed activists.

Extinction Rebellion itself nicely highlights the cyclical nature of radical environment action.

Protests and occupations

In the summer of 2018, the UK baked in a heatwave as the IPCC was putting the finishing touches to a report about what would happen if global warming exceeded 1.5℃ (short version: buckle up). Meanwhile, stickers with the now familiar stylised hourglass began to appear on lampposts, and news trickled out of a new group called “Extinction Rebellion”.

Protesters with UK parliament building in background

Over the following year, XR staged protests in Westminster, and occupied bridges and other key sites across London for days on end. Greta Thunberg, by now a sensation for her school strikes, addressed the crowds, and the actress Emma Thompson flew in from Los Angeles.

But an October 2019 “rebellion” was markedly less successful than the first ones. The Metropolitan Police had learned. It raided logistics hubs and issued preemptive banning orders (later successfully legally challenged). But the most damaging moment came as an own goal, when a splinter group undertook a notorious blocking-a-commuter train action, generating lots of media criticism and internal soul-searching about the pros and cons of “decentralised” movement activity.

Then came the pandemic and XR’s favoured tactics of mass mobilisation were rendered impossible – though attempts were made. Meanwhile, somebody put out fake leaflets linking the group to eco-fascist arguments.

This history – a sudden flourishing, followed by gradual fizzling out – is sadly fairly typical.
Direct action in the UK

In the early 1990s, people in the UK began taking environmental action. These actions can be seen as a continuation of the 1980s peace movement, of which the women’s camp at Greenham Common had been an inspiration and focal point.

Three decades ago this month a “Wake up the world is dying” protest took place in London to highlight rainforest deforestation and the importation of mahogany. There were many protests against new roads through woodlands. By the late 1990s, with international climate negotiations proving inadequate, the Rising Tide network sprang up, taking direct action across the country.

Activists from Rising Tide were then part of the Camp for Climate Action group in the 2000s, which emerged after the G8 protests in Scotland as some thought that groups were stuck in a rut of “summit hopping” and wanted to be more radical.

Climate Camp ran from 2006 to 2010, with protests at Drax and Kingsnorth power stations, Heathrow Airport, London and then Edinburgh. In 2011, after what was by accounts a gloomy but determined meeting, those present released a statement called “Metamorphosis”, which has language eerily similar to XR’s We Quit statement. It said its closure was “intended to allow new tactics, organising methods and processes to emerge in this time of whirlwind change”.

Through the 2010s groups such as No Dash for Gas and Reclaim the Power kept doing nonviolent direct action, joined by the ultimately successful anti-fracking movement. In the midst of this, attempts to use the Paris Climate Conference in 2015 as a way of kickstarting renewed activity were not successful.

Up like a rocket, down like a stick

Why does the pattern, what I call the “emotacycle” keep happening? One factor is how hard it is to retain committed activists. To quote myself from a December 2019 debate in New Internationalist about whether XR had the right tactics:

the emotional dynamics seem unchanged to me – a hardcore of “heroic types”, and a worried but unempowered wider community that can never see themselves doing yoga in a prison cell, [who] come to one meeting, feel alienated and don’t come back.

I went on to say that “previous cycles of climate protest tended to last three years or so”. Three years on, it seems XR has indeed followed this pattern.

XR’s “We Quit” statement also contains a teaser and an invitation to gather back at Parliament Square in Westminster, four and a half years on from the initial “Declaration of Rebellion”. A year ago the group was saying it would bring “millions” onto the streets in September. Now the number it is hoping for is 100,000.

Those predictions are still optimistic, shall we say. But other predictions made by those working on climate change – of increased emissions and an ever thicker blanket of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, trapping heat and causing floods and fires to be more intense and more frequent – are safer. Whether, in light of that, our civilisation is safe is another question.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Marc Hudson was a co-founder of Climate Emergency Manchester, but is no longer involved with the group.

Hershey's First Bilingual U.S. Plant Drives Powerful Results

Investment in U.S. Manufacturing Results in Highly Qualified Employees, Improved Retention and Equity

PUBLISHED 12-09-22

SUBMITTED BY THE HERSHEY COMPANY

HERSHEY, Pa., December 9, 2022 /CSRwire/ -- The Hershey Company (NYSE:HSY) announced its first bilingual manufacturing facility. Through the launch of the company’s ‘Say Hola’ initiative, the Hershey plant in Hazleton, Pennsylvania now seamlessly integrates both Spanish and English-speaking employees. The transformation evolves Hershey’s employee experience and ensures a work environment that’s accessible and equitable. In place for nearly one year, the program has enabled hiring of a more experienced workforce, improved retention and reduced recruitment costs.  ‘Say Hola’ further advances Hershey’s commitments to its communities while underscoring enterprise-wide DEI priorities, career development programs and enhanced care systems and rewards for employees.

“At the frontline of our business, our manufacturing employees make what we do possible and are a driving force behind our recent supply chain investments,” said Jason Reiman, SVP, Chief Supply Chain Officer. ‘Say Hola’ precedes a wide range of new and improved employee support programs launching in 2023 including enhanced parental leave, new training and development opportunities and local community efforts. “By delivering exceptional and inclusive experiences for employees, their families and the greater communities, we are doubling down on our legacy commitment to ensure Hershey is a top workplace for manufacturing workers so that people can grow within our company.”

In the past 20 years, Hazleton’s population has seen a rapid growth in Hispanic residents – growing from five to more than 60 percent. Recognizing the opportunity to evolve its approach and build programs that lead with inclusivity, Hershey launched this initiative to equip employees with the tools and resources needed to succeed regardless of their primary language. ‘Say Hola’ is part of Hershey’s larger people-first manufacturing strategy and is a direct reflection of the local community’s diverse, rapidly evolving demographics.

By launching ‘Say Hola’ and opening its doors to the changing Hazleton community, Hershey is seeing an increase in employee retention and highly experienced individuals applying for positions. In fact, more than 90 percent of the facility’s recruitment classes now have the desired manufacturing experience versus 50 percent of recruitment classes prior to program launch. The community’s enthusiasm about the transformation to a bilingual plant and word-of-mouth awareness has also reduced recruitment costs.

With a history of doing the right thing for its communities, Hershey’s investment in the Hazleton facility reflects founder Milton Hershey’s legacy and community-building efforts. The company embraced the opportunity to make internal changes to grow side by side with Hazleton and position the 50-year-old manufacturing facility as a mirror of the community. To do this, Hershey:

• Conducts trainings in both English and Spanish
• Produces all signs, labels and forms in both Spanish and English
• Ensures bilingual employees and resources are made available on the floor to support with communication and introduced a 24/7 1-800 number for assistance

Hershey's partnership with its Latino Business Resource Group (LBRG) was pivotal in ideating, planning and executing the ‘Say Hola’ initiative. The LBRG remains deeply involved as Hershey continues to build and implement the program. As its first multilingual pilot program, Hershey will continue to use key learnings from this initiative to move its people-first manufacturing vision forward and support its overarching DEI roadmap.

“The ‘Say Hola’ initiative showcases Hershey’s commitment to our people and the communities in which we live and work – both on a local and global scale,” said Alicia Petross, Chief Diversity Officer. “‘Say Hola’ has accelerated the diversity of our workforce – a key element of our DEI roadmap – and provided upskilling, improved recruiting and retention and most importantly, the program fosters a workplace that looks more like the communities our colleagues live in.”

Earlier this year, Hershey was named No. 6 on DiversityInc’s Top 50 Companies for Diversity and No. 9 on the Top Companies for Latino Executives list. The candy and snack maker’s Latino executives and board members are frequently honored in outlets like Latino Leaders Magazine.

About The Hershey Company

The Hershey Company is headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania and is an industry-leading snacks company known for bringing goodness to the world through its iconic brands, remarkable people and enduring commitment to help children succeed. Hershey has approximately 19,000 employees around the world who work every day to deliver delicious, quality products. The company has more than 100 brand names in approximately 80 countries around the world that drive more than $8.9 billion in annual revenues, including such iconic brand names as Hershey's, Reese's, Kit Kat®, Jolly Rancher and Ice Breakers, and fast-growing salty snacks including SkinnyPop, Pirate's Booty and Dot's Homestyle Pretzels.

For more than 125 years, Hershey has been committed to operating fairly, ethically and sustainably.  Hershey founder, Milton Hershey, created Milton Hershey School in 1909 and since then the company has focused on helping children succeed.

To learn more visit www.thehersheycompany.com.