Biden signs water bills benefiting 3 tribes in Arizona




A bathtub ring of light minerals shows the high water line of Lake Mead near water intakes on the Arizona side of Hoover Dam at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area Sunday, June 26, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev. The words "dead pool" surfaced this week as officials described the possibility that lake levels could shrink so much that neither dam would be able to release water downstream. The first weeks of 2023 will be crucial for Southwest U.S. states and water entities to agree how to use less water from the drought-stricken and fast-shrinking Colorado River, a top federal water manager said Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. 

(AP Photo/John Locher, File)

FELICIA FONSECA
Thu, January 5, 2023 


FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A Native American tribe that has one of the largest and most secure rights to Colorado River water now has approval to lease some of it in Arizona, a state that’s been hardest hit by cuts to its water supply and is on a perpetual search for more.

President Joe Biden signed legislation Thursday giving leasing authority to the Colorado River Indian Tribes, whose reservation tracks its namesake on the Arizona-California border. Biden also approved a water rights settlement for the Hualapai Tribe and authorized additional funding to complete water projects for the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes passed a resolution in 2020 to seek the federal legislation to help bolster the tribe’s economy and improve housing, health care and education on the reservation. Revenue from water leases also will help fund a nursing home, substance abuse treatment and improve an irrigation system, tribal leaders have said.

The tribe has the right to divert more than 662,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water in Arizona but hasn’t taken full advantage because it lacks the infrastructure. It also has rights to nearly 57,000 acre-feet of water in California. An acre-foot is enough to serve roughly two to three households annually.

The tribe’s leasing authority is limited to its water rights in Arizona and more so by what's already being used for farming. Tribal Chairwoman Amelia Flores said the legislation was designed that way to avoid further straining the river that’s been dwindling because of overuse, climate change and an unrelenting drought.

Already, the tribe has committed to leaving water in Lake Mead — the largest human-made reservoir in the U.S. West — to help ensure Hoover Dam can continue generating power and deliver water to Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico in the lower Colorado River basin. Flores said the tribe will work with its farm managers and talk to the community to determine the amount of water that can be leased, the price for the water and the length of the leases.

Flores suggested the leases won’t be as long as the 50-year terms that the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs offered for farming on the tribe’s reservation.

“I do not believe, and I think I speak for others on the Council, that we have the foresight to know what is best for our members who are not yet born or for their children,” she said.

Cities in metropolitan Phoenix and Tucson, as well as other Native American tribes who get water from a series of canals managed by the Central Arizona Project, are among the likely customers for water leases with the Colorado River Indian Tribes.

Flores said the tribe is committed to helping its neighbors and maintaining the habitat along the river as water becomes more scarce and others face deeper cuts.

The Colorado River serves 40 million people in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada. Mexico also gets a share. Mandatory shortages are affecting some states, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation has called for more widespread cuts as key reservoirs shrink.

The Hualapai Tribe also secured the right to lease water as part of its settlement in the lower Colorado River basin. The tribe now can divert 3,414 acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado River. But it's also at risk of having water curtailed because it’s a lower-tier right.

“The fourth-priority was only part of the whole negotiations, and we walked into it with our heads held up high because at least it’s water,” said former Hualapai Chairman Damon Clarke. “In that sense, it’s good. In another sense, that’s not good.”

Still, the tribe called Biden’s signature a historic step for the Hualapai people, whose reservation borders a 108-mile (174-kilometer) stretch of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

“This is a life-changing moment for the Hualapai Tribe and the many members of the Tribal Council who have worked toward this goal for more than a decade,” tribal Vice Chairman Scott Crozier said in a statement Thursday.

The legislation includes more than $310 million for the Hualapai tribe to build out a water delivery system. It has long relied on groundwater to serve its communities and its major tourist operation, Grand Canyon West that’s outside the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park.

The tribe secured water rights to a Colorado River tributary in 2014 through another federal water rights settlement. The federal government has approved about 40 such settlements with tribes, some of which include more than one tribe. Tribes often trade potentially huge water claims for the promise of federal funding to deliver water to their citizens.

The third bill that Biden signed amends a 2010 water rights settlement for the White Mountain Apache Tribe in eastern Arizona, authorizing additional funding and extending deadlines to complete a rural water system and dam.

___

Fonseca covers Indigenous communities on the AP's Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter: @FonsecaAP

Biden signs bills that secure long-sought water rights and land for 5 Arizona tribes

Debra Utacia Krol, Arizona Republic
Fri, January 6, 2023 

Five Arizona tribes celebrated after President Joe Biden signed legislation that secured water rights, funding to develop water infrastructure and historically important tribal lands.

Some tribes have been pushing for these bills for years, including the Colorado River Indian Tribes, which worked for more than two decades to secure the right to lease a portion of its Colorado River allotment. The bills were passed in the waning days of the 117th Congress.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes Water Resiliency Act, the Hualapai Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act, and the White Mountain Apache Tribe Water Rights Quantification Act were signed by Biden Jan. 5.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes, known as CRIT, had sought to lease part of its 719,248 acre-feet Colorado River allotment for more than 20 years, said CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores. The tribe has saved a portion of its allotment using conservation measures and will use the revenues from leasing it to help stabilize its economy and enable water service extensions to tribal members, she said.

CRIT, which operates a large farm and casino, also plans to improve its canal system and conserve even more water.

More importantly, Flores said, these measures will enable the tribe to help save the life of the river.

"The river's the person. The river can't speak for itself. And we as stewards need to step up and protect the river," she said.

The Mojave and Chemehuevi have lived in the Colorado River Valley and the surrounding lands for millennia, and in recent years, Navajo and Hopi people relocated to the area. All four tribal cultures hold water as the source of life.

"We're connected to the river," she said. "We're connected spiritually. We're connected with our religious ceremonies to to the Colorado River and to the habitat along along the river."

Further up the river, the Hualapai Tribe finally secured a small water settlement that will provide a huge boost to its economy and community. The settlement provides 4,000 acre-feet from the river and authorizes the construction of a pipeline and other infrastructure to deliver the water to the tribe's biggest enterprise, Grand Canyon West. Water will also be delivered to homes.

"The passage of the Hualapai Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act of 2022 is an historic step for the Hualapai people, who have lived along the Colorado River for millennia,” said Hualapai Tribe Vice-Chairman Scott Crozier.

The 2,300-member tribe had pushed for more than a decade to secure the allotment from the Colorado River. The tribe’s lands lie on the south side of the Grand Canyon along 108 miles of the river.

“This will secure our tribe’s future for generations,” Crozier said.

In eastern Arizona, the White Mountain Apache Tribe Water Rights Quantification Act amends a 2010 water rights settlement for the 15,000-member tribe. It authorizes federal funding and extends the time the tribe needed to complete its rural water system and Miner Flat Fam project.

“On behalf of the White Mountain Apache Tribe, I would like to thank Senator Kelly and Senator Sinema for their leadership in securing passage of this legislation in the Senate," said White Mountain Apache Tribe Chairman Kasey Velasquez. "The legislation would provide the necessary funding to provide desperately needed drinking water on the Fort Apache Reservation and resolve the tribe’s water related claims against the United States and others."

The three water bills were sponsored by Arizona's two senators, Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly. Flores noted that her tribe's bill was backed by other lawmakers, including Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.). Former Rep. Tom O'Halleran sponsored two of the three water bills that passed the full Congress.

“As Arizona and the West navigate this historic drought that often hits tribal communities the hardest, the passage of these three bills could not be more significant," said Kelly.

Sinema added that, by working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, "we ensured critical priorities for Arizona’s tribal communities would not fall victim to partisanship. Passage of these bills will help ensure continued economic growth and water certainty for tribal communities across Arizona.”

Tribal water: Their pleas for water were long ignored. Now tribes are gaining a voice on the Colorado River

Pascua Yaqui, Gila River Indian Community gain new lands

Two other bills, the Old Pascua Community Land Acquisition Act and the Blackwater Trading Post Land Transfer Act, were signed in December. Although each put only small tracts of land into to trust for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and the Gila River Indian Community, they each hold historical significance for the two tribal communities.

The Yaqui Tribe released a statement saying that its bill confirmed a 2021 gaming compact agreement between the 19,000-member tribe and the state to place about 30 acres of land in South Tucson into trust. The land is called the Old Pascua Village and contains churches, sacred sites, and ceremonial grounds that are culturally significant to the Pascua Yaqui people.

The Old Pascua Museum and Yaqui Cultural Center is also in the village, which is recognized as the original Yaqui settlement established after tribal members fled persecution in their native Mexico.

“This bill is necessary in order to create additional economic opportunities for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona and its members,” Yaqui Chairman Peter Yucupicio said after approval in the Senate. “The bill acknowledges the relationship between the Pascua Yaqui and the city of Tucson, is reflective of numerous stakeholder meetings and negotiations, and allows the tribe to preserve our traditional homelands while promoting economic opportunities and new housing options for the community.”

Grijalva congratulated the tribe with a Tweet after passage in the Senate.

The tribe did not answer inquiries about any plans to establish a third casino on part of the property.

The Blackwater Trading Post Land Transfer Act places about 55 acres of land on the Gila River community's east end into trust. The land is the site of the the historic Blackwater Trading Post, and was purchased by the tribe in 2010 when the trading post closed. The family who operated the trading post also had a small museum on the site, which contained more than 1,000 cultural items that tribal members had traded for supplies. Those items are now part of the collection at the community's Huhugam Heritage Center.

When the bill was introduced in 2021, Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis thanked Arizona's Senate and House delegation. “This non-controversial legislation is important to the Community and to our members residing in District 1 of the Reservation," he said.

The legislation also prohibited gaming operations on the land.

A long drought:At Lake Powell, a 'front-row seat' to a drying Colorado River and an uncertain future

Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at debra.krol@azcentral.com. Follow her on Twitter at @debkrol.

Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 5 Arizona tribes gain water rights, land from Biden legislation

END BEAR HUNTING

Hunter bear bait ban proposed for Alaska national preserves


FILE - In this Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2017 photo, a black bear checks out his surroundings in Granite Basin in Juneau, Alaska. The National Park Service is proposing a rule that would prohibit bear baiting in national preserves in Alaska, the latest in a dispute over what animal rights supporters call a cruel practice. The park service said Friday, Jan. 6, 2023 it is proposing a rule barring bear baiting in national preserves in Alaska. 

(AP Photo/Becky Bohrer, File) 

BECKY BOHRER
Fri, January 6, 2023

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Bear hunters in Alaska would no longer be able to use bait, such as pastries, dog food or bacon grease, under a proposed rule by the National Park Service on Friday that would prohibit bear baiting in national preserves in the state.

It's the latest in a dispute over what animal rights supporters call a cruel practice. The park service also says the new proposal would, in part, “lower the risk that bears will associate food at bait stations with humans and become conditioned to eating human-produced foods.”

The agency will be taking public comments on the proposal.

In September, U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason found problems with a 2020 Trump administration-era rule that lifted restrictions previously in place on sport hunting and trapping in national preserves in Alaska, including bear baiting. The case was brought by conservation and animal rights groups.

But the judge did not set the rule aside, and noted the park service had indicated it was already in the process of reassessing the rule. She sent the matter back to the agency.

Appeals in the case are pending.

Peter Christian, a spokesperson with the Alaska region for the National Park Service, said the assistant secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks last February directed the park service “to initiate a rulemaking process to reconsider the factual, legal and policy conclusions in the 2020 Alaska Hunting and Trapping rule which authorized several controversial sport hunting practices.”

The park service is pursuing the new proposal “due to legal and policy concerns regarding bear baiting implications for public safety. Bears that become habituated to non-natural foods used as bait pose a safety hazard to the public,” he said by email.

A similar ban on bear baiting, enacted in 2015 during the Obama administration, was rescinded by the 2020 rule, the park service said.

According to the agency, the proposed new rule also would reinstate prohibitions that had been in place under the 2015 rule “on methods of harvest that are not compatible with generally accepted notions of ‘sport’ hunting.”

The 2020 rule removed restrictions on such things as harvesting bears over bait; taking wolves and coyotes during the denning season; taking swimming caribou; and using dogs to hunt black bears, the agency said.

Sara Amundson, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, in a statement called the new proposal “a victory for Alaska’s iconic wildlife species.”

Explainer-Why the U.S.-Mexico energy spat is a tough nut to crack


The logo of the Mexican state oil firm PEMEX is pictured during a protest against Senator Samuel Garcia's proposal to close down the Cadereyta refinery as a measure to lower the levels of pollution in the air, in Cadereyta

Fri, January 6, 2023 
By Isabel Woodford

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico are due to hold a summit next week, where a major bone of contention could be a dispute centering on whether Mexico breached a trade pact by tightening state control of its energy market.

WHERE DOES THE DISPUTE STAND?

Tensions over Mexico's nationalist policies boiled over into a formal dispute in July, when the Washington and Ottawa filed a complaint against Mexico under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal.

The complaint argued Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's efforts to change the market to favor state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and national power utility Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) had discriminated against U.S. and Canadian companies.

The companies also complained that bureaucratic delays are stymieing their operations.

Dispute resolution talks began, and although progress has been halting, the United States and Canada last year agreed to extend the process beyond an initial 75-day window.

Under USMCA, if the controversy is not resolved during consultations, a dispute panel can be called to adjudicate.

WHAT IS MEXICO'S DEFENSE?

Lopez Obrador has put on a bullish front, saying Mexico has broken no laws and that "nothing is going to happen."

It comes after he overhauled the electricity market in the name of national sovereignty, giving CFE priority over private companies in connecting power stations to the grid.

Often couching his opposition to foreign and private participation in the energy sector as part of his drive to eradicate corruption, he argues past governments skewed the market in favor of private capital.

He also says that energy is a domestic matter, and points to an article he had inserted into USMCA stipulating Mexico's "inalienable" ownership of its oil and gas. Critics say the article does not cover his treatment of foreign firms.

CAN MEXICO FIX THE DISPUTE?

Most analysts predict Mexico would lose if a panel is asked to resolve the dispute. That could be very costly to Mexico, raising the prospect of punitive U.S. tariffs.

Both countries have previously stressed that they want to sort out the disagreement before it reaches a panel.

Talks slowed down after Mexico's economy minister resigned in October, and her successor cleared out several experienced trade negotiators, leaving an inexperienced team in charge.

The new teams says it has put forward proposals that could deal with two of the four areas of consultations, and that they are also addressing other U.S. concerns. But there has been little clear indication of meaningful progress.

Resolution appears to hinge on whether energy nationalists inside the Mexican administration, who have taken their cues from Lopez Obrador, are prepared to compromise.

WHAT ARE MEXICO'S BARGAINING CHIPS?

Lopez Obrador has made energy policy a cornerstone of his presidency, making it hard for him to back down.

His administration is also mindful that Mexico's assistance on tackling illegal immigration tends to carry more weight in Washington due to its prominence in U.S. domestic politics, giving the government tacit, if unstated, leverage.

Also, Mexican industry is so heavily integrated with the U.S. economy that a trade conflict could be painful for both countries at a time the region is attempting to reduce its reliance on Asia and bring down soaring inflation.

Still, the spat has hit investor confidence in Mexico, and Lopez Obrador is seeking U.S. help to finance solar power output in northern Mexico and attract investment in greener manufacturing, particularly in carmaking, a key industry.

(Reporting by Isabel Woodford; Editing by Dave Graham and Marguerita Choy)

Mexican govt inks deal to buy Mexicana airline brand for $42 million, union says


Mexicana airlines planes is seen at the Benito Juarez international airport in Mexico City

Fri, January 6, 2023 
By Kylie Madry

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -The Mexican government signed a deal with several aviation unions Friday to purchase the brand of the defunct Mexicana airline for 811.1 million Mexican pesos ($42.41 million), a union spokesman told Reuters.

The deal includes rights to use the airline's brand and the purchase of two buildings, a technical training center and a flight simulator, pilots' union spokesman Jose Alonso said in an interview. A time-frame for the payment has yet to be agreed upon, he added.

Mexico's transportation ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said the government intends to use Mexicana to launch a military-run commercial airline.

In December, Lopez Obrador said the airline was set to launch operations in 2023. The government is also in talks with Boeing on renting aircraft, he said.

On Monday, the government will lift any legal actions in place against Mexicana, which was declared bankrupt in 2014, Alonso said.

Founded in 1921, Mexicana had been among the world's oldest airlines.

The payment will be divided between pilots' union ASPA, flight attendants' union ASSA, ex-aviation workers' union AJTEAM and transportation workers' union SNTTTASS proportionally by a percentage of what was owed when Mexicana shuttered, Alonso said.

Though the payment is a small fraction of what was owed to workers, Alonso said, "it's a little bit of justice after 12 years."

The deal was reached Friday between Mexico's transportation ministry and the unions with supervision from the labor ministry, Alonso added.

A military-run business, Olmeca-Maya-Mexica, will take over the company, Lopez Obrador has previously said.

The push to operate the military carrier comes as Lopez Obrador has expressed his discontent with the country's airlines.

($1 = 19.1273 Mexican pesos)

(Reporting by Kylie Madry; Editing by Sarah Morland and David Gregorio)

WHITE MALE MISOGYNIST FEMICIDE
Utah murder-suicide underscores frequency of family killings





Eight Dead Utah

Jess, left, sits next to her sister, Cecily, during a press conference regarding the killing of a family in Enoch, Utah on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023. A Utah man fatally shot his five children, his mother-in-law and his wife, then killed himself two weeks after the woman had filed for divorce, according to authorities and public records.

(Ben B. Braun/The Deseret News via AP)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAM METZ and CLAUDIA LAUER
Fri, January 6, 2023

ENOCH, Utah (AP) — City leaders in a small Utah town choked up this week as they expressed shock after a murder-suicide carried out by a fellow church member left eight people dead in their close-knit community, including five children who were classmates with their kids.

Though shocking, family mass killings are an all-too-common tragedy across the country. They've happened nearly every 3.5 weeks for the last two decades on average, according to a database compiled by USA Today, The Associated Press and Northeastern University.

Enoch, Utah, is one of more than 30 communities sent reeling by a family mass killing in the last two years, a list that includes communities of wealth and poverty and spares no race or class. A family mass killing — where four or more people were killed, not including the perpetrator — happened each of the last two years in places as large as Houston or as small as Casa Grande, Arizona, the database shows.

The circumstances of the killings are myriad: An argument over pandemic stimulus checks leaves four family members shot dead and two injured in Indianapolis; financial issues lead to authorities finding six children and their parents inside a house set ablaze in Oklahoma; an escalating custody battle in Ohio precedes a man and members of his family shooting the mother of his child and seven of her family members; a father loses his job, piles his wife and kids in the family station wagon and plunges it into the Detroit River.

Motives can remain speculative in family killings in which assailants take their own lives, but police often cite financial or relationship issues as the causes.

Enoch police are still investigating what led to the deaths discovered Wednesday, but authorities said Tausha Haight had recently filed a divorce petition against her husband Michael, a 42-year-old insurance agent who they believe killed her, their five children and Tausha’s mother, who was staying at the family’s home.

Officials have not released information on the weapon they believe killed the adults and the children, who ranged in age from 4 to 17. A relative of Tausha Haight said Friday that the family was left “vulnerable” after Michael Haight removed guns he and his wife owned in the days before the murder-suicide.

Police went to the Haight’s home on Wednesday in response to a welfare check call placed when Tausha Haight missed an appointment.

The news left mothers, fathers, teachers and churchgoers asking a question many communities face in the aftermath of mass shootings: How could this happen here?

City Councilman Rob Jensen said he was well aware such tragedies happen throughout the country, yet that did little to quell the shock he felt when the killings happened in his town.

“Especially in a small town, you don’t anticipate this kind of thing. Nobody does,” Jensen said. “Everyone knows this kind of thing can happen. But everyone wants to say that it’s not them.”

Family mass killings immediately capture the attention of people in a community, but rarely garner the level of national attention received by mass killings at schools, places of worship or restaurants, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University who has studied familicides and mass killings for decades.

Fox, who helped compile and maintains the database for the AP and USA Today, said that’s because it doesn’t carry the same kind of fear with the public. He noted police often issue messages saying there is no danger to the public shortly after the killings are discovered.

“It’s a nice safe community, but family massacres are independent of the crime rate in the local area,” he said. “We are talking about internal factors, and I think that’s why it’s hard for people to see themselves in these situations and why the response is to mourn instead of fear.”

Family mass killings are in fact the most common type of mass killing, making up about 45% of the 415 mass shootings since 2006, according to the database. They happen twice as frequently as mass shootings in which members of the public are killed.

Most, but not all, involve handguns, only about a third involve households with a previous occurrence of domestic violence and most of the assailants have no violent history or criminal past, Fox said.

There is no governmental agency tracking murder-suicides nationally, so a few years ago policy analysts at the Violence Policy Center — a nonprofit educational organization that conducts research and public education on violence in the U.S. — began tracking details from news accounts to produce an annual report. The latest version from 2020 looked at murder-suicides including many mass killings during the first six months of 2019.

The study found 81% of murder-suicides happened at home and 65% involved intimate partners. The study also found that among murder-suicides where more than three people aside from the assailant were killed, six of the 10 during those six months were incidents in which a person killed their children, partner and themselves.

Fox said most of the killings fall into two categories. The first is murder by proxy, in which the killer is motivated by anger or resentment and kills the children who are seen as an extension of their partner. The second is suicide by proxy motivated by despondency or depression, most often a job loss, and the assailant kills the children as an extension of themselves.

"He wants to spare them the misery of living in this awful world," Fox said. “Over the years, there's been an eclipse in community. There was a time decades ago if you had trouble feeding your family or if you had lost your job, neighbors would come over with casseroles and they would offer emotional support. Many people don’t know their neighbors these days.”

___

Lauer reported from Philadelphia.


COMMENT

J.

This is domestic violence. In domestic abuse, the most dangerous time for the woman is when she tells the man she's leaving the marriage, which this woman had - she had filed for divorce the week prior. I'm so sick of these constant news articles of sick 'men' who abuse their wives and family in the first place and second, are so sick that they'd rather kill their entire family than suffer through rejection and divorce.

Utah man massacred family, including five children, after divorce petition

Thu, January 5, 2023 
By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) -A 42-year-old Utah man whose wife had filed for divorce just before Christmas shot dead seven members of his family including his five children ranging in age from 4 to 17 and then turned the gun on himself, officials said on Thursday.

The massacre on Wednesday has stunned the close-knit community of Enoch City in southwestern Utah, where both the mayor and the city manager said they knew the Haight family as neighbors.

After reporting the shooting with scant details on Wednesday, city officials called a news conference on Thursday and identified the shooter as Michael Haight, the father of the five children he killed.

Haight also shot dead his wife, Tausha Haight, 40, and her mother, Gail Earl, 78.

The children killed were a 4-year-old boy, a 7-year-old boy, a 7-year-old girl, a 12-year-old girl and a 17-year-old girl, officials said without naming them.

"The Haights were my neighbors. The youngest children played in my yard with my sons," Enoch City Mayor Geoffrey Chesnut told reporters. "Enoch City is a very close community. The neighbors are good. The people are wonderful. And the effort we make on one another's behalf is like family."

The rural town of about 7,500 is home to a high number of young professionals with children, Chesnut said.

Police were sent to the home for a welfare check after Tausha Haight had missed an appointment in town and efforts to reach her had failed, Chesnut said.

Tausha Haight and one of her daughters had been seen at a church event on Tuesday night, Chesnut said.

Officials declined to draw conclusions about the impact of the divorce petition that they said had been filed on Dec. 21.

Police Chief Jackson Ames said officers were once called to the couple's home a couple of years ago for an incident that he declined to describe, but that there had been no recent complaints.

"From what we saw outside, they were just phenomenally kind, and so everyone I've talked to has just been absolutely shocked about losing them," neighbor Garrett Minkler told ABC4 television.

School officials said counselors were being made available to classmates of the victims.

City Manager Rob Dotson noted that officials at the news conference were misty-eyed, their voices cracking, because of the emotional toll.

"We don't know why this happened," Dotson said. "However, we do know that they were our friends. They were our neighbors. And that we loved them."

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Peru protesters clash with police in airport takeover attempt in Puno

Fri, January 6, 2023 

LIMA (Reuters) - Dozens of protesters attempted to take over an airport near Peru's border with Bolivia Friday as part of anti-government protests, prompting police to use tear gas to disperse them.

Protesters set fire to a police tank outside the Inca Manco Capac airport in Juliaca, in Peru's Puno region, according to images on social media and local television.

Protests against President Dina Boluarte resumed this week after a two-week pause, following violent clashes in December that left 22 dead after the removal and arrest of former President Pedro Castillo.

News outlets in Puno reported 15 injured, including two policemen. The healthy ministry did not immediately confirm the reports.

Andean Airports of Peru, which operates the Juliaca airport, said services were suspended "due to the violent acts and lack of security."

In December, protesters forced the temporary closure of three airports in Peru.

Demonstrators demand Boluarte's resignation, the closure of Congress, constitutional changes and Castillo's release. The former president is serving 18 months in pre-trial detention while being investigated for "rebellion" after illegally trying to close Congress, a charge he denies.

Up to 49 blockade points were reported Friday in different regions of the country, an uptick from the day before, the Ombudsman's office said in a statement.

In the Ica region, on Peru's central coast, protesters have blocked a key highway, stranding dozens of passenger and cargo transport vehicles.

"We have already supported last year's strike, we have been unemployed for about 10 days and the truth is, with the pandemic and all that there has been, we want to continue working," said Jose Palomino, a driver affected by the roadblock.

The attorney general's office said Friday it was assessing complaints against Boluarte and three of her ministers and, if warranted, would launch an investigation into deaths that occurred during December's protests.

Human rights group have accused security forces of using deadly firearms and launching smoke bombs on protesters, who the army says have used homemade weapons and explosives.

Boluarte welcomed the prosecutor's announcement on Twitter, writing that she "will provide all the appropriate resources for the prompt clarification of the facts, as he has repeatedly requested."

(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Additional reporting by Alfredo Galarza for Reuters TV; editing by Diane Craft)

Big tech layoffs may further disrupt equity and diversity efforts

Thu, January 5, 2023 

By Doyinsola Oladipo

NEW YORK, Jan 5 (Reuters) - 2023 is shaping up as a challenging year to be a woman or minority working in the tech sector, or even a person with one too many years under their belt.

Surging firings by technology companies last year are disproportionately affecting women and mid-career talent which may make it more difficult to improve diversity in one of the most sought-after industries, according to data from a research firm.

In recent years, U.S. tech majors have stepped up hiring and made diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) a priority. But as the industry grapples with over-hiring since mid-2020, rising interest rates and changes in business and consumer behavior, tech companies have announced deep cuts, risking their diversity efforts.

Amazon.com Inc's layoffs will now include more than 18,000 roles as part of a workforce reduction it previously disclosed, its CEO said on Wednesday. That comes to about 6% of its corporate workforce. Salesforce Inc said on Wednesday it planned to eliminate about 10% of its staff.

The rare shakeup in big tech companies risks further disrupting diversity pledges that have already grown stagnant as companies de-emphasize DEI efforts.

Companies including Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com, Twitter Inc and Snap Inc have together cut over 97,000 jobs in 2022 to deal with the slowing economy and shareholder pressures, according to a report from employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. That is up 649% from 2021.

Women and Latino workers represent 46.64% and 11.49%, respectively, of the tech layoffs from September to December 2022, while those segments make up 39.09% and 9.96%, respectively, of the entire industry, according to data from Revelio Labs Inc, a startup that analyzed data from tech layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi and talent database Parachute List by Rocket.

Mid-career talent is also overrepresented in layoffs, said Reyhan Ayas, Revelio Labs senior economist.

Meta, for instance, committed in 2019 to doubling the number of Black and Hispanic employees in its U.S. workforce as well as doubling the number of women in its global workforce by 2024.

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who studied U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity data for 2008-2016, found that about 7% of tech firms are actively trying to diversify their workforce.

Tomaskovic-Devey said if the same pattern holds, the current round of layoffs will lead to fewer women and non-Asian minorities in tech firms and further entrench the dominance of white and Asian males in the industry.

Twitter was hit with a lawsuit that claimed the social media company disproportionately targeted female employees in layoffs.

Snap and Twitter did not respond to requests for comment. Meta declined to comment.

DISRUPT DIVERSITY

Black and Asian talent has been less affected by the job cuts but the unexpected layoffs in tech may make it more difficult to attract diverse early-career talent to "the cool kid on the block" or well-known tech companies, said Morgan DeBaun, CEO of Blavity Inc, which hosts the largest annual Black tech conference, AfroTech.

This will disrupt diversity efforts even further, said Benjamin Juarez, a recruiting consultant and co-founder of Latinos in Tech. Underrepresented talent will face increased competition for entry-level roles as experienced workers settle for those jobs, he added.

Entry-level jobs often present the best option for diverse candidates to get a foothold in the tech industry.

"Someone looking to break in to tech for the first time should anticipate that it could be a long road," said Amanda Daering, co-founder of HR consulting firm Newance which builds finance and tech teams at startups.

Companies have made cuts to budgets allocated to make workplaces more diverse, said Nadiyah Johnson, CEO of Milky Way Tech Hub, which helps corporations source diverse candidates.

"There's been patterns of pushing back projects that at one point in time were a priority, especially the first year or two since the George Floyd murder," she said.

Still, some are hopeful.

Latinos in Tech's Juarez said he is hopeful that massive layoffs will give rise to minority led-startups, his preferred solution to the stagnant DEI efforts.

"We want to increase the amount of Latinos in the tech space but we're starting to see that some of these DEI efforts just don't work and we just need to essentially build our own path."

(Reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo in New York Editing by Denny Thomas and Matthew Lewis)

Syrians in rebel enclave protest Turkey-Syria contacts

Fri, January 6, 2023 

IDLIB, Syria (AP) — Thousands of Syrians held protests Friday in different parts of the rebel-held northwest against recent moves by the governments in Damascus and Ankara to improve ties.

The protests in villages and towns in Idlib and Aleppo provinces came a week after the Turkish, Syrian and Russian defense ministers held previously unannounced talks in Moscow in the first such meeting between rivals Turkey and Syria since the start of the Syrian conflict 11 years ago.

Turkey has been a main backer of insurgents fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces. . Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces presidential and parliamentary elections in June and is under intense pressure at home to send Syrian war refugees back to Syria.

Damascus and Ankara have been holding talks at the security level in recent months but last week’s meeting in Moscow raised alarms among opposition activists who fear they could pay a price for a Damascus-Ankara reconciliation.

“Listen Erdogan, the blood of the martyrs cannot be sold,” chanted a group of protesters.

Russia, a main backer of Assad, has long been pressing for the reconciliation. Syria’s civil war has killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed large parts of the country. It has also displaced half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million.

Many of the displaced now live in tent settlements in the rebel-held northwestern Syria while Turkey is estimated to now host around 3.7 million Syrian war refugees.

The rebel-held northwest is also the base of the powerful al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Arabic for Levant Liberation Committee, which dominates the region’s rebel groups.

Earlier this week, the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, said a deal between Turkey and Syria would be a “serious deviation” and called on his fighters to prepare for a long battle against Syrian government forces.

2,500-year-old pantry — still partly stocked — unearthed during construction in Germany

Aspen Pflughoeft
Fri, January 6, 2023 

A school district in Germany called in archaeologists to excavate the area where a new school would be built. For months, the excavations found nothing, then they had a breakthrough.

Archaeologists at the site in Gaukönigshofen uncovered the remains of a pantry, the Würzburg District Office said in a Dec. 15 news release. The 2,500-year-old storage pit held a number of artifacts buried in a cone shape.

Unearthed from the pantry, archaeologists found broken fragments of ceramic pots, simple stone tools, two bronze fragments and animal bones indicating either food or food waste, the release said, Photos show two of the potshards.

Potshards found in the storage pit.

These items are traces of the Hallstatt culture, from an early Celtic period between 800 B.C. and 600 B.C., the excavation manager Ulrich Müller said in the release.

The excavation uncovered more than 40 artifacts, Müller said. Some of these finds came from the early middle ages, a period from 700 A.D. to 900 A.D.

Researchers will remove the artifacts from the site before continuing to study and preserve them, the release said.

Gaukönigshofen is about 315 miles southwest of Berlin.

Chinese Researchers Claim They Cracked Encryption With Quantum Computers



Jason Nelson
Thu, January 5, 2023 at 6:59 PM MST·4 min read

While the world continues to reel from how far artificial intelligence has come with projects like ChatGPT, Chinese researchers recently claimed that they have been able to crack encryption using quantum computing—something scientists have assumed was years away from happening.

A group of Chinese researchers published a "scientific paper" last month that said they used quantum computers to break a standard RSA algorithm that many industries—including banking, mobile phones, and data storage—use for their encryption measures.

According to the Financial Times, the Chinese researchers said they had used their algorithm to factor a number with 48 bits on a quantum computer with ten qubits (quantum bits) and that they had not yet tried to scale it up to work on a much bigger system.

Researchers Suggest Quantum Computers Only a Decade From Cracking Bitcoin
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While the claim has raised some concern about the state of the art in security, many experts consider the breakthrough to be impossible—at least for now.

"A colleague of ours calls it the biggest hoax he has seen in about 25 years," Global Quantum Intelligence CEO & Co-Founder Andre Konig told Decrypt in an interview. "The paper itself doesn't announce anything really new."

Konig calls the paper's claims hype-driven and a spin on existing methodologies and approaches, lacking a proof of concept that would demonstrate the successful breaking of current encryption standards.

What is Encryption?

Encryption helps protect information from being accessed even when it's intercepted by hackers, malicious actors, or nation-states that might try to steal personal or financial data. This secure means of scrambling and unscrambling information is key to blockchains like the Bitcoin network and cryptocurrency in general, which stores things like transaction details on a decentralized ledger made widely accessible over the internet.

What is Quantum Computing?

Quantum computing uses quantum mechanics to perform operations on data at much greater speeds than modern computers. Many times more powerful than an average desktop PC, quantum computers are attractive in calculation-heavy cryptography, but are much more challenging to build, program, and use. Their speed and processing power, crypto enthusiast fear, may one day be able to break the encryption used to secure Bitcoin.

"Some people in our industry call it Y2Q," Konig said. "Y2Q," Konig noted, is the unknown moment in the future when quantum computing achieves a mainstream breakthrough—referenced the way "Y2K" was used in the late 1990s in the computer industry. At the time, the industry looked to midnight, December 31, 1999, as the day when computers worldwide would go down, causing a global meltdown.

Konig says that while researchers do not know when Y2Q will happen, the industry is exploring the possibility of the day when quantum computers come into their own. "I think it's going to take about ten years to happen," he said. "But if you're one of these providers with critical information, you need to worry about it today."

Bank of Canada Using Quantum Computing to Simulate Crypto Adoption Scenarios

What is the threat to Bitcoin?

Bitcoin has never been successfully hacked, but many see brute force attacks using quantum computers as the likely tool someone would use to take down Bitcoin.

According to the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, a brute force attack uses trial-and-error to guess strings like login credentials and encryption keys, working through all possible combinations hoping to find a match. With current technology, these attacks can take years, even decades, to succeed.

Quantum computers could theoretically untangle complex encryption within hours or minutes.

"It would completely and utterly destroy the market," David Schwed, COO of the blockchain security firm, Halborn, told Decrypt. "But it's not just crypto; it's anything encrypted; whether you're breaking ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) or breaking RSA, you'll be able to break any encryption."

Could Quantum Computers Defeat Bitcoin? Not So Fast.

Schwed believes that if researchers were successful in developing quantum computing, the first target would not be cryptocurrency but massive stores of leaked and stolen encrypted data that nation-states have accumulated over the years.

"[They are] just waiting for the day that they can decrypt that data," he said. "That, to me, would be more concerning, not necessarily to crypto."

"The Chinese are not going to tell us that they can break encryption if they can break encryption," Schwed added. "They're just going to break encryption and do whatever they're gonna do with it."

Schwed and Konig agree that announcing the ability to break encryption would be odd for a country to do.

Who is Working on Quantum Computing?

While quantum computers may still be years away from posing a threat to encryption and cryptocurrency, several companies—including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin—have entered the race to bring quantum computing to the market.

"I think [it's] extremely urgent," Konig said. "Because no matter if it takes five years, ten, or even 15 years, patching your systems is going to take up considerable resources. So you really have to get started today."