Bill Gates considers W.Va. to expand nuclear energy efforts


Bill Gates speaks during the Global Fund's Seventh Replenishment Conference, Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2022, in New York. Gates topped The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of the 10 largest charitable gifts announced by individuals or their foundations in 2022. This year's list totaled nearly $9.3 billion. Gates gave $5 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to back the grantmaker’s work in global health, development, policy and advocacy, and U.S. education. 

LEAH WILLINGHAM
Mon, January 9, 2023

GLASGOW, W.Va. (AP) — Bill Gates is looking to West Virginia as he plans for the next phase of his effort to reboot U.S. nuclear energy technology: powering the east coast.

Microsoft co-founder Gates, who visited a closed down coal-fired plant in Glasgow, West Virginia on Monday, said he needs to see how his Natrium nuclear reactor demonstration in Wyoming performs before making any announcements about new sites. The Kemmerer, Wyoming sodium-cooled nuclear reactor is taking over the site of a current coal-powered plant and was scheduled to be online by 2028, but is facing delays because its only source of fuel was uranium from Russia, now at war with Ukraine.

However, during a visit to the American Electric Power plant, which closed in 2015, Gates called the West Virginia’s Legislature’s decision last year to repeal the state’s ban on nuclear power facilities “quite impressive" and said he's looking for sites to expand his efforts to the east coast.

West Virginia’s new law has opened the door to discussions with American Electric Power during the last six months, said Gates, who founded TerraPower, the company behind the $4 billion project in Wyoming.

“Really, I think six months ago we really weren’t on their radar much at all, nuclear wasn’t, but the Legislature did say, ‘Okay, we’re open-minded to nuclear’ and that was quite impressive,” he said of the American Electric Power plant, known as AEP.

The Wyoming coal-fired power plant that is being converted for the sodium-cooled nuclear reactor is scheduled to close in 2025, when Gates said its 200 employees will stay on and transition to working with nuclear energy. The demonstration project comes as many U.S. states see nuclear emerging as an option to help transition energy production away from coal, oil and natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Wyoming plant will feature a sodium reactor and molten salt energy storage system that will perform better, more safely and cost less than a traditional nuclear power, Gates said.

TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque said sites like the Glasgow plant are “ready and capable" to support a plant like Natrium because the company can take advantage of existing infrastructure, like the grid connection.

“You can get a two-year jump on this one — this is ready to go now,” Democratic Sen. Manchin joked, as he accompanied Gates on a tour of the plant in Glasgow.

The coal-fired plant, known as the Kanawha River Plant, is located along the Kanawha River in Glasgow, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast from Charleston. It went into operation in 1953 and was retired in May 2015 as part of AEP’s plan to comply with the U.S. EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.

Gates said that as the Wyoming project matures, it will be more clear how efforts can be expanded to new sites and will give utility companies the time needed to look at their overall strategy and see how and if nuclear power fits in.

“We hope to say, three years from now, have a couple of utilities that have a pretty solid plan and that Natrium is a part of their multi-decade generation strategy,” he said.

An Associated Press survey last year of the energy policies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia found that a strong majority— about two-thirds— say nuclear, in one fashion or another, will help take the place of fossil fuels. The momentum building behind nuclear power could lead to the first expansion of nuclear reactor construction in the U.S. in more than three decades.

Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation Authority bus driver Anthony Smith's grandparents lived in Glasgow, and both his parents worked at the plant before it closed. He said the town of less than 1,000 is in need of a boost.

“This town needs rejuvenating, honestly. It was different back then, you know?" he said. “I'd love to see things back how they used to be, that's probably what a lot of people feel anywhere they're from that has an area that's struggling, they just want to see it get better.”

Holtec seeks $7.4 billion loan for expansion tied to new reactor



Jim Walsh, Cherry Hill Courier-Post
Mon, January 9, 2023 

CAMDEN – Holtec International Inc. has applied for a $7.4 billion federal loan to fund expansion expected from future sales of a company-designed nuclear reactor.

Holtec would tap the loan to boost capacity to make parts at its existing U.S. facilities, and to build and commission “at least four” SMR-160 advanced light water reactors.

It also expects to build “one or more additional manufacturing plants,” the company said.

Holtec added it’s “actively evaluating” potential sites “for the new ultra-modern manufacturing plant(s)."

The firm has three nuclear manufacturing facilities in the United States, including one at its Camden corporate campus that was designed for the eventual production of SMR-160s. It also has a fabrication plant in India.

Holtec claims its small modular reactor produces carbon-free energy more safely than a conventional nuclear power plant.

The firm has invested more than $400 million in the reactor's development since 2010. It was approved in 2020 for $116 million in federal aid "to support the SMR-160’s commercialization readiness."

Holtec is seeking the loan from the U.S. Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, which received an infusion of about $111 billion from last year's Inflation Reduction Act.

"We anticipate that (the application process) will be ongoing for a while as DOE usually (has requests) for information or clarifying questions for an applicant," said Holtec spokesman Patrick O'Brien.

"Our goal is to have an SMR-160 licensed and operational by 2030," he said.

The company has said it’s “exploring” the potential to put its first SMR-160 at the Oyster Creek complex in Ocean County, where Holtec is decommissioning a former atomic power plant.

Earlier:Lacey to receive grant to prepare for future without Oyster Creek

It's also looking at two southern states “with rapidly growing regional demand for carbon-free energy,” Holtec said in a review of its 2022 performance.

Holtec also said it expects the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission “early this year” will license its planned nuclear-waste storage facility in New Mexico.

The complex, in the works for seven years, could hold “the vast quantity of spent nuclear fuel presently stored at more than 70 nuclear sites in 35 states,” the company said.

But an environmental coalition plans to challenge any NRC approval in federal court, said Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear, a nonprofit that’s sharply critical of Holtec’s plan.

Kamps said Holtec’s waste-storage project also faces court challenges from the states of New Mexico and Texas, as well as from businesses with mining and ranching interests near the proposed storage site.

He also described potential federal aid to Holtec as “an outrageous pickpocketing of hardworking American taxpayers to benefit a filthy rich private company.”

According to Holtec, the operation of a consolidated waste-storage site would spur nuclear power in the United States, “leading to the rise of small modular reactors."

It also expressed the belief that modular reactors made in America would find “a large global export market.”

Holtec previously has predicted it could place 32 SMR-160s in the United Kingdom by 2050.

The company said it expects to pair its SMR-160 with a “Green Boiler” facility that can store excess energy “from an SMR-160, a wind or a solar power plant, and generally from the grid in periods of excess power, then deliver that stored energy in times of generation deficit."

Holtec has been developing the Green Boiler since 2021.

Jim Walsh is a senior reporter at the Courier-Post, the Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal.

This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Holtec seeks federal loan for production of advanced nuclear reactor

US law based on anti-Latino racism fuels immigration fight


 In this photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, people who've been taken into custody related to cases of illegal entry into the United States rest in one of the cages at a facility in McAllen, Texas, on June 17, 2018. As thousands of children were taken from their parents at the southern border amid a crackdown on illegal crossings by the Trump administration, a federal public defender in San Diego set out to find new strategies to go after the longstanding deportation law fueling the family separations. (U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Rio Grande Valley Sector via AP, File)


RIO YAMAT
Mon, January 9, 2023

LAS VEGAS (AP) — As thousands of children were taken from their parents at the southern border during a Trump administration crackdown on illegal crossings, a federal public defender in San Diego set out to find new strategies to go after the longstanding deportation law fueling the family separations.

The resulting legal defense that Kara Hartzler would help draft in the coming years — work that continued even after a judge halted the general practice at the U.S.-Mexico border in June 2018 — was unprecedented.

It exposed Section 1326 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which makes it a crime to unlawfully return to the U.S. after deportation, removal or denied admission, as racist and a violation of equal protection rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.

And it became the legal framework for a never-before-seen ruling in August 2021 by Nevada U.S. District Judge Miranda Du. She struck down the law as unconstitutional and discriminatory against Latinos when she dismissed an illegal reentry charge against Mexican immigrant Gustavo Carrillo Lopez, though she didn’t block enforcement and prosecutions haven't stopped as the government appeals the case.

Du's 43-page ruling cited much of Hartzler's legal defense. “The record before the Court reflects that at no point has Congress confronted the racist, nativist roots of Section 1326,” the judge wrote.

Hartzler, who has spent the last decade as a federal public defender in California, said she was blown away when she learned of the ruling.

“When you’ve been working in law for as long as I have, you know that just because you’re legally right doesn’t mean you always win,” she said. “There’s a lot of forces at work in making legal decisions.”

The potentially precedent-setting case has been in legal limbo for more than a year as a federal court in California considers the Justice Department's appeal defending the law. Despite the ongoing battle in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the Nevada case has shined a national spotlight on the little-known history of Section 1326.

“It really is an ill-understood law when you think about the degree to which it is based on explicitly racist and white supremacist ideology,” said Sirine Shebaya, executive director of the nonprofit National Immigration Project.

Section 1326, along with its misdemeanor counterpart Section 1325, which criminalizes unauthorized entry, was enacted by Congress in 1952.

But the law's origins can be traced back a century to the 1920s — a decade described by UCLA history professor and leading Section 1326 researcher Kelly Lytle Hernandez as “a time when the Ku Klux Klan was reborn, Jim Crow came of age, and public intellectuals preached the science of eugenics.”

Many of the key elements that formed the legal defense now being considered by the 9th Circuit came from Hernandez's findings on Section 1326's discriminatory background.

With Congress' sights in the 1920s set on legislation that would block “undesirable” immigration, the National Origins Act of 1924 was enacted, establishing a cap on how many immigrants could enter the U.S. under a system that reserved 96% of slots for European immigrants and included a total ban on Asian immigrants.

Exempt from that system, however, were immigrants from the Western Hemisphere, including Mexico. Hernandez, who was called as an expert witness in the Nevada case, said the exception came as a compromise between nativist lawmakers and employers who had come to rely heavily on cheap labor from Mexico.

But before the decade's end, South Carolina Sen. Coleman Livingston Blease would orchestrate a new deal with employers that led to the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929.

Under this new law, unauthorized entry into the U.S. became illegal, allowing Congress to limit immigration from Mexico without implementing an outright ban.

Blease, Hernandez said, was a “proud white supremacist" who advocated for segregation and defended lynching. “That alone requires some reckoning with.”

Nearly a century later, the Justice Department has conceded that the 1929 law was motivated by racism. But in oral arguments in early December before the 9th Circuit, an attorney for the U.S. government argued later revisions — like Section 1326 — made it constitutional.

Du's ruling, however, points out that the 1952 revision establishing Section 1326 had adopted language “word for word” from the 1929 legislation, and since then, penalties — that range from prison time to permanent deportation — have stiffened at least five times.

Justice Department attorneys have also conceded that Section 1326 “bears more heavily on Mexican and Latinx individuals,” but argued the disparity is “a product of geography, not discrimination,” as well as “a feature of Mexico’s proximity to the United States, the history of Mexican employment patterns, and other socio-political and economic factors that drive migration from Mexico to the United States.”

Between October 2021 and September this year, the federal government’s fiscal year, 96% of people charged under Section 1326 were from Mexico, Central America, South America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands.

Section 1325 and 1326 cases are among the most prosecuted charges by the federal government, hitting record numbers in the 2019 budget year, when nearly 90,000 people were charged under Section 1325 and nearly 25,500 under Section 1326. The number of prosecutions have fallen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the Justice Department continues to prosecute tens of thousands of people annually for illegal reentry.

This fiscal year, for example, the Justice Department under the Biden administration prosecuted 13,670 cases under Section 1326. The vast majority of those defendants were charged in border states, including Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

“If you look at this law dispassionately and without political motivations, the facts of the legislation, how it was enacted and its impact on immigrants from Latinx countries, the case is really clear," said Shebaya, of the National Immigration Project. "There is a clear equal protections violation.”

There is no deadline for the 9th Circuit to issue its ruling on the Justice Department's appeal.

In the meantime, the U.S. government continues to pursue Section 1326 cases across the country because Du's order did not include an injunction on the statute.

“It's still pretty outrageous that they are continuing to pursue them,” Shebaya said, “given a court order saying they are unconstitutional.”

At the same time, some of the thousands of children separated from their parents during the Trump administration still have not been reunited.

Under Trump’s immigration policy, all adults crossing the border without authorization were charged with illegal entry. Because children cannot be jailed with their parents, Health and Human Services took custody of the children. No reunification system was put in place.

Goldman Sachs to cut 3,200 jobs this week

Pedro Goncalves
·Finance Reporter, Yahoo Finance UK
Mon, January 9, 2023 

Goldman Sachs prepares for tough economic conditions, including recessions in many key markets. Photo: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Goldman Sachs (GS) is planning to cut approximately 3,200 jobs, one of the largest rounds of layoffs in the company's history.

The layoffs are likely to affect most major divisions of the banks but should focus on Goldman Sachs' investment banking division, according to Bloomberg.

The bank is expected to begin informing people that they will lose their jobs on Wednesday.

Goldman Sachs will cut around 6.5% of roles from its workforce of 49,000 as it prepares for tough economic conditions, including recessions in many key markets. Headcount has jumped 34% since the end of 2018.

The firm is also expected to cut hundreds of jobs from its loss-making consumer operation after scaling back its direct-to-consumer Marcus division.

The investment bank has six offices in the UK, including in London, where it is believed to employ around 6,000 staff, and in Birmingham and Milton Keynes.

However, Goldman Sachs is continuing to hire in areas such as its analyst class for junior employees.

Chief executive, David Solomon, told staff late last month that the cuts were necessary to “weather the headwinds” caused by rising interest rates.

In December, the Financial Times reported that Goldman Sachs was considering cutting its bonus pool for investment bankers by at least 40% this year as it seeks to keep control of costs.

Institutional banks have been struck by a major slowdown in activity in recent months due to volatility in the global financial markets.

Annual bonuses season is due to kick off this week as JP Morgan (JPM), Citi (C) and Bank of America (BAC) all report their results for the past year.

The drop-off in deal activity is expected to result in a marked fall in bonus payments.

Goldman Sachs is expected to unveil pre-tax losses of more than $2bn (£1.7bn/€187bn) for a new unit covering its credit card and instalment-lending business.

The bank is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings on 17 January.

Goldman Sachs readies biggest layoffs since the financial crisis


The logo for Goldman Sachs is seen on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City

Sun, January 8, 2023 
By Saeed Azhar and Scott Murdoch

(Reuters) -Goldman Sachs Group will start cutting thousands of jobs across the firm from Wednesday, two sources familiar with the move said, as it prepares for a tough economic environment.

Just over 3,000 employees will be let go, one of the sources said, but the final number is yet to be determined. That scale of layoffs would be the largest since the 2008 financial crisis, one of the sources said.

The sources could not be named as the information was not yet disclosed publicly. Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

Bloomberg News reported on Sunday that Goldman would eliminate about 3,200 positions.

Goldman had 49,100 employees at the end of the third quarter, after adding significant numbers of staff during the coronavirus pandemic.

The layoffs are likely to affect most of the bank's major divisions, but should centre on Goldman Sachs' investment banking arm, one of the sources said. Wall Street banks have suffered a major slowdown in corporate dealmaking activity as a result of volatile global financial markets.

Hundreds of jobs are also likely to be reduced from Goldman Sachs' consumer business, Marcus, after it scaled back plans for the loss-making unit, the sources said.

The bank's chief executive David Solomon sent a year-end voice memo to staff warning of a headcount reduction in the first half of January, two separate sources said. Goldman Sachs declined comment on the memo.

The job cuts come ahead of the bank's annual bonus payments which are usually delivered later in January and are expected to fall about 40%.

The bank restarted its annual performance review process and staff cuts in September after pausing for two years during the pandemic.

The Wall Street giant typically trims about 1% to 5% of employees each year. These new cuts will come on top of the earlier layoffs.

Global banks, including Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc, have reduced their workforces in recent months as a dealmaking boom on Wall Street fizzled out due to high interest rates, tensions between the United States and China, the war between Russia and Ukraine, and soaring inflation.

Global investment banking fees nearly halved in 2022, with $77 billion earned by the banks, down from $132.3 billion one year earlier, Dealogic data showed.

The total value of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) globally had slumped 37% to $3.66 trillion by Dec. 20, according to Dealogic data, after hitting an all-time high of $5.9 trillion last year.

Banks had executed $517 billion worth of equity capital markets (ECM) transactions by late December 2022, the lowest level since the early 2000s and a 66% drop from 2021's bonanza, according to Dealogic data.

Despite the slowdown, Goldman's top dealmakers told Reuters in recent interviews that they are bullish on an M&A recovery in the second half of 2023.

(Reporting by Saeed Azhar in New York and Scott Murdoch in Sydney; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell, Christopher Cushing and Nick Zieminski)

CES 2023: Companies tout environmental tech innovations

More than a thousand startups are showcasing their products at the annual CES tech show in Las Vegas, hoping to create some buzz around their gadgets and capture the eyes of investors who can help their businesses grow.

(AP Photo/John Locher, File)

BRITTANY PETERSON
Mon, January 9, 2023 

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The mottled bright green leaves of a pothos plant stood out against the flashy expanse of electric vehicles and smart products at the CES tech show in Las Vegas this year. This particular version of the familiar houseplant was bioengineered to remove 30 times the amount of indoor air pollutants of a typical house plant, according to Neoplants, the Paris-based company that created it.

Customers are already joining a waitlist for seedlings still in the nursery.

Neoplants founder and CEO Lionel Mora is a passionate former Google employee who sings a bit of a different tune than other founders at the electronics convention, with its technology-can-solve-anything vibe. He says before people turn to engineering solutions, they need to address consumption. But, "when it comes to innovation, we believe that biology is the way to go because it’s sustainable by design,” he said.

As countries grapple with how to limit global warming and protect natural resources and biodiversity, more companies are growing their own commitments to building sustainable supply chains and slowing emissions. For others, like Neoplants, addressing environmental issues is their whole reason for being.

Companies and start-ups at CES touched on a broad range of those efforts. Austin-based Pivet showcased biodegradable phone cases. Electric watercraft company Candela unveiled a 28-foot electric speedboat. Ukrainian start-up Melt Water Club presented its water purification method that uses freezing.

The Department of Energy even had a booth — a first, said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who spoke with The Associated Press ahead of her keynote on Friday.

Granholm said she is excited about a range of technologies at CES and beyond, from John Deere's newest electronic farm equipment, to battery storage using alternative materials such as sodium salt, both of which she said the Department of Energy has helped fund.

Granholm also spoke about expanding the use of clean energy, including some forms of hydrogen, fusion and geothermal energy, highlighting the latter as an opportunity for the oil and gas industry.

"If they’ve used fracking to be able to get to oil and gas, they could be using that same technology to be able to extract the heat beneath our feet,” she said.

It could be a while before the oil and gas industry walks away from extracting fossil fuels. In the meantime, more companies are taking emissions reductions seriously. And the first step to reducing emissions is having a full understanding of them, said GreenSwapp founder Ajay Varadharajan. The Dutch company intends to help online grocers and food delivery services understand their carbon footprint, including those in their supply chain or “Scope 3” — often the toughest to track.

Varadharajan wrote an algorithm that pulls information about various edible products from published research papers, which allows him to assign a carbon footprint to every food’s barcode. The algorithm then fine tunes that number with information about a product’s farming techniques and packaging.

Using GreenSwapp's app, CES attendees could scan the barcode of various milk containers on display to instantly compare their carbon footprint. The company claims this works on any food item with a barcode.

The information is helpful for conscious consumers, but Varadharajan says the real impact happens when food companies use it to track their emissions.

Some companies may want to share the information with customers. But he expects many to use it internally, preparing for possible regulations, he explained. The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to soon require publicly traded U.S. companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. The largest ones may need to disclose Scope 3 emissions related to their supply chain. Once finalized, the U.S. would join a growing number of countries including the U.K. and Japan that require large companies to disclose this information. The European Union is finalizing reporting standards.

Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company didn't have a booth this year, but it did demo new tires on vehicles plastered in blue and yellow that rolled around Las Vegas.

The company currently has the largest market share for replacement consumer tires in the U.S. It says its new demo tire contains 90% sustainable materials, and has improved rolling efficiency, which helps people save energy, even when the tires are on electric vehicles.

Goodyear didn’t specify how much carbon is reduced in the new tire manufacturing process, or how much energy is saved through rolling efficiency.

“It's very dependent on the type of vehicle and the type of tire being used,” said CEO Rich Kramer.

But the company’s line of ingredients appear to move in the right direction. Tires use many materials and this new one transitions away from petroleum products to surplus soybean oil to maintain pliability. It uses silica from rice husk waste residue for grip and fuel efficiency. The list goes on, and Kramer says the tire is an important step toward the company goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050.

But sourcing these materials in large quantities is an issue, he said.

“Can you get them at scale to be able to increase production? And then how do you change the manufacturing process for that? That’s a challenge, but a challenge we welcome," he said.

There’s still some room for improvement in the sourcing of Goodyear's rubber, said Sean Nyquist of Forest Stewardship Council, which works to certify sustainable rubber.

“In the last 20 years, there’s been significant deforestation as a result of natural rubber,” he said, as demand grew for rubber from trees instead of synthetic versions made in a lab.

Goodyear’s rubber sourcing follows the guidelines of the Global Platform for Sustainable Natural Rubber. Nyquist says this is an important step, but third-party certification would add even more validity to sustainability claims.

Several tire companies are on a similar path, he said. The tires Pirelli makes for the plug-in version of the BMW X5 have obtained FSC certification, which guarantees rubber was sourced ethically, including forest management and labor practices.

There may not be a simple path to reducing emissions and building sustainable supply chains. But one place U.S. companies may now get more help is the record federal funding available to decarbonize buildings and transportation through the Inflation Reduction Act. Granholm says she believes the incentives to reduce energy use and scale clean technology are powerful.

“There’s policy innovation and there’s technology innovation, she said. “We’re all scanning to see what has the best impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and getting to our ultimate goal of saving the planet.”

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Associated Press writer Suman Naishadham contributed from Washington.

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

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For more coverage of CES, visit: https://apnews.com/hub/technology

Peru bans Bolivia's Evo Morales as political crisis simmers


Bolivia's former President Evo Morales attends a news conference in Mexico City

Mon, January 9, 2023 
By Marco Aquino

LIMA (Reuters) -Peru barred Bolivia's socialist former president, Evo Morales, from entering its territory on Monday, Peru's government announced in a statement, a decision Morales later derided as an attack meant to distract from rights violations.

The move to ban Morales, along with eight other unidentified Bolivians, follows weeks of deadly protests in Peru targeting President Dina Boluarte following last month's swift removal of former President Pedro Castillo, with some demonstrations held near the border with Bolivia.

Castillo's attempt to unlawfully dissolve Congress ahead of a looming impeachment vote unleashed a fresh political crisis in the South American nation, one of the world's top copper producers. He had been in office for less than two tumultuous years.

The statement from Peru's interior ministry said Bolivian citizens have entered the country in recent months to carry out political activities, violating immigration laws while undermining national security.

Morales, one of Latin America's most prominent leftists, has publicly backed Castillo, criticizing his ouster and subsequent arrest as illegal.

The indigenous Bolivian leader served as president for some 14 years through 2019 until he resigned under intense pressure following a disputed election and mass protests.

Morales took to Twitter on Monday to respond to the decision to deny him entry to Peru.

"Now they attack us to distract and dodge responsibility for grave violations of the human rights of our Peruvian brothers," he wrote, adding that political conflicts cannot be resolved with "expulsions, prohibitions or repression."

Shortly after the ban was announced, Peru Prime Minister Alberto Otarola blamed Morales for stoking unrest.

"We are closely watching not only the attitude of Mr. Morales, but also of those who work with him in southern Peru," he told reporters. "They have been very active in promoting a situation of crisis."

Last week, Peru's defense minister also accused foreigners of stirring up divisive protests.

After Castillo was removed from office and detained on charges of fomenting rebellion, thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding Boluarte's resignation, the release of Castillo, the closure of Congress, and a new constitution.

While Castillo remains jailed in pretrial detention, more than 20 people have been killed in the protests, which resumed last week after a pause for the holidays.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino in LimaWriting by Valentine HilaireEditing by Isabel Woodford, Bill Berkrot and Matthew Lewis)

HOW RIGHT YOU ARE
Palestinian prime minister says Israel aims to topple the PA


 Protesters hold a Palestinian flag in Umm el-Fahm, Israel, on Sept. 10, 2021. Israel's new public security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered police on Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023, to remove Palestinian flags from public places in the latest crackdown by the country's new hardline government. 

LAURIE KELLMAN
Mon, January 9, 2023 at 1:53 AM MST·4 min read

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The Palestinian prime minister on Monday accused Israel’s new ultra-nationalist government of trying to topple the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, and warned that a series of new Israeli sanctions could further inflame what has been a particularly deadly period of fighting.

In recent days, Israel has withheld millions of dollars of Palestinian tax revenues, stripped Palestinian officials of VIP privileges and broken up a meeting of Palestinian parents discussing their children's education. Late Sunday, Israel’s security minister banned public displays of the Palestinian flag.

Palestinian premier Mohammad Shtayyeh said the Israeli measures, made in response to a Palestinian appeal for U.N. help, are “aimed at toppling the authority and pushing it to the brink financially and institutionally.”

“We consider these measures a new war against the Palestinian people, their capabilities and funds, and a war against the national authority, its survival and its achievements,” Shtayyeh said during his weekly Cabinet meeting.

The Israeli measures have come in response to the U.N. General Assembly's decision to ask the U.N.’s highest judicial body to give its opinion on the legality of Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israel vehemently opposed the Palestinian-backed move. Decisions by the International Court of Justice are not binding, but can carry great influence.

Shtayyeh rejected Israeli claims that such moves are counter to peace.

“We have the right to complain and tell the world we are in pain,” he said in comments published in Haaretz earlier Monday. “Israel wants to prevent even the most non-violent way of fighting the occupation.”

A day earlier, Israel's national security minister ordered police to ban on the Palestinian flag in public.

“Today I directed the Israel police to enforce the prohibition of flying any PLO flag that shows identification with a terrorist organization from the public sphere and to stop any incitement against the state of Israel,” Itamar Ben-Gvir announced on Twitter.

A far-right firebrand known for his anti-Palestinian rhetoric, Ben-Gvir drew widespread international condemnation when he visited Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site last week.

Under Israeli law, flying the Palestinian flag is not a crime. But Israel's attorney general in 2014 ruled that police have the authority to confiscate a flag if it disrupts public order or is done in support of terrorism.

Adalah, an Arab minority legal rights group, said that Ben-Gvir's order falsely implies that any public display of the Palestinian flag disrupts the peace.

“This gives the police unfettered discretion to ban the waving of the Palestinian flag under all circumstances,” the group said.

The Israeli crackdown comes at a fragile time. The Israeli military has been conducting near-daily raids into Palestinian cities and towns since a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis killed 19 last spring.

Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem last year, according to the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2004, when 197 Palestinians were killed. A fresh wave of attacks killed at least another nine Israelis in the fall.

The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.

Ben-Gvir’s latest order is not the first battle over the Palestinian flag.

The red, green and white Palestinian flag carries great symbolism in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Last May, Israeli riot police beat pallbearers at the funeral for slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, causing them to nearly drop the casket. Police ripped Palestinian flags out of people’s hands and fired stun grenades to disperse the crowd.

Israel once considered the Palestinian flag to be an enemy symbol. But after Israel and the Palestinians signed a series of interim peace agreements in the 1990s known as the Oslo Accords, the flag was recognized as that of the Palestinian Authority, which was created to administer Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank. Israel opposes any official business being carried out by the PA in east Jerusalem, and police have in the past broken up events they alleged were linked to the PA.

Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday the measures against the Palestinians were aimed at what he called “an extreme anti-Israel” step at the U.N.

Israel’s Palestinian citizens make up 20% of the population and they’ve had a turbulent relationship with the state since its creation in 1948. During the war surrounding Israel's establishment, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced to leave.

Those who remained became citizens, but have long suffered discrimination and been viewed with suspicion by some Israelis because of their ties to Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future independent state. Netanyahu’s new government is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian statehood.

Indiana politics make it difficult for tech industry to recruit, keep employees in state


Binghui Huang, Indianapolis Star
Mon, January 9, 2023 

Everly Coleman is the exact type of person that Indiana is looking for — an entrepreneur who started her own data analytics company and bought a house to settle down in Indianapolis for more than a decade.

But she moved out of Indianapolis with her wife last year, as state legislators were getting ready to pass a near total-abortion ban. They now live in Santa Fe, N.M.

"We both believe reproductive rights are very important," said Coleman, who is a trans woman. But it wasn't just about abortion. They were worried that the state would follow Florida in passing a law restricting discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. And, in fact, a leading Republican has since signaled Indiana lawmakers will consider a so-called "don't say gay" law.

Indiana legislature:What lawmakers say about abortion, education and the economy ahead of 2023 session

The disconnect is growing between Indiana's mounting socially conservative policies, which includes not only the near-total abortion ban currently stalled in court, but also a ban on trans girls playing school sports, and the tech industry's increasingly vocal progressive workforce.

The tension is brewing as major employers struggle to recruit and keep employees in the state, a problem that is snowballing into a crisis for Indiana.

But pro-choice advocates, in or out of the tech industry, faced pressure to move away from Indiana for years before the Supreme Court's Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health ruling that overturned Roe vs. Wade's protection of a woman's right to have an abortion. South Bend area resident Karen Nemes made that point when she talked to The Tribune on June 24 at a Pro Choice South Bend rally following the release of the Dobbs decision.

"Friends have urged me to leave the area for years," she said then, adding she stays in Indiana because of the community. "We need people working at the state level pressuring state legislatures because that's where a lot of these draconian laws are coming through."

Increasing STEM workers in Indiana

In November, the governor's workforce cabinet rolled out a long list of recommendations to increase the number of STEM — for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — workers, in the state, including increasing education funding and incentives for colleges to graduate STEM students who stay in Indiana.

That same month, CEO David Ricks of Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co., a bio-tech company and drug maker, was quoted in a financial magazine saying that he's getting requests from employees to transfer out of Indiana.

He's declined to speak to IndyStar further about those requests.

Indiana abortion access:What's next after judge blocks Indiana abortion law

After Indiana passed a near-total ban on abortion, one of the most severe of such restrictions across the country, employees in tech and science industries put pressure on CEOs to warn Indiana that its conservative social policies will turn off the highly-sought-after STEM workers that it needs to sustain the economy.

Since then, tech workers from startups to global software companies told the IndyStar that the abortion ban has prompted coworkers to leave or start looking for other jobs. Some tech workers said the abortion ban would make it scary for them to start families because of concern that they couldn't get the health care if they developed complications during pregnancies.

The abortion ban that went into effect Sept. 15 has been temporarily blocked by an ACLU lawsuit, but Indiana's attorney general is appealing the decision.

South Bend:Abortion provider resumes services for at least three months after court ruling

But for others, it's not just the ban, but what it signals for the future for other social issues, such as LGBTQ rights.
Tech industry growing political power

Progressive tech workers are reshaping the way companies address political issues. They can leverage political power because they are some of the most in-demand applicants across the country. Many can pit multiple job offers against each other.

Attendees hold signs during a rally opposing the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade on Friday, June 24, 2022, at the Jon R. Hunt Plaza in downtown South Bend.

Media analysis of tech workers' political donations showed that employees overwhelmingly donated to Democratic candidates. About 89% of the money donated by Salesforce employees went to Democrats, according to CNBC analysis of the 2020 election cycle. That percentage is even higher in companies like Netflix, Adobe and IBM.

And they're doing more than just donating to political causes.

In the past few years, employees at the country's most prominent companies staged walkouts after clashing with their more conservative leadership on political issues.

'It's about freedom':'It's about freedom': Rally for abortion rights in South Bend after Roe v. Wade overturned

Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms Inc., employees staged a virtual walkout in 2020 to force the company to better regulate and control then-President Donald Trump's inflammatory posts. Netflix workers walked out in 2021 in protest of David Chappelle's new special for jokes mocking trans people.

While many of these walkouts are in the tech-heavy and Democratically-controlled California, the expansion of remote work means that these companies have employees joining virtual protests across the country.

That dynamic is alive and well in Indiana, albeit more privately and more timid in the Republican-controlled state.

Jordan Thayer, a trans woman working as a consultant in automation for a software development company in Carmel, said she's worried that she soon won't be free to live her life as she wants and her family won't be safe if they needs pregnancy care.

After the Dobbs decision:Anti-abortion rally draws counter protests in South Bend following overturn of Roe v. Wade

She sees states like Tennessee proposing to ban drag performances in public and worries those laws will come to Indiana and make it hard for her to be out in public, she said.

So, long term, her family won't stay.

"I don't want to have to jump employers and change states in a hurry," she said. "So we're looking now."

People hold signs at an abortion rights rally Wednesday, June 29, 2022, at the Robert A. Grant Federal Building & U.S. Courthouse in South Bend.

Indiana tech companies may have to offer remote work

Companies have to show applicants that they share their values in order to be compete in the cutthroat fight for tech and science workers, said Jim Stroud, a recruitment consultant who's worked with companies like Microsoft and Google.

"Salary and employer brand are neck in neck," Stroud said.

Tech companies in states where abortion access and LGBTQ rights are restricted will need to offer remote work to attract some applicants, Stroud said.

Others are reading:Changing economy, fewer students going to college will increase income gap, report says

"The issues come to play when they physically have to be there," he said.

In fact, some tech workers will forego a higher salary and opt for a company they believe shares their values, he said.

One telling example, he said, happened at a software company called Basecamp.

When the company banned "societal and political discussions" at work, its employees were so outraged that a third of them quit. Recruiters wasted no time in swarming in and showing them that their company shares their values, Stroud said.

"So any kind of company controversy is going to be like blood in the water," he said. "All these other recruiters are gonna converge on them like no tomorrow and be emailing everybody."

Attendees hold signs during a rally opposing the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v Wade on Friday, June 24, 2022, at the Jon R. Hunt Plaza in downtown South Bend.

That puts companies in a bind when issues elicit strong support and opposition, such as abortion, Stroud said. And they're scared that they may upset employees, applicants and customers if they take strong stances. In those cases, he advises companies to support employees internally, through benefits or matching their donations to political causes.

In Indiana, major companies carefully treaded the issue.

Many of Indianapolis's largest companies declined to participate in several public advocacy letters supporting abortion rights last summer. Lilly and Cummins released statements against the ban only after it was passed.

'A slap in the face': 'A slap in the face': Some upset Lilly, Cummins wait to criticize abortion ban until Holcomb signed it

Several announced they would pay for employees to seek abortion care in other states.

Mike Murphy, a former Republican state legislator who also served in executive roles at Simon Property Group and Elevance Health, which was previously known as Anthem, said these companies could have done more if they were seriously concerned about retention or recruitment.

"I don't doubt they may be reflecting some honestly held beliefs," he said. "But I would say they're unique in the state, because they have the economic power and thought leadership to change all that."
Indiana has struggled to recruit talent

Long before the Supreme Court became a super conservative majority that would reshape federal and state policies, Indiana struggled with attracting top talent. Economists have pointed to a mix of reasons, including lack of good schools, flat and largely landlocked landscape, poor infrastructure, and sparse attractions and amenities compared to other states.

And so even when everything is equal — company brand, salary to cost of living ratio, amenities in the city — the social laws of the state is a tie-breaker, several tech workers said.

Same goes with those who are living in Indiana.

Kristen Cooper, the founder and CEO of Indianapolis-based Startup Ladies, said she knows people in the industry who have moved out of Indiana because of abortion ban and anti-LGBTQ bills.

"You want to live in a community that supports your values and your lifestyle," she said. "If you're a woman and you have a choice between living in a state that provides you a great job and your reproductive rights versus a state with a great job and no reproductive rights, it's easily a tie-breaker."

Binghui Huang / Bhuang@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana politics around abortion, social issues stifle tech recruiting

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Indian court grants bail to ICICI Bank ex-CEO Chanda Kochhar


ICICI Bank's CEO Chanda Kochhar listens to a speaker at a news conference in Mumbai

Sun, January 8, 202

MUMBAI (Reuters) -An Indian court on Monday granted bail to former ICICI Bank chief executive Chanda Kochhar and her husband after they were arrested in December in connection with an alleged loan fraud case involving the bank and Videocon Group

Kochhar was one of India's highest-profile business leaders before she was ousted as ICICI CEO in 2019 following allegations that the bank, under her watch, sanctioned "high value" loans to Videocon in violation of its lending policies.

In return, Videocon's owner invested in NuPower Renewables, founded by Kochhar's husband Deepak, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) alleges. The agency arrested Videocon Chairman Venugopal Dhoot late last month.

All the parties have denied the allegations of loan fraud.

The Bombay High Court on Monday ordered that the Kochhars be released on bail.

It said the arrests, done by the CBI alleging that the Kochhars had been not been cooperating with the investigation, were "not in accordance with law".

"The ground for arresting the petitioners as stated in the arrest memos, is unacceptable and is contrary to the reason(s)/ground(s) on which a person can be arrested," said the order by judges Prithviraj K. Chavan and Revati Mohite Dere.

The Kochhars will be released on cash bail of 100,000 rupees ($1,214) each "for a period of two weeks".

($1 = 82.3600 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Jayshree Pyasi and Arpan Chaturvedi; Writing by Sudipto Ganguly and Sakshi Dayal; Editing by Krishna N. Das)

Conservatives take aim at tenure for university professors
 

BEEN DOING THAT SINCE THE SIXTIES

Tenure Backlash

Max McCoy, the lone journalism professor at Emporia State University, poses for a photo in front of the school's administration building Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023, in Emporia, Kan. McCoy penned a column that began, “I may be fired for writing this” — before learning this would be his last year teaching at the school. “This is a purge,” he said. He said all the fired professors were “Democrats or liberal in our thinking.” (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
Sun, January 8, 2023 

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — When Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick asked Texas colleges to disavow critical race theory, the University of Texas faculty approved a resolution defending their freedom to decide for themselves how to teach about race.

Patrick said he took it as a message to “go to hell.”

In turn, Patrick, a Republican, said it was time to consider holding the faculty accountable, by targeting one of the top perks of their jobs.

“Maybe we need to look at tenure,” Patrick said at a news conference in November.

It’s a sentiment being echoed by conservative officials in red states across the country. The indefinite academic appointments that come with tenure — the holy grail of university employment — have faced review from lawmakers or state oversight boards in at least half a dozen states, often presented as bids to rein in academics with liberal views.

Tenure advocates are bracing for the possibility of new threats as lawmakers return to statehouses around the country.

The trend reflects how conservative scrutiny of instruction related to race, gender and sexuality has extended from schools to higher education. But budget considerations also play a role. Tenured faculty numbers have been declining even in more liberal states. Universities are hiring more part-time, adjunct instructors amid declines in financial support from state governments.

Traditionally, tenured professors can be terminated only under extreme circumstances, such as professional misconduct or a financial emergency. Advocates for tenure say it is a crucial component of academic freedom — especially as controversy grows over scholarly discussions about history and identity.

Without tenure, faculty are “liable to play it safe when it comes time to have a classroom discussion about a difficult topic,” said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors.

But in difficult financial and political times, even tenured professors may not be guaranteed employment.

In Kansas, Emporia State University this fall cut 33 faculty — most of them tenured — using an emergency pandemic measure that allowed universities to bypass policies on staff terminations to balance budgets.

Max McCoy, Emporia State’s sole journalism professor, penned a column that began, “I may be fired for writing this” — before learning this would be his last year teaching at the school.

“This is a purge,” he said. He said all the fired professors were “Democrats or liberal in our thinking.”

University spokesperson Gwen Larson said individual professors were not targeted for dismissal. She said the cuts followed a review of how demand for academic programs is changing and “where we needed to move in the future.

Attacks on higher education have been fueled by a shift in how conservatives see colleges and universities, said Jeremy Young, of the free-expression group PEN America. The share of Republicans and independent-leaning Republicans who said higher education was having a negative effect on the country grew from 37% to 59% from 2015 to 2019 in Pew Research Center polling.

In Texas, university administrators are working behind the scenes to squash anticipated legislation that would target tenure, fearful it will hurt recruitment, said Jeff Blodgett, president of the Texas Conference of AAUP.

Some people already aren’t applying for university jobs because of the discussions, said Pat Heintzelman, president of the Texas Faculty Association.

In Florida, a federal judge in November blocked the “Stop-WOKE" Act, a law pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that restricts certain race-based conversations and analysis in colleges. The governor’s office is appealing the injunction. Compliance with the law would be part of the criteria for evaluating tenured professors under a review process that the university system’s Board of Governors is weighing.

“They’ve latched onto the idea that many totalitarian regimes have done over the years, which is if you can stop students from learning about ideas that a political party in power disagrees with, that is one way to stop those ideas from existing in the society at all,” said Andrew Gothard, president of United Faculty of Florida.

DeSantis, though, has questioned the argument that tenure provides academic freedom.

“If anything, it’s created more of an intellectual orthodoxy where people that have dissenting views, it's harder for them to be tenured in the first place," he said at a news conference in April.

In Louisiana, lawmakers set up a task force to study tenure with the Republican-backed resolution noting that students should be confident that courses are free of “political, ideological, religious, or antireligious indoctrination.” Professors raised concerns until they learned the task force’s members were mostly tenure supporters.

In Georgia, the state’s Board of Regents approved a policy that made it easier to remove tenured faculty who have had a negative performance review. Elsewhere, legislation to ban or restrict tenure also has been introduced in recent years in Iowa, South Carolina and Mississippi, but failed to win passage.

The pushback follows decades of declining rates of tenured faculty. According to the AAUP, 24% of faculty members held full-time tenured appointments in fall 2020, compared with 39% in fall 1987, the first year for which directly comparable information is available.

Part-time college instructors rarely receive benefits. They frequently must travel from campus to campus to cobble together a living.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Caprice Lawless, who wrote the “Adjunct Cookbook,” replete with recipes that poorly compensated Ph.D.s can cobble together with food pantry staples.

“I’ve taken Ph.D.s to foodbanks and watched them cry because they can’t get enough food for their family,” said Lawless, who said she served as a social worker of sorts before retiring two years ago from Front Range Community College in Westminster, Colorado.

The opposition to tenure has united conservatives for different reasons: Not all share the same concerns about “woke higher education,” said Marc Stein, a San Francisco State University history professor, who has written about the shift to part-time faculty.

“But,” he said, “if you attack the ‘wokeness’ of higher education and that leads to declining funding for higher education, then economic conservatives are happy.”

Tenure exploded after World War II when it helped with recruitment as the GI Bill sent enrollment soaring, said Sol Gittleman, a former provost of Tufts University who has written on the issue. Lately, the country has overproduced Ph.D.s, said Gittleman, who predicts tenure will largely disappear in the coming decades outside the top 100 colleges and universities.

“Critical race theory — that's an excuse,” he said. “If there was a shortage of faculty, you wouldn’t hear that.”

___

Associated Press writers Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, and Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Florida, contributed to this report. The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Federal judge hears arguments on state college campus surveys about freedom of thought

Ryan Dailey
Mon, January 9, 2023

A federal judge on Monday began hearing testimony in a trial over the constitutionality of a 2021 state law requiring colleges and universities to survey students and staff members about “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” on campus.

The plaintiffs, including the United Faculty of Florida union and individual teachers and students, are challenging three parts of the law (HB 233). The first day of the trial before Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker focused heavily on a requirement that colleges and universities conduct the surveys.

The law required the State Board of Education and the university system’s Board of Governors, to select or create “objective, nonpartisan, and statistically valid” questionnaires to weigh the “extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” on campuses. The surveys also are supposed to gauge how free students and staff feel to express ideas and are required to be conducted annually.

But the faculty members and other plaintiffs contend the surveys have the effect of chilling classroom speech.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs on Monday called Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C., as their first witness. They questioned Lichtman about whether the law had the intent of discriminating against colleges and universities, with Lichtman arguing that the required surveys are “highly problematic.”

Lichtman was asked about statements by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who signed the bill, and Rep. Spencer Roach, a North Fort Myers Beach Republican who was a sponsor of the legislation. Roach, for example, wrote in a March 2021 Facebook post that the measure would protect free-speech rights and “stem the tide of Marxist indoctrination on university campuses.”

Lichtman pointed to what he described as a “willingness by decision-makers to assail what they perceive as liberal … ideology” at the schools.

The history professor also said the law includes “no restriction” on how the Legislature could use survey data, which is required to be published each September.

“This survey, in perpetuity, has a chilling effect,” Lichtman said.

But attorneys representing the state argued in a court filing before the trial that the surveys, and the overall law, do not contemplate any potential punishment for schools, students and staff members.

“Like a thermometer, the surveys are meant to be a diagnostic tool designed to take the temperature of taxpayer-funded campuses. The survey provisions presuppose no diagnosis, prescribe no course of treatment, and predict no future action or consequence,” lawyers for the state wrote in a Dec. 8 brief.

Though Lichtman repeatedly said the law does not specifically require that the surveys be anonymous or voluntary, a first round of surveys administered in April made clear that the identities of respondents would not be published and participation was optional.

Writing that the law is “simply not enforceable against individual students or professors,” lawyers for the state disputed the plaintiffs’ claims of chilled speech and asked Walker to reject any testimony “regarding any chilling or self-censorship” attributed to the measure.

The state’s lawyers also argued colleges and universities face no threat of lost funding because of the law.

“As they have done throughout this litigation, plaintiffs are sure to testify at trial that they fear future funding reductions to their institutions or programs as a result of HB 233. But plaintiffs will not elicit any testimony at trial regarding any proposed or actual funding cuts to any institution based on HB 233, nor will they point to any provision in HB 233 that contemplates any funding decisions,” the state’s lawyers wrote.

Also being challenged in the lawsuit are parts of the measure that prohibit colleges and universities from “shielding” students and staff from speech protected by the First Amendment and that allow students to record classroom lectures.