LGBTQ RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

Sunak Blocks Scotland’s Gender Bill, Angering Nationalists



Kitty Donaldson
Mon, January 16, 2023

(Bloomberg) -- UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak blocked transgender rights legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament, setting up a major constitutional row and fanning nationalist sentiment in Scotland.

Sunak’s administration said on Monday that the Scottish legislation — which makes it easier for transgender people to self-declare as a different gender from the one they were assigned at birth — would have an “adverse impact” on Great Britain-wide equalities legislation.

“I have not taken this decision lightly,” Scottish Secretary Alister Jack said in a statement. “The bill would have a significant impact on, amongst other things, GB-wide equalities matters in Scotland, England and Wales. I have concluded, therefore, that this is the necessary and correct course of action.”

The veto sets the stage for a major constitutional clash between the Scottish National Party, which leads the administration in Edinburgh, and Sunak’s government. It’s the first time the UK has blocked any law passed by the Scottish Parliament since it was formed in 1999.

Scotland’s First Minister and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon described the move as “a full-frontal attack on our elected Scottish Parliament,” in a tweet following the announcement.

The prime minister’s move is likely to feed into a renewed push for independence by Sturgeon’s nationalists — who for years have been calling for a second independence referendum following a failed bid in 2014.

Sturgeon has argued that Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union — a move that was opposed in Scotland — has changed the calculation from 2014, when she described the plebiscite as a “once in a generation” vote.

Critics

Ahead of Sunak’s decision, Sturgeon said it would be an “outrage” if the UK chose to block the Scottish legislation, arguing the central government would be using trans people as a political weapon. She said the the gender reform bill was covered by powers devolved to Scotland.

The Scottish government is now is likely to challenge Sunak’s decision in the courts. Sunak, meanwhile, has been advised by his government lawyers that the bill affects UK-wide legislation on equalities, and that he was entitled to block it under Section 35 of the 1998 Scotland Act.

The Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill makes it easier for trans people to obtain a gender recognition certificate, and also cuts to 16 the minimum age at which they can self-declare as a different gender. It reduces the time required to live in their acquired gender before being recognized and removes the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

UK Says 262,000 People Identifed as Transgender in Census

“Transgender people who are going through the process to change their legal sex deserve our respect, support and understanding,” Jack said. He added that if the Scottish government chose to amend the legislation, “I hope we can work together to find a constructive way forward that both respects devolution and the operation of UK Parliament legislation.”

‘Intrusive’

Opponents of the controversial bill argue the changes fail to protect women’s rights and single-sex spaces and could allow violent males to “abuse” the system in environments such as women’s jails. Other critics say it is not appropriate to allow 16-year-olds to decide on such a profound change in their lives and the decision should be reserved for adults.

The Scottish legislation has also sparked concerns about so-called gender tourism to Scotland from other parts of the UK, whereby a transgender woman could legally change gender in Scotland, then use their new status to access female-only spaces in the rest of the country.

But the SNP’s Social Justice Secretary Shona Robison has argued the legislation is about making life easier for some of the most stigmatized people in society by removing “intrusive, medicalized and bureaucratic” processes for obtaining a gender recognition certificate.

--With assistance from Ellen Milligan.'

UK govt to veto Scotland's gender self-recognition law



JILL LAWLESS
Mon, January 16, 202

LONDON (AP) — The British government said Monday it will block a new law that makes it easier for people in Scotland to legally change their gender, sparking conflict with transgender rights advocates and the nationalist Scottish administration in Edinburgh.

Secretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack said he would prevent the bill from getting royal assent — the final formality that makes it law — because of concern it conflicts with “Great Britain-wide equalities legislation.” That legislation, among other things, guarantees women and girls access to single-sex spaces such as changing rooms and shelters.

The Scottish government is likely to challenge the decision at the U.K. Supreme Court.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called the decision by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government “a full-frontal attack” on the Scottish parliament, which approved the bill last month.

“The Scottish Government will defend the legislation and stand up for Scotland’s Parliament,” she said on Twitter. “If this Westminster veto succeeds, it will be first of many.”

The Scottish bill allows people aged 16 or older in Scotland to change the gender designation on their identity documents by self-declaration, removing the need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

It also cuts the time trans people must live in a different expressed gender before the change is legally recognized, from two years to three months for adults and to six months for people aged 16 and 17.

The legislation sets Scotland apart from the rest of the United Kingdom, where a medical diagnosis is needed before individuals can transition for legal purposes.

The Scottish National Party-led government in Edinburgh says the legal change will improve the lives of transgender people by allowing them to get official documents that correspond with their gender identities.

Opponents claim it risks allowing predatory men to gain access to spaces intended for women, such as shelters for domestic abuse survivors. Others argue that the minimum age for transitioning should remain at 18.

Scotland is part of the United Kingdom but, like Wales and Northern Ireland, has its own semi-autonomous government with broad powers over areas including health care.

This is the first time a U.K. government has blocked a Scottish law since the Scottish government and parliament were established a quarter century ago. The move will provide fodder for nationalists who want Scotland to break away from the U.K. and become an independent country.

Jack, the U.K. minister responsible for Scotland, said he had “not taken this decision lightly.”

“Transgender people who are going through the process to change their legal sex deserve our respect, support and understanding,” he said in a letter to Sturgeon. “My decision today is about the legislation’s consequences for the operation of GB-wide equalities protections.”

Shami Chakrabarti, a Labour Party member of the House of Lords and former director of the rights group Liberty, said Sunak’s government might be trying to stir up “culture wars” by stepping in, but legally “they may have a point.”

“It is arguable, at least, that what’s happened in Scotland has a potential impact on the legislation as it operates U.K.-wide,” she told the BBC.

Several countries around the world have legalized gender self-recognition, including Argentina, Canada, New Zealand, Denmark and Iceland. Last month Spain’s parliament approved a bill similar to Scotland’s.

The Clean Energy Sector Is Set For A Major Labor Shortage

Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, January 16, 2023

The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act is a sweeping piece of legislation that will have a huge range of impacts from imposing a 15% minimum corporate tax rate to reforming prescription drug pricing. The Act also marks a turning point for the clean energy industry and imposes a protectionist approach to energy production that stands to alter the United States’ relationship with Europe. It seems like the Inflation Reduction Act does just about everything – oh, yeah, except reduce inflation.

The Inflation Reduction Act is actually a slimmed-down version of the Build Back Better Act, and it, therefore, includes massive financial support for United States industries, most notably in the renewable energy sector. According to the Biden administration, the Act provides an estimated $370 billion in subsidies for solar, wind, and electric vehicle subsidies.

Through these and other provisions, the bill aims to enable the United States to lower greenhouse gas emissions to a threshold 40% below 2005 levels by 2030. However, the bill also includes provisions supporting fossil fuels, which were added to the Act in order to sway key holdout West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin to help pass the legislation. While this has led to a lukewarm reception among environmentalists, the Act stands to create unprecedented support for the green energy transition and could have major positive implications for the U.S. economy as a whole.

Related: Spanish Utility Says Europe's Energy Crisis Isn’t Over Yet

Altogether, the investments and subsidies included in the Inflation Reduction Act will create a whopping 537,000 jobs a year for a decade. While that kind of job creation is great on the surface, it actually highlights a major problem for the clean energy industry’s big moment: there just aren’t enough workers to get the job done. According to reporting from Reuters, the labor shortage is severe enough that it stands to derail Biden’s climate change agenda altogether. Despite tactics including “ offering better wages and benefits, flying in trainers from overseas, and contemplating ideas like buying roofing and electric repair shops just to hire their workers,” U.S. clean energy companies haven’t been able to bridge the labor gap.

Reuters Graphics


Clean energy companies have been forced to try new recruiting tactics and new labor pools. “In their hunt for workers,” Reuters reports, “solar, wind and electric vehicle companies have expanded programs offering free and subsidized training to military veterans, women and the formerly incarcerated.” But so far those efforts have fallen short. "It feels like a big risk for this expansion. Where are we going to find all the people?" said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group, quoted in the report.

The United States unemployment rate is currently at a historic low of just 3.5%. The question is whether it’s going to stay there. The United States Federal Reserve has a dual mandate – to maintain price stability and the ideal inflation rate of 2% and to support maximum employment. Clearly, the Fed has had its work cut out for it on the inflation front over the last year; last month the annual inflation rate clocked in at 6.5% – which may sound bad but actually represents the sixth consecutive month that the inflation rate has decreased. Those decreases are due to the Fed’s aggressive interest rate hikes. While that tactic has proven successful, however, some economists are now wondering whether the Fed has gone too far.

Lots of economic experts are predicting that we will enter into a recession this year, which means that while the runaway interest rates will stabilize, the unemployment rate will rise. While this is terrible news for the economy as a whole, it could prove to be a saving grace for the clean energy industry and the climate agenda.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

WHAT ABOUT USING DAM C?

Exclusive-Electricity constraints force Canada's first LNG terminal to delay renewable shift

Mon, January 16, 2023 
By Rod Nickel and Nia Williams

(Reuters) -Shell PLC's LNG Canada export project in British Columbia plans to start building its proposed second phase with natural gas-powered turbines and switch to electricity as more renewable power becomes available, a top executive said, a decision that means the expansion project will initially generate high greenhouse gas emissions.

LNG Canada, in which Japan's Mitsubishi Corp owns a 15% stake, is set to be Canada's first liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal. The first phase is expected begin shipments around 2025.

With global demand for natural gas from sources other than Russia accelerating after its invasion of Ukraine last year, LNG Canada is weighing whether to build by 2030 a second phase to double annual capacity to 28 million tonnes.

LNG Canada now plans to initially build Phase 2 with natural gas-powered turbines and switch to electric motors as more power becomes available, pending a final investment decision, CEO Jason Klein told Reuters on Friday.

LNG Canada has previously described this approach as only one of the options it was considering.

The company's move to only gradually switch to renewable electricity risks means the Phase 2 project would produce initially high emissions that would run up against ambitious emissions reduction goals set by the British Columbia and federal governments.

Running the turbines using B.C.'s hydro electricity to cool the gas to liquid for shipping would limit emissions, but requires hundreds of kilometers of new transmission lines to reach the province's remote northwest coast.

"We can't do an immediate and wholesale electrification of the plant and the pipeline. It's not possible today because the transmission infrastructure just isn't there," Klein said, adding that LNG Canada is discussing with both governments and utility BC Hydro when lines may be in place.

"If the power was there today it would be a pretty straightforward decision."

LNG Canada's dilemma illustrates the practical challenges of a global push to electrify buildings and vehicles to curb climate-warming emissions. The move requires the world's grid to generate significantly more power and build infrastructure to deliver it.

Klein said LNG Canada had not directly asked for financial assistance from either government to build transmission lines and electrify Phase 2, and is still assessing the project's economics.

"I wouldn't expect to be able to attract capital to a project that's not competitive," Klein said.

LNG Canada has full environmental permits from both governments to use natural gas turbines for Phase 2, making it unclear what leverage governments have to force electrification.

Government cooperation is critical to constructing transmission lines, however.

"It would be difficult to make an investment on this scale without some level of alignment and the support of host governments," Klein said.

CLIMATE GOALS

Russia's invasion of Ukraine upended gas deliveries to Europe, prompting a scramble for alternative supplies. Some of Canada's allies, including Germany and Japan, have asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to play a major role in increasing LNG supplies.

Ottawa wants to develop a Canadian LNG industry to boost the economy, but has also pledged to cut emissions by at least 40% by 2030.

The terminal, which LNG Canada says would have the lowest emissions intensity in the world, will emit 4 million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually with both phases based on natural gas power. That's the equivalent of 0.6% of Canada's total 2020 emissions.

Electrifying Phase 2 is expected to be more expensive than using natural gas. But buyers may pay more for LNG produced with lower emissions, Klein said, noting that some buyers already purchase carbon offsets for LNG cargoes.

He said he is satisfied the province of B.C. can generate enough electricity for the terminal - the issue is how quickly it can build new transmission lines and how that would impact Phase 2 costs.

Mora Scott, a BC Hydro spokesperson, said the utility expects to have more than enough power until the end of the decade and is planning for scenarios including rapid growth from mining and LNG development.

Future LNG projects need to fit within B.C.'s climate goals, the province's ministry of energy said in a statement, while federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said it was up to B.C. to decide what to do with its electricity.

LNG production accounts for only 15% of the greenhouse gases associated with it, and the rest enters the atmosphere when consumers burn the gas, suggesting the governments' emphasis on electrification of the terminal is misplaced, said Bruce Robertson, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an independent energy research group.

"This is a classic example of how perverse carbon accounting is," he said. "The LNG industry in Canada is conveniently excluding where most of the emissions occur."

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Nia Williams in British Columbia, additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, editing by Denny Thomas and Deepa Babington)

POSTMODERN STALINISM
Vietnam lawmakers to hold rare extraordinary meeting - sources

 Deputies of Vietnam's National Assembly attend the opening ceremony of the Autumn session in Hanoi

Mon, January 16, 2023

(Reuters) - Vietnam's legislature is expected to hold a rare extraordinary meeting on Wednesday, according to three sources, following a similar gathering earlier this month when two deputy prime ministers were dismissed.

The meeting of the National Assembly would come as the communist country pursues a "blazing furnace" anti-corruption crackdown that has already led to the arrest of a health minister and investigations into hundreds of senior officials.

Three sources familiar with government and parliament affairs, who declined to be identified due to the political sensitivity of the matter, said the legislature may ratify resignations of more high-ranking officials this week.

This would signal a further escalation in the corruption crackdown even as concerns grow that it may affect economic sentiment and investment.

A National Assembly information official declined to comment on the possible meeting. Calls to two other parliament officials went unanswered.

Such meetings are rare in Vietnam's rubber-stamp legislature and it is unusual for two to be held close together, or in the run-up to the Lunar New Year, the country's long holiday period.

The assembly on Jan. 5 voted to dismiss two of the government's deputy prime ministers, in a move sources said might be tied to graft scandals.

Vietnam has no paramount ruler and is officially led by four "pillars": the powerful Communist Party secretary, the largely ceremonial president, the prime minister and the chair of the assembly.

(Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor, Martin Petty)

Brazil's crowdfunded insurrection leaves paper trail for police

Mon, January 16, 2023 
By Gabriel Stargardter and Marcela Ayres

BRASILIA (Reuters) - With a Brazil flag draped around his neck and his feet propped up on a dark wooden table, Samuel Faria leaned back in the Brazilian Senate president's ceremonial chair which he had just commandeered and surveyed the chaos on the lawn outside.

"It's kicking off out there," he said, watching from his Senate perch as fellow yellow-and-green clad supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked government buildings in Brasilia on Jan. 8. He then thanked his patrons.

"I've got money in the bank," he said, as he livestreamed Brazil's worst political crisis in a generation. "Thanks to you dear patriots ... who helped us, lots of friends sponsoring us with Pix."

A wildly successful government-run payments system, Pix has become a key financial pillar underpinning Bolsonaro's election-denial movement, allowing his most ardent fans to crowdfund their alternative media outlets and far-right demonstrations culminating in the chaos of Jan. 8.

But now, as authorities seek to identify the funders of the Brasilia riots, the same tool that helped to forge the insurgent movement will be used by investigators to take it down, around a dozen police and anti-money laundering officials told Reuters.

"We have a secure and consistent line of investigation focused on tracking financial movements undertaken via Pix," said a senior federal police officer involved in the sprawling, nationwide investigation, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing probe. "The financiers' time is up."

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is leading the criminal probe into the insurrection, and Justice Minister Flavio Dino have said they plan to prioritize uncovering the financiers of the riots, who will likely face similar charges to the 1,398 arrested rioters. They are accused of crimes including terrorism and attempting a coup.

A federal cop working the Supreme Court probe said initial investigations suggested the insurrection was financed by farmers and trucking magnates from Bolsonaro strongholds in the interior of Brazil. However, police had yet to identify a big fish, said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity: "Nobody of relevance yet."

The federal police press office declined to comment about an active investigation.

Faria, the Senate invader from the city of Socorro, in Sao Paulo state, did not respond to a request for comment.

Launched in November 2020 and run by Brazil's central bank, Pix is free of charge for individuals, allowing them to instantly transfer money to others via online banking apps.

It has been a huge success, used by everyone from beggars to billionaires. Since its launch, over 133 million Brazilians and almost 12 million companies have made or received Pix transfers, according to the central bank. Transactions to date have totaled around 16 trillion reais ($3 trillion) and outpaced debit and credit card payments last year.

Pix has entered all facets of Brazilian life, including the vast, unruly universe of blogs and YouTube channels that serve as a hotbed for Bolsonaro's core supporters.

Pro-Bolsonaro influencers advertise their Pix "keys" on YouTube videos and Instagram livestreams, asking followers to send instant contributions to their bank accounts.

Enzo Leonardo Suzin, a conservative YouTuber known as Enzuh, said most of his income still came from ads, but Pix contributions now represented up to 20% of revenue.

"I always used crowdfunding to improve the quality of the channel," said Suzin, who was targeted in 2020 by a Supreme Court probe into alleged fake news but has never been charged.

Pix has become ubiquitous thanks to the fact it is free and instantaneous. Its reach has been a boon to fundraisers, who can easily receive transfers from across Brazil.

Since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won the Oct. 30 election, Suzin had noticed Pix becoming widely used by the hardcore Bolsonaro supporters agitating for a coup in encampments outside military bases across Brazil, including the army headquarters in Brasilia.

Many of them had paused their lives and were using social media to solicit contributions from like-minded "patriots".

"Many influencers and some everyday folks there financed themselves exclusively via Pix," Suzin said.

INVESTIGATIVE TRAIL

Police, money-laundering experts and central bank officials said Pix donations will be central to investigators' efforts to uncover who orchestrated the insurrection. Several officials requested anonymity to discuss the probes underway.

"It's an extremely powerful tool within that investigative context, and I have no doubt it will be used," said Bernardo Mota, a former official at the Council for Financial Activities Control (Coaf), Brazil's financial intelligence unit.

Pix transfers are covered by bank secrecy laws, and police can only access a suspect's transaction history with judicial authorization.

Although Pix does not offer more traceability than previous systems, experts said the fact it is administered by the central bank removes a layer of bureaucracy, allowing investigators to sidestep dealing with private banks.

That is particularly useful in an investigation such as this one, Mota said, with a need to quickly trace what could be hundreds or even thousands of different financiers cross Brazil.

One of the most common types of Pix key is a person's phone number, offering investigators a shortcut to seek wiretaps and subpoena chat records.

"I think that speed allows you to identify the relations between the people involved, and especially those who financed it all," Mota said. "You might have people who financed it and weren't there (in Brasilia) that day. Through the financial links you can identify them."

The central bank said in a statement that "all Pix operations are traceable," adding that it "always works closely with the competent authorities in the investigation of any crimes involving the financial system."

Pix has its investigative drawbacks, experts said. With a growing share of daily transactions now carried out over the system, it may be time-consuming for investigators to separate suspicious transfers from everyday spending.

A current central bank official said a slew of new financial technology companies and digital payment processors had increased access to banking in Brazil, while also making it easier to open an account with little or even false information.

With Pix, protestors could "gather resources for everything we needed," said Oswaldo Eustaquio, another high-profile Bolsonarista. "Money was never a problem for us."

(Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter in Rio de Janeiro and Marcela Ayres in Brasilia; Editing by Brad Haynes and Chris Sanders)

Why is Pakistan teetering on the brink of default?



Mimansa Verma
Mon, January 16, 2023 

Over the past several months, Pakistan has faced a crisis similar to Sri Lanka’s, with a weak currency and the highest-ever inflation rate. Things may be reaching a flashpoint now.

Home to 2.8 million people, India’s neighbor is on the verge of bankruptcy amid deep political instability. Devastating floods between June and August 2022, compounded by the global economic turmoil sparked by the Ukraine war, have precipitated a disaster that has been in the making for many years.

Faltering GDP growth had made it difficult for Pakistan to service debt of $274 billion, which was nearly 79% of Pakistan’s GDP as of September 2022.

So bad is the situation now that the country has put up its embassy building in the US on sale. Its textile industry, accounting for around 60% of its exports, has come on a verge of closure. Shopping malls, wedding halls, restaurants, and markets have been asked to operate shorter working hours to conserve energy.

With the state unable to fund imports, containers of essential food items, raw materials, and medical equipment are held up at the Karachi port. Banks have refused to issue new letters of credit for importers.

Pakistan’s economic woes have historical roots—from dismal foreign direct investment to poor business climate to dysfunctional domestic energy markets and poor tax collection.

Pakistan’s depleting forex reserves

By Jan. 6, the country’s forex reserves had dwindled to $4.3 billion, the lowest level in nearly nine years. This wasn’t enough to cover even a month of imports, leave alone the more than $8 billion it has to repay in loans this quarter.

datawrapper-chart-5pw55

Over the past year, the Pakistani rupee has shed over 20% to trade at 228.75 per dollar (Jan. 16), making imports costlier. The currency’s decline accelerated in April when prime minister Imran Khan was ousted following a no-confidence vote.

datawrapper-chart-NjiMv

Pakistan’s deepening debt crisis

Last year’s cataclysmic flood broke the proverbial back of the cash-strapped nation, which was already grappling with high debt. Pakistan’s agriculture, food, livestock, and fisheries sectors lost $3.7 billion in the catastrophe, according to a report by the country’s planning commission. Long-term losses were estimated at around $9.24 billion.

About half of the $7 billion loan, extended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2019, has already been disbursed. Now, especially with the Imran Khan government’s collapse, that deal has been put on hold since Pakistan has not taken measures to generate revenues enough for repayment.

datawrapper-chart-8zsQ0

Hyperinflation has sparked chaos on the streets

Pakistan recorded headline inflation of 24.5% in December 2022, double of 12.3% from a year ago. Onion prices have surged 501% year-on-year; staples such as rice, wheat, pulses, and salt now cost nearly 50% more than they did a year ago.

The worst-ever flour crisis is ravaging the country, with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, and Balochistan provinces even reporting stampedes for the grain and flour. Balochistan’s food minister Zamarak Achakzai, last week, warned of worse as stocks of subsidized flour have been completely depleted.

Pakistan, the world’s 8th biggest producer of wheat, is now importing 75 lakh tonnes of it to plug the shortage.

“The priority should be to tame inflation through sound macroeconomic policies...to provide targeted relief to those hit hardest by rising prices, including through expanded social protection programs, and to address the distortions that discourage trade and productivity,” said Derek HC Chen, author of a World Bank’s report published on Pakistan in October.

datawrapper-chart-jv1s1

There are other macroeconomic risks, too, that Pakistan must tackle: a large current account deficit, high public debt, and subdued demand in Pakistan’s traditional export markets.

A helping hand from the world

The Pakistan government has said it needs more than $16 billion over the next three years to rebuild infrastructure lost to floods.

Last week, several countries came together to pledge aid of $9 billion to it. The United Arab Emirates, besides rolling over $2 billion that Pakistan owes it, agreed to provide an additional $1 billion to help it avoid default.

However, this may not be enough. Prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has, meanwhile, attempted to break the deadlock with the IMF. It must be noted that IMF has bailed out Pakistan multiple times in its 75-year membership.

Move over Ben Franklin: Laser lightning rod electrifies scientists



 Lightnings flash over Tirana

Mon, January 16, 2023 
By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Benjamin Franklin fashioned the first lightning rod in the 1750s following his famous experiment flying a kite with a key attached during a thunderstorm, the American inventor had no way of knowing this would remain the state of the art for centuries.

Scientists now are moving to improve on that 18th century innovation with 21st century technology - a system employing a high-powered laser that may revolutionize lightning protection. Researchers said on Monday they succeeded in using a laser aimed at the sky from atop Mount Santis in northeastern Switzerland to divert lightning strikes.

With further development, this Laser Lightning Rod could safeguard critical infrastructure including power stations, airports, wind farms and launchpads. Lightning inflicts billions of dollars in damage on buildings, communication systems, power lines and electrical equipment annually while also killing thousands of people.


The equipment was hauled to the mountaintop at an altitude of about 8,200 feet (2,500 meters), some parts using a gondola and others by helicopter, and was focused on the sky above a 400-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) transmission tower belonging to telecommunications provider Swisscom, one of Europe's structures most affected by lightning.

In experiments during two months in 2021, intense laser pulses - 1,000 times per second - were emitted to redirect lightning strikes. All four strikes while the system was active were successfully intercepted. In the first instance, the researchers used two high-speed cameras to record the redirection of the lightning's path by more than 160 feet (50 meters). Three others were documented with different data.

"We demonstrate for the first time that a laser can be used to guide natural lightning," said physicist Aurelien Houard of Ecole Polytechnique's Laboratory of Applied Optics in France, coordinator of the Laser Lightning Rod project and lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Lightning is a high-voltage electrical discharge between a cloud and the ground, within a cloud or between clouds.

"An intense laser can generate on its path long columns of plasmas in the atmosphere with electrons, ions and hot air molecules," Houard said, referring to positively charged particles called ions and negatively charged particles called electrons.

"We have shown here that these plasma columns can act as a guide for lightning," Houard added. "It is important because it is the first step toward a laser-based lightning protection that could virtually reach a height of hundreds of meters (yards) or a kilometer (0.6 mile) with sufficient laser energy."

The laser device is the size of a large car and weighs more than 3 tons. It uses lasers from German industrial machine manufacturing company Trumpf Group. With University of Geneva scientists also playing a key role, the experiments were conducted in collaboration with aerospace company ArianeGroup, a European joint venture between Airbus SE and Safran SA.

This concept, first proposed in the 1970s, has worked in laboratory conditions, but until now not in the field.

Lightning rods, dating back to Franklin's time, are metal rods atop buildings, connected to the ground with a wire, that conduct electric charges lightning strikes harmlessly into the ground. Their limitations include protecting only a small area.

Houard anticipated that 10 to 15 years more work would be needed before the Laser Lightning Rod can enter common use. One concern is avoiding interference with airplanes in flight. In fact, air traffic in the area was halted when the researchers used the laser.

"Indeed, there is a potential issue using the system with air traffic in the area because the laser could harm the eyes of the pilot if he crosses the laser beam and looks down," Houard said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

High-powered lasers can be used to steer lightning strikes

The technology could protect rocket launchpads and power plants.


Scientify/University of Geneva

Jon Fingas
·Reporter
Mon, January 16, 2023 

Lightning rods have been used to safely guide strikes into the ground since Benjamin Franklin's day, but their short range (roughly the same radius as the height) and fixed-in-place design makes them ineffective for protecting large areas. The technology may finally be here to replace them in some situations. European researchers have successfully tested a system that uses terawatt-level laser pulses to steer lighting toward a 26-foot rod. It's not limited by its physical height, and can cover much wider areas — in this case, 590 feet — while penetrating clouds and fog.

The design ionizes nitrogen and oxygen molecules, releasing electrons and creating a plasma that conducts electricity. As the laser fires at a very quick 1,000 pulses per second, it's considerably more likely to intercept lightning as it forms. In the test, conducted between June and September 2021, lightning followed the beam for nearly 197 feet before hitting the rod.



Researchers have been exploring laser lightning guides for years. However, experiments have typically been limited to much shorter distances and relatively slow pulses that were more likely to miss lighting as it formed. Dr. Aurélien Houard, who helped lead the project, told the Wall Street Journal that this laser shot 100 times more pulses per second than in previous attempts.

It could be a long while before lasers are used beyond experiments. The University of Glasgow's Matteo Clerici, who didn't work on the project, noted to The Journal that the laser in the experiment costs about $2.17 billion dollars. The discoverers also plan to significantly extend the range, to the point where a 33-foot rod would have an effective coverage of 1,640 feet.

If the scientists succeed, the breakthrough could make lightning protection viable across large areas. This would be particularly useful for safeguarding rocket launchpads, where lightning strikes can force mission delays if they're too close to the flight path. They could also be helpful for protecting airports, power plants, forests and other sprawling locations where a strike could prove catastrophic

Giant Lasers Will Protect Us From Lightning Strikes

Maddie Bender
Mon, January 16, 2023

Maksim Isachenko / Getty

For all the technological innovation the modern industrial age has afforded us, protection against lightning is not on the list. To guard our homes and buildings from lightning strikes and subsequent fires, we still rely on the lightning rod, a technology invented by Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. Yes, really: Our best method at directing lightning still comes from the guy who tied a metal key to a kite and flew it during a thunderstorm.

Still, Franklin’s lightning rod—consisting of a conductive metal rod that directs lightning to strike the ground via a wire—works well for most situations. “The classical Franklin Rod is very efficient and relatively cheap,” Aurélien Houard, a physicist at École polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, told The Daily Beast in an email. “Its main limitation is related to its size, and to the fact that you cannot install lightning rods everywhere, while lightning strikes can fall almost everywhere.”

Lightning storms don’t just cause damage to buildings. Bolts can strike people, lead to hundreds of injuries and about 20 deaths each year in the U.S., and ignite devastating wildfires. Creating ways to protect more than just buildings from lightning’s damage—or better yet, devising a single method to attract lightning bolts and discharge them safely—would represent the biggest breakthrough in centuries for this area of study.

Improbably enough, scientists have managed to do just that. A team led by Houard and Swiss physicist Jean-Pierre Wolf have presented results that provide evidence that intense, short laser pulses can guide and potentially even trigger lightning to strike a single source. Their findings were published on Jan. 16 in the journal Nature Photonics.

TRUMPF/Martin Stollberg

In the 1960s, researchers discovered that lightning could be triggered and controlled by shooting small rockets attached to a conducting wire into the air during a storm. While clearly not a practical solution, the science behind this method gave the physicists an idea: Why not use a laser instead to emit a continuous conductive beam of energy and extend the range of a lightning rod?

“The laser creates a virtual extension of the metallic rod,” Houard explained, noting that a rod is typically only a few meters tall and can only protect as many meters far as it is tall. Lasers produce narrow beams of light, heating and detaching electrons from the air molecules in its path that can then conduct electricity. Lightning prefers to travel down a conductive path (which is why lightning rods work in the first place), so a giant laser beam will naturally guide it to the smaller metal rod underneath.

The physicists led an experiment during the summer of 2021 to test out their laser mountain on top of a telecommunications tower that itself was atop Mount Säntis, the highest mountain in a massif in northeastern Switzerland. After transporting the laser by truck and reassembling it at the peak of the mountain, the physicists operated the laser during thunderstorms between July and September 2021 for a total of 6 hours and 20 minutes.

By analyzing high-speed footage and a device that measures very-high-frequency activity characteristic of lightning strikes, the researchers found that the laser successfully guided four different lightning strikes. Shockingly, one of these strikes followed the path of the laser for more than 50 meters down to the metal rod, an impressively long distance.

Unlike previous unsuccessful attempts to construct a laser lightning rod, Houard said the group’s laser generated over 100 times more shots per second—since lightning can develop and discharge in milliseconds, this kind of precision likely played a crucial role in the team’s success. Additionally, the laser’s location upped the odds that lightning would strike in the general vicinity of the laser:

“In most of the places, lightning develops from the cloud to the ground, and it is impossible to predict precisely where it will go,” Houard said. “But on Mount Säntis, all the lightning flashes are hitting the tower, and this happens almost 100 times per year.”

Houard said that the researchers hope to repeat their experiment using different colored lasers and vary the amount of energy expended per pulse to collect more data and increase the lightning rod’s ambit. Then, they would like to test the laser in settings more similar to a real-world environment, not at the top of a mountain. Theoretically, with enough laser energy, one could generate temporary protection with a laser lightning rod hundreds of meters tall and protect very large and tall structures.

Though the analyzed results are only coming to light now, Wolf told CNN that the experiment’s success would have been apparent months earlier when experimentation ended in September 2021. “I think that at the end of September we will either open a bottle of champagne or a bottle of whiskey, if you see what I mean,” he said.

The new space race

Devika Rao, Staff writer
Mon, January 16, 2023 

Astronauts. Illustrated | Getty Images

The original space race was a key part of the Cold War, when the U.S. and the USSR competed to be the first country on the moon. Now almost 70 years later, the U.S. is in a new space race with a new competitor: China. Here's everything you need to know:
Why is there a new space race?

Simply put, the moon is prime real estate and both the U.S. and China want to stake their claim.

This year, the U.S. launched its 26-day Artemis I mission, sending an Orion space capsule around the moon before returning to Earth. This was a step toward the U.S. once again putting people on the moon, but this time with the hopes of a more permanent setup, writes Politico.

This objective is at risk because of China's lunar military potential. The country has expressed interest in landing taikonauts, the Chinese word for astronauts, on the moon as well as creating a space governance system. NASA has warned that China could potentially lay claim to prime resource areas on the moon under the guise of research, potentially barring others countries' access and potentially endangering U.S. satellites.

The U.S.-proposed moon base would likely be collaborative between multiple nations. However, in the 1990s, China was thought to have stolen U.S. space technology. This led to the Wolf Amendment, passed in 2011, which prevented NASA from ever collaborating with China. In turn, there are talks of China potentially launching a joint moon mission with Russia instead.

"It is a fact: we're in a space race," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, 'Keep out, we're here, this is our territory.'" He noted that China lays claim to the South China Sea despite it being considered international waters.

At the same time, China's space technology is rapidly improving raising worries that China might reach its goal earlier than expected.
How is China improving its space technology?

China has shown quick advancement in space technology over the past year. One of the most prominent achievements was the launching of a new space station in November. The Shenzhou 15 mission launched three taikonauts, sending them to the newly built Tiangong space station to wrap up construction. This makes China just the third country to operate a space station, after the U.S. and Russia.

The new station is technologically advanced and can support other astro-goals that China hopes to accomplish including launching a new space telescope, running experiments on life in space, and launching missions to Mars, writes Forbes.

Along with the space station, China also launched robotic landers and rovers on the moon and Mars. In addition, the country was the first to use landers and rovers to collect samples from the far side of the moon, continues Politico. "It's entirely possible they could catch up and surpass us, absolutely," remarked Space Force Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno. "The progress they've made has been stunning — stunningly fast."

China's great improvements to its space program have concerned the U.S. government.
How does the space race play into ongoing tensions?

The U.S. and China have been experiencing tension for many years now, making this space race especially contentious. Recent political conflict has included the U.S. giving vocal support to Taiwan, a territory that China has long claimed.

Additionally, China is a strong ally of Russia which the U.S. and other Western nations have condemned for its invasion of Ukraine. China may potentially launch a joint moon project with Russia, which would leave the U.S.'s space power and moon claim at even more significant risk.

China has been vying to solidify its standing as a frontrunner in innovation and combat, and landing on the moon could achieve that. The country has also shown that it may be able to set up communications between the Earth and the moon via existing satellites, which could spell trouble.

"There is potentially mischief China can do on the moon," Terry Virts, former commander of the International Space Station and Space Shuttle, commented to Politico. "If they set up infrastructure there they could potentially deny communications." China has responded to these claims saying, "Outer space is not a wrestling ground," and that, "China always advocates the peaceful use of outer space." China is also part of the Outer Space Treaty which prevents countries from staking a claim on celestial bodies.

Either way, the U.S. has also been working to get back on the moon, hoping to launch moon mission Artemis II by 2024, and Artemis III, which will put humans on the moon, by 2025, per The New York Times. However, China's moon landing date, "keeps getting closer and closer" according to Nelson, and the U.S. will only beat them there "the good Lord willing."

It's official: China's population is shrinking for the first time in 60 years

Matthew Loh
Mon, January 16, 2023 

Travellers crowd at the gates and wait for trains at the Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station during the peak travel rush for the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday on January 15, 2023 in Shanghai, China.

Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

China's population declined in 2022, the first time since the early 1960s.


The country's population fell by 850,000 people in 2022 to 1.4118 billion, per official statistics.


The drop, coupled with China's aging population, poses risks to the health of the nation's economy.

China's population is officially shrinking.

Mainland China's population fell by 850,000 people in 2022 to 1.4118 billion, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday. The country recorded 9.56 million new births and 10.41 million deaths in 2022. The news comes after years of falling birth rates and as Beijing grapples with an impending demographic crisis.

The decline is the first in China since Mao Zedong's failed Great Leap Forward of the early 1960s, when nationwide famine claimed an estimated 30 million lives.

The drop in 2022 also comes after China posted its slowest ever population growth in 2021, when its population rose by 480,000 people.

This new data poses drastic implications for the health of China's economy, such as potential falling demand for goods like housing and a significantly reduced working-age population.

Deaths in the country also increased, in part due to the pandemic — China has been reeling from a surge in COVID-related fatalities over the last month. On Saturday, health authorities reported nearly 60,000 COVID-related deaths between December 8 and January 12.

Health data firms elsewhere in the world estimate China's total pandemic death toll over the next few months will reach at least 1 million.

Meanwhile, India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation. The United Nations projects that India's population will hit 1.67 billion people by 2050, while China is expected to have a smaller population of 1.32 billion by then.

China records 1st population fall in decades as births drop






Commuters wearing face masks walk along a street in the central business district in Beijing on Jan. 12, 2023. China has announced its first overall population decline in recent years amid an aging society and plunging birthrate

. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Mon, January 16, 2023

BEIJING (AP) — China has announced its first population decline in decades as what has been the world's most populous nation ages and its birthrate plunges.

The National Bureau of Statistics reported Tuesday that the country had 850,000 fewer people at the end of 2022 than the previous year. The tally includes only the population of mainland China, excluding Hong Kong and Macao as well as foreign residents.

That left a total of 1.41 billion people, with 9.56 million births against 10.41 million deaths, the bureau said at a briefing on Tuesday.

Men outnumbered women by 722.06 million to 689.69 million, a result of the strict one-child policy that only officially ended in 2016 and a traditional preference for male offspring to carry on the family name.

Since abandoning the policy, China has sought to encourage families to have second or even third children, with little success, reflecting attitudes in much of east Asia where birth rates have fallen precipitously. In China, the expense of raising children in cities is often cited as a cause.

China has long been the world's most populous nation, but is expected to soon be overtaken by India, if it has not already. Estimates put India's population at more than 1.4 billion and continuing to grow.

The last time China is believed to have recorded a population decline was during the Great Leap Forward at the end of the 1950s, under then-leader Mao Zedong's disastrous drive for collective farming and industrialization that produced a massive famine killing tens of millions of people.

Yi Fuxian, an expert on Chinese population trends at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, tweeted that the data reflected how China’s population began to decline nine to 10 years earlier than projections by Chinese officials and the United Nations.

That means that China's “real demographic crisis is beyond imagination and that all of China’s past … policies were based on faulty demographic data,” Yi wrote.

“China’s demographic and economic outlook is much bleaker than expected," he added, predicting that China would have to take a less combative tone internationally and improve is relations with the West.

China's statistics bureau said the working-age population between 16 and 59 years old totaled 875.56 million, accounting for 62.0% of the national population, while those aged 65 and older totaled 209.78 million, accounting for 14.9% of the total.

The statistics also showed increasing urbanization in a country that traditionally had been largely rural. Over 2022, the permanent urban population increased by 6.46 million to reach 920.71 million, or 65.22%, while the rural population fell by 7.31 million.

It wasn't immediately clear if the population figures have been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak that was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan before spreading around the world. China has been accused by some specialists of underreporting deaths from the virus by blaming them on underlying conditions, but no estimates of the actual number have been published.

The United Nations estimated last year that the world’s population reached 8 billion on Nov. 15 and that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023.

In a report released on World Population Day, the U.N. also said global population growth fell below 1% in 2020 for the first time since 1950.

Also Tuesday, the bureau released data showing China’s economic growth fell to its second-lowest level in at least four decades last year under pressure from anti-virus controls and a real estate slump.

The world’s No. 2 economy grew by 3% in 2022, less than half of the previous year’s 8.1%, the data showed.

That was the second-lowest annual rate since at least the 1970s, after the drop to 2.4% in 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, although activity is reviving after restrictions that kept millions of people at home and sparked protests were lifted.

China’s population falls for first time since 1961, highlights demographic crisis





Children play on swings at a playground in Beijing

Mon, January 16, 2023 
By Albee Zhang and Farah Master

BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) -China's population fell last year for the first time in six decades, a historic turn that is expected to mark the start of a long period of decline in its citizen numbers with profound implications for its economy and the world.

The drop, the worst since 1961, the last year of China's Great Famine, also lends weight to predictions that India will become the world's most populous nation this year.

China's population declined by roughly 850,000 to 1.41175 billion at the end of 2022, the country's National Bureau of Statistics said.

Long-term, U.N. experts see China's population shrinking by 109 million by 2050, more than triple the decline of their previous forecast in 2019.

That's caused domestic demographers to lament that China will get old before it gets rich, slowing the economy as revenues drop and government debt increases due to soaring health and welfare costs.

"China's demographic and economic outlook is much bleaker than expected. China will have to adjust its social, economic, defense and foreign policies," said demographer Yi Fuxian.

He added that the country's shrinking labour force and downturn in manufacturing heft would further exacerbate high prices and high inflation in the United States and Europe.

The national statistics bureau said in a statement that people should not worry about the decline in population as "overall labour supply still exceeds demand".

China's birth rate last year was just 6.77 births per 1,000 people, down from a rate of 7.52 births in 2021 and marking the lowest birth rate on record.

The death rate, the highest since 1974 during the Cultural Revolution, was 7.37 deaths per 1,000 people, which compares with rate of 7.18 deaths in 2021.

ONE-CHILD POLICY IMPACT

Much of the demographic downturn is the result of China's one-child policy imposed between 1980 and 2015 as well as sky-high education costs that have put many Chinese off having more than one child or even having any at all.

The data was the top trending topic on Chinese social media after the figures were released on Tuesday. One hashtag,"#Is it really important to have offspring?" had hundreds of millions of hits.

"The fundamental reason why women do not want to have children lies not in themselves, but in the failure of society and men to take up the responsibility of raising children. For women who give birth this leads to a serious decline in their quality of life and spiritual life," posted one netizen with the username Joyful Ned.

China's stringent zero-COVID policies that were in place for three years have caused further damage to the country's demographic outlook, population experts have said.

Local governments have since 2021 rolled out measures to encourage people to have more babies, including tax deductions, longer maternity leave and housing subsidies. President Xi Jinping also said in October the government would enact further supportive policies.

Measures so far, however, have done little to arrest the long-term trend.

Online searches for baby strollers on China's Baidu search engine dropped 17% in 2022 and are down 41% since 2018, while searches for baby bottles are down more than a third since 2018. In contrast, searches for elderly care homes surged eight-fold last year.

The reverse is playing out in India, where Google Trends shows a 15% year-on-year increase in searches for baby bottles in 2022, while searches for cribs rose almost five-fold.

(Reporting by Albee Zhang in Beijing and Farah Master in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Kevin Yao in Beijing; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

Ex-Mexico security chief’s trial poised to lift lid on US and Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’

Oscar Lopez in Mexico City
Mon, January 16, 2023 

Photograph: Marco Ugarte/AP

One of Mexico’s most powerful former officials will stand trial in the US this week, charged with accepting million-dollar bribes from a violent cartel in a case with profound political implications that could expose the inner workings of the “war on drugs” on both sides of the border.

Genaro García Luna, a former head of Mexico’s equivalent of the FBI who went on to lead the country’s security ministry, was arrested in Texas in 2019, charged with conspiring to traffic cocaine and lying to the US government.

Related: Twenty-four hours of terror as cartel violence engulfs Mexican city

He was subsequently charged with taking multimillion-dollar bribes from the powerful Sinaloa cartel, once run by the drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, in exchange for allowing it to operate with impunity, all while he was supposedly spearheading Mexico’s anti-drug efforts.

The accusations against García Luna surfaced during El Chapo’s trial, when one of the Sinaloa cartel’s members testified that he had given the former security minister briefcases filled with cash. If convicted, the former official faces up to life in prison.

“For nearly two decades, García Luna betrayed those he was sworn to protect”, said Seth DuCharme, acting US attorney for the eastern district of New York, announcing the second set of charges in 2020, “by accepting bribes from members of the Sinaloa cartel to facilitate their crimes and empower their criminal enterprise.”

The trial, which is set to begin in a Brooklyn court on Tuesday, has the potential to expose the insidious corruption that has plagued Mexican security agencies, while also underscoring the failures of the US-supported fight against drug trafficking groups, and provide Mexico’s current president with still more ammunition for his constant attacks against previous administrations.

Calderón sends in the army

Mexico’s “war on drugs” began in late 2006 when the president at the time, Felipe Calderón, ordered thousands of troops onto the streets in response to an explosion of horrific violence in his native state of Michoacán.

Calderón hoped to smash the drug cartels with his heavily militarized onslaught but the approach was counter-productive and exacted a catastrophic human toll. As Mexico’s military went on the offensive, the body count sky-rocketed to new heights and tens of thousands were forced from their homes, disappeared or killed.

Kingpin strategy

Simultaneously Calderón also began pursuing the so-called “kingpin strategy” by which authorities sought to decapitate the cartels by targeting their leaders.

That policy resulted in some high-profile scalps – notably Arturo Beltrán Leyva who was gunned down by Mexican marines in 2009 – but also did little to bring peace. In fact, many believe such tactics served only to pulverize the world of organized crime, creating even more violence as new, less predictable factions squabbled for their piece of the pie.

Under Calderón’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, the government’s rhetoric on crime softened as Mexico sought to shed its reputation as the headquarters of some the world’s most murderous mafia groups.

But Calderón’s policies largely survived, with authorities targeting prominent cartel leaders such as Sinaloa’s Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

When “El Chapo” was arrested in early 2016, Mexico’s president bragged: “Mission accomplished”. But the violence went on. By the time Peña Nieto left office in 2018, Mexico had suffered another record year of murders, with nearly 36,000 people slain.

"Hugs not bullets"

The leftwing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador took power in December, promising a dramatic change in tactics. López Obrador, or Amlo as most call him, vowed to attack the social roots of crime, offering vocational training to more than 2.3 million disadvantaged young people at risk of being ensnared by the cartels.

“It will be virtually impossible to achieve peace without justice and [social] welfare,” Amlo said, promising to slash the murder rate from an average of 89 killings per day with his “hugs not bullets” doctrine.

Amlo also pledged to chair daily 6am security meetings and create a 60,000 strong "National Guard". But those measures have yet to pay off, with the new security force used mostly to hunt Central American migrants.

Mexico now suffers an average of about 96 murders per day, with nearly 29,000 people killed since Amlo took office.

“During Felipe Calderón’s presidency, [García Luna] was one of the two or three most important actors in the fight against drug trafficking, probably the most important,” said Rafael Fernández de Castro, director of the Center for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and a former foreign policy adviser to Calderón. “So yes, it is very significant.”

Once the head of Mexico’s Federal Investigation Agency, García Luna was selected by Calderón in 2006 to serve as secretary of public security, which also put him in charge of Mexico’s now defunct federal police.

Related: Architect of Mexico’s war on drugs held in Texas for taking cartel bribes

Throughout Calderón’s presidency, García Luna was tasked with developing and implementing the president’s militarized assault on the nation’s powerful drug cartels. In doing so, he worked closely with American security officials and traveled regularly to the US.

“He was one of Washington’s favorites,” said Fernández de Castro.

But according to the current US attorney for the eastern district of New York, Breon Peace, García Luna was secretly receiving millions of dollars from the Sinaloa cartel. In a letter last week to Judge Brian M Cogan, Peace said that, in exchange for the bribes, the cartel was granted “safe passage for its drug shipments, sensitive law enforcement information about investigations into the cartel, and information about rival drug cartels”.

The cartel was also at times tipped off about potential arrests, and even if they were arrested, cartel members were allowed to walk free. While being protected by García Luna, the Sinaloa cartel was able to import “multi-ton drug loads” to New York, according to Peace.

After leaving office in 2012, García Luna moved to Miami, where his lavish lifestyle, including a multimillion-dollar home and yacht, was supported by businessmen with whom he had worked while in office, helping them extend government surveillance and technology contracts.

Using what the US attorney called “an opaque constellation of shell companies, straw buyers, foreign bank accounts, cash businesses, and proxies”, García Luna is alleged to have “spent his time peddling the influence he had gained while participating in the conspiracy to create wealth for himself in the United States”.

García Luna has pleaded not guilty to the charges. César de Castro, a lawyer for the former security secretary, did not respond to an interview request.

People who knew and worked with García Luna, particularly in his early days as head of the Federal Investigation Agency, described him as serious and strict – a figure at odds with the mansion-dwelling Miami playboy portrayed by US prosecutors.

“He was a very disciplined guy, very institutional,” said Gustavo Mohar, who served as the general secretary of Mexico’s top intelligence agency CISEN under President Calderón. “He was the classic policeman who in front of his superiors was very ‘Yes sir, no sir.’”

The problem, said Mohar, came once García Luna was appointed to the head of the security ministry, a position with extraordinary power.

He became the guy in charge of taking down organized crime. I think that warped his sense of reality

Gustavo Mohar

“He became the policeman, the guy in charge of taking down organized crime, and particularly drug trafficking,” Mohar said. “I think that warped his sense of reality.”

Given the close ties the former security secretary once enjoyed with Washington, the trial could also be awkward for US officials, security analysts said.

“It’s part of this complex web of cooperation but also complicity between officials in Mexico and the United States in the war against drug trafficking and organized crime,” said Fernández de Castro, the former Calderón adviser.

Related: Betrayal, torture and a $100m bribe: what the El Chapo trial has revealed

Peace, the US attorney, said the government “expects that numerous witnesses, including several former high-ranking members of the Sinaloa cartel, will testify”. As happened at the trial of El Chapo, this testimony, along with García Luna’s own, has the potential to implicate current and former officials on both sides of the border.

But one official likely looking forward to the trial is the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who built his brand campaigning on the corruption that plagued his predecessors.

“This is a marvelous gift for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, because it speaks to the corruption of the past,” said Fernández de Castro. “It’s a football the US justice system is giving him so he can score an incredible goal.”

Unlike the 2020 arrest of Gen Salvador Cienfuegos, which caused such outrage among Mexican officials that the US returned him to Mexico, López Obrador has spent months raging about García Luna – even reprimanding Mexican media for not covering the trial enough.

“It’s going to be interesting,” the president said last week. “It’s very important for me to follow it, and I hope the media are going to be reporting on it constantly.”

US drug trial opens for Mexico ex-security head
 

In this Jan 3, 2020 file courtroom sketch, defense attorney Cesar de Castro, left, Mexico's former top security official, Genaro Garcia Luna, center, and a court interpreter, appear for an arraignment hearing in Brooklyn federal court in New York, Jan. 3, 2020. The former top security official is scheduled to go on trial Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, on charges he accepted millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for helping the powerful Sinaloa Cartel move drugs and its members avoid capture.

 (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams, File)

 In this 2008 photo provided by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, Jesus Zambada is shown. In 2019, jurors in his New York trial heard Zambada testify that he personally made at least $6 million in hidden payments to top Mexican security official Genaro Garcia Luna on behalf of his older brother, cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. 

(U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York via AP, File)

MARK STEVENSON
Mon, January 16, 2023

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The man who was once Mexico's top security official and in charge of fighting the drug cartels goes on trial Tuesday on charges he accepted millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for helping the powerful Sinaloa Cartel move drugs and its members avoid capture.

Genaro García Luna was best known as the mumbling, tough-looking former security secretary under ex-President Felipe Calderón who spearheaded the bloody war on cartels between 2006 and 2012.

United States prosecutors allege he was so brazen he accepted tens of millions of dollars, often stuffed in briefcases. The evidence against him includes pay stubs, though whether they were from official jobs, private sector consultancy, cartel payments or other bribes is unclear.

They say he continued to live off his ill-gotten proceeds even after he moved to the United States, where he was arrested in 2019, though the defense says he was a legitimate businessman. Jury selection was scheduled to begin Tuesday.


In the end, the case could reveal the inner workings of how Mexican cartels have been able to operate so openly for so long: by bribing Mexican police and military right up to the top ranks.

“For decades, Mexico’s political elite, of all parties, has sought by any means to have security ministers, generals, police commanders, interior secretaries and high-ranking officials tried and imprisoned in Mexico … all that to avoid them giving information on the ties between the drug cartels and politicians,” said Mexican security analyst David Saucedo. “Garcia Luna’s trial in the United States breaks with that pattern.”

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has welcomed the trial expected to cast light on corruption in the administration of Calderón, who the president accuses of having robbed him of the presidency in 2006.

But López Obrador himself fought tooth and nail to avoid a U.S. trial of former defense secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos on similar charges in 2020, at one point threatening to kick DEA agents out of Mexico unless the general was returned, which he was.

The trial begins just days after U.S. President Joe Biden met with López Obrador in Mexico City. The two governments pledged continued cooperation against the drug cartels, especially against the scourge of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which contributed to more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2021. López Obrador scrapped the civilian federal police force that García Luna once led and put the military in charge of much of the country's security.

“It’s not the same to put a civilian PAN official on trial, as it is to put a defense secretary on trial, when your whole national security policy rests on the armed forces,” said Ana Vanessa Cárdenas, an international security analyst at the Anahuac University, referring to Calderón's conservative National Action Party.

García Luna has pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges and a continuing criminal enterprise. He could face decades in prison if convicted.

What he will face in a Brooklyn courtroom is a parade of government witnesses, including high-level cartel members, of a kind not seen in Brooklyn since Sinaloa boss Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was convicted there in 2019 and sentenced to life in prison. Some accusations against García Luna surfaced at the Guzmán trial.

“While holding public office, (García Luna) used his official positions to assist the Sinaloa Cartel, a notorious Mexican drug cartel, in exchange for multimillion-dollar bribes. At trial, the government expects that numerous witnesses, including several former high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel, will testify about bribes paid to the defendant in exchange for protection,” U.S. Attorney Breon Peace wrote in a court filing last week.

“In exchange for these bribes, the defendant provided the Sinaloa Cartel with, among other things, safe passage for its drug shipments, sensitive law enforcement information about investigations into the cartel, and information about rival drug cartels,” Peace wrote. “These payments allowed the cartel at times to receive warnings in advance of law enforcement efforts to apprehend cartel members and to allow cartel members to be released if arrested.”

Before convicting Guzmán in 2019, jurors in his New York trial heard former cartel member Jesús Zambada testify that he personally made at least $6 million in hidden payments to García Luna, on behalf of his older brother, cartel boss Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

The cartel is now believed to be run by Zambada and at least three of Guzmán's sons, one of whom was arrested earlier this month on an extradition request from the United States.

García Luna isn't the first top Mexican official arrested for involvement with drug traffickers. Gen. Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo was made Mexico’s drug czar by President Ernesto Zedillo in 1996. He was arrested the following year after it was discovered he was living in a luxury apartment owned by the leader of the Juarez cartel, Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

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