WHITE AMERICAN PROTESTANTS
Tensions with evangelicals threaten Trump White House bid

Julia Manchester
Sat, January 21, 2023

Tensions between Donald Trump and evangelical leaders have spilled into public view, posing a potential threat to the former president’s election chances in 2024.

In an interview earlier this week, Trump said evangelical leaders are showing “signs of disloyalty” because they have yet to endorse his third presidential bid.

The comments highlighted the changing dynamic in GOP politics as the leaders of one of Trump’s most supportive demographics appear to distance themselves from the former president.

“It’s going to make these next few months uncomfortable for evangelical leaders because they’re going to have to, in essence, answer that question: Are you for Trump or are you not?” said David Brody, the chief political analyst at the Christian Broadcasting Network, who conducted the interview with Trump.

Trump’s comments come after influential evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress interviewed former Vice President Mike Pence, who is also evangelical, on stage at First Baptist Church in Dallas last week.

Pence is a potential 2024 Trump rival and Jeffress is a longtime supporter of Trump but has notably held off on endorsing him ahead of next year’s presidential election.

But in an interview with The Hill on Friday, Jeffress said he believes the former president will be the GOP presidential nominee in 2024 and that his decision to hold off on endorsing the president is “just a matter of timing.”

“I just don’t see a need to make an official endorsement two years out,” Jeffress said.

“Just let me cut to the chase,” he said. “I think President Trump is the presumptive nominee for 2024. I expect he will be the nominee in 2024 and I believe he’ll be the next president of the United States.”

However, Jeffress said that if Pence decides to run in 2024 he will be “a strong contender.”

White, evangelical Protestants played a key role in Trump’s coalition in 2016 and 2020 and have historically been a loyal Republican voting bloc. According to Pew Research, 84 percent of white, evangelical Protestants voted for Trump in 2020, while 77 percent voted for him in 2016.

The conservative voting bloc was drawn to Trump for his stances on issues like abortion and immigration. Trump, who appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices, has largely been credited for setting in motion the overturning of Roe v. Wade — one of his key campaign promises.

“He’s very much action-oriented and so therefore if he made promises and he delivered on those promises, which he did for four years, he’s going to say ‘well, what’s the problem here?’” Brody said.

While notable group leaders are choosing to wait to endorse the former president — despite him delivering on those promises — many are now wondering if it’s a signal that Trump’s support is softening among evangelicals ahead of the 2024 Republican primary.

“I think Trump is not helping himself here,” said Robert Jones, founder of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. “Trump did not really gain the votes of white evangelicals through white evangelical leaders in 2016.”

Jeffress publicly broke with Russell Moore, the-then president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, over Trump in 2016. Moore has been a vocal critic of the then-GOP candidate, while Jeffress embraced him.

“If you had just listened to evangelical leaders, you would have thought there was a great divide in the evangelical community on this,” Jones continued. “Of course when it came time to vote in primaries, the rank and file of white evangelicals lined up quite handily behind Trump.”

“There was never a divide on the ground in the way there was among evangelical leaders,” he said. “I think Trump himself may misunderstand the dynamics that evangelicals were never waiting on their leaders to tell them who to vote for.”

Brody said that broadly evangelical leaders and voters also have not been turned off by the controversies that have dogged Trump for decades, arguing that they always knew what they were signing up for.

“If chaos was there before — and it was — and chaos was here now, what has changed? Nothing has changed,” Brody said.

There is a trend in some early polls showing Trump’s support wavering among Republican voters as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gains traction. Forty-nine percent of Republican primary voters said they would support the former president in 2024 and 54 percent of evangelical voters said they planned on supporting him in his third bid, according to a New York Times-Sienna College poll released in October ahead of the midterm elections.

However, polling this week showed Trump running ahead of DeSantis. A new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released on Friday showed Trump leading DeSantis 48 percent to 28 percent. Meanwhile, a Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday showed Trump leading DeSantis 48 percent to 31 percent.

But if multiple Republican contenders jump into the primary, which is likely to happen, evangelical support could be divvied up.

“Evangelicals are going to have a decision to make and Trump will probably end up losing some of that support,” Brody said.

And experts say they doubt that Trump’s support among evangelical voters themselves will suffer drastically anytime soon.

“When you look at Trump’s favorability numbers, they have moved down a bit since he was in office among white evangelicals but not very much,” Jones said. “To me, unless the numbers look significantly worse than they did in 2016 for him, I would not count him out, and they do not.”

“Hundreds of thank yous are not hundreds of tanks.”

T62 USED IN UKRAINE

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was typically blunt. 

After thanking the United States for a $2.5 billion contribution of arms, atop $3 billion announced several weeks ago, he said: “Hundreds of thank yous are not hundreds of tanks.”

In an appearance on German television, he said: “If you have Leopards, then give them to us.”

American officials were clearly frustrated after their negotiations with the German government this week. Germany had begun by saying that it would send Leopard tanks, and authorize others to, if the United States sent its M-1 Abrams tank as well. 

The United States declined, saying the tank is such a gas guzzler — it employs a jet engine — and requires such a supply line to keep running that it would not be useful in Ukraine’s environment. (The officials dodged questions about why a tank so difficult to operate on European battlefields is in the American arsenal.)

The British Challengers and German Leopards are more flexible and easier to run. 

THEY TAKE DESIEL

But in public, Austin and others avoided criticizing Scholz, who in their view has managed the biggest reversal of German foreign policy — starting with the suspension of two pipelines bringing gas from Russia — quite skillfully.

The NATO Alliance Is Holding Strong on Ukraine. But Fractures Are Emerging. (yahoo.com)

 

Ukraine war: Can NATO tanks and training turn the tide?

Anna Mulrine Grobe
Mon, January 23, 2023 

As the defense chiefs of 54 nations gathered Friday to chart the next steps forward in repelling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reiterated the urgency of their mission.

“Russia is regrouping, recruiting, and trying to reequip,” he warned, urging colleagues to “dig deeper” in their efforts to bolster Kyiv’s defenses with weapons and training as the first anniversary of Russia’s war in Ukraine – and an expected spring assault – approaches.

He then patched in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy via video, who noted that the assembled Ukraine Defense Contact Group has done so much for his country that it would be “absolutely just” to tender “hundreds of thank-you’s.”

“But,” he added in a pointed proviso, “hundreds of thank-you’s are not hundreds of tanks.”

For days before – and after – the Ramstein meeting, the talk was of tanks: specifically whether the United States would greenlight its M1 Abrams for Ukraine. Such a move by the U.S. appears to be Germany’s tacit precondition for releasing its own Leopard 2 tanks, desperately desired by President Zelenskyy and his troops for their war effort.

Those tanks did not materialize at this meeting, though Poland vowed last week to send some of its own Leopards – never mind German arms export laws. The German foreign minister has signaled that Berlin won’t stand in Warsaw’s way.

Still, many military analysts say that such vehicles and more long-range firepower will ultimately be necessary. The new infusion of heavy weapons – and the intensive troop training that goes with them – buoys Ukrainian hopes of potentially turning the tide toward victory. At the very least, it raises the hope of Ukraine holding its own in the conflict’s next phase.

New equipment will continue to require “brutal prioritization” on the battlefield, however, says retired Gen. Frederick “Ben” Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe. And those sorts of decisions about how to distribute scarce resources, he adds, like everything about this war, “will be hard.”
Ukraine seeking firepower and mobility

The goal for the extensive – if accelerated – training that Ukrainian soldiers began this month is to give them the skills to penetrate Russian positions that have been hardening for months and, in some cases, years.

This will be particularly necessary in the face of a new round of Russian mobilizations, which will “probably bring a lot of new recruits into Ukraine in roughly April,” says Rafael Loss, coordinator for pan-European data projects at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

More than ever, Ukrainian soldiers “will need to be able to move around under fire, and for that, you need armored vehicles,” he notes, adding that up to this point, troops have often been using pickup trucks. “Any piece of shrapnel shreds the aluminum.”

To help avoid this, the U.S. last week promised, along with other armored personnel carriers, 59 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, renowned not only for their ability to protect soldiers but also – given the 7-foot-long gun barrels mounted to their turrets – for their considerable firepower.

Equally important to this latest arms package, military analysts say, is the training that will come with it. It will focus on how to maneuver the new vehicles while wielding existing weapons – known in military parlance as “combined arms” training – “as opposed to just pounding one another with artillery,” a senior defense official said in a briefing earlier this month. “Equipment is one thing. Using the equipment is another.”

The idea, ultimately, is to “change this dynamic that you see right now where it’s inches forward” on the front lines, Laura Cooper, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia and Ukraine, said in a Pentagon briefing this month. The point is to instead use the new vehicles, artillery, and other firepower together to “make greater progress on the battlefield and really push back on these Russian positions,” she added. “So that’s what we’re looking forward to seeing in the coming months.”

For NATO, the stakes involve not only aiding a democratic ally but also defending Europe more broadly against the threat posed by a more aggressive Russia under Vladimir Putin.

The new armored vehicles and other support are enough to equip the equivalent of two brigades of Ukrainian fighters, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said at Ramstein Friday. Training on the Bradleys is now taking place in Germany.

Across the Atlantic, in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, Ukrainian soldiers are learning to operate Patriot missile defense systems, to allow them to shoot down incoming Russian air attacks. While such instruction can take up to one year, the U.S. Army is “expediting” this training for Kyiv to “several months.”

“The longer these troops are off the line,” Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder observed, “they’re not actually engaged in combat.”
Can you “maintain it, operate it, fuel it?”

Key to this operation will be Ukraine’s ability to keep these ever more powerful and complex vehicles and weapons systems running – and that will take practice, too.

Some of it will involve “tele-maintenance,” which is “exactly what it sounds like,” Ms. Cooper says. The near-rocket-scientist skill level required for repairs of the M1 Abrams has been the chief reason the Pentagon has raised for not giving Kyiv its much-coveted tank to date.

It’s “a very complicated piece of equipment,” Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, has noted. “It’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine.” Plus, it uses “about three gallons to the mile with jet fuel.”

This could prove a disadvantage on the battlefield, says Brigadier General Ryder. “If I’m going to provide you with a piece of equipment, are you going to be able to sustain it, maintain it, operate it, fuel it? Is it going to be an albatross around your neck, so to speak?”

That said, Ms. Cooper acknowledged, “We absolutely agree that Ukraine does need tanks.”

For now, NATO allies are helping to refurbish Russian-made T-72 tanks for Ukraine, which currently has some 800 Soviet-era tanks on the battlefield, says retired Col. Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has made a comprehensive study of armaments in the war.

One problem, however, is that “the production line for T-72 ammunition is really limited outside of Russia,” says Mr. Loss at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “And Russia is of course not going to sell that to Ukraine.”
Pressing Germany

Great Britain has provided 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks – widely seen as an effort to spur Germany to provide its widely lauded Leopard 2 tanks. But a dozen or so such tanks won’t turn the tide of battle, analysts say.

The benefit of the Leopard 2 tanks is that “there are enough out there, hither and yon, that you could cobble together numbers that are significant,” Mr. Cancian says. Ukraine would like at least 300 of them, and “you could definitely get 100,” which, he adds, “is enough to outfit a significant part of the Ukrainian armored force.”

Countries that use the Leopards would likely come together to build a coalition to supply the tanks as well, “ensuring a steady supply of ammunition and spare parts,” Mr. Loss says.

For these reasons, Germany is under heavy pressure to let their tanks go to Ukraine.

Secretary Austin was asked, repeatedly, at Ramstein whether Germany was showing “real leadership” in the war effort. “Yes,” he replied. “But we can all do more.”

Still, as the latest round of equipment and training flows into Ukraine, its soldiers build their skills. And as that happens, analysts point out, Kyiv is in an ever-better position to lobby President Joe Biden and other allied leaders for the big guns of their respective arsenals.

For this reason, it is likely not a matter of whether Kyiv will get more tanks, they add, but when.

“The Ukrainian people are watching us,” Secretary Austin said Friday. “The Kremlin is watching us. And history is watching us.”

Oil wells guzzle precious California water. Next door, residents can’t use the tap



Hilary Beaumont in Fuller Acres, California,  photograph by Pablo Unzueta
Sun, January 22, 2023 

Towering refineries and rusty pumpjacks greet visitors driving along the highways of Kern county, California. Oil wells sit in the middle of fields of grapevines and almond trees. The air is heavy with dust and the scent of petroleum.

The energy fields here are some of the most productive in the US, generating billions of barrels of oil annually and more than two-thirds of the state’s natural gas. And in a drought-stricken state, they’re also some of the thirstiest, consuming vast quantities of fresh water to extract stubborn oil.

But in the industry’s shadow, nearby communities can’t drink from the tap. One of those communities is Fuller Acres, a largely Latino town in Kern county where residents must drive to the nearest town to buy safe water. There is no proven link between the unsafe drinking water and the oil industry that surrounds the town, but there is a history of big businesses polluting the resources they share with their neighbors. For instance, nearby farming has left a dangerous pesticide known as 1,2,3-TCP in the drinking water.

Advocates say the dichotomy highlights deep-seated inequities in a state where water is a precious resource. The western US is in the midst of a once-in-a-millenium megadrought driven by the climate crisis. California officials have imposed restrictions on domestic water use and residents face fines for breaking the rules.

But as the state begins to phase out fossil fuels and usher in a sustainable economy, it has yet to limit the use of fresh water by oil companies.

Between 2018 and 2021, oil and gas companies in California consumed nearly 3bn gallons of fresh water for drilling operations – water that could otherwise have supplied domestic systems, according to Food & Water Watch, an NGO that focuses on corporate and government accountability. That’s equivalent to more than 120m showers.

Caroline Wren, a researcher with Food & Water Watch, calls it grave misuse that benefits the very companies that are exacerbating global heating.

“California cannot afford to waste water on industries like the fossil fuel industry that are unequivocally worsening the climate crisis and the water crisis,” she said.

‘Everybody buys water’

Fuller Acres is a community of about 1,000 people, mostly farmworkers, living in a collection of bungalows surrounded by a patchwork of farm fields and dozens of oil wells. A refinery looms over the town. At night, it lights up like a Christmas tree, and in the morning, it lets off flares that smell of rotten eggs.

In 2022, central California, including Kern county, experienced “exceptional drought” conditions, the highest category of official drought ranking. Other states in the western US also saw exceptional drought in 2022. Although historic rains flooded California in January, Kern county remains in severe drought.

On a mild December afternoon, stray dogs roam the Fuller Acres convenience store parking lot in search of kind faces and snacks. The catchy beats of Bad Bunny emanate from passing traffic.

Around the corner, Maria Villa lives in a cheerful turquoise bungalow. Her hair is pulled into a high bun and gray wisps frame her face.

She has lived here for decades but has long avoided drinking the tap water. About 20 years ago, when her parents became sick, she began to suspect the water was unsafe. “They died of cancer,” she said. “My dad had cancer in his stomach, and I don’t know if that happened [because of] the water or something else.

“He always drank the water from the house, and then when he started getting sick, I started buying water.”

The Fuller Acres Water Company, which is responsible for the community’s water, sent her a notice warning that her water was contaminated with 1,2,3-TCP, which the EPA has classified as probably carcinogenic to humans because it causes cancer in animals. TCP was manufactured by companies such as Shell and Dow and used by farmers in central California from the 1950s to the 1980s.

In 2018, Fuller Acres Water Company became one of 40 local water suppliers in California to sue Shell and Dow, accusing them of contaminating water with TCP. Shell and Dow have settled dozens of cases.

Now, Maria Villa and her sister Angelita Villa only use the tap water to wash dishes and shower. “I have rashes on my face and body,” Angelita said in Spanish, scratching her arms.

Twice a week, Villa drives to Lamont, a town about three miles away, to buy water from dispensing machines. It costs her about $48 per month on top of her domestic water bill of $210 a month. Her neighbors face the same reality: “Everybody is the same, everybody buys water.”

Water inequity in the Central Valley exists because water delivery is highly fragmented. While cities have significant freshwater resources to meet demand from residents and industry, including oil companies, smaller communities have never been hooked up to a large municipal supplier and instead draw water from wells.

Drought puts these communities at risk as decreasing surface water supply increases reliance on groundwater. Oil and agricultural companies drill deep wells that suck up groundwater, which in turn depletes the water in shallower wells that residents rely on, increasing concentrations of existing contaminants, or drying up the wells altogether. A new study in the journal Nature Communications found that groundwater was rapidly depleting in the Central Valley, which includes Fuller Acres.

The wastewater used in oil extraction can also put drinking water at risk. KQED reported in 2017 that companies injected wastewater directly into protected aquifers, and thousands of wastewater wells across the state could be contaminating drinking water. A 2021 paper found that wastewater disposal by oil companies affected aquifers used for public and agricultural water supplies.

Fuller Acres and other small towns in Kern county face a “double whammy” of chemicals from agriculture and oil extraction, explained Sandra Plascencia-Rodriguez, Kern county policy advocate with Leadership Counsel, a group that provides legal representation and policy advocacy to low-income, rural communities in California.

According to Leadership Counsel, because small communities like Fuller Acres don’t have the financial means to dig deeper wells or operate and maintain water treatment plants, they’re harder hit by lowering groundwater levels and groundwater contamination.

What can the state do?

Kern county’s ageing oil fields use a lot of water. Most of the easy oil has been pumped out, leaving thick, syrupy oil that’s hard to extract. As one state report put it, sucking heavy crude from the ground is like drinking a milkshake through a thin straw.

To solve this problem, companies use “enhanced oil recovery” methods, some of which use fresh water. In Kern county, it’s common to inject steam at temperatures of up to 300C into oil wells, heating the heavy crude and helping it flow to the surface. This method also requires huge amounts of energy, making Kern county’s Midway Sunset oil field one of the world’s highest greenhouse gas emitters, rivaling Canada’s oil sands.

Tony Kovscek, professor of energy science and engineering at Stanford University, said steam injection requires high quality water: “If the water is low quality, you damage the steam generator and you have to do a lot of maintenance.” Although oil companies do use fresh water from municipal sources, he said, they mostly use recycled water that is treated.

Still, to get high quality fresh water, oil operators also draw from surface sources, such as lakes and rivers, and from underground aquifers. According to an analysis by the non-profit FracTracker Alliance, between 2018 and 2020, oil and gas operators used 302m gallons of potable groundwater from California’s aquifers.

Under the 2014 water use transparency law SB1281, operators are required to report how much of the water they use would otherwise have been available for domestic use or agriculture. According to a recent analysis of water disclosures by InsideClimate News, in 2021 Kern county’s oil and gas companies diverted about 58m gallons of water from the State Water Project, a vast system of pipes and aqueducts that transports crucial water resources from the Sierra Nevada snowpack to southern California.

Oil and gas companies are far from the only water-guzzlers. Stacked against the Central Valley’s vast agriculture industry, the amount used by oil is relatively small. While oil and gas operators used nearly 3bn gallons of fresh water from 2018 through 2020 that would have otherwise been used by domestic systems, Food & Water Watch estimated that almond groves alone used 4tn gallons of water over the same period. But Wren said the harm that oil and gas companies cause in communities – the pollution, health impacts and climate crisis – “makes their water use pretty egregious”.

California does not restrict oil companies’ use of this fresh water, according to Buzz Thompson, faculty director at Stanford’s Water in the West program. An earlier draft of SB1281 required oil producers to only use recycled water during a drought, but it was removed amid objections from the oil industry. The situation has put state officials, including California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, under fire for failing to take action.

According to Thompson, the state does have the power to act. California’s constitution states that fresh water can only be used for “reasonable and beneficial” applications. It is up to the state water resources control board, the agency responsible for California’s water management, or a court to decide what qualifies. But historically, the state has been reluctant to entirely halt use of fresh water by commercial entities. A rare exception occurred in 1935, when the California supreme court ruled that a farmer couldn’t use fresh water to drown gophers.

Thompson added that under emergency powers, the governor could direct the board to examine whether the use of water by oil companies is “reasonable and beneficial”.

Kyle Ferrar, the western program coordinator at FracTracker Alliance, pointed out in a 2021 report that Newsom had asked California residents to cut their personal domestic consumption of water by 15%, but he had done little to address the consumption of water by fossil fuel companies. Ferrar said outdated water laws in California continued to uphold the status quo, even as the state wrestles with continuing drought. “A lot of this just comes down to historical records and historical contracts that guaranteed the industry these volumes of water, and they’ve never been reviewed. There’s never been any legislation to consider the validity or the necessity of them, either.”

Asked why the governor wasn’t taking executive action to limit water use by oil companies, the governor’s office did not directly respond but said that the state does not have direct authority over oil companies’ water use. However, if an oil company has a water right, it must comply with state water board rules, the statement said. Thompson said that was correct, but the state did have the authority to review a municipality’s decision to sell surface water to an oil company.

Thompson said the solution to stark water inequity in the Central Valley was to hook up small communities to municipal systems. The state is working on that – it has a program to effectively “adopt” communities with shoddy water systems. The governor’s office said the state had earmarked $2.7bn in financial assistance that prioritized disadvantaged communities.
Residents protect themselves

As they wait for the state to take action, Kern county residents are left to figure things out for themselves.

A water-dispensing machine in Lamont advertises water for 25 cents a gallon or $1 for five gallons. Alejandro Sanchez opens a small door and inserts a gallon jug under the spout. He feeds a bill into the machine and presses a button. Water pours in.

He lives down the street and prefers to buy water rather than drink from his tap, he explains in Spanish. Once it is full, he balances the heavy jug on his shoulder, waits for a break in traffic, and walks across the highway toward home.

Lucy Basket, who lives in Lamont, parks her car at the water machine. She only fills her gallon jugs halfway because she has pain in her shoulders. She places the jugs in her backseat and secures them with seatbelts.

“I feel safer drinking this water,” she said in Spanish. “If you drink [tap water] a lot, you will get sick, but if you don’t you’ll be fine.”

Fuller Acres is one of dozens of disadvantaged unincorporated communities in Kern county – a designation for disproportionately low-income places that are outside city limits. Plascencia-Rodriguez of Leadership Counsel argued that Fuller Acres residents pay taxes and therefore Kern county should step up to help them access clean drinking water. “They want to see the county invest in them, just like they invest in the county,” she said.

Advocates with Leadership Counsel are asking the county to set aside funding in its budget to pay for bottled water deliveries at least twice a month.

Maria Villa said bottled water deliveries would help, as would better filtration of the tap water.

Villa questioned why oil companies are allowed to use so much high-quality fresh water while Fuller Acres doesn’t have safe water. “Why can’t they put the same water here?”

Oil Companies Stand Up To Los Angeles City Council Drilling Ban

Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, January 21, 2023

After decades of transitioning towards renewable energy, with several new developments across the state, LA has finally taken significant steps to move away from oil and gas. California has been repeatedly called the leader in clean energy in the U.S., and yet it is home to several large-scale oil and gas projects, as well as thousands of plugged wells from its former black gold heyday. And despite a lack of public awareness, LA was and remains a major hub for fossil fuel production, with giant wells hidden behind false buildings in busy districts across the city. At the end of last year - following several reports on the negative impact of fossil fuels on LA residents – the city council introduced a move towards a total ban on oil and gas drilling within city limits. But now, just over a month later, oil and gas companies operating in the region have filed a lawsuit against the city. So, will LA finally see the green transition it has long desired, or will Big Oil be allowed to continue pumping so long as demand remains high?

In December, the LA City Council voted unanimously to ban new oil and gas drilling as well as agreeing to phase out existing wells over the next 20 years. This is perhaps the most ambitious climate policy to be passed in the state to date and could provide the blueprint for other cities across the U.S. to follow. At present, there are 26 oil and gas fields and more than 5,000 active and idle wells in LA. While this has been negatively seen by U.S. politicians looking to boost national oil and gas output, as the country looks to reduce its reliance on Russia and ensure its energy security, LA residents and environmental groups have long been pushing for this move. The ban follows a major new policy from Californian lawmakers last year to ban new oil wells within 3,200 feet of homes, schools and other populated areas.

Yet, just over a month after the council’s decision, an oil firm with a drilling project in Wilmington, LA has decided to sue the city over the ban. The company, Warren Resources, has accused the council of failing to carry out the necessary environmental review over the potential impact of halting extraction. The lawsuit, filed in the LA Superior Court, states that the decision violates the California Environmental Quality Act, the city’s General Plan and the state and federal constitutions. Warren has good reason to be unhappy about the ban, as it would mean the closure of all its operations, which are all located in LA.

The lawyers on the lawsuit stated: “The City has failed to ask the necessary questions and obtain the required evidence at every turn, has rushed every legally required process along the way, and as a result has based its approval and adoption of the Ordinance on a woefully deficient environmental document.” And the President and CEO of Warren Resources, James A. Watt, explained, “Warren Resources has spent millions to consolidate our operations into a single, all-electric location with an impeccable environmental record.”

Yet, Bahram Fazeli, the director of research and policy at Communities for a Better Environment, believes that “This is a baseless lawsuit to delay common sense protection for vulnerable communities," Fazeli said. "The city has the right to determine its land-use priorities and to make communities whole and healthy.”

However, four other oil entities have already also initiated a separate lawsuit against the city’s ban this month. And more oil companies may soon follow in Warren’s footsteps, many of whom have several high-value oil operations in development across the city.

California continues to be a major producer of oil and gas, as the seventh-largest crude oil-producing state in 2021 and third-largest refiner. It is also the largest consumer of jet fuel and second-largest consumer of gasoline, accounting for 15 percent of U.S. jet fuel consumption and 10 percent of motor gasoline use in 2020. However, in 2021, California was also the country’s biggest producer of electricity from solar, geothermal, and biomass energy, demonstrating the expanse of its renewable energy sector. While oil and gas still play a major role in California’s economy, as well as demand for the fuels remaining high, the state is making a clear and intentional transition towards greener alternatives by rapidly expanding its renewable energy capacity.

LA’s ban on new oil and gas projects, and plans to phase out existing operations, marks a major step away from fossil fuels to renewable alternatives. It follows several new climate policies at the state level and a wide array of reports and lobbying from environmental groups and residents. However, this is unlikely to be an easy transition as oil companies operating in the state reject the move, using legal action to ensure the City Council faces several hurdles on the road to green.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com

BEFORE GEORGE SANTOS

New York’s New Guv Has a ‘Very Conservative,’ Pro-NRA, Anti-Immigrant Past

WATCH THAT SWING

Kathy Hochul was once an NRA favorite who bashed undocumented immigrants and donated money to an anti-LGBTQ ministry.

William Bredderman
Researcher
Updated Aug. 11, 2021


Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who in two weeks will succeed the disgraced Gov. Andrew Cuomo, positioned herself in the conservative suburbs of Buffalo as a Democrat who feasted on liberal sacred cows.

She obtained local government posts in her native Erie County, which encompasses the Rust Belt city and adjoining communities, by running not only on the Democratic line but that of the state’s Conservative Party. Appointed Erie County Clerk in 2007 by then-Gov Eliot Spitzer—a Democratic favorite at the time—she shot to statewide prominence by going after the Buffalo area’s undocumented immigrant population: when Spitzer that same year proposed granting drivers licenses to migrants without a social security number, she not only fought to block the policy but threatened to have any such applicant who turned up at her office arrested.

It was largely this record and reputation that she ran on when GOP Rep. Chris Lee resigned his seat in the House in 2011 over a lewd photo scandal, although she did support the Affordable Care Act. Her victory in a four-way race, in a strongly Republican district and at the height of the Tea Party wave, seemed like a coup for the Democrats and then-President Barack Obama.

NY’s New Guv Is Staring at a Massive Conflict of Interest
CASH ME OUT
William Bredderman


But the Obama administration soon learned Hochul was anything but a reliable ally. While she endorsed increasing taxes on high income earners, she reiterated her campaign-era openness to cutting entitlements such as Medicaid, supported stripping out portions of the Affordable Care Act, and voted for the GOP-sponsored balanced budget amendment.

Most notably, she was one of 17 House Democrats who voted with Republicans to declare Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for declining to cooperate in an investigation into the “Fast and Furious” scandal, in which certain Department of Justice offices deliberately allowed gun dealers to sell firearms to traffickers, in the hopes of tracking the weapons to drug cartels.

The National Rifle Association had promised to reward those who voted in favor of the measure, and it followed through: its campaign arm supported Hochul for a full term in 2012, an endorsement she aggressively promoted in her re-election campaign. She also boasted that she had “become very conservative in my voting record.”

But it was not enough. Hochul lost her seat to Republican businessman Chris Collins, who would later have to resign himself after copping to insider trading charges.

Hochul left politics to take a job in banking. When she returned in 2014, as Cuomo’s handpicked running mate, she’d metamorphosed into a different sort of Democrat. She now applauded the governor’s signature piece of gun control legislation, anathema to gun rights groups, and even said she was open to supporting drivers licenses to undocumented immigrants—and fully endorsed the proposal by the time she ran for a second term as lieutenant governor in 2018.

She also boosted the governor’s new Women’s Equality Party line, which became an object of irony and ire after multiple female staffers alleged Cuomo had sexually harassed them this year.

But her earlier conservative incarnation always loomed in the background. During the 2014 campaign, her opponent in the primary, Columbia University Professor Tim Wu, drew attention to her earlier conservative incarnation. And even after she’d won the Democratic nomination for the state’s second slot, it emerged she had once donated money to the ministry of an anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion preacher from Texas.

How a Chain of Creeps Paved the Way for NY’s First Woman Guv
GLASS CEILING FROM HELL
Harry Siegel


Hochul, who had long received support from pro-choice groups such as EMILY’s List, claimed she had had no knowledge of the evangelical pastor’s social stances.

Even as Cuomo glided through Democratic primaries against high-profile but low-power progressive opponents like actress Cynthia Nixon, Hochul still struggled a bit, topping her 2018 opponent by fewer than 100,000 votes.

Hochul’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But such evolutions are far from unheard of in New York, given the schism between its fiercely conservative rural regions and deep-blue Democratic cities, and the nation’s increasingly polarized politics. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) served a term-and-a-half in the House of Representatives as a pro-gun, anti-sanctuary city, pro-English-only education Democrat, only to morph into a liberal paragon after former Gov. David Paterson appointed her to the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton

The space between Earth and the moon is about to get a little more crowded


Anjali Nair

Denise Chow
Sun, January 22, 2023 

The moon is hot right now.

By some estimates, as many as 100 lunar missions could launch into space over the next decade — a level of interest in the moon that far surpasses the Cold War-era space race that saw the first humans set foot on the lunar surface.

With multiple nations and private companies now setting their sights on missions to the moon, experts say cislunar space — the area between Earth and the moon — could become strategically important, potentially opening up competition over resources and positioning, and even sparking geopolitical conflicts.

“We’re already seeing this competing rhetoric between the U.S. government and the Chinese government,” said Laura Forczyk, executive director of Astralytical, a space consulting firm based in Atlanta. “The U.S. is pointing to China and saying, ‘We need to fund our space initiatives to the moon and cislunar space because China is trying to get there and claim territory.’ And then Chinese politicians are saying the same thing about the United States.”


Both the U.S. and China have robust lunar exploration programs in the works, with plans to not only land astronauts on the moon but also build habitats on the surface and infrastructure in orbit. They are also not the only nations interested in the moon: South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, India and Russia are among the other countries with planned robotic missions.

Even commercial companies have lunar ambitions, with SpaceX preparing to launch a private crew this year on a tourism flight in lunar orbit, and other private companies in the U.S., Japan and Israel racing to the moon.

Increased access to space — and the moon — comes with many benefits for humanity, but it also raises the potential for tensions over competing interests, which experts say could have far-reaching economic and political consequences.

“During the Cold War, the space race was for national prestige and power,” said Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director and fellow of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Now, we have a better understanding of the kind of benefits that operating in cislunar space can bring countries back home.”

Though definitions sometimes differ, cislunar space generally refers to the space between Earth and the moon, including the moon's surface and orbit. Any nation or entity that aims to establish a presence on the moon, or has ambitions to explore deeper into the solar system, has a vested interest in operating in cislunar space, either with communication and navigation satellites or outposts that serve as way stations between Earth and the moon.

With so many lunar missions planned over the next decade, space agencies and commercial companies will likely be angling for strategic orbits and trajectories, Forczyk said.

“It might seem like space is big, but the specific orbits that we are most interested in get filled up fast,” she added.

Much of the increased activity in cislunar space owes to substantial decreases in launch costs over the past decade, with advancements in technology and increased competition both driving down the price of sending objects into orbit. At the same time, planetary science missions offered humanity a glimpse of the resources available in space, ranging from ice deposits on the moon to precious metals in asteroids, said Marcus Holzinger, an associate professor of aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Once people started really thinking through that, they realized that that water-ice can provide substantial resources or enable the gathering or collection of resources elsewhere in the solar system,” he said.

Water-ice can, for instance, help sustain human colonies on the moon, or be separated into oxygen and hydrogen to fuel rockets on longer deep-space journeys.

With so much to gain, conflicts could emerge between nations or commercial entities.

In 2021, Holzinger co-authored a report titled “A Primer on Cislunar Space“ to help U.S. government officials understand the ins and outs of cislunar space. Holzinger said it wasn’t intended as a strategy document, but rather to inform those in the military and in government who are interested in cislunar operations.

That interest is apparent: Last year, the Space Force identified cislunar operations as a development priority, and in April established the 19th Space Defense Squadron to oversee cislunar space. In November, the White House released its own strategy for interagency research on "responsible, peaceful, and sustainable exploration and utilization of cislunar space."

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, with more than 110 countries counted as parties, essentially declared that the exploration and use of outer space should benefit all of humankind and that no one country can claim or occupy any part of the cosmos. More recently, the Artemis Accords signed in 2020 established nonbinding multilateral agreements between the U.S. and more than a dozen nations to maintain peaceful and transparent exploration of space.

Holzinger said these agreements are “easy” when there aren’t tangible economic and geopolitical interests at stake.

“Now we’re sort of seeing the rubber hit the road, because all of a sudden there are potentially geopolitical interests or commercial interests,” he said. “We have to maybe come up with a more nuanced approach.”

Creating a sustainable and safe environment for cislunar operations will be critical, but the very nature of this area presents its own challenges.

Situational awareness in cislunar space, or the ability to know where objects are at all times, is tricky because of how expansive it is compared to the volume of space around Earth, including low-Earth orbit and geostationary orbit, said Patrick Binning, who oversees programs on space solutions to national security challenges at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

“The volume of cislunar compared to the volume below geostationary orbit is 2,000 times more volume, so this is an enormous challenge to find things and keep track of things in that huge volume.” he said.

It's also harder to detect satellites and other spacecraft at such great distances from Earth, and in some cases, harder to predict their paths.

This is because objects in cislunar orbit are influenced by three different gravitational forces: the Earth, the moon and the sun, Johnson said.

“It’s a three-body system, which means that not all orbits are nice and circular or as predictable as those near Earth orbit,” she said.

Together, these factors could make it difficult to manage traffic in cislunar space, particularly if adversaries intentionally try to mask their activities there.

Yet if humans intend to establish a permanent presence on the moon, and venture beyond to Mars, it will be imperative to prioritize safety, sustainability and transparency, said Jim Myers, senior vice president of the civil systems group at The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research organization based in El Segundo, California.

"Those elements have to be there," Myers said. "Unless we do this in a very thoughtful way, unless we plan, we're going to run into all sorts of trouble."

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

LUCIFER MORNING STAR

NASA scientist explains why Venus is Earth's 'evil twin' (video)

Doris Elin Urrutia
Sun, January 22, 2023

Venus as seen by Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft.

A new NASA video makes the case that Venus is Earth's "evil twin."

The nefarious moniker is revealed to be, in a way, an apt description of why astronomers will be investigating Venus this decade. Scientists and engineers from NASA and the European Space Agency are gearing up to send three new missions to the second rock from the sun. They want to know a whole lot more about the nearby planet, which resembles Earth in so many ways, and yet is so strikingly different.

The video touches on a few nightmarish but intriguing aspects of Venus. For one, it's got a runaway greenhouse effect. The 15-mile-thick (24 kilometers) shroud of atmosphere is made of carbon dioxide and contains sulfuric acid clouds. The planet produces temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Lori Glaze, NASA's director of planetary science, said in the video that the Venusian surface can reach 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius).

"So it is a crazy place, but really interesting," Glaze said. "And we really want to understand why Venus and Earth turned out so differently."

Related: Scientists hail 'the decade of Venus' with 3 new missions on the way

At least three missions to Venus will fly within the next decade or so. There is NASA's DAVINCI, short for Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry and Imaging, which includes two major components. First and foremost is a spacecraft that will fly by Venus, capturing data about the planet's clouds and its terrain, in addition to acting as a telecommunications hub for the mission. Second is a special descent probe, which will drop down through Venus' thick atmosphere and collect data as it journeys through the perilous environment.

Another mission, called VERITAS, will become the first NASA orbiter to visit Venus since the 1990s. VERITAS is short for Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy. The spacecraft will develop a big-picture look at Venus and its history, aiding scientists who want to know more about its volcanoes and to determine whether Venus ever had water. The Italian Space Agency (ASI), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the French Space Agency (CNES) will also contribute to VERITAS.

Related stories:

— NASA's Parker Solar Probe captures stunning Venus photo during close flyby

— Photos of Venus, the mysterious planet next door

— Mercury-bound spacecraft snaps selfie with Venus in close flyby (photo)

Then there is the EnVision mission from the European Space Agency (ESA). The NASA-supported mission targets a launch in the early 2030s. When it reaches Venus, EnVision will try to learn why Venus became Earth's "evil twin," as the NASA video describes it. Specifically, it will study Venus' hostile atmosphere and its inner core to see how both planets could form in the same part of the solar system and with the same stuff, yet yield wildly different realities.

Perhaps soon, these missions will let us marvel at Earth's closest planetary neighbor.

Follow Doris Elin Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Radio signal from 9 billion light-years away

AGO  from Earth captured

Caitlin McFall
Sat, January 21, 2023

A radio signal 9 billion light-years away from Earth has been captured in a record-breaking recording, Space.com said Friday.

The signal was detected by a unique wavelength known as a "21-centimeter line" or the "hydrogen line," which is reportedly emitted by neutral hydrogen atoms.

The signal captured by the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India could mean that scientists can start investigating the formation of some of the earliest stars and galaxies, the report said.

Scientists involved in the GMRT upgradation project.

Researchers detected the signal from a "star-forming galaxy" titled SDSSJ0826+5630, which was emitted when the 13.8 billion-year-old Milky Way – the galaxy where Earth resides – was just 4.9 billion years old.

"It's the equivalent to a look-back in time of 8.8 billion years," author and McGill University Department of Physics post-doctoral cosmologist Arnab Chakraborty said in a statement this week.

A view of the Milky Way from an area of Puyehue National Park near Osorno City, Chile, May 8, 2008.

Galaxies reportedly emit light across a wide range of radio wavelengths. But until recently, 21-cm-wavelength radio waves had only been recorded from galaxies nearby.

"A galaxy emits different kinds of radio signals. Until now, it's only been possible to capture this particular signal from a galaxy nearby, limiting our knowledge to those galaxies closer to Earth," Chakraborty said.

An exhibitor arranges a scaled-down model of Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) Antenna on display during ‘Vigyan Samagam,’ a multi-venue mega-science exhibition, at the Visveswaraya Industrial and Technological Museum in Bangalore on July 29, 2019.

The signal allowed astronomers to measure the galaxy’s gas content and therefore find the galaxy’s mass.

This determination has led scientists to conclude that this far-off galaxy is double the mass of the stars visible from Earth, the report said.

INJUSTICE IN PRISON NATION U$A
SC killer prosecuted as adult at age 12. Chester’s Pittman, now 33, set for release


Andrew Dys
Fri, January 20, 2023 

A few days after Thanksgiving in 2001 in rural Chester County, volunteer firefighters responded to a house fire.

Inside they found two people dead. But the fire didn’t kill them — shotgun blasts did.

A person believed to be among South Carolina’s youngest-ever convicted killers shot and killed Joe and Joy Pittman, the child’s grandparents, in their bed and then burned their house down to try and cover up the crime. Kristen Avery Pittman, then 12 and known by a different name, made up a story about a non-existent Black man who robbed the place and kidnapped the kid before the kid escaped.

Now, Pittman is set for release on Feb. 1 at 33 years old.

Pittman has legally changed her name and identifies as a transgender woman, public records show. The policy of The Herald and parent company McClatchy call for using the name and pronouns that align with a transgender person’s gender identity.

“I as well as my family know that I have identified as a ‘female’ most of my life but due to my incarceration at twelve (12) years old I was not able to take the steps of transition that I needed over the years,” Pittman wrote in a lawsuit against South Carolina prison officials.

A federal lawsuit filed by Pittman sought medical approval for gender confirmation surgery and prescription hormone medication while incarcerated. The treatment was denied and the lawsuit was dismissed, court documents show.

Pittman killed her grandparents after being disciplined for a fight on the school bus. She was also on anti-depressants despite the young age. The story became a national debate over what age a child should be prosecuted as an adult, and whether anti-depressants had any role in the crimes.

The yearslong prosecution of Pittman being tried as an adult involved an overturned verdict and an eventual guilty plea. It became an international news story, covered by the likes of CBS, CNN and Larry King, network news shows such as 48 Hours and other media.

Why will be Pittman be released?

Pittman never had a parole hearing while in prison because manslaughter convictions are not parole eligible crimes under South Carolina law. Release can come only at the end of 85% of the sentence, state law shows.

Under S.C. law a person convicted of a violent felony such as manslaughter must serve 85% of the time and is not parole eligible, according to the S.C. Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Service and the S.C. Department of Corrections.

Pittman has reached the end of a 25-year sentence after spending almost 22 total years in custody since age 12, South Carolina officials say.

That 22 years included all the jail time from arrest in 2001 before the 2005 trial for both murders, according to spokesperson Chrysti Shain of the corrections department. It includes juvenile prison time afterward from 2005 until July 2010 when the manslaughter plea was handled.

The 2005 convictions were overturned because Pittman’s defense lawyers in the 2005 trial did not tell Pittman or a court-appointed guardian ad litem that prosecutors offered a plea deal during the trial, according to court documents and testimony. That guardian, Chester lawyer Milton Hamilton, told The Herald in 2015 that he would have advised Pittman to take the plea deal.

Hamilton said in a phone interview this week he is glad Pittman has served the sentence.

Pittman eventually pleaded guilty in December 2010 to two counts of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two concurrent 25-year sentences. The guilty plea was in adult court.

Pittman’s sentence is set to end Feb. 23, but offenders are generally released on the first day of the month of eligibility, officials said.

Pittman is set for release from Ridgeland prison in Jasper County on Feb. 1, according to spokespersons Anita Dantzler of the S.C. PPP, and records from the SCDC.

Pittman is scheduled to live in York County after release, officials said. Because of that, Pittman will be assigned a York County probation agent, Dantzler said.

She’s still listed in South Carolina prison records under her old name. Asked about that, SCDC said it enters a person’s new name as their “legal name” after receiving relevant court documents. The person’s commitment name — the name on the sentencing sheet — remains the same in the SCDC system.
Public safety: Will Pittman be supervised?

South Carolina law has safeguards in place to protect public safety after the release of offenders convicted of violent crimes sentenced to more than 20 years in prison, officials said.

According to Dantzler, Pittman must complete two years of a state supervision program that starts after release Feb. 1.

Pittman will be required to meet with an agent in the York County probation office and during routine home visits, Dantzler said. The frequency of reporting will be determined after an offender risk and needs assessment, Dantzler said.

Pittman will have no curfew, electronic monitoring, or any other restrictions other than not contacting the victim’s family, Dantzler said.
The crimes

On Nov. 29, 2001, Pittman stole her grandparents’ truck after the killings, then drove to neighboring Cherokee County where she was found by hunters.

The shotgunned bodies of Joy and Joe Pittman were found in the bed after the fire burned out.

Pittman initially told police a Black man broke into the house and kidnapped her. Chester deputies said the story did not add up, and Pittman soon confessed to killing both grandparents and setting the fire to try and cover it up.

Chester County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested Pittman for two counts of murder.

“I aimed at the bed and shot four times, “ Pittman told Chester deputies the day after the killings in a confession that was part of the court record. “I really didn’t care then.”
The 2005 trial

Despite her young age, a family court judge ruled after court hearings that Pittman should stand trial as an adult.

Pre-trial publicity forced a change of venue from Chester County, where news about Pittman had been almost daily for three years. The 2005 murder trial was held in Charleston and covered live by Court TV, cable and network news and media from around the world.

Prosecutors said from the beginning Pittman executed Joy and Joe Pittman during a scheme that could only be done by a ruthless killer who thought and acted like a grown-up.

Pittman was represented at trial in 2005 by a team of lawyers from across the country who took the case. The defense team at trial in 2005 blamed involuntary intoxication of the the anti-depressants for the killings.

By 2005, Pittman had grown to over 6 feet tall. To combat the change for jurors and show her age when the crimes happened in 2001, defense lawyers used a cutout picture of a younger Pittman in court.

Headlines around the country from the New York Times and other national media talked about the Zoloft drugs involved in the case.

The company that made the anti-depressants denied in statements that there was any evidence the drugs led to violence.

The Charleston jury in 2005 found Pittman guilty of two counts of murder. The judge gave Pittman the lowest possible sentence for two murders — 30 years for each, to run concurrent.
Convictions overturned

But those convictions were overturned in July 2010 after Pittman filed a lawsuit against defense lawyers. That civil trial showed the judge, prosecutors and trial lawyers discussed plea deals Pittman and the court-appointed guardinan ad litem were never told about by the defense team despite having a legal right to be told.

The judge in that lawsuit ruled the convictions could not stand.

A new trial was ordered, but Pittman in 2010 took a plea deal to voluntary manslaughter at the Chester County Courthouse, and was sentenced to 25 years.

The plea ended more than nine years of legal wrangling and national debate over how Pittman should be prosecuted because of her age and the effects of the prescribed medication on children.
Authorities: Pittman received a proper sentence

The people involved in Pittman’s arrest and prosecution are no longer involved in the criminal justice system in the roles they were in from 2001 to 2010. People involved in the prosecution case at that time said Pittman was convicted as an adult under South Carolina law and should serve the full sentence.

Current law enforcement and prosecutors in Chester County, where the crimes took place, said the 2001 killings, investigation and prosecution happened before they were serving in office and declined to comment on the Pittman case or the expected release.

Former 5th Circuit Solicitor’s Office prosecutors John Meadors and Barney Giese, who were assigned by South Carolina courts to prosecute Pittman in the 2005 trial, said at the 2010 guilty plea the crimes were adult crimes and the only reason a plea deal was ever offered during the 2005 trial was because of Pittman’s age of 12 at the time of the killings.

Giese said in 2010 the case was handled from investigation through resolution, “the right way.”

And now, whether Pittman should have been prosecuted as an adult or not, the prison sentence is almost over.

COMPETITOR WITH JUNTA INC.

Founder of Egypt’s Juhayna Food Industries and his son released from prison

 A truck of Juhayna transports products of juice and milk from a factory in Cairo, Egypt

Sat, January 21, 2023 

CAIRO (Reuters) -The founder and former CEO of Juhayna Food Industries and his son were released from prison in Egypt on Saturday after about two years in detention, in a case that shook the business community as well as Egyptian and foreign investors.

Juhayna, a listed company, is the country's largest dairy products and juices producer.

After security and prison sources as well as a family member confirmed Safwan and Seifeldin Thabet's release, photos posted on social media showed them joyfully embracing relatives after returning home.

The authorities accused them of belonging to and financing a terrorist group - commonly a reference to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood - according to state media. The Thabet family have denied any wrongdoing in statements on social media.

The two were never convicted. Amnesty International reported in 2021 that authorities were holding the Thabets because of their refusal to cede assets to a state entity, an account confirmed by sources close to the family.

There was no immediate official statement from authorities on the release. A member of the Thabet family told Reuters the two men were released from a police station and returned home, but said the family had no other information about why they were freed.

A prison source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the case against them had not been closed.

Safwan Thabet, Juhayna's founder and former CEO, was detained in December 2020. His son took over as CEO before he too was detained in February 2021.

The family had pleaded for their release partly due to the illness of Safwan’s wife, who died during his detention.

Terrorism related charges have been widely deployed in a crackdown that has swept up dissidents from across the political spectrum in Egypt in recent years.

The release comes shortly after Egypt obtained a rescue package from the International Monetary Fund under which the government pledged to be more supportive of the private sector.

(Reporting by Farah Saafan, Haithem Ahmed, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and David Gregorio)

V FOR VICTORY

Indian wrestlers call off protest over sexual harassment allegations

Sat, January 21, 2023 


India's top wrestlers have called off a protest after the head of the sport's national federation reportedly agreed to step aside until claims of sexual harassment against him are investigated.

Dozens of male and female wrestlers, including Olympic and Commonwealth medallists, had announced a boycott of all competitions until Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh was removed.

Singh, who is also a member of parliament from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has denied the allegations.

Wrestler Bajrang Punia announced the decision to call off the protest after talks with India's Sports Minister Anurag Thakur on Friday.

"The minister told us that a committee will be formed (to look into the allegations) and it will complete its work in one month," Punia told reporters.

"We are confident that a thorough probe will be conducted."

Thakur said Singh "will step aside" until the investigation is completed within four weeks, the Times of India reported.

The protesting athletes were being led by Vinesh Phogat, a three-time Commonwealth Games champion and one of India's most decorated woman wrestlers.

Phogat has accused Singh of harassing "several young wrestlers" and said that she knew "at least 10 to 20 girls" who had recounted sexual harassment at wrestling camps.

She has said that both girls and boys have come forward to accuse other senior figures in the sport of harassment and bullying.

In a letter to P.T. Usha, president of the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) on Friday, Phogat and other top athletes said it had taken a lot of courage for them to come forward.

Phogat said that she was "mentally harassed and tortured" by Singh after she failed to win an Olympic medal and "almost contemplated suicide".

Hours after receiving the letter, the IOA announced a seven-member panel to investigate all harassment charges against Singh.

Singh has dismissed the allegations as a political ploy to usurp his position and told media he was "ready to be hanged" if even a single woman wrestler proved the sexual harassment charge.

India is a deeply hierarchical society and Phogat said many wrestlers were intimidated into not coming forward because of their humble origins.

The allegations come months after the coach of the country's national cycling team was sacked following sexual harassment charges.

India's #MeToo movement gathered momentum in 2018 after a Bollywood actress accused a senior actor of sexual harassment.

Soon after, other women came forward with multiple allegations, including against a former government minister, but activists say there has been little fundamental change.

abh/stu/qan

Indian wrestlers end protest over sexual harassment


Indian wrestlers huddle together as they deliberate during against Wrestling Federation of India President Brijbhushan Sharan Singh and other officials in New Delhi, India, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023. Top Indian wrestlers on Saturday called off a sit-in protest near the parliament building following a government assurance that a probe into their allegations of sexual harassments of young athletes by the federation would be completed in four weeks.

 (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Fri, January 20, 2023 

NEW DELHI (AP) — Top Indian wrestlers on Saturday called off a sit-in protest near the parliament building following a government assurance that a probe into their allegations of sexual harassments of young athletes by the federation would be completed in four weeks.

“We are ending our protest,” wrestler Bajrang Punia said.

The wrestlers and their nearly 200 supporters held a sit-in protest for three days at Jantar Mantar accusing the federation president of sexually and mentally harassing young female athletes. The protesters had sought the immediate removal of Wrestling Federation of India president Brijbhushan Sharan Singh and some other officials pending an inquiry against them.

Late Friday, Indian Sports Minister Anurag Singh Thakur met protesting wrestlers a second time and announced a probe into the accusations by the wrestlers and said it would would be completed in four weeks.

He also said the federation president “will step aside and help in carrying out the probe.”

“Until then, a committee will carry out day-to-day work of the Wrestling Federation of India,” he said.

Earlier, Punia wrote on Twitter that the government promised justice for the players.

“Thank the government on behalf of all my fellow players for taking our agitation and demands seriously,” he said. “Our fight is not with the government. We are all fighting against the players federation and its president.”

Singh, the federation president, is a lawmaker representing the governing Bharatiya Janata Party and has rejected the accusations and said he was ready to face any probe.