SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH

The Dark Side of Sports Stadiums

ROBERT REICH

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Billionaires have found one more way to funnel our tax dollars into their bank accounts: sports stadiums. And if we don’t play ball, they’ll take our favorite teams away.

Ever notice how there never seems to be enough money to build public infrastructure like mass transit lines and better schools? And yet, when a multi-billion-dollar sports team demands a new stadium, our local governments are happy to oblige.

A good example of this billionaire boondoggle is the host of the 2023 Super Bowl: State Farm Stadium.

That’s where the Arizona Cardinals have played since 2006. It was finally built after billionaire team owner Michael Bidwill and his family spent years hinting that they would move the Cards out of Arizona if the team didn’t get a new stadium. Their blitz eventually worked, with Arizona taxpayers and the city of Glendale paying over two thirds of the $455 million construction tab.

And State Farm Stadium is not unique. It’s part of a well established playbook.

Here’s how stadiums stick the public with the bill.

Step 1: Billionaire buys a sports team.

Just about every NFL franchise owner has a net worth of over a billion dollars — except for the Green Bay Packers, who are publicly owned by half a million cheeseheads.

The same goes for many franchise owners in other sports. Their fortunes don’t just help them buy teams, but also give them clout — which they cash-in when they want to get a great deal on new digs for their team.

Step 2: Billionaire pressures local government.

Since 1990, franchises in major North American sports leagues have intercepted upwards of $30 billion worth of taxpayer funds from state and local governments to build stadiums.  

And the funding itself is just the beginning of these sweetheart deals.

Sports teams often get big property tax breaks and reimbursements on operating expenses, like utilities and security on game days. Most deals also let the owners keep the revenue from naming rights, luxury box seats, and concessions — like the Atlanta Braves’ $150 hamburger.

Even worse, these deals often put taxpayers on the hook for stadium maintenance and repairs.

We taxpayers are essentially paying for the homes of our favorite sports teams, but we don’t really own those homes, we don’t get to rent them out, and we still have to buy expensive tickets to visit them.

Whenever these billionaire owners try to sell us on a shiny new stadium, they claim it will spur economic growth from which we’ll all benefit.  But numerous studies have shown that this is false.

As a University of Chicago economist aptly put it, “If you want to inject money into the local economy, it would be better to drop it from a helicopter than invest it in a new ballpark.”

But what makes sports teams special is they are one of the few realms of collective identity we have left.

Billionaires prey on the love that millions of fans have for their favorite teams.

This brings us to the final step in the playbook: Threaten to move the team.

Obscenely rich owners threaten to — or actually do — rip teams out of their communities if they don’t get the subsidies they demand.

Just look at the Seattle Supersonics. Starbucks’ founder Howard Schultz owned the NBA franchise but failed to secure public funding to build a new stadium. So the coffee magnate sold the team to another wealthy businessman who moved it to Oklahoma.

The most egregious part of how the system currently works is that every dollar we spend building stadiums is a dollar we aren’t using for hospitals or housing or schools.

We are underfunding public necessities in order to funnel money to billionaires for something they could feasibly afford.

So, instead of spending billions on extravagant stadiums, we should be investing taxpayer money in things that improve the lives of everyone — not just the bottom lines of profitable sports teams and their owners.  

Because when it comes to stadium deals, the only winners are billionaires.

(Source: youtube.com)

IMF delays crucial bailout for cash-strapped Pakistan

Pakistan’s economy has been in dire straits due to dwindling foreign exchange reserves.

Scroll Staff
2 hours ago

Government officials and IMF team holding bailout talks. 

| Pakistan Press Information Department/AFP

The International Monetary Fund on Friday said that “considerable progress” was made during talks with cash-strapped Pakistan but did not announce any financial aid for the country.

Islamabad is seeking $1.1 billion (INR 9,074.44 crore) from the international lender – part of its $6 billion (INR 49,496.97 crore) bailout package – to avert economic collapse. The $1.1 billion payment has been stalled since December.

After an International Monetary Fund team left Pakistan on Friday after 10 days of talks with the government, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said the payment was delayed because of “routine procedures”, Reuters reported.

In a statement, Pakistan International Monetary Fund Mission Chief Nathan Porter said that the negotiations will continue virtually in the coming days.

Khaqan Najeeb, a former finance ministry adviser, told Reuters that the delay in releasing the much-needed loan is untenable.

Pakistan’s economy has been in dire straits due to dwindling foreign exchange reserves. Analysts fear the reserves would last less than 20 days and warned that any delay in the International Monetary Fund bailout could have damaging consequences.

In January, the year-on-year inflation had risen to a 48-year high, leaving Pakistanis struggling to afford basic food items.

The country’s economic crisis was exacerbated by last year’s devastating floods that displaced nearly 3.3 crore people of its 23 crore population and destroyed crops over large tracts of land.

Last week, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had said that the economic situation was unimaginable. “The conditions we will have to agree to with the IMF are beyond imagination,” he added. “But we will have to agree with the conditions.”

Also read

:How Pakistan’s massive power outage has reaffirmed fears of a Sri Lanka-style economic collapse

Why Pakistan has not seen any major public protests despite extreme economic hardship

Crore - Wikipedia 

A crore denotes ten million and is equal to 100 lakh in the Indian numbering system. It is written as 1,00,00,000 with the local 2,2,3 style of digit group ...

Five million may be homeless in Syria after quake: UN

UN official in Syria says the ‘crisis within a crisis’ is also making the delivery of aid more difficult.

People take shelter inside a mosque, following an earthquake, in Jableh, Syria, on February 9, 2023. [Yamam al Shaar/Reuters]

Published On 11 Feb 2023

More than five million Syrians may be homeless after Monday’s devastating earthquakes that struck the country and its neighbour Turkey, according to a United Nations official.

“As many as 5.3 million people in Syria may have been left homeless by the earthquake,” Sivanka Dhanapala, the Syria representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on Friday. “That is a huge number and comes to a population already suffering mass displacement.”

“For Syria, this is a crisis within a crisis,” he added, “We’ve had economic shocks, COVID and are now in the depths of winter, with blizzards raging in the affected areas.”

Survivors of the magnitude 7.8 and 7.6 quakes have flocked to camps set up for people displaced by nearly 12 years of war from other parts of Syria. Many lost their homes or are too scared to return to damaged buildings.

Some 24,000 people have already died across Turkey and Syria because of the quake – more than 3,300 of those in Syria.

Dhanapala said the UNHCR has been “rushing aid” to the badly affected parts of Syria, but “it’s been very, very difficult”.

“There are 6.8 million people already internally displaced in the country. And this was before the earthquake.”

Meanwhile, a second UN aid convoy of 14 trucks has crossed into rebel-held areas of Syria – after an initial six vehicles went in on Thursday.

The Syrian government has said it will allow aid deliveries to rebel-held areas outside of its control, in cooperation with the UN and humanitarian organisations.

“The full scale of the devastation in Syria is only beginning to come to light,” said Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey, reporting from the UN in New York.

Although more aid convoys are getting through the one authorised border point into the hardest-hit areas, our correspondent said critics argue it is too little, too late.

“The majority of [people made homeless from the quake are] in areas the Syrian government doesn’t control, where people had already been uprooted by years of war,” she said.

On Friday the UN also released another $25m in emergency funding for Syria, bringing the total so far to $50m, Saloomey said, “but an assessment team is now on the ground and the needs are expected to well exceed that”.

The conflict in Syria started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful protests, and escalated to pull in foreign powers and armed groups.

Nearly half a million people have been killed, and the conflict has forced about half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes, with many seeking refuge in Turkey.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

Aid trickles in as death toll from Turkey-Syria quakes surpasses 24,000

Issued on: 11/02/2023 - 

International aid was trickling into parts of Turkey and Syria on Saturday where rescuers toiled to pull children from rubble in areas devastated by a massive earthquake that has killed over 24,000 people.

A winter freeze in the affected areas has hurt rescue efforts and compounded the suffering of millions of people, many in desperate need of aid.

At least 870,000 people urgently needed food in the two countries after the quake, which has left up to 5.3 million people homeless in Syria alone, the UN warned.

Aftershocks following Monday's 7.8-magnitude tremor have added to the death toll and further upended the lives of survivors.

The United Nations World Food Programme appealed for $77 million to provide food rations to at least 590,000 newly displaced people in Turkey and 284,000 in Syria.

Of those, 545,000 were internally displaced people and 45,000 were refugees, it said.
Humanitarian access

The UN rights office on Friday urged all actors in the affected area — where Kurdish militants and Syrian rebels operate — to allow humanitarian access.

The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is considered a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies, announced a temporary halt in fighting to ease recovery work.

In rebel-held northwestern Syria, about four million people rely on humanitarian relief but there have been no aid deliveries from government-controlled areas in three weeks.

(with AFP)

Turkey's lax policing of building codes known before quake



1 / 18
Destroyed buildings are seen from above in Antakya, southeastern Turkey, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023. The Turkish government has for years tempted fate by not enforcing modern construction codes at the same time it was allowing — and in some cases, encouraging — a real estate boom in earthquake-prone areas, according to experts in geology and engineering who repeatedly issued warnings.

(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

ZEYNEP BILGINSOY and SUZAN FRASER
Fri, February 10, 2023 

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey has for years tempted fate by not enforcing modern construction codes while allowing — and in some cases, encouraging — a real estate boom in earthquake-prone areas, experts say.

The lax enforcement, which experts in geology and engineering have long warned about, is gaining renewed scrutiny in the aftermath of this week's devastating earthquakes, which flattened thousands of buildings and killed more than 22,700 people across Turkey and Syria.

“This is a disaster caused by shoddy construction, not by an earthquake,” said David Alexander, a professor of emergency planning at University College London.

It is common knowledge that many buildings in the areas pummeled by this week’s two massive earthquakes were built with inferior materials and methods, and often did not comply with government standards, said Eyup Muhcu, president of the Chamber of Architects of Turkey.

He said that includes many old buildings, but also apartments erected in recent years — nearly two decades after the country brought its building codes up to modern standards. “The building stock in the area was weak and not sturdy, despite the reality of earthquakes,” Muhcu said.

The problem was largely ignored, experts said, because addressing it would be expensive, unpopular and restrain a key engine of the country's economic growth.

To be sure, the back-to-back earthquakes that demolished or damaged at least 12,000 buildings were extremely powerful — their force magnified by the fact that they occurred at shallow depths. The first 7.8 magnitude quake occurred at 4:17 a.m., making it even more difficult for people to escape their buildings as the earth shook violently. And President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has acknowledged “shortcomings” in the country's response.

But experts said there is a mountain of evidence — and rubble — pointing to a harsh reality about what made the quakes so deadly: Even though Turkey has, on paper, construction codes that meet current earthquake-engineering standards, they are too rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings crumbled.

In a country crisscrossed by geological fault lines, people are on edge about when and where the next earthquake might hit — particularly in Istanbul, a city of more than 15 million that is vulnerable to quakes.

Since the disaster, Erdogan's minister of justice said it will investigate the destroyed buildings. “Those who have been negligent, at fault and responsible for the destruction following the earthquake will answer to justice,” Bekir Bozdag said Thursday.

But several experts said any serious investigation into the root of weak enforcement of building codes must include a hard look at the policies of Erdogan, as well as regional and local officials, who oversaw — and promoted — a construction boom that helped drive economic growth.

Shortly before Turkey's last presidential and parliamentary election in 2018, the government unveiled a sweeping program to grant amnesty to companies and individuals responsible for certain violations of the country's building codes. By paying a fine, violators could avoid having to bring their buildings up to code. Such amnesties have been used by previous governments ahead of elections as well.

As part of that amnesty program, the government agency responsible for enforcing building codes acknowledged that more than half of all buildings in Turkey — accounting for some 13 million apartments— were not in compliance with current standards.

The types of violations cited in that report by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization were wide-ranging, including homes built without permits, buildings that added extra floors or expanded balconies without authorization, and the existence of so-called squatter homes inhabited by low-income families.

The report did not specify how many buildings were in violation of codes related to earthquake-proofing or basic structural integrity, but the reality was clear.

“Construction amnesty doesn’t mean the building is sturdy,” the current head of the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, Murat Kurum, said in 2019.

In 2021, the Chamber of Geological Engineers of Turkey published a series of reports raising red flags about existing buildings and new construction taking place in areas leveled by this week's quakes, including Kahramanmaras, Hatay and Osmaniye. The Chamber urged the government to conduct studies to ensure that buildings were up to code and built on safe locations.

A year earlier, the Chamber issued a report that directly called out policies of “slum amnesty, construction amnesty” as dangerous and warned that “indifference to disaster safety culture" would lead to preventable deaths.

Since 1999, when two powerful earthquakes hit northwest Turkey, near Istanbul — the stronger one killing some 18,000 people — building codes have been tightened and a process of urban renewal has been underway.

But the upgrades aren't happening fast enough, especially in poorer cities.

Builders commonly use lower quality materials, hire fewer professionals to oversee projects and don't adhere to various regulations as a way of keeping costs down, according to Muhcu, president of the country's Chamber of Architects.

He said the Turkish government’s so-called “construction peace” introduced before the 2018 general elections as a way to secure votes has, in effect, legalized unsafe buildings.

“We are paying for it with thousands of deaths, the destruction of thousands of buildings, economic losses,” Muhcu said.

Even new apartment buildings advertised as safe were ravaged by the quake.

In Hatay province, where casualties were highest and an airport runway and two public hospitals were destroyed, survivor Bestami Coskuner said he saw many new buildings, even “flashy” new ones had collapsed.

In Antakya, a historic city in Hatay, a 12-story building with 250 units that was completed in 2012 or 2013 collapsed, leaving an untold number dead, or still trapped alive. The Ronesans Rezidans was considered one of the “luxury” buildings in the area and was advertised as “a life project that is high quality” on Facebook with a pool, gym, beauty center and security.

On Friday, a contractor who oversaw the construction of that building was detained at Istanbul Airport before boarding a flight out of the country, Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency reported.

Another destroyed building in Antakya is the Guclu Bahce, which began construction in 2017 and opened with much fanfare in 2019 in a ceremony attended by Hatay’s mayor and other local officials, according to fact-checking website Dogrulukpayi.

In Malatya, the brand-new Asur apartments — billed as earthquake-proof in advertisements — sustained damage in the first quake, but residents escaped unharmed. Some residents who returned to the building to collect belongings managed a second lucky escape when the second strong temblor hit, causing the building to slide toward one side, according to video shown on TikTok and verified by fact-checking website Teyit.

The devastation across Turkey comes at a sensitive time for President Erdogan, who faces tough parliamentary and presidential elections in May amid an economic downturn and high inflation.

Erdogan regularly touts the country's construction boom over the past two decades, including new airports, roads, bridges and hospitals, as proof of his success during more than two decades in power.

On his tour of the devastation Wednesday and Thursday, Erdogan pledged to rebuild destroyed homes within the year.

“We know how to do this business," he said. “We are a government that has proved itself on these issues. We will.”

___

Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Robert Badendieck in Istanbul and Danica Kirka in London contributed.

‘Why did we give all these warnings?’: Turkey earthquake region was flagged as danger zone at least 24 years ago

24 years after the deadly Izmit earthquake, Turkey sees 6,000 buildings collapse, thousands dead -- and no accountability in sight

Tuvana Sahinturk
Wed, February 8, 2023 

On Monday morning, Turkey woke up to a disastrous tragedy. At 4:17 a.m. local time, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit near Gaziantep, a city in Southern Turkey, with 120 recorded aftershocks following in the next 12 hours. The earthquake was named the deadliest in a decade, with casualties in Turkey and Syria surpassing the 10,000 mark.

This is not the first big earthquake Turkey has faced, yet it is one of the deadliest. Growing up in Turkey, I was always warned and taught about how dangerous earthquakes can be. From classes to television, there was always a voice telling us how to place our furniture, prepare earthquake emergency kits, and countless drills in case tragedy ever struck.

A man stands inside a destroyed building as others react, in Iskenderun town, southern Turkey, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. A powerful earthquake hit southeast Turkey and Syria early Monday, toppling hundreds of buildings and killing and injuring thousands of people. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The 1999 Izmit earthquake, still deeply mourned, was the biggest earthquake in Turkey I knew about growing up, causing almost 20,000 deaths, and collapsing over 100,000 buildings. My mother was pregnant with me at the time, and she was still so terrified when I became old enough to understand what an earthquake is. The danger and horror of earthquakes are deeply understood by the Turkish people, there has been more than enough suffering to take earthquake preparation seriously. So how did over 6,000 buildings collapse once again, more than 20 years later?

The morning of the earthquake, geoscientist, Naci Görür, went on live television, unable to hide his despair.

“I was woken up at 4 a.m. in the morning, I cried for an hour, and I am still crying. It’s the place we have been warning about for years. Not a single local authority called to ask what they can do. Why did we give all these warnings?” he said.

Görür’s perspective is one that suggests that the right preparation and inspection could have at least decreased the scope of the disaster that struck the morning of Feb. 6th.



In an interview with The Guardian, Dr. Henry Bang, a geologist and disaster management expert explained what could have caused so many buildings to collapse in different ways.

RELATED: How you can help Turkey, Syria victims

“Those whose walls have crumbled to the ground are probably very old buildings that were built with relatively weaker building materials. The [multi] story buildings that have collapsed like a pack of cards were probably not built with earthquake-resistant design features,” said Bang.

After the 1999 earthquake, many pointed their fingers at the outdated building codes that were still in place. So, Turkey introduced modern building codes hoping to be better prepared next time.

The problem is there are many ways to cheat, like replacing reinforcing rods with styrofoam or using outdated procedures. Whether the inspections that are supposed to take place inside these buildings were conducted regularly still remains a question, and one thing stands true: the contractors that chose to cheat the system for extra cash now carry the responsibility for the thousands of lives that were lost in the earthquake.

Drone footage shows devastation from Turkey quake

STORY: Drone footage captured by Reuters gave a bird's-eye view of Hatay's landscape littered with mounds of rubble from collapsed buildings, while others stood precariously on an angle with long cracks and fissures slashing across their facades.Rescue teams worked early on Tuesday to reach people trapped in the rubble of buildings in southern Turkey as the death toll in the country from Monday's (February 6) earthquake continued to rise. The magnitude 7.8 quake hit Turkey and northwest Syria, toppling entire apartment blocks, wrecking hospitals, and leaving thousands more people injured or homeless.Nearly 8,000 people have been rescued from 4,758 buildings destroyed in the tremors a day earlier, Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said in its latest statement.

While measurements and preparation play a big part in earthquake management, Turkey still sits in a highly seismically active area, making the natural disaster almost non-avoidable. In an interview with Scientific American, Ross Stein, CEO of the catastrophe modelling company Temblor, explains that Turkey is squeezed by a giant tectonic vise, meaning that the country is being forced outward to the west, spilling into the Mediterranean and ultimately being pushed beneath Crete in a subduction zone similar to the one seen off of Japan.

In earthquake-affected cities, search and rescue efforts are still ongoing. Donating and spreading secure assembly locations and helpful information can go a long way toward helping the survivors.

Photos: Powerful Turkey, Syria earthquake leaves collapsed buildings, thousands dead

Abhya Adlakha
·Editor, Yahoo News Canada
Mon, February 6, 2023 

2/ 45

Earthquakes jolt Turkiye's provinces

People and emergency teams search for people in a destroyed building in Adana, Turkey, Monday, Feb. 6, 2023. A powerful quake has knocked down multiple buildings in southeast Turkey and Syria and many casualties are feared. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

More than 2,300 people have died after a devastating, historic 7.8 magnitude earthquake ripped through Turkey and Syria, leaving destruction and debris and trapping hundreds of residents under rubble.

The quake, one of the strongest to hit the region in more than a 100 years, struck 23 km east of Nurdagi, in Turkey's Gaziantep province, the US Geological Survey said.

Authorities feared the death toll would rise further as rescuers searched through tangles of metal and concrete for survivors in a region beset by more than a decade of Syria’s civil war and a refugee crisis.

Warning: Images in this gallery are disturbing and depict death and destruction

Canadian women's players go on strike amid tense dispute with Canada Soccer

Christine Sinclair and Janine Beckie confirmed the players' strike to TSN's Rick Westhead on Friday, citing ongoing pay equity issues and "unfair" budget cuts.


Elias Grigoriadis
·Writer
Fri, February 10, 2023

Canada Soccer decided to make "significant cuts" to the women's national program, the players said in a statement.

Canada Soccer’s tense relationship with its national teams is somehow getting worse, as the women's side on Friday announced their intention to go on strike less than six months away from the 2023 World Cup.

The team released a statement explaining their decision to strike, while demanding better treatment and equal pay and condemning the actions of the federation’s leadership.

"The Canadian Women's National Soccer Team is both outraged and deeply concerned with the news of significant cuts to the national team programs for 2023," the statement reads.

Defending Olympic champions and three-time medalists, the women's side has been the driving force behind Canada’s success on the international stage for the better parts of two decades. Despite this, their budgets at every level have repeatedly been cut due to financial hardships, prompting fewer and smaller training camps, youth program cuts, and unanswered questions surrounding financial compensation.

"We have been patiently negotiating with Canada Soccer for more than a year," read the statement. "Now that our World Cup is approaching, the Women's National Team players are being told to prepare to perform at a world-class level without the same level of support that was received by the Men's National Team in 2022, and with significant cuts to our program — to simply make do with less."

Having reached their breaking point, the players have announced their intention to receive fair and equal treatment by any means necessary. This comes in light of the team being days away from partaking in the SheBelieves Cup against other international powerhouses before the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this summer.

"If Canada Soccer is not willing or able to support our team, new leadership should be found. We are committed to do whatever it takes to create public awareness of this crisis and to force Canada Soccer to start to support the national teams properly," concluded the statement.

Christine Sinclair and Janine Beckie confirmed the players' strike to TSN's Rick Westhead on Friday, citing ongoing pay equity issues and budget cuts to the program.

"Saying that we're outraged is an understatement," Beckie said. “There's not really words to describe how it feels to be here in camp with the national team and know we are not being given the same resources that our men's team was given last year to prepare for their World Cup… I don't like the word fair. But it is so incredibly unfair to the women, and the staff, and to everyone that supports this team, works for this team, is a fan of this team. We've had enough. It's way, way, too far gone."

"It hurts, I'm not going to lie,” said Sinclair, arguably the best soccer player Canada has ever produced. "We all represent this country proudly. We've shared some of the greatest moments together. But to not feel that support from your own federation has been hard in the past. But it's gotten to a point where, at least for me personally, until this is resolved I can't represent this federation. I'm such a competitor that breaks my heart and kills me."
Men's players throw their full support behind CWNT

Players from the men's national squad promptly showed support for their counterparts, sharing a statement of their own. They even called on Canadian Minister of Sport Pascale St-Onge to intervene if Canada Soccer does not "take immediate action to respond to the players’ demands and concerns."

The men are no strangers to standoffs with the federation due to repeated contract disputes, either. The team refused to take part in a crucial World Cup preparation match against Panama and almost forfeited a CONCACAF Nations League Game against Curaçao.

Both teams united to pressure Canada Soccer into revealing more information about their financial practices, but have yet to do so.

Canada Soccer has yet to comment on both statements.

More from Yahoo Sports

Indian gov't withdraws appeal to hug cows on Valentine's Day


Fri, February 10, 2023

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s government on Friday withdrew its appeal to citizens to mark Valentine’s Day next week not as a celebration of romance but as “Cow Hug Day” to better promote Hindu values.

The appeal had attracted widespread criticism from political rivals and on social media.

A terse statement issued by the government-run Animal Welfare Board of India said the appeal issued Wednesday “stands withdrawn.”

Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst, said the call to hug cows had been “absolutely crazy, defying logic.”

"The decision to withdraw the government appeal was to prevent the politics of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) from being ridiculed in the face of severe criticism from all quarters,” he said.

Young, educated Indians typically spend Valentine’s Day crowding parks and restaurants, exchanging gifts and holding parties.

The Animal Welfare Board had said Wednesday that “hugging cows will bring emotional richness and increase individual and collective happiness.”

Devout Hindus, who worship cows as holy, say the Western holiday goes against traditional Indian values.

In recent years, Hindu hard-liners have raided shops selling Valentine's Day items, burned cards and gifts, and chased hand-holding couples out of restaurants and parks, insisting that the day promotes promiscuity. Hindu nationalist groups such as Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal say such raids help reassert a Hindu identity.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has been pushing a Hindu agenda, seeking the religion's supremacy in a secular nation known for its diversity. Hindus comprise nearly 80% of the nearly 1.4 billion people. Muslims account for 14%, while Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains account for most of the remaining 6%.

The cow has long been embedded in the Hindu psyche and is deeply respected by many, much like one's mother. Most states in India have banned cow slaughter.

The Associated Press

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon falls in first month under Lula




Fri, February 10, 2023 

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest fell in January from a year earlier, satellite data showed on Friday, in the first monthly figures under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Preliminary satellite data collected by the government's space research agency Inpe showed 167 square km (64 square miles) cleared in the region last month, down 61% from January 2022, the worst for the month in the eight-year series.

In mid-January, Brazilian environmental agents launched their first anti-logging raids under Lula, who has pledged to end surging destruction under his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

Deforestation in January was also below the historical average of 196 square km for the month since 2016, although January data can be especially noisy given heavy clouds over the rainforest early in the year.

"It is positive to see such a relevant drop in January," WWF-Brasil conservation specialist Daniel Silva said. "However, it is still too early to talk about a trend reversal, as part of this drop may be related to greater cloud cover."

He noted the January data represented the first drop from a year earlier in five months.

The fresh figures come after Reuters reported exclusively on Thursday that the United States was considering its first contribution to a multilateral fund aimed at fighting Amazon deforestation, with a possible announcement during President Joe Biden's meeting with Lula at the White House on Friday.

The Brazilian-administered Amazon Fund, supported mainly by Norway and Germany, was reactivated by Environment Minister Marina Silva the day she took office last month, after being frozen since 2019 under Bolsonaro.

Even with the positive start to the year, experts and staff at environmental agency Ibama warn it may take years for Lula to deliver on conservation targets after Bolsonaro cut funding and staff at key agencies.

The Brazilian government is also fighting wildcat mining on Yanomami land in the Amazon, its largest indigenous reservation, amid a humanitarian crisis blamed on illegal gold miners.

(Reporting by Gabriel Araujo; Editing by Brad Haynes)

Biden host's Brazil's Lula for talks on Amazon protection

LULA VISIT IGNORED BY MEDIA FOR UFO GETTING SHOT DOWN

NEWS WIRES
Fri, 10 February 2023 

Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva traveled to Washington on Thursday, invited to the White House by President Joe Biden in a visit that will focus on support for Brazilian democracy and shared environmental commitments.

The U.S. government is considering joining a multilateral fund aimed at fighting Amazon deforestation in Brazil, an a contribution could be announced during their meeting, two U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Relations between the Western Hemisphere's two largest democracies had been lukewarm under Lula's far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of Republican former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Lula will visit Biden on Friday afternoon, after meeting with Senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic lawmakers in the morning.

Brazil's Foreign Ministry said support for democracy, human rights and the environment will be at the center of Lula's agenda in Washington.

Brazil is also eager for more countries to contribute to the Amazon Fund started by Germany and Norway to back protection of the rainforest and sustainable development projects.

The Biden administration is looking into joining the $1.3 billion fund, the two U.S. officials confirmed to Reuters.

A U.S. contribution to the Brazilian-administered fund would underline the resetting of ties between the two countries after the recent period of frosty relations.

Bolsonaro flew to Florida 48 hours before Lula was sworn in and has requested a tourist visa to stay in the United States.

Biden Says Democracy Prevailed in US, Brazil as Lula Visits




Jordan Fabian and Simone Iglesias
Fri, February 10, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden, meeting his Brazilian counterpart at the White House, said “democracy prevailed” in both the US and Brazil after severe attacks against its institutions.

“Both our nations’ strong democracies have been tested of late, very much tested, and our institutions were put in jeopardy,” Biden said Friday as he hosted Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva less than six weeks after his inauguration. “We have to continue to stand up for democracy, democratic values that form the core of our strength.”

The Oval Office sit-down was meant as a show of support for Brazil’s newly elected government and to demonstrate relations between the two biggest democracies in the Americas are back on track.

Biden, 80, and Lula, 77, are veteran politicians who share common progressive beliefs and have faced down similar challenges from their far-right predecessors on their paths to power.

The Democratic US president defeated Republican incumbent Donald Trump in 2020, only for Trump’s supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an effort to overturn his loss. Lula, who had already served in the nation’s top job, last year beat then-President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump admirer. But just a week after his Jan. 1 inauguration, pro-Bolsonaro rioters stormed the capital of Brasilia in a failed attempt to oust the leftist leader.

Lula said his predecessor despised international relations, and that his world started and ended with “fake news” in the morning, afternoon and night.

“Sounds familiar,” Biden quipped in response.

Biden said the two countries would “stand together to reject political violence.”

“We have to work together so that another invasion of the Capitol never happens again, so that the invasions of the powers that occurred in Brazil never happen again,” Lula said.

Amazon Fund

In addition to shoring up democratic institutions, the two leaders found common ground on climate change. During his campaign, Biden offered to work with international partners to create a $20 billion fund to protect the Amazon, which was subject to rapid deforestation under Bolsonaro.

Read More: Biden Pledges to Slow Destruction of Brazil’s Amazon Rainforest

After the meeting, Lula told reporters that he talked with Biden about the importance of rich countries providing financial assistance to developing nations that are home to the world’s remaining tropical forests. The US, he added, will likely join the Amazon fund or a similar instrument that could engage a larger number of countries to combat deforestation.

The US later announced in a joint statement its “intent to work with Congress to provide funds for programs to protect and conserve the Brazilian Amazon, including initial support for the Amazon Fund, and to leverage investments in this critical region.”

Lula has said he’s strongly committed to fighting climate change and pledged to end deforestation in the Amazon by 2030.

Yet their meeting also exposed differences, as Lula showed he’ll not abide by US orthodoxy on international affairs. For instance, the Brazilian president said he pitched to Biden the creation of a group of countries that could offer to mediate peace between Russia and Ukraine, possibly having China as a mediator — which is anathema to Biden and Kyiv’s allies.

In the joint statement, the leaders “deplored the violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine by Russia and the annexation of parts of its territory as flagrant violations of international law and called for a just and durable peace.” They also expressed concern about the global effects of the conflict on food and energy security.

Adding to the tensions is the presence of both their former opponents in Florida, as they plot political comebacks. Bolsonaro has vacationed in the Sunshine State since Dec. 30, while Trump has based himself at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

While Biden has faced pressure from congressional Democrats to expel Bolsonaro, Lula was not planning to bring up the topic in the Friday meeting. The US government has taken a wait-and-see approach, hoping the former Brazilian leader leaves the country on his own.

(Updates with Lula’s post-meeting comments and joint statement starting in paragraph 11.)

BREAKING: U.S. Military Shoots Down Another ‘High-Altitude Object’ Over Alaska

Andrew Daniels
Fri, February 10, 2023 at 2:04 PM MST

U.S. Military Shoots Down 2nd High-Altitude Object

CHANDAN KHANNA - Getty Images

The U.S. military shot down a “high-altitude object” over Alaska airspace on Friday afternoon.

The object was “roughly the size of a small car,” compared to the much bigger Chinese spy balloon that the U.S. shot down last weekend.

The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet.

Updated 4:00 p.m. ET: On Friday afternoon, the U.S. military shot down another unauthorized “high-altitude object” that was flying over Alaska airspace, National Security Council official John Kirby told reporters at the White House.

It was the second time in six days that the U.S. military eliminated a mysterious object, after an F-22 shot down a Chinese spy balloon last Saturday.

Kirby said President Joe Biden gave the OK to shoot down the fast-moving object, which hasn’t yet been identified as a balloon, after the U.S. Department of Defense tracked it over the last 24 hours. “The object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight,” Kirby said. “Out of an abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object, and they did.”



Kirby said the high-altitude object, which officials confirmed was unmanned, “came inside our territorial waters and those waters right now are frozen.” According to Kirby, fighter aircraft from the U.S. Northern Command took down the mysterious object between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. ET.

Kirby said this object was “much, much smaller” than the Chinese spy balloon the U.S. military shot down last Saturday, but there are no indications as to whether or not it contained surveillance equipment. “The way it was described to me,” Kirby said, “was roughly the size of a small car as opposed to a payload that was two or three buses sizes.” He continued: “No significant payload.”

It’s unclear who owned or sent the object, U.S. officials said, via the New York Times.

We will continue to update this story as more information develops.

Kurdish militants suspend 'operations' after Turkey quake

Fri, 10 February 2023 


Kurdish militants from the outlawed PKK group announced a temporary halt in fighting to facilitate rescue work after the huge earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Ankara and its main Western allies for waging a brutal insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984.

Ankara is also trying to ban a top opposition party that supports Kurdish causes over its alleged links to the militants.

But Monday's earthquake has reshaped the political landscape while claiming more than 21,000 lives -- more than 18,000 of them in Turkey.

It struck a multi-ethnic region that has witnessed some of the heaviest fighting between Turkish government forces and the PKK.

The group's co-leader Cemil Bayik told the PKK-linked ANF news agency that "thousands of our people are under the rubble" and urged a focus on recovery work rather than waging war.

"We call on all our forces engaged in military actions: stop the military actions in Turkey, in metropolises and cities," he said in comments published on the site late Thursday.

"We have decided to not conduct any operation as long as the Turkish state does not attack," he said.

Bayik said the pause in fighting would stay in place "until the pain of our people is relieved and their wounds are healed".

"Of course, the attitude of the Turkish state will also be decisive in our decision," he added.

- No Turkish response -

Government forces have used combat drones to push Kurdish fighters from Turkey's southeastern regions to the northern stretches of neighbouring Iraq.

Turkey is now conducting a low-scale war against the Kurds in northern Iraq and also fighting a separate Kurdish group in Syria that it views as a local branch of the PKK -- but which Washington has relied on to battle Islamic State jihadists.

PKK attacks peaked during a deadly wave of violence in 2015-2016 that followed a breakdown in peace negotiations with Ankara.

The group's founder Abdullah Ocalan has been in jail since being nabbed by Turkish intelligence in 1999 while he was in Nairobi.

Ocalan's jailing was followed by a brief unilateral ceasefire and then the start of formal truce talks in 2013.

The talks collapsed after the PKK killed two Turkish policemen in 2015.

Turkish officials did not respond to Bayik's comments.

The government has been trying to ban the Kurdish-backed Peoples' Democratic Party -- the Turkish parliament's third-largest -- over its ties to PKK.

Turkey's top court was considering whether to ban the party ahead of elections that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proposed holding on May 14.

But most state institutions have suspended operations to focus on earthquake relief work.

Students walk out after told to limit Black History program

Thu, February 9, 2023

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — More than 200 students walked out of class at an Alabama high school after they say they were told by school leaders to omit certain relevant events from an upcoming student-led Black History Month program.

However, school officials have denied the allegations even while acknowledging the need for students' concerns to be heard.

Students told WBMA-TV they were ordered to leave out major historical moments, including slavery and the civil rights movement, from the program scheduled for Feb. 22 at Hillcrest High School in Tuscaloosa.

The students were told they “couldn’t talk about slavery and civil rights because one of our administrators felt uncomfortable,” said Black History Month Program board member J’Niyah Suttles, a senior who participated in Wednesday's walkout.

She said the the direction from a school administrator left her hurt.

“My protector from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. — for you to tell me I can’t talk about something that is dealing with my culture is very disturbing, it’s very confusing,” Suttles said.

Fellow Hillcrest senior Jada Holt expressed similar emotions.

“Why am I being censored about my culture, something that is rooted in me? Why can’t I talk about it? History is history and it’s already been made, and it can’t be erased,” she said.

Senior Jamiyah Brown, who helped put the program together, organized the walkout, which lasted about an hour.

“Without our history we are nothing. Without teaching our youth where we come from, how can we move forward?” Brown said.

Tuscaloosa County Superintendent Dr. Keri Johnson, in a statement, denied allegations that an administrator told the students to leave out historical elements.

“It is not true that faculty or staff told students that slavery or the civil rights movement could not be part of the program," Johnson said. “When several community members heard this and contacted Hillcrest High administration out of concern, administration explained to them that this was false information that was circulating.”

Johnson said the school system supports the students' right to peacefully demonstrate.

“A number of our Hillcrest High students have concerns about the culture within their school. We care deeply about our students, and it is important that their concerns are heard. We are putting together a plan to make sure our students feel heard, so that we know the right steps to put in place to ensure all students know that they are valued,” Johnson said.

The president of the Tuscaloosa Branch of the NAACP, Lisa Young, said the alleged direction was a disgrace.

“I don’t know how you can talk about Black history in this country without talking about slavery or the civil rights movement,” Young said.

She said she has asked to meet with Johnson but has yet to be given a date.

Young said she was “angry and part of me feels like we failed our students. We want to see what we can do to assist them, and make their school a safe place.”