INVASION OF PRIVACY

Candidate in high-stakes Virginia election performed sex acts with husband in live videos

BY SARAH RANKIN AND DENISE LAVOIE
 September 11, 2023

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A candidate in a high-stakes legislative contest in Virginia had sex with her husband in live videos posted on a pornographic website and asked viewers to pay them money in return for carrying out specific sex acts.

Screenshots of Susanna Gibson on the website were shared with The Associated Press. The campaign for Gibson, a Democrat running for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in a district just outside Richmond, issued a statement Monday in which it denounced the sharing of the videos as a violation of the law and her privacy. Gibson called the exposure of the videos “the worst gutter politics.”

“It won’t intimidate me and it won’t silence me,” she said in the statement. “My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they’re willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up.”

The Washington Post first reported the videos on Monday.

The revelation marked an explosive turn in a contest that will carry significant weight in determining the balance of power in the Virginia General Assembly. The race has attracted large amounts of spending and interest for an off-year legislative race.

Democrats control the Senate by a four-vote margin, and Republicans control the House of Delegates by the same margin, with four seats currently vacant. The parties are waging intense legislative battles as GOP rising national political star Gov. Glenn Youngkin looks to bolster his conservative agenda with full control of state government.

Gibson said that exposing the videos is “an illegal invasion of my privacy designed to humiliate me and my family.” Gibson’s attorney, Daniel P. Watkins, said that disseminating the videos is a violation of Virginia’s revenge porn law, which makes it a crime to “maliciously” disseminate or sell nude or sexual images of another person with the intent to “coerce, harass, or intimidate.

“A criminal act has occurred here, and that’s the dissemination of revenge porn by a Republican operative,” Watkins told the AP.

Watkins cited a 2021 Virginia Court of Appeals ruling that found it was unlawful for a man to secretly record his girlfriend during a consensual sexual encounter even if he did not show the video to other people. The court found that consent to being seen is not the same as consent to being recorded.

Gibson, 40, a nurse practitioner and married mother of two young children, won a Democratic primary in June and is running against Republican businessman David Owen in one of the most competitve districts in the state.

“I’m sure this is a difficult time for Susanna and her family, and I’m remaining focused on my campaign,” Owen said in a statement.

A top-ranking Virginia Democrat immediately came to Gibson’s defense after the videos were reported by the Post. “Now we are going to make this the biggest fundraising day of her campaign,” Sen. L. Louise Lucas said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Garren Shipley, a spokesman for Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert, did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

Gibson and Owen are competing in the 57th District, an area that includes suburbs of Richmond in both Henrico and Goochland counties. The district chose Youngkin by a 51.2%-to-48.3% margin in 2021, but in the 2022 congressional midterm elections, the split in the district was 50% Democratic to 49.1% Republican.

Gibson has said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade propelled her into the race.

Gibson had an account on Chaturbate, a legal website where viewers can watch live webcam performances that feature nudity and sexual activity, according to the screenshots reviewed by the AP. The videos show GIbson and her husband, John David Gibson, having sex and at times looking into the camera and asking viewers for donations in the form of “tokens” or “tips” to watch a private show.

Chaturbate videos are streamed live on that site and are often archived on other publicly available sites, the Post reported. More than a dozen videos posted under Gibson’s Chaturbate username were archived on one of those sites — Recurbate — in September 2022, the month after she announced her candidacy. The most recent were two videos archived on Sept. 30, 2022. It is unclear when the livestream occurred.

NEW LEADER OF GOP FREEDOM CAUCUS
Putin says prosecution of Trump shows US political system is ‘rotten’



In this photo released by Roscongress Foundation, Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures while speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (Sergey Shinov, Roscongress Foundation via AP)

In this photo released by Roscongress Foundation, Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (Vyacheslav Viktorov, Roscongress Foundation via AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin applauds as he attends a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

 September 12, 2023

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted Tuesday that the criminal cases against former U.S. President Donald Trump are political revenge that show the fundamental corruption of the United States.

“As for the prosecution of Trump, for us what is happening in today’s conditions, in my opinion, is good because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others democracy,” Putin said at an Eastern Economic Forum gathering in Russia’s Pacific Coast city of Vladivostok.

“Everything that is happening with Trump is the persecution of a political rival for political reasons. That’s what it is. And this is being done in front of the public of the United States and the whole world,” he said.

Opinion polls indicate that Trump is by far the strongest contender to become the Republican Party’s candidate in the 2024 presidential election. During his four years in the White House, Trump repeatedly touted having good relations with Putin, while critics alleged he was submissive to the Russian leader.

Trump has claimed he could resolve the conflict in Ukraine in a matter of days, if he regains the presidency. He has not provided details of his potential approach.

“We hear that Mr. Trump says that he will solve pressing problems in a few days, including the Ukrainian crisis. Well, this cannot but bring happiness. This is good,” Putin said.

However, the Russian leader said his country’s poor relations with the United States were unlikely to change significantly regardless of who becomes president.

“What to expect from the future, no matter who the president is, it’s hard for us to say, but it’s unlikely that anything will change radically,” Putin said. He claimed the Biden administration has instilled a strong bias against Russia and ”it will be very difficult for them to somehow turn this whole ship” in the other direction.

Russia also is due to have a presidential election in 2024. Putin hedged Tuesday when asked if he would seek another term after being in power, as president or prime minister, since 2000.

“We will talk about it” after the Russian parliament sets an election date, he said.
___

Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

Fukushima nuclear plant’s operator says the first round of wastewater release is complete


A group of plaintiffs and supporters, demanding revokation of TEPCO’s treated water discharge plan, head to the Fukushima District Court to file a lawsuit, in Fukushima, northeastern Japan, Friday, Sept. 8, 2023. Fishermen and residents of Fukushima and five other prefectures along Japan’s northeastern coast filed a lawsuit Friday demanding a halt to the ongoing release of treated radioactive wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea. The banner reads “Lawsuit to halt the release of ALPS treated radioactive wastewater."

BY MARI YAMAGUCHI
September 11, 2023

TOKYO (AP) — The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said Monday that it has safely completed the first release of treated radioactive water from the plant into the sea and will inspect and clean the facility before starting the second round in a few weeks.

The Fukushima Daiichi plant began discharging the treated and diluted wastewater into the Pacific Ocean on Aug. 24. The water has accumulated since the plant was damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011, and the start of its release is a milestone in the plant’s decommissioning.

The discharge, which is expected to continue for decades until the decommissioning is finished, has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and by neighboring countries. China has banned all imports of Japanese seafood in response, hurting producers and exporters and prompting the Japanese government to compile an emergency relief fund. Groups in South Korea have also fiercely protested, demanding Japan stop the release.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at summits last week of Southeast Asian countries and the Group of 20 nations, stressed the safety and transparency of the release to win international support and sought the immediate lifting of China’s ban.


Fukushima official says release of treated water is a milestone in nuclear plant’s decommissioning

During the 17-day first release, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, said it discharged 7,800 tons of treated water from 10 tanks. About 1.34 million tons of radioactive wastewater is stored in about 1,000 tanks at the plant.

Plant workers will rinse the pipeline and other equipment and inspect the system over the next few weeks before starting the release of the second round of 7,800 tons stored in 10 other tanks, TEPCO spokesperson Teruaki Kobashi told reporters Monday.

All sampling data from seawater and fish since the start of the release have been way below set safety limits, officials said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been cooperating with Japan and reviewed the safety of the project. It concluded that the release, if carried out precisely as planned, would have a negligible impact on the environment, marine life and human health. On Monday, a team of South Korean experts from the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, under an agreement between South Korea and the U.N. nuclear agency, visited an IAEA office set up at the Fukushima plant to monitor the release and share information, the IAEA said in a statement. The South Korean team has been in Japan for the last two weeks and met with IAEA officials offsite.

TEPCO and the government say the wastewater is treated to reduce radioactive materials to safe levels, and then is diluted with seawater to make it much safer than international standards.

The radioactive wastewater has accumulated since three of the plant’s reactors were damaged by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. It continues to grow because cooling water used on the damaged reactors leaks into the reactor basements, where it mixes with groundwater.

TEPCO plans to release 31,200 tons of treated water through March 2024, and officials say the pace will pick up later.

The government and TEPCO say the discharge is unavoidable because the tanks will reach their capacity of 1.37 million tons next year and space at the plant is needed for its decommissioning.

UAW union makes progress with 1 of 3 automakers as strike deadline looms


A worker assembles a Ford vehicle at the company's Chicago Assembly Plant (2010). Ford, General Motors and Stellantis are locked in negotiations with the UAW this week as a strike deadline looms at midnight Thursday

. File Photo by Brian Kersey/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 11 (UPI) -- Stellantis NV, the owner of Jeep and Chrysler, reached a partial agreement with the United Auto Workers union on Monday as a strike deadline looms that could cost the auto industry more than $1 billion.

The union and automaker reached a tentative agreement on health and safety issues, a positive step forward to handling other issues for their contract before the current one expires at midnight Thursday.


"There is still more work to do, but we know that Stellantis and the UAW have a shared interest in these discussions: reaching an agreement that secures the future for our employees and their families," said Tobin Williams, senior vice president of human resources of Stellantis North America in a note to workers.

"We are on a good path and remain committed to reaching a tentative agreement without a work stoppage that would negatively impact our employees and our customers."

Stellantis also sent a second proposal to the union on Monday. The first proposal to the union, which included a 14.5% pay raise to most employees was swiftly rejected. UAW President Shawn Fain rejected similar raise proposals from Ford and General Motors as inadequate with members facing inflation pressures.

The UAW proposal wants the automakers to make temporary workers into full-time after 90 days, give the union the right to strike over plant closures, and more paid time off, including recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday.

Ford wants the right to outsource any work at any time and GM and Stellantis have agreed to give workers paid time off during Juneteenth. All three so far have rejected all UAW changes to pension and retiree healthcare plans.

Stellantis reports progress in talks with auto workers and plans to make another offer Monday


 United Auto Workers members walk in the Labor Day parade in Detroit, Sept. 2, 2019. Automaker Stellantis has made a counteroffer to the United Auto Workers that includes wage increases in each year of a new four-year contract totaling 14.5%. The raises, which would be for most workers, doesn’t include any lump sum payments.

 (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

 September 11, 2023

DETROIT (AP) — Stellantis is reporting progress in talks with the United Auto Workers union with just three days left before contracts expire with Detroit’s three automakers.

Tobin Williams, head of human resources for North America, told employees in an email that the union made counteroffer to its economic proposal on Sunday.

Stellantis released no details of its offer Monday.

He also says both sides have reached agreement in a number of areas including health and safety.

“There was good energy among both teams and great momentum to reach an agreement as we head into the final days before the contract expires Thursday night,” Williams wrote. “We are on a good path and remain committed to reaching a tentative agreement.”

UAW President Shawn Fain on Friday called counter offers from Stellantis, General Motors and Ford inadequate. He warned of strikes against any company without a tentative contract agreement when the contracts expire at 11:59 p.m. Thursday.

On Monday, Fain said in a statement that all three companies waited until the last minute to make economic offers. “When the CEOs are ready to make a serious offer, we’ll be there, day or night,” he said.

On Friday, Stellantis, which was formed in a 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Peugeot, made its first counteroffer to the union’s demands with a bigger pay raise than offers from Ford and General Motors. Stellantis offered wage increases in each year of a new four-year contract totaling 14.5%.

Last week Ford increased its offer from 9%, to 10% raises over four years, but it also included lump sum payments, while GM’s offered 10% plus lump sums. All three companies offered additional lump sum payments to cover inflation.

The proposal from Stellantis, which was formed in a 2021 merger of Fiat Chrysler and France’s PSA Peugeot, is closer to the union’s demands of 46% across-the-board increases over four years, but both sides still are far apart.

Fain said Friday that he threw the offers into the trash. “Things are moving but they’re moving very slow and we’ve got a long way to go in four days,” Fain said on a Sunday night video event.

The union has asked for 46% raises in general pay over four years — an increase that would elevate a top-scale assembly plant worker from $32 an hour now to about $47. In addition, the UAW has demanded an end to varying tiers of wages for factory jobs; a 32-hour week with 40 hours of pay; the restoration of traditional defined-benefit pensions for new hires who now receive only 401(k)-style retirement plans; and a return of cost-of-living pay raises, among other benefits.

Perhaps most important to the union is that it be allowed to represent workers at 10 electric vehicle battery factories, most of which are being built by joint ventures between automakers and South Korean battery makers. The union wants those plants to receive top UAW wages. In part, that is because workers who now make components for internal combustion engines will need a place to work as the auto industry increasingly transitions to EVs.

Hostess is being acquired by JM Smucker in a deal valued at $5.6B after coming back from the brink

Hostess reemerged in 2013 with a far less costly operating structure than its predecessor company and was no longer unionized.

- A Hostess sign is shown on a closed retail outlet store in Garland, Texas

 Hostess, the maker of snack classics like Twinkies and HoHos, is being sold to J.M. Smucker in a cash-and-stock deal worth about $5.6 billion. Smucker, which makes everything from coffee to peanut butter and jelly, will pay $34.25 per share in cash and stock, and it will also pick up approximately $900 million in net debt.

 (AP Photo/LM Otero, file)
1
BY MICHELLE CHAPMAN
September 11, 2023

Hostess, the maker of snack classics like Twinkies and HoHos, is being sold to J.M. Smucker in a cash-and-stock deal worth about $5.6 billion.

Smucker, which makes everything from coffee to peanut butter and jelly, will pay $34.25 per share in cash and stock, and it will also pick up approximately $900 million in net debt.

Hostess Brands Inc. shareholders will receive $30 in cash and 0.03002 shares of The J.M. Smucker Co. stock for each share of stock that they own.

“We believe this is the right partnership to accelerate growth and create meaningful value for consumers, customers and shareholders. Our companies share highly complementary go-to market strategies, and we are very similar in our core business principles and operations,” Hostess President and CEO Andy Callahan said in a prepared statement Monday.

Twinkies went big when Hostess put them on shelves in 1930, and it followed up with a string of sweet concoctions like DingDongs, Zingers and Sno Balls.

In an interview with The Associated Press this year, Callahan talked about how Hostess Brands managed some of the most well-known brands in America, and also how balance was needed as Americans’ tastes changed.

The company motored along for decades, but its struggles began to grow in this century, with workers blaming mismanagement and a failure to invest in brands to keep up with changing tastes. The Lenexa, Kansas, company said that it was weighed down by higher pension and medical costs than its competitors, whose employees weren’t unionized.

By 2012, the company with roots dating back to 1925, began selling off its brands in chunks to different buyers. Wonder was sold to Flowers Foods. McKee Foods, which makes Little Debbie snack cakes, snapped up Drake’s Cake, which includes Devil Dogs and Yodels.

The rest, including Twinkies and other Hostess cakes, was acquired by Metropoulos & Co. and Apollo, for $410 million.

Apollo Global Management, founded by Leon Black, buys troubled brands and tries to turn them around before selling them. It’s done so with fast-food chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. Metropoulos & Co., which has revamped then sold off brands including Chef Boyardee and Bumble Bee, also owns Pabst Brewing Co.

Hostess reemerged in 2013 with a far less costly operating structure than its predecessor company and was no longer unionized.

Morgan Stanley’s Pam Kaufman said that Hostess offered attractive revenue growth through its U.S. sweet snacks business and opportunities for international expansion. She anticipates merger and acquisition activity ramping up in the packaged food sector due to slowing revenue growth and strong balance sheets.

The boards of The J.M. Smucker Co. and Hostess have both approved the deal, which is expected to close in Smucker’s fiscal third quarter.

Smucker’s stock dropped 7%, while shares of Hostess surged 19%.

HAUNTED HIGHWAY

New highways carve into Cairo’s City of the Dead cemetery as Egypt’s government reshapes the city



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A bulldozer demolishes structures in Cairo’s historic City of the Dead, Egypt, Saturday, Aug. 26, 2023. Authorities have already razed hundreds of tombs and mausoleums as they carry out plans to build a network of multilane highways through the City of the Dead, a vast cemetery in the Egyptian capital that has been in use for more than a millennium. 

A man films his relatives recently demolished graves in Cairo’s historic City of the Dead, Egypt, Sept. 1, 2023. Authorities have already razed hundreds of tombs and mausoleums as they carry out plans to build a network of multilane highways through the City of the Dead, a vast cemetery in the Egyptian capital that has been in use for more than a millennium. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Workers disassemble the 700-year-old minaret of al-Turba al-Soltaniya, which will be moved to a new location to make way for a new highway roundabout,” at Cairo’s historic City of the Dead, Egypt, Sept. 4, 2023. Authorities have already razed hundreds of tombs and mausoleums as they carry out plans to build a network of multilane highways through the City of the Dead, a vast cemetery in the Egyptian capital that has been in use for more than a millennium. 

Residents prepare to fly their kite at Cairo’s historic City of the Dead, Egypt, Sept. 1, 2023. Authorities have already razed hundreds of tombs and mausoleums as they carry out plans to build a network of multilane highways through the City of the Dead, a vast cemetery in the Egyptian capital that has been in use for more than a millennium.

AP Photos/Amr Nabil

BY LEE KEATH AND SAMY MAGDY
September 11, 2023


CAIRO (AP) — The cane chairs and umbrella still stand in the courtyard of Hussein Omar’s family mausoleum, where his grandmother came every morning for 19 years after her daughter — his mother — died. Near her grave, she would sit and pray under the date palm and among the flowering plants, a few hours of peace in Cairo ’s historic City of the Dead.

Now the mausoleum, built in 1924 in a neo-Islamic style and housing the graves of a number of prominent Egyptians from a century ago, is threatened with demolition.

Authorities have already razed hundreds of tombs and mausoleums as they carry out plans to build a network of multilane highways through the City of the Dead, a vast cemetery that has been in use for more than a millennium. Stunned preservationists say the construction is destroying a unique part of Egypt’s heritage where major Islamic figures, prominent Egyptian politicians, artists and scholars and the loved ones of many Egyptians are buried.

“It’s always felt like a very sacred space. We always thought that whatever happens in the rest of Cairo, the City of the Dead would be safe,” said Omar, a historian who is writing a 500-year history of Cairo as told through the necropolis. “As we see now, that’s not the case.”

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The work is part of a mega-building campaign by President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi that is reshaping the city of some 20 million people. His government has put up massive freeways and flyovers at a furious rate, torn down several older neighborhoods it considers slums and built housing projects. It has encouraged the growth of gated suburban compounds outside the city while building a giant new capital in the desert.

Though many support the roadwork to unclog congestion in the overcrowded city, the construction has also brought complaints of uprooting green spaces and trees.

But the cemetery destruction sparked an outcry that is unusual in an Egypt, where dissent has been squelched for years under el-Sissi.

Dozens of parties, activists, public figures and non-governmental organizations signed a petition in August condemning the destruction. Five members of a committee of experts formed by the government to study the cemeteries resigned in protest, saying authorities ignored its recommendations that demolitions be halted and alternatives to the routes be found.

The government’s project is destroying a “unique, architectural, historic fabric,” Ayman Wanas, an official with the government department that lists distinctive buildings, wrote in his resignation letter posted online. “It’s a waste of Egypt’s historic, valuable heritage which is irreplaceable.”

Apparently in response, authorities last week temporarily halted the demolition of tombs in the main part of the cemetery, a municipal official who oversees the eastern Cairo area where the cemeteries are located, told The Associated Press.

He said no explanation was given to the municipality, but he believes the government either wants to examine alternatives or wants to quiet criticism ahead of a meeting of the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, that started Sunday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to brief media.

Security agents told grave caretakers not to let anyone enter or photograph sites, several caretakers said.

The area is designated by UNESCO as a world heritage zone. But many preservationists sharply criticize the agency for remaining silent over the destruction. In a statement to the AP, UNESCO said it has expressed concerns to the Egyptian government and asked for more information on the work.

There was no official announcement of the temporary halt and no word that the highway plans had been changed.

The City of the Dead, covering nearly 2 square miles (5 square kilometers), has been a unique space in Cairo for centuries. Originally a desert plain outside the city, it first came into use soon after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in the 700s. Imam Shafii, one of the top scholars of early Islam, was buried there after his death in 819, and now the grey dome of his mausoleum-shrine towers over the district.

Over the centuries, it was filled with the tombs of Mamluk and Ottoman nobles and ordinary Egyptians. A rare large open space in Cairo, it has a stark beauty — quiet dirt paths run through a landscape of grave-markers, ancient domes and unexpected areas of greenery. Stately mausoleum compounds hold elaborately carved and decorated cenotaphs inside.

The area also abounds with life. Families come weekly to visit loved ones’ graves, spending the day with picnics and food. Generations of caretaker families live in the mausoleums. Kids fly kites on its empty roads in the evening. Tens of thousand of people live in residential neighborhoods within the cemetery, and on Fridays its main avenue is packed with an outdoor market.

The main demolitions so far have been in an area dotted with mausoleums of some of Egypt’s most notable families of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The government said it has given families who had to exhume and move their loved ones new burial plots, usually in the suburbs outside Cairo.

Omar’s extended family has five mausoleums in the cemetery, two of which are slated for destruction. His mother, who died in 2001, is buried in the Barakat family mausoleum. Among his forebearers there are Fathallah and Atef Barakat, two nationalist figures who participated in the 1919 Revolution against British colonial rule.

For Omar and others, the necropolis isn’t just a historic site, but a center of personal memories and a place that joins life, death and peace.

Omar recalls visiting the mausoleum as a 6-year-old and asking his grandmother what the sound was that he was hearing. Raised in densely urbanized Cairo, he didn’t recognize the sound of birds singing.

“It is about the cohesiveness of the space, the peacefulness of the space. It has historically been a place of serenity,” he said. “What does it mean to have some lone surviving mausolea in the middle of a massive jumble of roads and traffic?”

In 2020, a large highway flyover was built across the southern end of the cemetery, razing hundreds of graves. The more extensive plans now reportedly include making way for two new highways, two large roundabouts, a giant cloverleaf and the widening of other roads.

Preservationists fear that will mean the City of the Dead’s end: Carved up between highways, its remaining pieces would be vulnerable to further destruction.

The government has long argued the graves are not on a list of protected official historic Islamic and Christian monuments, a list that has hardly been updated in decades.

Two 700-year-old minarets on the list that are in the path of the roadwork are being dismantled and moved to another location. The planned highways weave within yards (meters) of several other registered monuments.

Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly said in June that alternative burial sites are being provided for families moving their dead ahead of the construction. He said tomb markers of historic figures would be collected in a “Cemetery of the Immortals.”

Mostafa el-Sadek, a university professor who leads a volunteer initiative to document ancient graves and mausoleums, was frustrated by the government’s insistence on razing the tombs.

“The demolition must stop,” he said. “This area has layers and layers of history. Any problems, including the groundwater, could be resolved. It’s a matter of willingness.”

 

US sets record for billion-dollar weather disasters in a year — and there’s still 4 months to go


Ryan Orosco, of Brentwood, carries his son Johnny, 7, on his back while his wife Amanda Orosco waits at the front porch to be rescued from their flooded home on Bixler Road in Brentwood, Calif., Jan. 16, 2023

 (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via AP, File)

BY SETH BORENSTEIN
September 11, 2023

The deadly firestorm in Hawaii and Hurricane Idalia’s watery storm surge helped push the United States to a record for the number of weather disasters that cost $1 billion or more. And there’s still four months to go on what’s looking more like a calendar of calamities.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday that there have been 23 weather extreme events in America that cost at least $1 billion this year through August, eclipsing the year-long record total of 22 set in 2020. So far this year’s disasters have cost more than $57.6 billion and claimed at least 253 lives.

And NOAA’s count doesn’t yet include Tropical Storm Hilary’s damages in hitting California and a deep drought that has struck the South and Midwest because those costs are still to be totaled, said Adam Smith, the NOAA applied climatologist and economist who tracks the billion-dollar disasters.

“We’re seeing the fingerprints of climate change all over our nation,” Smith said in an interview Monday. “I would not expect things to slow down anytime soon.”


Water hookups come to Alaska Yup’ik village, and residents are thrilled to ditch their honey buckets

NOAA has been tracking billion-dollar weather disasters in the United States since 1980 and adjusts damage costs for inflation. What’s happening reflects a rise in the number of disasters and more areas being built in risk-prone locations, Smith said.

“Exposure plus vulnerability plus climate change is supercharging more of these into billion-dollar disasters,” Smith said.

In this photo made in a flight provided by mediccorps.org, the remains of a destroyed home are visible in Keaton Beach, Fla., following the passage of Hurricane Idalia, Aug. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

NOAA added eight new billion-dollar disasters to the list since its last update a month ago. In addition to Idalia and the Hawaiian firestorm that killed at least 115 people, NOAA newly listed an Aug. 11 Minnesota hailstorm; severe storms in the Northeast in early August; severe storms in Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin in late July; mid-July hail and severe storms in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Tennessee and Georgia; deadly flooding in the Northeast and Pennsylvania in the second week of July; and a late June outbreak of severe storms in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.

“This year a lot of the action has been across the center states, north central, south and southeastern states,” Smith said.

Experts say the United States has to do more to adapt to increased disasters because they will only get worse.

“The climate has already changed and neither the built environment nor the response systems are keeping up with the change,” said former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Craig Fugate, who wasn’t part of the NOAA report.

The increase in weather disasters is consistent with what climate scientists have long been saying, along with a possible boost from a natural El Nino, University of Arizona climate scientist Katharine Jacobs said.

“Adding more energy to the atmosphere and the oceans will increase intensity and frequency of extreme events,” said Jacobs, who was not part of the NOAA report. “Many of this year’s events are very unusual and in some cases unprecedented.”

Destroyed homes are visible in the aftermath of a devastating wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Smith said he thought the 2020 record would last for a long time because the 20 billion-dollar disasters that year smashed the old record of 16.

It didn’t, and now he no longer believes new records will last long.

Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field called the trend in billion-dollar disasters “very troubling.”

“But there are things we can do to reverse the trend,” Field said. “If we want to reduce the damages from severe weather, we need to accelerate progress on both stopping climate change and building resilience.”
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears
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Cash bail disproportionately impacts communities of color. Illinois is the first state to abolish it


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Shannon Ross poses for a portrait Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023, in Chicago. Ross, who describes himself as Indigenous and a person of color, was arrested in Chicago in October 2019 on weapons charges, and ultimately found not guilty. But that came only after he spent months in jail awaiting trial, lost his home, car, job and countless moments with his children. Illinois will become the first state to completely abolish cash bail on Sept. 18, making the state a testing ground for whether and how eliminating it works on a large scale. 

Shannon Ross poses for a portrait Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023, in Chicago. Ross, who describes himself as Indigenous and a person of color, was arrested in Chicago in October 2019 on weapons charges, and ultimately found not guilty. But that came only after he spent months in jail awaiting trial, lost his home, car, job and countless moments with his children. Illinois will become the first state to completely abolish cash bail on Sept. 18, making the state a testing ground for whether and how eliminating it works on a large scale. 

Nikuya Brooks stands in her dining room at home Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, in Chicago. Brooks’ bond was set at $150,000 after her first-time arrest on drug charges in 2017, according to the mother of three. No one in her family could pull together 10% of the bond for her to walk free. Illinois will become the first state to completely abolish cash bail on Sept. 18, making the state a testing ground for whether and how eliminating it works on a large scale. 

Nikuya Brooks stands on the porch at home with her 16-year-old daughter Gabrielle Jones, left, and their dog Snowball Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, in Chicago. Brooks’ bond was set at $150,000 after her first-time arrest on drug charges in 2017, according to the mother of three. No one in her family could pull together 10% of the bond for her to walk free. Illinois will become the first state to completely abolish cash bail on Sept. 18, making the state a testing ground for whether and how eliminating it works on a large scale. 

AP Photos Erin Hooley


BY CLAIRE SAVAGE AND COREY WILLIAMS
September 11, 2023


CHICAGO (AP) — It took four and a half months for Shannon Ross’ life to unravel.

Ross, who describes himself as Indigenous and a person of color, was arrested in Chicago in October 2019 on weapons charges and ultimately found not guilty. But that came only after he spent months in jail awaiting trial, lost his home, car, job and countless moments with his children.

Ross couldn’t afford the $75,000 bond set during a hearing that he recalls lasted only a few minutes.

“I had to lose everything to prove that I wasn’t guilty,” he told The Associated Press. “It messes with you mentally, psychologically. It messes up relationships; it messes up the time you put in to build your life up.”

But Illinois is about to overhaul the system that upended Ross’ life. Illinois’ Pretrial Fairness Act, which abolishes cash bail as a condition of pretrial release, will take effect Sept. 18, making Illinois the first state to end cash bail and a testing ground for whether — and how — it works on a large scale.

Judges can still keep people accused of serious crimes behind bars pretrial, but first would have to go through a more rigorous review of each case.

Critics say cash bail policies are especially unfair to Black people and other people of color. A 2022 federal civil rights report on cash bail systems found that courts tend to impose higher pretrial detention penalties on Black and Latino people, citing a study that showed Black men received bail amounts 35% higher than white men, and Latino men received bail amounts 19% higher than white men.

Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell Jr. described Illinois’ previous cash bail system as “a cousin to slavery.”

“The vast majority of people in the system are poor, and they’re Black and brown, and they have no power. It is an incredibly unfair system,” he said. “You go to a bond hearing, it sounds like a slave auction. People are talking very fast. They’re putting price tags on people’s freedom.”

Between 1970 and 2015, there was a fivefold increase in the number of people jailed before trials, according to the 2022 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report. Data shows more than 60% of defendants were detained prior to trial because they couldn’t afford to post bail, and that nearly 74% of the 631,000 people jailed daily in the United States are awaiting trial.

Typically in state courts, a judge decides if a defendant poses too much of a threat to the community to be released, or if they can be freed with conditions, according to the nonprofit Bail Project.

Some states have tried to ease cash bail rules.

In 2017, New Jersey essentially replaced its cash bail system with a risk assessment process that gauged the potential danger a released defendant could pose to the community. But cash bail is still allowed in some instances in that state and others that have curtailed the practice, such as New York and Alaska.

California has made several efforts to reform its cash bail system, but lawmakers balked at sweeping reform.

Proponents of cash bail argue that it ensures released defendants show up for court proceedings, and say that without it, violent criminals who are released pending trial could have the opportunity to commit more crimes. But New Jersey data showed that after the state moved away from cash bail, the number of defendants who were charged with a new crime or who failed to appear in court remained steady.

Illinois state Senate minority leader John Curran, a Republican representing suburbs southwest of Chicago, said he’s not opposed to changing the system but wants judges to retain more power than Illinois’ new law grants.

“I’ve always said that New Jersey has done this mostly right,” Curran said. “All felonies are put before a judge and a judge can consider if a person is a danger to the community or a willful flight risk or whether there is a history of intimidating witnesses, and they can detain on those standards and it gives judges full discretion.”

The loudest opposition to the change in Illinois has come from law enforcement. Jim Kaitschuk, executive director of the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association, said members’ focus is now on trying to “work through it the best we can.”

“I think we’ll be searching for a lot of people” because defendants who don’t post bond have no incentive to return to court, Kaitschuk said.

Although setting people free before trial will become the default in Illinois, there will still be cases that warrant detention, including for those accused of violent or sexual offenses or facing charges involving a gun, according to the public defender Mitchell.

In such cases, the judge must weigh several factors in deciding whether to keep someone jailed, including evidence, previous convictions, and whether that person is a flight risk.

“It won’t make the system perfect for everybody. But what it will do, we think, is puts us in a better position to make a more thoughtful decision,” Mitchell said.

Race certainly seemed to play a role when Nikuya Brooks’ bond was set at $150,000 after her first-time arrest on drug charges in 2017, according to the Chicago mother of three. No one in her family could pull together 10% of the bond for her to walk free. Brooks, who is Black, said a white woman she was jailed with had prior convictions and the same charges as Brooks, but received a lower bond.

According to Brooks, she didn’t know her ex was transporting ecstasy while she was in the car. Police stopped the vehicle and arrested both. She said she spent a year in DuPage County Jail before her trial, unable even to hug her children.

“I really wanted to fight my case because I’m not a criminal,” she said. “I’m not a drug dealer. I’m a mom. You know, I bake cookies for the PTA. I ran a Girl Scout troop.”

Brooks said other women in jail told her if she pleaded guilty, prison visits offered more freedom and that she might be able to hug or kiss her children. She told her public defender she wanted to make a deal, and ended up serving about two more years in prison.

Years later, she still struggles to find employment because of her criminal record.

“You’re already being punished because you’re being detained,” she said. “But you’re also being punished twice because you’re poor.”

Ross, who was cleared of the weapons charges that put him in jail, said he also struggles to find secure housing and income four years later. He lost his job as a forklift operator while jailed. Once he made bail with the help of the Chicago Community Bond Fund, Ross started a business online during pretrial house arrest. But he said his credit score tanked after he couldn’t make payments from jail.

“I feel like it was a Catch-22,” Ross said. “And the worst part about it is I knew I was not guilty.”

Reflecting on their experiences, Brooks and Ross said being locked up pretrial harmed their chances in court. “You’re automatically stigmatized if you’re incarcerated and you’re fighting your case, especially Black women,” Brooks said. They hope the new law will change that for others in Illinois.

“It’s more equal for everyone,” said Ross. “I feel like it’s more justice in the criminal justice system.”
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Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

California fast food and health care workers poised to win major salary increases


Fast food workers and their supporters march past the California state Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., on Aug. 16, 2022. Most fast food workers in California would get a $20 minimum wage under a new bill introduced in the state Legislature on Monday, Sept. 11, 2023. The bill represents an agreement between labor unions and the fast food industry.

 (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

BY ADAM BEAM
September 11, 2023


SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Nearly 1 million California workers are poised to win major salary increases after labor unions flexed their collective muscle in the state’s Democratic-led Legislature on Monday following a summer of high-profile strikes in the entertainment and hospitality industries.

Most of the state’s 500,000 fast food workers would be paid at least $20 per hour next year under a new bill aimed at ending a standoff between the industry and labor unions over wages and working conditions. About 455,000 health care workers — not doctors and nurses, but the people who do everything else at hospitals, dialysis clinics and other facilities — will see their salaries rise to at least $25 per hour over the next 10 years in a separate bill.

Both proposals must first pass the state Legislature and be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But the proposals have the blessing of both labor unions and industry groups, clearing the path for passage this week before lawmakers adjourn for the year.

An added bonus for voters: The November 2024 ballot will be a little less crowded. The fast food industry has agreed to withdraw its referendum on a fast food law that Newsom signed last year.

The bills, both introduced Monday, are just some of the impressive run of results for labor unions in the state Legislature this year. Also on Monday, the state Assembly voted to advance a proposal to give striking workers unemployment benefits — a policy change that could eventually benefit Hollywood actors and writers and Los Angeles-area hotel workers who have been on strike for much of this year.

“I think fast food cooks and cashiers have fundamentally changed the politics of wages in this country and have reshaped what working people believe is possible when they join together and take on corporate power and systemic racism,” said Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union.

California’s minimum wage is already among the highest in the country at $15.50 per hour. The fast food bill would increase that minimum wage to $20 per hour for workers at restaurants in California that have at least 60 locations nationwide — with an exception for restaurants that make and sell their own bread, like Panera Bread.

The bill will affect about 500,000 fast food workers in California, according to the Service Employees International Union, which has been working to unionize fast food workers in the state. They include Ingrid Vilorio, who works at a Jack In The Box in the San Francisco Bay Area. She said the raise will help her family, who until recently was sharing a house with two other families to afford rent.

“A lot of us (in the fast-food industry) have to have two jobs to make ends meet. This will give us some breathing space,” said Vilorio, who also works as a nanny.

The $20 hourly wage would be a starting point. The nine-member Fast Food Council, which would include representatives from the restaurant industry and labor, would have the power to increase that minimum wage each year by up to 3.5% or the change in the U.S. consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers, whichever is lower.

The wage increase for health care workers is more complicated. Their salaries will rise gradually over the next decade, depending on where they work. Workers for large health care facilities and dialysis clinics will see their pay jump to at least $23 per hour next year, increasing to $25 per hour by 2026. Workers at rural hospitals with lots of Medicaid patients would have their salaries increase to at least $18 per hour next year, with 3.5% increases each year until it reaches $25 per hour in 2033.

Workers at community clinics will see their salaries rise to at least $21 per hour in 2024 before peaking at $25 per hour in 2027. Salaries at all other covered health care facilities will increase to at least $21 per hour next year before reaching $25 per hour by 2028.

“Everyone in the healthcare sector understands that we have a workforce crisis, and that wages are the essential prerequisite for any solution,” said Tia Orr, executive director of the Service Employees International Union-California. “With this increase, more workers will join and stay in the healthcare workforce, and as a result Californians will be safer and better cared for.”

It’s unusual, but not unprecedented, for states to have minimum wages for specific industries. Minnesota lawmakers created a council to set wages for nursing home workers. In 2021, Colorado announced a $15 minimum wage for direct care workers in home and community-based services.

In California, most fast food workers are over 18 and the main providers for their family, according to Enrique Lopezlira, director of the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center’s Low Wage Work Program. Just over 75% of health care workers in California are women, and 76% are workers of color, according to a study published earlier this year by the UC Berkely Labor Center.

Hospitals support the bill in part because it “ensures that wages for health care workers are set by the state, creating greater equity for all of California’s health care workforce,” said Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association.

The fast food industry benefits by stopping two proposals they say would have made it much harder for restaurants to operate in California. Labor unions agreed to withdraw a bill that would have held big fast food corporations like McDonald’s liable for the misdeeds of their independent franchise operators in the state.

And Democrats in the state Legislature agreed to strip funding for the Industrial Welfare Commission, an agency that has the power to set wage and workplace standards for multiple industries.

“It provides meaningful wage increases for workers, while at the same time eliminates more significant — and potentially existential — threats, costs and regulatory burdens targeting local restaurants in California,” said Matt Haller, president and CEO of the International Franchise Association.
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Associated Press writer Olga R. Rodriguez contributed from San Francisco.

California lawmakers approve the nation’s most sweeping emissions disclosure rules for big business


 State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, speaks at a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., on Jan. 21, 2020. California lawmakers approved legislation Monday, Sept. 11, 2023, requiring major companies to disclose a sweeping range of greenhouse gas emissions. The bill, introduced by Wiener, would make companies making more than $1 billion annually report their direct and indirect emissions. 

(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)Read More

A man pushes a stroller near the AES power plant in Redondo Beach, Calif., on Sept. 7, 2022. California lawmakers approved legislation Monday, Sept. 11, 2023, requiring major companies to disclose a sweeping range of greenhouse gas emissions. 

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

BY SOPHIE AUSTIN
 September 11, 2023

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Major corporations from oil and gas companies to retail giants would have to disclose their direct greenhouse gas emissions as well as those that come from activities like employee business travel under legislation passed Monday by California lawmakers, the most sweeping mandate of its kind in the nation.

The legislation would require thousands of public and private businesses that operate in California and make more than $1 billion annually to report their direct and indirect emissions. The goal is to increase transparency and nudge companies to evaluate how they can cut their emissions.

“We are out of time on addressing the climate crisis,” Democratic Assemblymember Chris Ward said. “This will absolutely help us take a leap forward to be able to hold ourselves accountable.”

The legislation was one of the highest profile climate bills in California this year, racking support from major companies that include Patagonia and Apple, as well as Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations convention behind the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

The bill would still need final approval by the state Senate before it can reach Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Lawmakers backing the bill say a large number of companies in the state already disclose some of their own emissions. But the bill is a controversial proposal that many other businesses and groups in the state oppose and say will be too burdensome.

Newsom declined to share his position on the bill when asked last month. His administration’s Department of Finance opposed it in July, saying it would likely cost the state money that isn’t included in the latest budget. Newsom has advanced California’s role as a trendsetter on climate policies by transitioning the state away from gas-powered vehicles and expanding wind and solar power. By 2030, the state has set out to lower its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below what they were in 1990.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who introduced the disclosure bill, said in a statement that it would allow California to “once again lead the nation with this ambitious step to tackle the climate crisis and ensure corporate transparency.”

California has a lot of big companies that manufacture, export and sell everything from electronics to transportation equipment to food, and most every major company in the country does business in the state, which is home to about one in nine Americans. Newsom often boasts about the state’s status as one of the world’s largest economies.

The policy would require more than 5,300 companies to report their emissions, according to Ceres, a nonprofit policy group supporting the bill.

About 17 states, including California, have inventories requiring large polluters to disclose how much they emit, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. California’s climate disclosure bill would be different because of all the indirect emissions companies would have to report. Additionally, companies would have to report based on how much money they make, not how much they emit.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules that would make public companies disclose their emissions, up and down the supply chain. But the California bill would go beyond that, by mandating that both public and private companies report their direct and indirect emissions.

Companies would have to report indirect emissions including those released by transporting products and disposing waste. For example, a major retailer would have to report emissions from powering its own buildings, as well as those that come from delivering products from warehouses to stores.

Opponents of the bill say it is not feasible to accurately account for all of the mandated emissions from sources beyond what companies are directly responsible for.

“We’re dealing with information that’s either unreliable or unattainable,” said Brady Van Engelen, a policy advocate at the California Chamber of Commerce.

The chamber, which advocates for businesses across the state, is leading a coalition that includes the Western States Petroleum Association, the California Hospital Association and agricultural groups, in opposing the bill. They argue many companies don’t have enough resources or expertise to accurately report emissions and say the legislation could lead to higher prices for people buying their products.

Hundreds of companies in California already have to disclose their direct emissions through the state’s cap and trade program, said Danny Cullenward, a climate economist and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. The decade-old program, which allows large emitters to buy allowances from the state to pollute and trade them with other companies, is one of the largest in the world.

Cullenward said the disclosure bill could lead to similar proposals in other states as federal regulators, faced with possible lawsuits in the future over disclosure mandates, “are going to be under pressure to not overreach.”

Supporters of the disclosure bill acknowledge it’s not a “perfect” solution that would guarantee flawless emissions reports. But they say it’s a starting point. California Environmental Voters, which supports the bill, says the legislation would put pressure on companies to move faster in lowering their emissions.

“Our state can’t just take 2023 off in terms of climate action,” said Mary Creasman, the group’s chief executive officer.

The California Air Resources Board would have to approve regulations by 2025 to implement the bill’s requirements. Companies would have to begin publicly disclosing their direct emissions annually in 2026 and start annually reporting their indirect emissions starting in 2027. Companies would have to hire independent auditors to verify their reported emissions releases. The state would not penalize companies for unintentional mistakes they make in reporting a portion of their indirect emissions.

A similar proposal introduced last year passed the state Senate but failed in the Assembly. Wiener, the San Francisco Democrat who introduced the legislation both years, has said proponents of the bill built a stronger coalition this year to have a better outcome.

A key committee in the state Assembly blocked legislation earlier this year that would have sped up the state’s timeline for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Lawmakers are also weighing a bill that would require companies making more than $500 million annually to disclose how climate change could hurt them financially.
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Sophie Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin @sophieadanna