UK

Ex-firefighter explains just how hard it is to extinguish a lithium battery fire

Story by Jasper King • METRO UK

Neil Pedersen served as a firefighter for more than 30 years and retired in 2019 (Picture: Neil Pedersen)© Provided by Metro

An ex-firefighter has spoken out after an electric bus was engulfed in flames in south London this morning.

Neil Pedersen, 55, from Staffordshire, who served as a firefighter for Staffordshire Fire and Rescue for more than 30 years, warned there could be a ‘tsunami’ of electric vehicle fires in the future

The Met Police declared a critical incident after the blaze in Wimbledon, south London, at 7am this morning which TfL will investigate.

It is fires like these that prompted Neil to set up Fire Containers Ltd and the International Road Rescue and Trauma Consultancy (IRRTC) following his retirement in 2019.

Fire Containers Ltd assist emergency responders by designing and developing the world’s first patent Electric Vehicle Containment Unit (EVCU).

This has a built water supply which recirculates water for continual cooling against highly flammable lithium batteries.

His role is now about teaching the next generation of firefighters about the risks associated with electric vehicles and ways around dealing with these fires with the IRRTC.



Neil Pedersen explained why EV fires are so hard to put out for firefighters on the ground (Picture: Neil Pedersen)© Provided by Metro

A critical incident was declared by the Met Police following the blaze (Picture: Shutterstock)© Provided by Metro



The bus was eventually towed off after hours of delays for Londoners (Picture: Alamy Live News)© Provided by Metro
How are lithium battery fires put out?

Neil warned Metro: ‘There could be a tsunami of electric vehicle fires if action is not taken soon.

‘This is because they are basically chemical fires that spread from cell to cell and create a domino effect where water is useless against a blaze.

‘Firefighters have to use 10 to 15 times more water to tackle an EV fire over a petrol or diesel vehicle because of hazardous flammable toxic gasses it gives off from the lithium batteries.

Related video: Dramatic video shows e-bike lithium-ion battery catching fire and exploding, burning down store (FOX News)

‘Water is useless against these toxic gases and turns to steam.

‘What’s more, lithium batteries are on the bottom of electric vehicles and are hard for firefighters to tackle so this is where the EVCU comes in handy.’

But there is a problem because only Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service and West Midlands Fire and Rescue have adopted EVCUs according to Neil.

With 20 million electric vehicles expected on the UK’s roads by 2032, up from 1.2 million in 2023, this poses a problem for fire services up and down the country.

The sale of electric vehicles outstripped diesel and petrol car sales in 2023 which Neil says will equate to more fires on the UK’s roads.



The bus burst into flames on a busy street (Picture: Facebook)© Provided by Metro



The area was cordoned off with a 25m metre perimetre (Picture: Shutterstock)© Provided by Metro
What could have caused the electric London fire?

Addressing today’s fire in London, Neil said: ‘It’s most likely that today’s electric vehicle bus fire in London was caused by an electrical fault and may not be linked to the lithium batteries if the fire started at the back of the bus.

‘This is because lithium batteries on electric buses are on the top of the front of the bus rather than the back.


‘But as the sale of electric vehicles continues to increase, fires like these are only going to become more common.

‘On average it takes firefighters four hours to extinguish EV fires and this is because of their lithium batteries and on average costs £1million an hour each time traffic is held up because of a burning vehicle.’
Have electric bus fires happened before?

The Wimbledon bus fire is not the first time an EV fire has caused chaos in London after a Potters Bar bus depot fire in 2019.

And there are safety concerns about a new Edgware EV bus garage proposed in north London.

Neil added: ‘The problem is that millions of electric vehicles are due to be sold with lithium batteries.

‘The way to prevent this is investment in new technologies to replace these highly flammable batteries.

‘Right now toxic gases are highly dangerous to the health and safety of firefighters on the ground as well.

‘These fires are virtually impossible to stop and until then we face an increase and likelihood of more.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

Interest swelling in ocean carbon removal

Story by The Canadian Press • 

Brad Ack gets why people might be leery about using fledgling technologies to sink billions of tonnes of carbon pollution in the ocean to tackle the climate crisis.

However, record levels of global warming have put the planet and ocean in such peril that aggressive large-scale measures are essential, said Ack, chief executive officer for Ocean Visions, a nonprofit coalition advancing ocean-climate solutions.

“The oceans have very significant potential to assist and be part of the giant carbon removal challenge we have,” Ack said. “The ocean is already the largest cycler of carbon on the planet.”

Even the near elimination of emissions from burning fossil fuels by 2050 won’t be enough to cool the planet’s system and superheated oceans or fully alleviate the rise of wildfire, droughts or floods, Ack said.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made clear a range of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies is necessary to meet the international target to limit warming to 1.5 C.

Carbon removal, also known as negative emissions strategies, includes natural solutions like relying on forests, marshes or soil to trap and store carbon, or the deployment of emerging technology to pull carbon directly from the air or ocean, and then, storing it long term.

Related video: B.C. program aims to capture carbon and push it underwater (cbc.ca)

Estimates suggest between five and 16 billion tonnes of CO2, or 16 GtCO2 (gigatonnes), will need to be removed annually by 2050, depending on the rate of emissions reductions and whether we overshoot our climate targets.

It’s not a question of whether we do carbon removal, but rather where we do it, Ack stressed.

The ocean is already the planet’s greatest carbon sink, absorbing 30 per cent of human-caused emissions and 90 per cent of excess heat fuelled by greenhouse gases. Able to lock CO2 in the deep sea for hundreds and even thousands of years, oceans act as a reservoir for about 38 GtCO2 of this “blue carbon.”

The ocean sequesters CO2 in two ways: As microscopic marine creatures or plants absorb carbon, and when carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean.

Phytoplankton at the ocean’s surface draw carbon and release oxygen during photosynthesis. They can be eaten by other animals, or die and fall to the ocean floor where they get trapped in sediment.

Surface water also absorbs and dissolves carbon. The colder and less salty the water, the more dissolved carbon it can take up. Frigid water near the poles tends to absorb more CO2, and being denser, sinks to the sea floor, moving with deep ocean currents under pressure into marine basins for long periods of time.

There’s a rising swell of interest in marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) solutions aiming to scale up and speed the ocean’s natural biological or chemical processes to capture and store CO2, Ack said.

Amplifying natural blue carbon storage by conserving and restoring marine ecosystems like mangroves, eelgrass, or salt marshes with tandem benefits to biodiversity is widely supported in the scientific community and underway worldwide.

However, there’s a schism among researchers, some of whom are apprehensive about novel strategies that haven’t yet been tested on a large scale.

Proposals include massively boosting the production of seaweeds like kelp, which absorb carbon during photosynthesis, before sinking it into the deep sea or turning it into a climate-friendly seafood or bioplastic.

Others involve pumping surface water down to the deep ocean where increased pressure and solubility allow more carbon to be stored. Or alternatively, pushing cold, nutrient-rich water up from the deep to spur the growth of plankton that absorb carbon before sinking to deeper water when they die.

A related strategy is to fertilize the ocean with iron or nitrogen to trigger large plankton blooms.

Scrubbing carbon from the air or stripping it from ocean water before injecting it into the deep sea or seabed, or boosting the ocean’s alkalinity and ability to absorb carbon by loading it with minerals like basalt or carbonate are also being explored.

Critics suggest the focus on novel methods poses a distraction from urgent and drastic emissions cuts and nature-based solutions that are workable right now.

And a number of ocean scientists with the Deep Sea Ocean Stewardship Initiative are urging caution around using the deep sea as a potential dumping ground without a robust understanding of the impacts on ocean chemistry, food webs and marine life.

Professor Lisa Levin of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, led a team study on how manipulating the ocean to curb the climate crisis might threaten deep-sea ecosystems or its vital carbon cycle services.

Decaying seaweed on the seabed could deplete oxygen and pumping excessive carbon dioxide into the deep sea could suffocate marine life.

Seeding the ocean with substances to boost alkalinity or plankton could reduce light, cause harmful levels of cadmium or nickel, destructive algal blooms, or increase ocean acidity.

“The technologies are pretty much unproven,” she said. There’s concern that if people do think about the ocean, they're thinking about it the wrong way — as a waste disposal system,” she said.

There’s a need for more research and integrated policy to make sure mCDR costs don’t outweigh the benefits, she said.

Ack agreed, noting Ocean Visions has created a blueprint to accelerate science and actions needed to prove or disprove the viability of novel ocean carbon removal methods by 2030.

“We’re a consortium of science organizations trying to ask and answer the most critical questions about whether or not this can scale and we can do it safely, effectively, and how it compares with all of the other alternatives,” Ack said.

To date, the focus of carbon clean-up has centred on land-based natural solutions, which simply cannot meet the significant carbon removal that’s necessary, Ack said.

Two billion tonnes of CO2, or two gigatonnes (GtCO2), are being removed annually — the vast majority using conventional land-based methods like protecting or restoring forests or soil management, recent research indicates.

A mere one per cent of that total comes from emerging technologies like direct air capture (DAC) and storage.

Yet natural terrestrial carbon removal, even scaled up to five GtCO2 by 2050, won’t be enough on its own to reach net zero.

It’s estimated novel methods including ocean-based options need to provide half of the 10 GtCO2 removal needed by mid-century. Those strategies must increase to an estimated 15 GtCO2 by the end of the century.

There will undoubtedly be trade-offs to large-scale interventions, but the climate crisis is now immune to tentative interventions, he said.

It’s analogous to using chemotherapy, which has unpleasant symptoms, to treat a lethal cancer, he added.

Global warming is on track to be increasingly life-threatening, he stressed.

“We know it and see it in our real lives,” Ack said.

‘Now the question is, how many different forms of medical intervention are we willing to try to keep ourselves alive?”

Rochelle Baker / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer

Rochelle Baker, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Washington State plans to sue to block Kroger's deal for Albertsons - Bloomberg News

Story by Reuters • 

The Kroger supermarket chain's headquarters is shown in Cincinnati, Ohio, 

REUTERS/Lisa Baertlein/File Photo© Thomson Reuters

(Reuters) -The Washington State attorney general is planning to file a lawsuit to block supermarket chain Kroger's proposed $24.6-billion acquisition of smaller rival Albertsons, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing a person familiar with the plan.

The lawsuit could come as soon as Thursday afternoon and is expected to be filed in state court, the report said.

"Any decision to attempt to enjoin the transaction now would be premature," a Kroger spokesperson said, adding the company was engaged in "productive discussions" with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state Attorneys General.

"The only parties that would benefit if this deal is blocked would be Amazon, Walmart and other large, non-union retailers," an Albertsons spokesperson said.

The proposed merger has drawn the ire of U.S. lawmakers and an investigation by the FTC due to antitrust concerns, with worries piling up that the deal would lead to higher prices for consumers, store closures and loss of jobs.

Six U.S. lawmakers including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders had written to the FTC showing their opposition to the deal, Reuters last month reported. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in October his office may sue to stop the deal.

Related video: FTC delays decision on Kroger-Albertsons merger (FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth)  View on Watch

While Kroger has proposed to divest 413 stores to C&S Wholesale Grocers to get regulatory approval, lawmakers argued the sale would not address harm to consumers, workers, and the grocery industry.

Separately on Thursday, Axios reported the FTC was not likely to weigh in on the merger until February, citing a source close to the FTC's thinking.

The FTC and Kroger did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment on the Axios report.

The grocers had said they expect to complete the merger by early 2024 following the completion of FTC's review.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shweta Agarwal)

Murray Mandryk: Sask. Party government pushes teachers over line in the sand

Opinion by Murray Mandryk •

The Saskatchewan teachers' contract dispute drew 2,000 teachers to the steps of the legislature back in 1988.© Don Healy

There would seem to be a thin line between a government sincerely wanting to resolve the legitimate grievances of a group like Saskatchewan teachers and doing last-minute things to create the appearance of wanting to resolve issues.

Or perhaps that line was never all that thin.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2024/01/sask.html

On Thursday, we learned that teachers will stage a one-day strike Tuesday, unless the government returns to the bargaining table for what the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation deems serious negotiations about key issues.

If a strike does happen, it will be the first time Saskatchewan teachers have walked off the job since May 2011 — a three-day strike that (get this) is the only such job action teachers have taken in 50 years.

Contrary to my personal recollection from high school almost that long ago, it evidently takes a lot more to push teachers over the line than one recalls.

As such, one might assume recents conciliation gestures by the Saskatchewan Party government might have teachers toeing the mark a bit longer.

One recent announcement sees the government set aside $ 2.5 million for a teachers’ innovation fund that Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill says demonstrates the government “is listening to teachers” by finding “practical solutions to improve the classroom environment for teachers and students.”

Teachers can apply with support of their administrators for pilot project grants of as much as $75,000.

Prior to that, the government announced another $3.6-million pilot project to deal with violence in the classroom disrupting the ability of teachers to teach.

If this notions seem familiar, it likely should. These are things that teachers have either been working on through the STF’s meagre professional development resources — like its McDowell Fund — or that the government and teachers have been blue-skying about for years.

But they may be familiar to you because they are exactly what teachers have consistently claimed are central to this labour dispute.

These were issues long before the government decided to buy billboard space this summer in its at-taxpayers’-expense campaign that Saskatchewan teachers are the highest paid in Western Canada at $90,000 a year.

All this was prior to the government changing the channel in October with its so-called “parental rights” legislation, in which the bill debate seemed to imply teachers were keeping valuable personal information on children transitioning from parents. This may have been another factor that was less than helpful in these protracted negotiations.

On Thursday, Cockrill, in a prepared statement, expressed his disappointment that the STF “continues to work toward a strike while the Government Trustee Bargaining Committee remains at the bargaining table, ready to talk.”

And the education minister was as quick to note that the the Sask. Party government has provided record education funding “and two brand new pilot projects announced just this week.”

The two announcements this week were by no means a last-minute Hail Mary that could have been proposed months ago, or — worse — a calculated political move the government knew would come too late and would make teachers look like they were insincere in their ongoing demands for the government to seriously negotiate a fix to problems in the classrooms.

These are pilot projects the government just discovered and may bear fruit as early as June 2025.

One might still be inclined to suggest this is all about the money — specifically, the STF thinking it can do better than the seven per cent the government has offered.

And it would no doubt be naive to think money isn’t a more important element than the STF has suggested.

But if you are looking for patterns of consistency, it’s hard to dispute what STF president Samantha Becotte suggested Thursday, that “at every turn, teachers have said that committees are getting us nowhere on these urgent issues, and a new deal must include items to address class size and complexity.”

This has been — and continues to be — the teachers’ line in the sand.

Come Tuesday, it very much appears it will become a picket line.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

Related

Murray Mandryk: Unnecessary teachers' strike inching toward the inevitable

Columnists Opinion: More than wages at stake in Saskatchewan teachers dispute

The tribes wanted to promote their history. Removing William Penn's statue wasn't a priority

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The National Park Service's proposal to remove a William Penn statue from a historic site in Philadelphia –- quickly withdrawn amid a backlash — wasn't a priority for some of the Native Americans the agency was required to consult with as it prepared to renovate the deteriorating plaza.

Uprooting the statue of Pennsylvania's founder from Welcome Park also wasn't a major point of discussion as park service officials and tribal representatives met to plan the renovation over video last year, said Jeremy Johnson, director of cultural education for the Delaware Tribe of Indians.

Rather, what tribal representatives had envisioned for the plaza is an exhibit that would highlight the culture, history, traditions and perceptions of the Native Americans who had lived there for thousands of years before Penn arrived, Johnson said.

“We do still speak highly of William Penn,” Johnson said. But tribal representatives, he said, “were really just focusing on our culture and our history and that, in a way, he was an important part of it, but ... it was a small interaction compared to our overall history.”

A park service spokesperson hasn’t responded to repeated questions about the abandoned proposal.

Related video: William Penn statue will not be removed from Welcome Park (FOX 29 Philadelphia)

Announced quietly on Friday, the plan quickly and — perhaps unexpectedly — laid bare the sensitivities around the image of the colonial founder of Pennsylvania and threatened to become the latest front in a fight over how to tell the nation’s history through its monuments.

A top state Republican lawmaker, Bryan Cutler, said removing Penn's statue to "create a more inclusive environment takes (an) absurd and revisionist view of our state’s history.” Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro pressed the Biden administration to keep the statute in its “rightful home.”

The park service said it consulted with representatives of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, whose ancestors were displaced by the Pennsylvania colony. Such consultation with the federally recognized tribes is required under the National Historic Preservation Act.

But leaders of the Shawnee Tribe and the Eastern Shawnees, both now based in Oklahoma, like the Delawares, said they hadn’t had any discussions about it. Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe, said his tribe hadn’t received a customary “dear chief” letter from the agency — and he objects to removing the statue.

“William Penn was an ally of the Shawnee,” Barnes said. “As long as he lived, he kept his promise. As long as he was able to speak on behalf of the colony in western Pennsylvania, the Shawnees had a home there. ... Of all the terrible human beings that inflicted tragedy upon native peoples, I don’t put William Penn in that category.”

Historians say Penn’s willingness to negotiate with Indians for lands distinguished him from previous colonizers in the Chesapeake and New England where early colonial regimes were more willing to use armed force in bloody confrontations to expand their settlements.

But Penn's legacy has been mythologized, to some extent, and his mission still led to the dispossession of natives, historians say.

The statue of William Penn — a replica of the bronze one that sits atop City Hall some 15 blocks away — stands on top of a round marble base that reads “Welcome Park is dedicated to William Penn.”

The park is named for the ship that brought Penn to Philadelphia in 1682 and is built on the site of one of Penn’s homes, demolished in the 1800s.

Johnson said he had no strong feelings about removing the statue as part of the wider plan to transform the plaza.

That plan would replace a timeline of Penn's life and legacy on one wall — with such titles as “gentleman,” “Quaker,” “proprietor” and “friend of Indians” — with new panels featuring indigenous history. The plan also involved adding native plants and trees and circular benches to make it more welcoming, Johnson said.


The park service now says the statue will stay put, and it remains committed to rehabilitating the site after a ‘’robust public process to consider options.”

Penn arrived in present-day Philadelphia in 1682 after being granted the charter for a huge swath of land by King Charles II, land that the English had wrested from Dutch colonialists, historians say.

As a Quaker, Penn sought peaceful interactions with the Lenape people, said Jean Soderlund, a retired professor of history at Lehigh University.

But his goal as the “proprietor” of the colony was to obtain their land so that he could sell it to European immigrants, Soderlund said.

It was “conquest through treaty," said Michael Goode, an associate professor of history at Utah Valley University

Many Europeans and Americans saw William Penn as a symbol of enlightenment and religious tolerance, Goode said.

Tribes trusted Penn to avoid bloodshed and used it to their strategic advantage in treaty negotiations, historians say.

Well after Penn died in 1718, tribal leaders invoked his name in treaty negotiations with colonial governors as an honest broker whose legacy those governors were obligated to uphold by being accountable to the treaties they signed, historians say.

“This is partly rhetorical and strategic and all the rest,” said Andrew Murphy, a political science professor at the University of Michigan. “But he did have a kind of reputation as someone who was revered in a way, or at least what he represented came to be revered.”

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Follow Marc Levy at http://twitter.com/timelywriter.

Marc Levy, The Associated Press

INTERSECTIONALITY

New insights into how race impacts sexist attitudes in the United States

Story by PsyPost (CA)  •

(Photo credit: Adobe Stock)© PsyPost (CA)

A recent study has revealed a nuanced picture of how racism and sexism intersect in shaping attitudes towards Black and White women. Published in the journal Sex Roles, the study found that Black participants generally exhibited higher levels of both hostile and benevolent sexism compared to White participants. Interestingly, the race of the women being considered significantly influenced these attitudes.

The motivation for this study stemmed from a gap in the existing psychological literature, which has primarily focused on general attitudes of sexism, often overlooking how these attitudes might vary when directed towards women of different races. Building on the framework of ambivalent sexism theory, which suggests that sexism can manifest in both overtly negative (hostile) and seemingly positive but patronizing (benevolent) ways, the researchers aimed to explore how these attitudes differed based on the race of both the person holding the attitudes and the women they were directed towards.

“Ambivalent sexism refers to the complementary components of benevolent and hostile sexism,” explained study author Jessica T. Campbell, an assistant research scientist at the Center for Evaluation, Policy, & Research (CEPR) within Indiana University.

“Benevolent sexism views women as largely helpless but pure and moral; hostile sexism views women as controlling and power-hungry. Benevolent sexism is associated with subjectively positive evaluations of women who align with traditional gender roles, while hostile sexism punishes women to maintain male dominance. Both are problematic.”

“There is ample research on ambivalent sexism (e.g., benevolent and hostile sexism) that goes back decades, but there are substantial gaps in that literature,” Campbell said. “Sexism is cross-culturally impactful, so having a more nuanced understanding of how it manifests is essential.”

To investigate these complex dynamics, the researchers recruited a sample of 2,775 participants, including 1,084 White and 1,691 Black American volunteers, through the Project Implicit research website. Participants were randomly assigned to consider either Black women, White women, or women in general while responding to the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI). This tool measures both hostile sexism (e.g., Women seek to gain power by getting control over men) and benevolent sexism (e.g., Women should be cherished and protected by men).

The researchers found that Black participants reported higher levels of both hostile and benevolent sexism compared to their White counterparts. When it came to hostile sexism, both Black and White participants displayed higher levels when thinking about women of the other race, indicating a potential outgroup bias. For example, Black participants reported higher levels of hostile sexism towards White women, while White participants indicated higher levels towards Black women.

Benevolent sexism showed a different pattern. Participants, irrespective of their race, reported higher levels of benevolent sexism towards Black women compared to White women or women in general. This trend suggests a form of Eurocentric bias, where benevolent sexism might cater more to the traditional stereotypes surrounding White women.

Interestingly, the study did not find a significant interaction between the race of the perceiver and the race of the target woman in the case of benevolent sexism, a contrast to the findings for hostile sexism. This could indicate different underlying dynamics driving the two forms of sexism.

“In the current, high-powered study, Black women were the recipients of higher levels of benevolent sexism from all perceivers (participants making sexist judgments), and higher levels of hostile sexism from White perceivers,” Campbell told PsyPost.

“Additionally, Black participants reported higher levels of benevolent and hostile sexism overall compared to White people. Additional support should be directed toward Black women to help mitigate the impact of ambivalent sexism in the workplace, in personal relationships, and in social justice movements (e.g., by centering Black women’s voices, experiences, and needs).”

The study, while insightful, is not without limitations. Its reliance on self-reported data and its focus on U.S. American participants mean that the findings may not be universally applicable across different cultural contexts or to other racial or ethnic groups. The researchers suggest that future studies could explore sexist attitudes towards women from other racial and ethnic identities and in different cultural contexts.

“We cannot generalize these findings to other races or ethnicities, nor can we generalize them to spaces beyond the USA.”

The study, “The Influence of Perceiver and Target Race in Hostile and Benevolent Sexist Attitudes“, was authored by Jessica T. Campbell, Sa‑kiera Tiarra Jolynn Hudson, and Kate A. Ratliff.

Trump Told E.U. Officials 'We Will Never Come to Help You' If Attacked, Commissioner Alleges

Story by David Wetzel •Knewz.com


Former United States President Donald Trump told European officials he would turn his back on Europe if it was attacked, a high-ranking E.U. official said.

Thierry Breton, a French commissioner who handles the E.U.'s internal market, said Trump made the comments to European Union President Ursula von der Leyen during the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Knewz.com has learned.

According to NBC News, Breton, who attended the meeting, shared Trump's alleged comments at a panel discussion in Brussels on Tuesday, January 9.

“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and to support you,” Breton quoted Trump as saying.

“By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO,” Trump also said, according to Breton.



Thierry Breton, the European Union's commissioner for internal market, made the allegations against former President Donald Trump. By: MEGA© Knewz (CA)

“And by the way, you owe me $400 billion, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defense,” Breton quoted Trump as saying.

While Trump was in office, he challenged other countries in NATO, saying that the United States should not have to shoulder so much of the funding. He often said that NATO countries needed to pay their fair share in order to have protection from the United States.

When NBC News asked for von der Leyen's recollection of the Trump allegations, a spokesperson for the European Union essentially declined to comment.



Former President Donald Trump allegedly made the comments to European Union President Ursula von der Leyen. By: MEGA© Knewz (CA)

“Out of principle the President NEVER discloses what her interlocutors have told her during closed door meetings. So, we are not going to comment either way,” the spokesperson said in an email.

On Wednesday night, Trump joined Fox News for a town hall discussion. The former president, who has a large lead in the Republican primary, appeared calm.

Trump, who often is highly critical of media, appeared to be pleased with the way the town hall went.


Former United States President Donald Trump enters the courtroom in his civil fraud trial at State Supreme Court on Thursday, January 11, 2023, in New York City. By: MEGA© Knewz (CA)

"The Town Hall last night received wonderful reviews. Thank you to Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum for doing a really professional job," the former president wrote on Truth Social.

Meanwhile, GOP presidential hopefuls Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis traded vicious jabs in the final Republican debate before the Iowa Caucuses.

Last week, President Joe Biden gave a speech in connection to the January 6 insurrection that essentially served as the official launch of his campaign to get re-elected in November. He was highly critical of his likely 2024 opponent.



The European Union has 27 members. By: Unsplash/Guillaume Perigees© Knewz (CA)

According to NBC News, a spokesman for Biden's campaign condemned Trump, an America-first boaster, regarding the European Union report.

“The idea that he would abandon our allies if he doesn’t get his way underscores what we already know to be true about Donald Trump: The only person he cares about is himself," the spokesman said.

According to some of the most recent polling, there is not much separation between Trump and Biden.

Polls by YouGov and Ipsos both had the candidates even, according to projectsfivethirtyeight.com. However, a poll by Morning Consult from January 7 had Biden leading by one point.

An earlier poll by TIPP Insights had Trump leading by three points.

Donald Trump claims credit for ‘miracle’ of overturning right to abortion

Story by David Smith in Washington • THE GUARDIAN
Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP© Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP

Donald Trump, the former US president, boasted about the “miracle” of ending the constitutional right to abortion but warned that Republicans who tout extreme bans are being “decimated” in elections.

Trump was put on the spot on Wednesday during a Fox News town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, his latest attempt at counter-programming a Republican debate that was being shown on CNN at the same time.

A female voter, undecided between Trump and rival Ron DeSantis, raised concerns over the Republican frontrunner’s recent attempts to back away from abortion restrictions unpopular in elections and opinion polls.

She said: “I’ve been vocal in celebrating with you all of your pro-life victories from the past but then in this campaign you’ve also blamed pro-lifers for some of the GOP losses around the country and you’ve called heartbeat laws like Iowa’s terrible.”

The voter added: “I’d just like some clarity on this because it’s such an important question to me. I’d like for you to reassure me that you can protect all life, every person’s right to life without compromise.”

Trump, sitting with co-hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, sought to shore up his conservative credentials by taking credit for the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, the ruling that guaranteed the right to abortion nationwide, by a supreme court with three Trump-appointed justices.



WIONWill Trump make legal battles a part pf political campaign?
3:21

ReutersHow abortion could impact the 2024 U.S. elections
3:28

Scripps NewsThese 13 states are likely to vote on abortion laws in 2024
2:24


“You wouldn’t be asking that question, even talking about the issue, because for 54 years they were trying to get Roe v Wade terminated and I did it and I’m proud to have done it,” he said. “Nobody else was going to get that done but me and we did it and we did something that was a miracle.”

But as he has in recent campaign rallies, Trump also struck a note of caution. “Now I happen to be for the exceptions, like Ronald Reagan, with the life of the mother, rape, incest. I just have to be there, I feel. I think probably 78% or so, a poll, about 78%. It was Ronald Reagan. He was for it. I was for it.

“But I will say this: you have to win elections. Otherwise you’re going to be back where you were, and you can’t let that ever happen again. You’ve got to win elections.”

Trump suggested that Florida governor DeSantis’s decision to sign a six-week abortion ban could be one of the reasons for his drop in the polls ahead of Monday’s first presidential nomination contest in Iowa.

“A lot of people say, if you talk five or six weeks, a lot of women don’t know if they’re pregnant in five or six weeks,” he said. “I want to get something where people are happy. You know, this has been tearing our country apart for 50 years. Nobody’s been able to do anything.”

Trump went on to claim that Democrats were “the radicals” and repeated his false claim that they are willing to kill babies in the eighth or ninth month or pregnancy or even after birth.

The exchange illustrated how Trump, who has a long history of veering between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” positions, is attempting to walk a fine line between his conservative base and electoral expediency.

But his embrace of the demise of Roe v Wade handed Democrats more ammunition. Joe Biden’s X account released a video clip of Trump’s answer, commenting: “Just like he said: he did it.”

The 77-year-old also used the town hall to claim that he was “not going to be a dictator” and promise “the largest deportation effort in the history of our country”. He also revealed that he had decided the identity of his running mate.

Asked who he would pick as potential vice-president, Trump replied: “Well, I can’t tell you that, really. I mean, I know who it’s going to be but –”

Baier entreated: “Give us a hint.”

But Trump offered only: “We’ll do another show some time.”

Trump Says We Should Have Negotiated Around the Civil War. Here’s What Would Have Happened.

Composite image. Donald Trump’s official portrait and Abe Lincoln, photo by Alexander Gardner.© provided by RawStory

Former President Donald Trump raised hackles from historians recently when he insisted that he could have negotiated a solution that would have prevented the American Civil War.

This led historian Joshua Zeitz to conduct a thought experiment: What if Trump or someone like him had been president instead of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War?

In an essay in Politico, Zeitz posited that "in all likelihood, chattel slavery in North America would have persisted, even grown, well into the 20th century" had Trump been president in the 1860s.

According to Zeitz, the notion that slavery would have died out on its own was likely wishful thinking given how much Southern states were dedicated to expanding it out into new territories.

READ MORE: Listen: Trump’s top Senate allies try – and fail – to defend his immunity claim

Additionally, Zeitz points out, Lincoln did try to negotiate a more gradual end to slavery, only to be slapped away by Southern plantation owners.

"The only plausible program for gradual abolition was compensated emancipation, a scheme by which the government would pay slaveowners to emancipate their enslaved workers," he argues. "White Southerners bitterly resisted that option."

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On top of all that, writes Zeitz, the aftermath of the American Civil War resulted in policies that led to industrialization that turned America into an economic powerhouse.

"The world Donald Trump envisioned is both easy and awful to imagine: a world in which Lincoln and his cabinet agreed to the Crittenden compromise, slavery persisted into the 20th century — ending, perhaps, in violent revolution, or under global pressure — and the nation’s economic and political trajectory took a markedly different course," he contends. "The U.S. would have remained an economic powerhouse, most likely, but much of the nation’s industrial development and urbanization would have been delayed by decades."

Read the whole essay here.

U$A

DEI efforts are under siege. Here’s what experts say is at stake

Story by By Nicquel Terry Ellis and Catherine Thorbecke, CNN  • 

When the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police set off a wave of racial unrest across the country in 2020, corporate America responded swiftly with renewed and public commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

Major companies created new DEI positions or expanded teams dedicated to DEI and the phrase became a buzzword across the business landscape. Many corporate leaders pledged to hire more people of color, removed branding perceived to be racist and invested in historically Black colleges

At the time, the efforts were largely met with public support, amid a so-called “racial reckoning” that laid bare a slew of systemic inequities in American society, including the workplace.

But nearly four years later, the very public ousting of Harvard’s first Black woman president earlier this week has led to a new firestorm of debate about DEI efforts in corporate America and beyond.

While Claudine Gay’s resignation from Harvard was linked to a plagiarism scandal and ongoing controversy over a congressional hearing on antisemitism last month, her departure inspired some critics to take aim at what they perceive as a broader failing of DEI efforts.

Among the most vocal of these critics pushing back against DEI is billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who in the wake of Gay’s departure posted a 4,000-word opus on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that blasted DEI as “inherently a racist and illegal movement in its implementation even if it purports to work on behalf of the so-called oppressed.”

Ackman’s lengthy thesis was later retweeted by billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who now owns the social media platform.

“DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it,” Musk wrote in his post sharing Ackman’s screed on Wednesday. In a follow-up post, the world’s wealthiest person doubled down, adding, “DEI, because it discriminates on the basis of race, gender and many other factors, is not merely immoral, it is also illegal.”

As some of the most powerful business leaders in America level some of the loudest attacks yet against DEI, experts in the field insist that the term is widely misunderstood and unfairly weaponized by critics. They tell CNN DEI was created to build workplaces that more broadly reflect all of America and to foster safer, more inclusive work environments for people of all races, genders, sexual orientations and religious identities.

And they argue that the people fighting these efforts now risk alienating both employees and customers.

When DEI disappears

DEI initiatives in corporate America have long faced skepticism from both sides of the political aisle – with some voices on the left blasting these efforts as corporate window dressing that focuses more on publicity than enacting real change for people of color in the workplace.

Others on the right, meanwhile, have taken aim at these efforts, which they say unfairly disadvantage White workers.

Daniel Oppong, founder of The Courage Collective, a consultancy that advises companies on DEI, said the backlash toward DEI is unsurprising because other efforts to advance social justice in the US have historically been met with resistance.

What’s getting lost in the conversation, Oppong said, is the reason DEI was introduced to corporate America in the first place – because marginalized communities did not always have equal opportunities for jobs or feel a sense of belonging in corporate settings.

“That is the genesis of why some of these programs exist,” he said. “It was an attempt to try to create workplaces where more or all people can thrive.”

Shaun Harper, a USC professor and founder and executive director of the USC Race and Equity Center, said there are many misconceptions about DEI. It wasn’t, as some critics have claimed, created to exclude White people or White men from the workforce, he said.

Harper said many companies with DEI offices offer training that teaches employees how to unlearn stereotypes against certain groups, respect each other’s differences, and hire people of color without overlooking them because of personal bias.

“It’s not all divisive,” he said. “People can learn the skills that are needed to deliver on diversity and inclusion values.”

A pendulum swing

After a DEI hiring spree that began in late 2020, data suggests some businesses are now in fact reversing course on their efforts.

The most recent data on hiring from the job site Indeed shared with CNN Friday illustrates a pendulum swing in postings for DEI-related roles on the site.

After a more than 29% uptick in job postings with DEI in the title or description between November 2020 and November 2021, the data shows a more than 23% decline in the amount of job postings with “DEI” in the title or description between November 2022 and November 2023.

Corporate leaders who dismantle DEI programs risk creating a hostile work environment, Harper said.

“Leaders who are pulling the plug on DEI are doing so without understanding the long-term exposure to harm,” he said. “Doing away with DEI makes companies more – not less – susceptible to lawsuits, to costly levels of turnover among employees, reputational harm not only among employees but also among customers and clients and prospective partners who will refuse to work with a place because it’s such a mess.”

Separate data from the Pew Research Center published last May indicates deep divides in Americans’ attitudes towards DEI at work based on demographic and political lines.

While the Pew data finds that a majority of employed American adults (56%) say focusing on increasing DEI at work is a good thing, it also notes that a relatively small share of workers place a lot of importance on diversity at their workplace. Only about three in 10 respondents say it is extremely or very important to them to work somewhere with a mix of employees of different races and ethnicities or ages, according to Pew.

Moreover, the survey found 78% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning workers say focusing on DEI at work is a good thing, compared with just 30% of Republican and Republican-leaning workers.

The data also shows American workers have disparate views on how much attention their employers are paying to DEI. About half of the workers (54%) surveyed by Pew said their company or organization pays the right amount of attention to increasing DEI, while 14% say their employer pays too much attention and 15% say their employees pay too little attention.

The political and cultural divide was also reflected in the responses to posts from Ackman and Musk. Mark Cuban, billionaire businessman and minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, pushed back on Musk’s posts in a thread defending DEI as good for businesses and their workers.

“The loss of DEI-Phobic companies is my gain,” Cuban wrote. “Having a workforce that is diverse and representative of your stakeholders is good for business.”

Cuban is far from alone. Hundreds of C-suite executives in the United States said their organizations remained committed or increased diversity, equity and inclusion efforts since 2022, according to a survey published this month by the employment law firm Littler.

More than half of the executives who answered the survey agreed that backlash toward corporate DEI efforts has increased since the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in June, but 69% said it has not caused their organization to change its approach to DEI efforts.

Still, Harper said the recent backlash against DEI, along with the exodus of people in DEI roles at major companies in the last two years, demonstrates that many diversity commitments in 2020 were short-lived.

“Many companies jumped on the bandwagon at the moment because it was fashionable and en vogue to do so,” Harper said.

Oppong said he feels companies are experiencing “diversity fatigue” because their 2020 initiatives were not sustainable.

“Part of the challenge is that a lot of folks in chief DEI office roles, they were not set up for success in the first place,” he said, adding that colleagues in the field have told him they’ve had to fight for funding for their teams.

“That just shows the surface level investment in the work.”

Still, Oppong said, as the US becomes more diverse, so are the consumers for many major companies.

“The consequence is you’re not going to effectively serve the shifting demographics of the (country) and it reduces your customer base,” he said.

CNN’s Nicole Chavez contributed to this report.

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Thousands protest in Slovakia against a government plan to amend the penal code

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — Thousands of people took to the streets of major cities in Slovakia on Thursday to renew their protests against plans by the new government of populist Prime Minister Robert Fico to amend the country’s penal code.

The changes proposed by the three-party coalition government include abolishing the special prosecutors’ office, which handles serious crimes such as graft, organized crime and extremism.

Those cases would be taken over by prosecutors in regional offices, which haven’t dealt with such crimes for 20 years.

About 20,000 protesters condemned the plan at a central square in Bratislava, according to police cited by local media.

Michal Šimečka, head of the liberal Progressive Slovakia, the strongest opposition party, was one of them.

"You're making the same mistake as any other unsuccessful dictator," Šimečka said in a message to Fico.

“You underestimate the desire of people for freedom and justice,” Šimečka said.

“Mafia, mafia,” and “We've had enough of Fico," the crowd repeatedly chanted.

The legislation approved by Fico’s government needs parliamentary and presidential approval. The three-party coalition has a majority to override an expected veto by President Zuzuana Čaputová.

Čaputová said she was also willing to use a constitutional challenge to the legislation. It’s unclear how the Constitutional Court might rule.

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Fico returned to power for the fourth time after his scandal-tainted leftist party won Slovakia’s Sept. 30 parliamentary election on a pro-Russia and anti-American platform.

His critics worry that his return could lead Slovakia to abandon its pro-Western course and instead follow the direction of Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Since Fico’s government came to power, some elite investigators and police officials who deal with top corruption cases have been dismissed or furloughed. The planned changes in the legal system also include a reduction in punishments for corruption.

Under the previous government, which came to power in 2020 after campaigning on an anti-corruption ticket, dozens of senior officials, police officers, judges, prosecutors, politicians and businesspeople linked to Fico’s party have been charged and convicted of corruption and other crimes.

From the first relatively small protest of several hundred on Dec. 7 in Bratislava, the anti-government rallies have spread to 19 towns and cities.

The Associated Press