BREAKING NEWS

US climate envoy Kerry stepping down to help Biden campaign, say reports


Democratic presidential candidate former US Vice president Joe Biden (left) campaigns with former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on December 6, 2019 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. US climate envoy John Kerry, a key player in the Biden administration’s push to tackle climate change, will step down to work on the president’s reelection bid, media reported. — AFP pic

Sunday, 14 Jan 2024 

WASHINGTON, Jan 14 — US climate envoy John Kerry, a key player in the Biden administration’s push to tackle climate change, will step down to work on the president’s reelection bid, media reported yesterday.

The former secretary of state and senator has spent the last three years liaising with other countries to up commitments on climate change, including at the most recent COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai.


Kerry, 80, intends to help Joe Biden’s campaign by publicising the president’s work in combatting global warming, according to multiple US media outlets citing officials familiar with the situation.

Kerry informed Biden of his intentions to leave on Wednesday, and his staff learned of the decision on Saturday, those officials said.
ADVERTISEMENT


Apart from leading the US delegation at three UN climate summits, Kerry worked effectively with China despite complicated diplomatic relations. Together, the countries are the world’s two largest polluters, accounting for 41 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.


In a rare display of unity, the United States and China helped carry the COP28 December climate summit in Dubai, where negotiators sealed a historic although watered-down agreement to begin to transition away from oil, gas and coal.

Kerry had welcomed his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua a month earlier in California, where the two countries agreed on outlines of climate action that partly served as a basis for the nearly 200-nation Dubai deal.

News of Kerry’s stepping down comes one day after Xie retired on health grounds.

One of Biden’s first moves in office after his inauguration on January 20, 2021 was to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, which former president Donald Trump had exited.

Under the 2015 UN deal countries committed to limiting the Earth’s warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and preferably to the safer 1.5C threshold.

That said, the year of 2023 was the hottest on record, with the increase in Earth’s surface temperature nearly crossing the critical 1.5C threshold, according to EU climate monitors.

Kerry, himself a onetime Democratic presidential nominee, will step down sometime in the coming months, according to Axios, which first reported the news.

The White House and Kerry’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP.

US climate envoy John Kerry to leave Biden administration

By REUTERS

JANUARY 13, 2024 

US climate envoy John Kerry will leave the administration later this winter, and plans to help President Joe Biden's election campaign, Axios reported on Saturday.

Kerry, a US former secretary of state, informed his staff earlier on Saturday after speaking with Biden earlier this week, a spokesman for Kerry told Reuters.

Axios first reported on Saturday that Kerry, 80, will leave the administration later this winter, and plans to help Biden's campaign.

Kerry was instrumental is helping to broker the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, as well as the UAE Consensus that calls for the transition away from fossil fuels reached in December at COP28 in Dubai.

US climate envoy John Kerry to leave Biden administration

SAT, 13 JAN, 2024 - 21:41

SEUNG MIN KIM, AP

John Kerry, the US special envoy on climate, is stepping down from the Biden administration in the coming weeks, sources said.

Mr Kerry, a long-serving senator and secretary of state, was brought in shortly after Joe Biden’s election win in 2020 to take on the new role created specifically to fight climate change on behalf of the administration on the global stage.

Mr Kerry’s departure plans were first reported on Saturday by Axios.

He was one of the leading drafters of the 2015 Paris climate accords and came into the role with significant experience abroad, as secretary of state during the Obama administration and from nearly three decades as a member of the US senate foreign relations committee.

Mr Biden’s decision to seek Mr Kerry for the post was seen as a signal the incoming American leader would make good on his campaign pledge to battle climate change in a more forceful and visible manner than in previous administrations.

“The climate crisis is a universal threat to humankind and we all have a responsibility to deal with it as rapidly as we can,” Mr Kerry said in a visit to Beijing last summer, when he met Chinese vice president Han Zheng on climate matters.

Trump falsely claims ‘no terrorist attacks’ and ‘no wars’ during his presidency

The Fact Checker
January 13, 2024 

“We had no terrorist attacks at all during my four years.”

— Former president Donald Trump, during a Fox News town hall, Jan. 10

“I had no wars. I’m the only president in 72 years, I didn’t have any wars.”

— Trump, also during the town hall

Trump’s town hall featured many of the same false claims he makes on a daily basis, but there were two new ones that are worth of fact-checking. We suspect that, if he becomes the Republican presidential nominee, he will feature these falsehoods on a regular basis. They slip nicely into his narrative that President Biden has unleashed chaos around the globe.

No terrorist attacks

Trump made this comment in the context of touting the travel ban he imposed, after several court challenges and rewrites, on Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. (Chad was on the list but was removed in 2018 after the White House said the country had improved security measures.)

“They call it the Trump travel ban,” he told the Fox audience. “They tried to make a big deal. The Supreme Court very intelligently approved it. Without that, we would’ve had blowups.”

The travel ban essentially halted the issuance of immigrant visas to the affected countries and restricted certain types of nonimmigrant visas, such as for tourism and business, though the protocol varied from country to country.

But Trump is wrong when he claims there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency. Laying aside domestic terrorism by right- or left-wing groups, the authoritative Global Terrorism Database maintained by the University of Maryland shows two major incidents tied to Islamist militants that resulted in fatalities.

• Dec. 6, 2019: “A member of the Saudi Air Force, identified as Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, opened fire on a classroom in the Naval Air Base in Pensacola, Florida, United States. Four people, including the assailant, were killed and eight others were injured in the attack. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed responsibility for the incident. Alshamrani posted criticism of U.S. wars and quoted Osama bin Laden on social media hours before the attack.”
• Dec. 17, 2017: “An assailant driving a Home Depot rental truck entered a bike path in an attempt to run over civilians on the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. Following the initial attack, the assailant exited the vehicle and was shot by a police officer after displaying imitation firearms. At least eight people, including two citizens from the United States, five Argentinian tourists, and one Belgian tourist, were killed and 13 other people, including the assailant, were injured in the attack. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed that the assailant, identified as Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, was ‘one of the caliphate soldiers;’ however, sources doubted the veracity of this claim. Authorities also recovered a note from the vehicle in which Saipov pledged allegiance to ISIL.”

Both of these incidents garnered enormous attention, and Trump himself commented on the cases at the time. He even called the Saipov case a “terrorist attack” in his 2018 State of the Union address.

“In recent weeks, two terrorist attacks in New York were made possible by the visa lottery and chain migration,” Trump said. “In the age of terrorism, these programs present risks we can no longer afford.”

The other case listed in the database that Trump referenced in his address (the 2019 incident had not yet happened) was this one, though it did not result in fatalities:

• Dec. 11, 2017: “A suicide bomber detonated explosives [a pipe bomb] at Port Authority Bus Terminal between Seventh and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. In addition to the assailant, three civilians were injured in the blast. Akayed Ullah, a jihadi-inspired extremist, claimed responsibility for the incident and stated ‘They’ve been bombing in my country and I wanted to do damage here,’ and ‘I did it for the Islamic State.’ In April 2021, Ullah was sentenced to life plus 30 years.”

Ullah, who came to the United States from Bangladesh in 2011, had obtained a green card as the child of a sibling of a U.S. citizen. Saipov, from Uzbekistan, arrived in the United States in 2010 through the diversity visa lottery.

The database also lists four other incidents attributed to jihadi-inspired extremists, though no one was killed except, in two cases, the assailant.

A Trump spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

No wars

Trump said he was the first president in 72 years not to have any wars, which takes us back to 1948, when Harry S. Truman was elected in his own right after stepping up to finish Franklin D. Roosevelt’s final term months before the end of World War II. This is a more broad-based claim than a statement Trump made in his farewell address as president — that he had started no new wars.

The spokesman did not respond to a question seeking clarification, but neither claim is true.

Jimmy Carter, president from 1977 to 1981, not only never formally declared war or sought authorization to use force from Congress during his presidency, but military records show not a single soldier died in hostile action during his presidency. Eight military personnel died during the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue mission, but the military deems those as non-hostile deaths. (A helicopter collided with an aircraft.) A marine and an army soldier were also killed when a mob burned the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

At least 65 active duty troops died in hostile action in Trump’s presidency, the records show, as he ramped up commitments in Iraq and Syria to fight the ISIS terrorist group while also launching airstrikes on Syria as punishment for a chemical weapons attack. (During the town hall, Trump bragged, “We beat ISIS, knocked them out.”) Trump also escalated hostilities with Iran, including the killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. Trump said at the time the strike was carried out in accordance with the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution of 2001.

Trump might argue that he inherited those conflicts, but it is debatable whether one should count Barack Obama’s intervention in Syria as a “new war” or an extension of the conflict in Iraq started under George W. Bush. (The ISIS terror group emerged in the aftermath of that war.) Obama did not deploy any U.S. troops to Libya when NATO began a campaign in Libya aimed at saving civilians in Benghazi threatened by Libyan government forces. Still, 1,436 troops died in hostile action in Obama’s first term as wars continued in Iraq and Afghanistan; 161 troops died in hostile action during his second term.

Only 58 troops died in hostile action during Ronald Reagan’s two terms, including 17 as a result of the brief 1983 invasion of Grenada. But 241 people were killed when suicide bombers struck U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

Bill Clinton established a no-fly zone in Bosnia, deployed troops to restore the president of Haiti and bombed targets in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. But only one death from hostile action is recorded by the military during his eight-year presidency. Eighteen troops died in Somalia supporting a United Nations peacekeeping mission (the Black Hawk Down incident); his predecessor, George H.W. Bush, had sent the troops for humanitarian reasons.

The Pinocchio Test

Trump often has a poor memory and a tenuous grasp on history, as these examples yet again show. There were jihadi-inspired terrorist attacks in the United States during his presidency, as he himself noted at the time. It’s also false to claim that he’s the first president since 1948 not to have had any wars on his watch. Jimmy Carter earns that honor.

Four Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Send us facts to check by filling out this form

Sign up for The Fact Checker weekly newsletter

 

Mickey Mouse & Elon Musk Boost Libraries in Viral Week

Posted on January 11, 2024 by Chris Freeland

Last week, Mickey Mouse and Elon Musk helped raise the visibility of library preservation and the Internet Archive’s mission across social media in an unexpected convergence of the public domain, popular culture and the publishers’ lawsuit against our library.

It started less than an hour into the new year. At 12:36am, we posted a 45 second clip from Steamboat Willie to X (formerly Twitter) with the iconic introduction of Mickey Mouse. By the next morning, the video had reached hundreds of thousands of views; by the end of the day, views had climbed into the millions. To date, the clip (above) has been viewed 10.2 million times.

As a result of that interest, people began looking at our profile and older posts. One key user posted a message of support about our blog post highlighting the amicus briefs filed in support of our appeal in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the lawsuit against our library.

That post, and presumably coupled with the visibility from the viral Mickey Mouse tweet, started a groundswell of support for the Internet Archive, with thousands of users sharing their thoughts on the importance of our mission. 

In that chatter, a meme started forming: “Protect the Internet Archive – pass it on”

So many people were sharing this sentiment that “Protect the Internet Archive” started trending.

And then Elon Musk weighed in with “Support the Internet Archive!”:  

With Musk’s enormous following on X, activity across our profile and posts skyrocketed, including our reply, but none more so than the post he shared about our appeal. To date, the post has been viewed more than 20 million times. 

But it didn’t stop there. Because of the overwhelming level of support & visibility, we were getting dozens of messages from supporters asking how they can help our cause. In addition to telling our new followers about our mission, we also invited people to tell the publishers to stop suing libraries and sell us ebooks we can own and preserve.

And they did. Hundreds of users shared a message to the publishers with the hashtag #SellDontSue.

And then, like all viral moments, the attention faded. As of today (January 11, 2024), activity around our feed has returned to normal levels.

DESANTISLAND KILLER CHOO CHOO

NTSB Investigating 2 Brightline High Speed Train Crashes That Killed 3 People in Florida This Week

The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate two crashes involving Florida’s Brightline train that killed three people at the same railroad crossing on the high speed train’s route between Miami and Orlando

The three deaths in Melbourne this week mark at least 108 since it began operations in July 2017. 

By Associated Press
Jan. 13, 2024

A Brightline train approaches the Fort Lauderdale station on Sept. 8, 2023, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024 it will investigate two crashes involving Florida's Brightline train that killed three people at the same railroad crossing on the high speed train's route between Miami and Orlando.

(AP Photo/Marta Lavandier, file)

FORT LAUDERDALE Fla. (AP) — The National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday it will investigate two crashes involving Florida’s Brightline train that killed three people at the same railroad crossing on the high speed train’s route between Miami and Orlando.

The crashes happened Wednesday and Friday at a crossing along the U.S. 1 corridor in Melbourne, on Florida’s Atlantic coast, where the high speed train passes through on its daily routes to and from South Florida. Since Brightline launched the 160-mile extension that links South Florida and Orlando in September, there have been five deaths, according to an Associated Press database.

Friday’s crash killed driver Lisa Ann Batchelder, 52, and passenger Michael Anthony Degasperi, 54, both of Melbourne. On Wednesday, 62-year-old Charles Julian Phillips was killed when the vehicle he was driving was hit by the train. Three passengers in that vehicle were injured, according to Melbourne police.

Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey told reporters at the scene that the SUV triedto outrun the train. He said he’s spoken to Brightline officials about doing another public safety campaign to warn drivers not to go around railroad crossings because the train is traveling at higher speeds.

“I start by saying if the arm is down don’t go around,” Alfrey told Orlando television station WKMG. “There’s no good outcome with a train. This is an unfortunate situation. We have the loss of life again. There’s safety precautions for a reason, and people need to adhere them.”

The bright, neon yellow trains travel at speeds up to 125 mph (201 kph) in some locations. The 3.5-hour, 235-mile (378-kilometer) trip between Miami and Orlando takes about 30 minutes less than the average drive.

The NTSB team was expected to at the scene for several days, beginning Saturday.

“Investigators will work to better understand the safety issues at this crossing and will examine opportunities to prevent or mitigate these crashes in the future,” NTSB spokeswoman Sarah Taylor Sulick told The Associated Press.

She said a preliminary report will be released within 30 days, and a final report will be issued in 12 to 24 months.

Brightline did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, but the company has placed warning signs near crossings to alert drivers to the fast-moving trains.


The three deaths in Melbourne this week mark at least 108 since it began operations in July 2017. That’s one death for approximately every 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) its trains travel, the worst death rate among the nation’s more than 800 railroads, an ongoing Associated Press analysis that began in 2019 shows. Among U.S. railroads that log at least 100,000 train-miles a year, the next-worst rate since 2017 belongs to California’s Caltrain commuter line. Caltrain has averaged one death for every 125,000 miles (201,000 kilometers) traveled during that period.

None of Brightline’s previous deaths have been found to be the railroad’s fault. Most have been suicides, pedestrians who tried to run across the tracks ahead of the train or drivers who maneuvered around crossing gates rather than wait.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BRIGHTLINE 

Tribal leaders halt the burning of repatriated artifacts from Wounded Knee Massacre

Amelia Schafer ICT and Rapid City Journal staff

More than 150 recently repatriated artifacts from the Wounded Knee Massacre were set to be burned December 29. Instead, tribal leaders from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and later the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe asked to halt the ceremony.

On December 29, instead of burning the artifacts, descendants of Wounded Knee Massacre survivors gathered to pray, sing and remember the more than 300 Lakota men, women and children killed by the United States military.

The issue stems from disagreements over what to do with items repatriated from the Woods Memorial Library’s Founders Museum Collection in Barre, Massachusetts. While one group of descendants planned to burn artifacts, others requested more time to consider alternatives.

In November 2022, the Woods Memorial Library’s Founders Museum gave items back to a group of descendants of Wounded Knee survivors. The group, Si’Tanka Ta’ Oyate O’mniceye (Descendants of the Si’ Tanka (Big Foot) Nation), is comprised of Mniconju and Hunkpapa Lakota survivor descendants most of whom live in the Oglala area on Pine Ridge.

Following the massacre, several survivors chose to settle in the Oglala area, said the group’s historian Michael He Crow, Mniconju Lakota. He Crow’s own family settled in the Oglala area after the massacre.

The repatriated artifacts had been taken from the mass graves of Wounded Knee Massacre victims killed in 1890. The military had been sent to Pine Ridge to stop a potential “Indian uprising.” Instead, they encountered a band of mostly Mniconju Lakota led by Chief Spotted Elk (nicknamed Big Foot by the military). The military misinterpreted the group’s ghost dance songs as an intent to attack and opened fire on the band.


Wounded Knee Massacre survivor descendants place green prayer flags in honor of the more than 300 victims of the massacre. Courtesy of Seth Brings Plenty

The items returned from the Founders Museum were stolen from the graves of Wounded Knee victims. Most of the items are clothing – moccasins and ghost dance shirts. Some moccasins have blood splatters on them. The rest of the items are several peace pipes, hand drums, a few dolls, two tomahawks, a bow with arrows, and a few beaded lizard and turtle amulets/pouches containing umbilical cords.

Mixed in amongst the artifacts are items from other tribes – Ojibwe-style moccasins, Dakota and Cheyenne beadwork and other items.

The Founders Museum is a private collection of items. As such it is exempt from provisions from the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The repatriation did not have to follow federal guidelines. Instead, it was “inspired by NAGPRA,” according to the museum’s initial press release. As such, the items were given back to a group of the museum’s choice.

The Founders Museum did not respond to requests for comment about the repatriation process.

Since the artifacts were returned, the group has hosted public meetings once a month, sometimes twice a month, for community members. The meetings were meant to be a way for survivor descendants to voice their opinions, He Crow said.

“The Cheyenne River tribe supported what we planned to do up until October of this year (2023),” He Crow said.

The tribe published a statement on the eve of the Wounded Knee ceremony voicing its opposition to burning the artifacts. In his initial statement, Chairman Ryman LeBeau asked that the ceremony be halted until all descendants had a chance to give input.

The Woods Memorial Library in Barre, Massachusetts repatriated over 150 items to a group of Wounded Knee Massacre descendants. Courtesy photo

"The Wounded Knee artifacts issue is between the tribes and families of the descendants. We respect the decision to be diplomatic in dealing with such historical artifacts," LeBeau said in an email to ICT and the Rapid City Journal. "We are working collectively toward a positive outcome with our relatives. Overall, this is still an ongoing process, and we are still in communication with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe on what further steps need to be taken."

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire issued a statement on December 30 in opposition to the burning ceremony.

“Today, I understand that the Barre Museum returned Wounded Knee artifacts to the Oglala Sioux Tribe. For the record, descendants from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe were not included in the determination of disposition for these cultural items. The massacre at Wounded Knee was a direct result of the assassination of our Grandfather Tatanka Iyotaka (Sitting Bull) and the Hunkpapa descendants of the massacre must have their voice heard as well,” Alkire said in the press release.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe did not respond to requests for comment.

The descendants group had chosen to burn the items as they believed the smoke from the items would carry the artifacts back to the spirits. Some items, like pipes, wouldn’t be burned. The group also feared that if buried, the artifacts would be stolen and taken back to a museum like they were after the massacre.

“The objects are part of the people that died there. Those were real personal things to them. And so it would be like an extension of their bodies and a part of them physically. So, (putting them in a museum) it would just be like displaying a hand or foot that was repatriated. So it's not something that we would have hoped that people believe in doing,” He Crow said. “For example, if it was a hand or a foot you brought back, are you going to display that in a museum and charge people to see?”

The Oglala Sioux Tribe had been involved with the group's plans and President Frank Star Comes Out had attended meetings regularly.

“It feels kind of strange that they (the other tribes) would do this right now,” He Crow said.

“I mean, they had a whole year to talk about it, but they didn’t come to us. … I really don't know what their motivation is. It could be outside influences that are motivating their decisions. The only way we'll know what is going on is to have these meetings and they can inform us, because at the beginning they supported what we're doing.”

In the days leading up to the 133rd Wounded Knee ceremony, the group had become aware of other parties requesting that items not be burned.

“We had a meeting on Wednesday, and I told people just to be aware that if anything happens, then we can make some changes,” He Crow said. “So, we were a little bit prepared, but we didn't expect it to happen that way.”

Now, it’s up to the Oglala Sioux Tribe to plan an intertribal meeting about the future of the artifacts. It’s unclear when that meeting will take plac

This story is co-published by the Rapid City Journal and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the South Dakota area.

Amelia Schafer is the Indigenous Affairs reporter for ICT and the Rapid City Journal. She is of Wampanoag and Montauk-Brothertown Indian Nation descent. She is based in Rapid City. You can contact her at aschafer@rapidcityjournal.com.

No turning back: The largest dam removal in U.S. history begins

By Erik Neumann - Jefferson Public Radio,
Juliet Grable - NPR Photo
January 12, 2024 

The bypass tunnel at the bottom of Iron Gate Dam in Northern California has been carefully reinforced so it can handle the load of water and sediment pouring through it.

Updated January 13, 2024 

The largest dam removal in U.S. history entered a critical phase this week, with the lowering of dammed reservoirs on the Klamath River.

On Thursday, the gate on a 16-foot-wide bypass tunnel at the base of Iron Gate dam, the lowest of those slated to be removed, was opened from a crack to 36 inches.

Amy Cordalis stood in the dawn chill to witness the first big surge as the gate was widened. She's an attorney and Yurok Tribe member who has played a critical role in advocating for dam removal. As water poured through the tunnel, she could hear boulders rolling and tumbling. The water turned to dark chocolate milk as decades of pent-up sediment surged through.

"This is historic and life-changing," Cordalis said. "And it means that the Yurok people have a future. It means the river has a future; the salmon have a future."

Amy Cordalis (left) and Barry McCovey, members of the Yurok Tribe, have played key roles in advocating for the removal of the Klamath River dams.

Mike Belchik, a senior policy adviser for the Yurok Tribe, was also there to witness the controlled breach.

"It's kind of surreal," said Belchik, who has worked on Klamath River water issues for the tribe for nearly 30 years. "I don't know why we had such confidence that it was going to happen. But we did. We always knew it would happen."

One hundred seventy-three feet high, with a 740-foot crest, Iron Gate is an earth embankment dam with a skinny, many-fingered reservoir behind it. The lowering — or drawdown — of Iron Gate and two other reservoirs on the Klamath River will make way for the removal of three remaining hydroelectric dams that are part of the Lower Klamath Project in Northern California and southern Oregon.

For decades, these barriers have blocked salmon, steelhead and Pacific lamprey from accessing habitat above them and contributed to poor water quality below. The Klamath River was once the third-largest salmon producer on the West Coast, but in the time since the dams were constructed, the Klamath's coho and Chinook runs have dwindled to a fraction of their historic abundance.

When tribal activists first started calling for the removal of four Klamath River dams in the late 1990s, people thought they were "crazy," said Leaf Hillman, an elder of the Karuk Tribe who helped launch the campaign. "We've never really considered any other alternative to removing dams. And so it was a fight that we were committed to, and that we knew that we had to win. And it's been an intergenerational struggle."

A massive die-off of Chinook salmon in 2002 that catalyzed increased activism around getting the dams removed. An estimated 34,000 to 78,000 fish died. The loss of these fish didn't just mean the loss of a fun summer fishing activity, said Brook Thompson, a Yurok Tribe member who was 7 years old at the time and is now in her late 20s. "Those salmon to me are the connections I have with my relatives," she explained. "In a day, that was all gone."

Copco 1, located on the Klamath River in Northern California, is one of three remaining dams in the Lower Klamath Project that will be deconstructed later this year.

The fight to save the Klamath River's salmon shaped the lives and careers of people like Thompson, who grew up holding up posters at protests. Today, she is pursuing a Ph.D. that focuses, in part, on how to incorporate Native knowledge into policy. For her, it all comes back to the river and the fish that are so central to Native diets, ceremonies and identity.

"Yurok spirituality and Yurok ways of life cannot exist without having the salmon here," she said.

While activists celebrate the rebirth of a river, the massive project brings uncertainty to others, particularly residents who live near the dams. In the small town of Copco Lake, Calif., losing their namesake lake means losing the centerpiece of their community. It also brings heightened concerns about how the reshaped landscape will affect their property values and their ability to safeguard their homes from wildfires in a high-risk region.

Up until now, vehicles could easily access the lakeshore to pump water to fight fires, and aircraft could dip their buckets into the lake, according to Francis Gill, a Copco Lake resident and fire chief for the community's volunteer fire department. Gill fears that the community will be much more exposed to fire without the lake as a buffer.

"Now, instead of having that lake as a huge barrier, we get the potential for fire to jump the river, get from one side to the other easily," Gill said. "Especially just with the way the wildfires have been getting the last 10 years. They just blow up so fast and get so big, so quickly."

Other large dam removals on the Penobscot River in Maine and on the Elwha River in Washington state have shown that rivers — and the fish that depend on them — can recover quickly. The successful campaign and restoration of the Klamath watershed will no doubt inform other dam removal efforts.

"Every time we do this, and we do this at a big scale, we learn new things about the legal pathways," said Dave Owen, a law professor at the University of California, San Francisco. "It just helps people see that this is possible, and that it can be highly successful."

Advocates and analysts are eyeing four dams on the Lower Snake River in Idaho as the next big dam removal in the queue. Owen says that who owns the dams and what the dams are used for greatly impacts the politics around their removal.

"Along the Snake River, you have irrigators who rely on some of those reservoirs; you also have barge traffic, that's conveying wheat," Owen said. These factors make the Snake River dams a "harder case." Still, the removal of the Klamath River dams "makes action on the Snake River more likely than it was a few years ago," he said.

For the next week, water will flow through the bypass tunnel at an average rate of 2,200 cubic feet per second, draining down Iron Gate reservoir between two and four feet per day. Later this month, J.C. Boyle, the uppermost of the three dams, will be breached, followed by Copco 1. By June, the Klamath River should be flowing more or less within its historic channel, and the work of dismantling the structures can begin.

Advocates are quick to point out that dam removal alone will not save the Klamath River's salmon runs. However, removing the barriers will open up 76 miles of coho habitat and over 400 miles of Chinook habitat, says Shari Witmore, a fish biologist at NOAA Fisheries.

If modeling is correct, as many as 80% more Chinook salmon could return to the basin within about 30 years after the dams are removed. Ocean harvest could increase by as much as 46%. But this will depend in part on restoring important tributaries, including the cold spring-fed rivers in the upper Klamath Basin, which have been compromised with diking and draining of wetlands.

"Once we restore that, we put this basin back together," Witmore says. "That creates a lot of resilience over time with climate change, and it buffers against multi-year droughts."

Cordalis, the Yurok Tribe member, agrees that more work lies ahead. But she's also looking forward to fulfilling a simple personal goal.

"Fishing," she said. "I want to go fishing."

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

New Health Law approved in Cuba gives green light to euthanasia and shields abortion

“The right of people to access a dignified death is recognized, through the exercise of end-of-life determinations,” says the text of the new Public Health Law.

by  OnCuba Staff
December 26, 2023

Photo: Canva.

With the new Public Health Law, approved  by the National Assembly of People’s Power, Cuba became the second country in Latin America and the Caribbean to allow euthanasia.

On December 11, 2022, Cuban Minister of Health José Ángel Portal Miranda presented a draft Public Health Law to the deputies of the Assembly and announced that it would be discussed by the provinces during 2023.

After a year, and before the vote, the minister described the bill as “updated, comprehensive, protective, built collectively, innovative and ethical.”

The Law confirms the “responsibility of the State to guarantee access, free and quality care, protection and recovery services.”

Users more than patients

On the other hand, the law grants more autonomy to users of the health system and among their rights and duties recognizes those of “free access” and receiving timely and quality services; being cared for by staff with the required qualifications who will provide dignified treatment “free from abuse, coercion or violence” and without discrimination for “any cause, condition or circumstance.”

This new regulation, which leaves Law 41 of 1983 behind, recognizes sexual and reproductive rights, so that “the development” of the user’s sexuality “in a healthy way” is recognized and respected.

It also endorses the need for people to be able to “access methods for contraception and voluntary termination of pregnancy…” as well as the right to “resort to treatments for infertility…through the use of assisted reproduction techniques.”

Abortion and reproductive rights, what will the new Public Health Law say?

Shielded abortion

During the parliamentary session, deputy Yamila González Ferrer, vice president of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba and one of the promoters of the Family Code, considered that the Law protects the right to abortion, which in Cuba has been guaranteed for more than 50 years by the health system, but without there being a law that established it as a right.

“We do not want abortion to be the first option, it cannot be a contraceptive method. We know it and it is part of comprehensive sex education. The fact that the law reflects it in a context in which there are setbacks in that area in the region and in the world, is significant for Cuban women and their right to decide about her body,” said González Ferrer.

Draft Public Health Law in Cuba includes recognition of euthanasia


Euthanasia

One of the most controversial and at the same time most advanced aspects of the Law is the inclusion of the right to euthanasia.

In the world, only countries such as Switzerland, Holland, Luxembourg, Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, New Zealand, Colombia and some states in the United States allow euthanasia to varying degrees.

“The right of people to access a dignified death is recognized, through the exercise of end-of-life determinations, which may include the limitation of therapeutic effort, continuous or palliative care, and valid procedures that end life,” reads the document approved this Friday by the deputies.

A submerged “cemetery” was discovered near the Santiago de Cuba’s Morro

Experts suppose that the amphorae found at the site contain ashes of deceased persons, or were depositories of these before being thrown into the sea as an act of last will.

by  OnCuba Staff
December 27, 2023

Dozens of amphorae, as well as cannons from the colonial period, boxes with bullets from artillery pieces and other implements of war lie at the site of the discovery, at a depth of about 10 meters, in the eastern part of the entrance to Santiago's bay. 

Photo: Naturaleza Secreta/Facebook

Researchers from the Regional Center for Management and Handling of the Underwater Natural and Cultural Heritage (CUBASUB) discovered by chance a submerged “cemetery” in the vicinity of Castillo del Morro San Pedro de la Roca, in the city of Santiago de Cuba.

In the place of the discovery, about 10 meters deep, in the eastern zone of the entrance of the bay of Santiago, lie dozens of amphorae, as well as cannons from the colonial period, boxes with bullets from artillery pieces, and other implements of war, according to an article published by the provincial newspaper Sierra Maestra.

Experts suppose that the amphorae found contain ashes of deceased people, or were depositories of these before being thrown into the sea as an act of last will.

The peculiar cemetery appeared while the researchers were carrying out prospecting work linked to the search and location of an old submarine cable used for almost a century for telecommunications, and that in the territory had been baptized as “the English cable”.

The publication specifies that from historical documents it can be established that the site was used by the Spanish military that occupied the Santiago fortress to take to it, employing a system of cables and manual machinery, diverse supplies used by the garrison.

The experts point out as hypothesis of the presence of the artillery pieces that some of them accidentally fell silent at the moment of their transfer and since then they remained in the seabed of the place used later by the relatives of the deceased to throw their ashes.

“There is nothing mysterious about this practice, nor was it done secretly, only that in truth very few knew that so many deceased made ashes would end up in the sea and in such a strategic place as the ‘mouth of the bay’, and exactly under the emblematic Castillo del Morro”, highlights the media.

The castle and the cable

The Morro San Pedro de la Roca Castle, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, was part of the defensive system of the city of Santiago de Cuba in colonial times, along with the forts and batteries of La Estrella, La Socapa, Santa Catalina.

As a result of the investigations carried out, plans, maps, engravings, photos and all kinds of documentation have been compiled for study, but some issues “come to the patrimonial scene many years later,” says the article by Dr. Jesus Vicente Gonzalez, reviewed by Sierra Maestra.

Some evidence found points to a certain relationship with the place where the so-called “English cable” passed, which by the end of the 19th century was the latest in communications.

It was managed by the British company The Cuba Submarine Telegraph Company LTD, established on the island since the second half of that century when a cable was laid from Batabanó to Cienfuegos and from there to Manzanillo.

Another route linked the Pearl of the South with Santiago de Cuba and continued to Haiti and Jamaica to link from these countries with other places on the planet, the text notes.

It adds that during the Spanish-Cuban-American war of 1898, the U.S. Navy cut the cable. It was later restored and with obsolete equipment, it remained in operation until 1975.

Cuba stands out in World Scientists Rankings 2024

The listing comes from the AD Scientific Index, a global measurement and analysis system that shows the coefficients of total productivity and the last six years of publication citations.

by  OnCuba Staff
January 13, 2024

Cuban laboratory. Photo: Scientific American

A total of 2,507 researchers dedicated to science from 44 Cuban institutions were selected to enter the World Scientists Rankings 2024 (AD Scientific Index).

Leading the list are Pedro A. Valdés Sosa, from the Cuban Neuroscience Center, René Delgado Hernández, from the University of Havana, and Yovani Marrero Ponce from the Marta Abreu Central University of Las Villas.

A top-level neuroresearcher and director of the China-Cuba Joint Laboratory for Translational Research in Neurotechnology UESTC, in Chengdu, Valdés Sosa is the Cuban delegate to the International Brain Initiative and a prestigious expert in neuroimaging.

Dr. Valdés Sosa’s work began in the 1960s in the integration between computing and medicine, a relationship that he directed towards in-depth studies of brain behavior, among other academic efforts.

Dr. Pedro Valdés Sosa with President Miguel Diaz Canel

President for decades of the Cuban Society of Pharmacology, René Delgado Hernández has maintained intense research work on the healing benefits of Cuban herbalism.

One of his most recent studies was on Caesalpinia bahamensis Lam, a medicinal plant used by the Cuban population to treat kidney and liver diseases that, despite its consumption, lacked scientific studies to support its biological applications.

For his part, Yovani Marrero-Ponce is the author of numerous chemical-biological investigations both in Cuba and Ecuador, where he is a full-time research professor at the San Francisco de Quito University.

The men and women of science on the island include representatives from other centers such as the University of Las Tunas, the Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz University of Camagüey, the University of Computer Sciences, the José Antonio Echeverría Technological University of Havana (CUJAE), and the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, among others.

In the region of Latin America and the Caribbean, the AD Scientific Index (Alper-Doger Scientific Index) of 2024 has at the forefront Mexican researcher Heriberto Castilla, from the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute, in the category of Natural Sciences/Physics.

For its part, the University of Panama ranked first in the Latin American region for the third consecutive year.

Worldwide, the number one ranking of scientists is held by HJ Kim, from Kyungpook National University, South Korea.

With a comprehensive evaluation that covers academic works from 218 countries, the AD Scientific Index analyzes the performance of 22,869 universities and institutions, involving more than 1,443,405 scientists from more than two hundred countries.

For such research, it takes as reference the i10 index (number of academic works that an author has written and that received at least ten citations), h-index (number of citations that an author has received), as well as the citations in Google Scholar.

The measurement shows the classification by twelve topics such as Agriculture and Forestry; Arts, Design, and Architecture; Business and Management; Economics and Econometrics; Education; Engineering and Technology; History, Philosophy, Theology; Law; Medical and Health Sciences; Natural Sciences; Social Sciences and others.