African wildlife charity with Prince Harry as board member investigating rape and torture claims against eco-guards

Sky News
Mon, 29 January 2024 


A wildlife charity which has Prince Harry as a board member is investigating allegations of human rights abuses by its guards in the Republic of the Congo.

African Parks said it was "encouraging anyone with knowledge" of any abuse to come forward and said the investigation was its "highest priority".

In addition to sitting on the board, the Duke of Sussex is also a former president of the non-profit organisation, which manages 22 national parks and protected areas across 12 countries.

Guards managed and paid by the charity had been engaged in the beating, rape and torture of indigenous people in the rainforests of the Republic of the Congo, according to a report in the Mail On Sunday.

The charity said it had been made aware of the allegations last year after a letter from Survival International - but added the human rights organisation had "chosen not to co-operate, despite repeated requests" for more details.

African Parks was founded in 2000 and aims to protect Africa's national parks and advance wildlife conservation around the world.

It manages more than 20 million hectares (49.4 million acres) of protected zones - or an area nearly as big as England, Scotland and Wales combined.

'A zero-tolerance policy'

A statement from the African Parks board and chief executive said: "African Parks has a zero-tolerance policy for any form of abuse and is committed to upholding the rights of local and indigenous people.

"We are aware of the serious allegations regarding human rights abuses by eco-guards against local people living adjacent to Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo, which have recently received media attention.

"We became aware of these allegations last year via a board member who received a letter from Survival International.

"We immediately launched an investigation through an external law firm based on the information we had available, while also urging Survival International to provide any and all facts they had.

"It's unfortunate that they have chosen not to co-operate, despite repeated requests, and we continue to ask for their assistance.

"This is an active, ongoing investigation that is our highest priority as an organisation, and we encourage anyone with knowledge of any abuses to report them to us or to the Congolese law enforcement authorities which will assist with the investigation and ensure that the perpetrators of any abuses are brought to justice."

On claims Survival International has not been co-operating, the head of the organisation's conservation campaign, Fiore Longo, said: "It's not up to us to give them details.

"It's their responsibility when we raise a problem to go there and investigate."

Iranian, Canadians indicted in US in dissident murder plot

AFP
Mon, 29 January 2024 

An Iranian and two Canadians have been indicted for allegedly conspiring to assassinate Iranian dissidents on US soil (SCOTT OLSON)

An Iranian and two Canadians, including a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, have been indicted for allegedly conspiring to assassinate Iranian dissidents on US soil, officials said Monday.

Naji Sharifi Zindashti, 49, Damion Patrick John Ryan, 43, and Adam Richard Pearson, 29, plotted to murder two residents of the state of Maryland, Justice and Treasury department officials said.

Zindashti, who is based in Iran, is a narcotics trafficker who runs a network that has carried out numerous "assassinations and kidnappings across multiple jurisdictions in an attempt to silence the Iranian regime's perceived critics," the Treasury Department said in a statement.

Zindashti was indicted by a grand jury in Minnesota along with Ryan and Pearson for allegedly plotting the murder-for-hire of two unidentified individuals who had fled to the United States from Iran.

Ryan, identified in the indictment as a "full-patch member of the outlaw Hells Angels Motorcycle Club," and Pearson are currently incarcerated in Canada on unrelated charges, the Justice Department said.

According to the indictment, Zindashti recruited Ryan to carry out the murders, for which he was to be paid $350,000 with another $20,000 for expenses.

Ryan allegedly hired Pearson to put together a team to carry out the murders.

"Zindashti and his team of gunmen, including a Minnesota resident, used an encrypted messaging service to orchestrate an assassination plot against two individuals," said US Attorney Andrew Luger for the District of Minnesota.

"Thanks to the skilled work of federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents, this murder-for-hire conspiracy was disrupted and the defendants will face justice," Luger added.

Zindashti allegedly communicated with Ryan between December 2020 and March 2021 through the SkyECC encrypted messaging service, according to the indictment.

An unidentified co-conspirator allegedly sent Ryan information about the intended victims, including their photographs and a map with their address.

- 'Unacceptable threat' -

The same day, the United States and Britain announced sanctions against Zindashti's network, which they alleged is run "at the behest of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security."

"Zindashti's network has been linked to murders in several countries," including the United Arab Emirates, Canada and Turkey, the US Treasury Department said.

"The Iranian regime's continued efforts to target dissidents and activists demonstrate the regime's deep insecurity and attempt to expand Iran's domestic repression internationally," US Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism Brian Nelson said.

The United Kingdom said in a separate notice that it would "sanction seven individuals and one organization, including senior Iranian officials and members of organized criminal gangs who collaborate with the regime."

They include members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Unit 840, over reported "plots to assassinate two television presenters from news channel Iran International on UK soil," said the British announcement.

"The Iranian regime and the criminal gangs who operate on its behalf pose an unacceptable threat to the UK's security," British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in a statement. "The UK and US have sent a clear message -– we will not tolerate this threat."

Barcelona runs out of water for swimming pools amid ‘worst drought ever’


James Badcock
Thu, 1 February 2024 


Reservoirs across southern Spain are at extremely low levels thanks to a continued spell of warm, dry weather - Jon Nazca/Reuters

Tourists face swimming pool closures in Barcelona in the coming weeks as Catalonia confronts its “worst drought ever”.

The region’s government has imposed emergency measures over the crisis, caused by a lack of rainfall, which outlaw the refilling of pools or topping them up unless recycled water is used.

“It’s the worst drought ever recorded,” said Pere Aragonès, Catalonia’s president, on Thursday.

The emergency measures, set to take effect from Friday, will impact six million people in Barcelona and hundreds of other coastal communities in Catalonia.

The first phase of restrictions includes a ban on washing cars and watering public gardens unless using water sourced from an approved recycling system.

Private pools at hotels and elsewhere cannot be emptied and refilled, and are only permitted to be topped up if facilities have water regeneration systems.

The only exceptions will be made for swimming pools used for therapeutic purposes in hospitals, nursing homes and facilities for the disabled.

Catalonia’s campsite association has said it is exploring ways to use seawater in pools because of the restrictions.

Outdoor pools used by swimming clubs will be able to dodge the restrictions but cannot use their showers. Showers on beaches used by bathers to wash away sand must remain closed.

The measures aim to lower the daily amount of water permitted for residential and municipal purposes from 210 to 200 litres (55 to 52 gallons) per person.

Most households in Barcelona already fall well below that limit. Hotels, however, register a much higher average consumption, with a 2016 survey showing that five-star establishments with Jacuzzis and multiple pools exceed 540 litres per guest per day.
Irrigation systems next in line

Measures will be ramped up in two more phases if winter and spring do not bring abundant rains, with limits lowered to 180 litres, and then 160 litres, if required.

Across the board, agricultural irrigation must be reduced by 80 per cent, water use in livestock farming by half, and in the industry and leisure sector by 25 per cent.

If triggered, a second phase of restrictions would see showers at gyms switched off.

Businesses in the sector have criticised that proposal and instead plan to introduce time-limited showers of just three minutes instead.

Tourism sector representatives are also in discussions with the regional government on how to reduce their water use without pulling the plug on attractions.

The measures come after several heatwaves were recorded in Spain and wider Europe last summer, lowering reservoir levels as water evaporation and consumption increased.


The Cuencas Internas water board, which supplies more than 90 per cent of Catalonia’s population with water, says the region has regularly received less than half of its anticipated rainfall since the autumn of 2020.

As a result, its reservoirs are currently at just 16 per cent of their capacity.

Teresa Ribera, Spain’s ecological transition minister, said “the government of Spain will not leave the Barcelona metropolitan area without support.”

Last summer’s unusually warm weather has continued into 2024, with the mercury rising to nearly 30C (86F) in some regions in January – temperatures usually seen in June.

The region of Andalusia, whose reservoirs are at just 22 per cent of capacity, is also expected to impose emergency measures. Juan Manuel Moreno, Andalusia’s president, has said that the region’s major cities and resorts should expect restrictions this spring and summer, adding that the region lost 2.1 per cent of GDP in 2023 because of the drought.

Experts say climate change driven by human activity is boosting the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.

Ukrainian nuclear staff barred from Russia-held plant: IAEA


AFP
Thu, 1 February 2024 

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control, has banned Ukrainian staff from entering, according to the IAEA (Anatolii Stepanov)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Thursday that workers from Ukraine's atomic energy operator Energoatom have been barred from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was taken over by Russian forces in March 2022, one month after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, and its six reactors have been shut down.

As the plant is now manned by staff who have taken Russian nationality, it was not clear how many people are affected by the new order.


But fierce fighting in the area and power cuts have raised international concerns as the plant still needs electricity and water to cool its systems.

IAEA head Rafael Grossi is to visit the site next week after holding high-level talks on Tuesday in Kyiv, the agency said in a statement.

During his visit, Grossi will "raise the crucial issue of staffing" at the plant to seek "further information" on the latest announcement.

"It is of crucial importance that the plant has the qualified and skilled staff that it needs for nuclear safety and security," Grossi said in the statement.

"The number of staff has already been reduced significantly since the war began," he added.

A source in Energoatom told AFP that Russia had been "imposing" citizenship on the plant's employees and forcing them to sign contracts with Russian-installed operator Rosatom.

"The Russians have set several deadlines. If someone does not take a Russian passport and sign contracts, they will no longer come to work," the source said.

The latest deadline was 1 January 2024, it said.

Before the war, there were 11,500 staff at the plant. At present 4,500 people are employed by the Russian operator at the plant and 940 applications were "under consideration".

Staff working at the site consist of former Energoatom employees who have "adopted Russian citizenship and signed employment contracts with the Russian operating entity", the IAEA statement specified.

Besides that "staff who have been sent to the ZNPP from the Russian Federation" work there.

The IAEA has repeatedly warned of persistent nuclear safety and security risks at the site.

IAEA officials have been on the ground monitoring the plant since September 2022.

The six reactor units, which before the war produced around a fifth of Ukraine's electricity, have been shut down.

kym/cad/pvh

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

OxyContin marketer agrees to pay $350M rather than face lawsuits

Thu, February 1, 2024 


An advertising agency that helped develop marketing campaigns for OxyContin and other prescription painkillers has agreed to pay U.S. states $350 million rather than face the possibility of trials over its role in the opioid crisis, attorneys general said Thursday.

Publicis Health, part of the Paris-based media conglomerate Publicis Groupe, agreed to pay the entire settlement in the next two months, with most of the money to be used to fight the overdose epidemic.

It is the first advertising company to reach a major settlement over the toll of opioids in the U.S. It faced a lawsuit in at least Massachusetts but settled with most states before they made court claims against it.

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led negotiations with the company, said Publicis worked with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma from 2010-2019, helping campaigns for OxyContin and other prescription opioids, Butrans and Hysingla.

James' office said the materials played up the abuse-deterrent properties of OxyContin and promoted increasing patients' doses. While the formulation made it harder to break down the drug for users to get a faster high, it did not make the pills any less addictive.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said the company provided physicians with digital recorders so Publicis and Purdue could analyze conversations that the prescribers had with patients about taking opioids.

As part of the settlement, Publicis agreed to release internal documents detailing its work for Purdue and other companies that made opioids.

The company said in a statement that the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing and noted that most of the work subject to the settlement was done by Rosetta, a company owned by Publicis that closed 10 years ago.

“Rosetta’s role was limited to performing many of the standard advertising services that agencies provide to their clients, for products that are to this day prescribed to patients, covered by major private insurers, Medicare, and authorized by State Pharmacy Boards,” Publicis said.

The company also reaffirmed its policy of not taking new work on opioid-related products.

Publicis said that the company's insurers are reimbursing it for $130 million and that $7 million of the settlement amount will be used for states' legal fees.

Drugmakers, wholesalers, pharmacies, at least one consulting company and a health data have agreed to settlements over opioids with U.S. federal, state and local governments totaling more than $50 billion.

One of the largest individual proposed settlements is between state and local governments and Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma. As part of the deal, members of the Sackler family who own the company would contribute up to $6 billion, plus give up ownership. The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether it's appropriate to shield family members from civil lawsuits as part of the deal.

The opioid crisis has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in three waves.

The first began after OxyContin hit the market in 1996 and was linked mostly to prescription opioids, many of them generics. By about 2010, as there were crackdowns on overprescribing and black-market pills, heroin deaths increased dramatically. Most recently, opioids have been linked to more than 80,000 deaths a year, more than ever before. Most involve illicitly produced fentanyl and other potent lab-produced drugs.

Geoff Mulvihill, The Associated Press

The battle to change Native American logos weighs on, but some communities are reinstating them


Thu, February 1, 2024 



It was a passionate student letter in 2020 that caused the Southern York County school board to reconsider its logo: a Native American man, representing the “Warriors.”

Though the conversation had come up before in the suburban district located in southern Pennsylvania, 2020 was a turning point of racial reckoning after death of George Floyd. Less than a year later, the school board voted to retire the warrior logo after it considered research that depicted what impact the reductive imagery had on Native and non-Native students.

“I understand the attachment people have to that at the school,” said said Deborah Kalina, who served on the school board at the time. “But it’s more than that. And I think we did the right thing.”

Three years later, however, the logo — a Native American man with feathers, a tomahawk and pipe — is back after a newly-elected conservative bloc acted on their campaign promise and reinstated it earlier this month. It’s shaken the Native communities across the country who work to challenge such logos, said Donna Fann-Boyle, co-founder of the Coalition of Natives and Allies. When one school district does it, they worry others will try, too.

“Everything could just go backward,” said Fann-Boyle, who says she has Choctaw and Cherokee heritage.

It’s a marked departure from the larger tide of communities deciding to change their mascots, a trajectory that has been underway for decades, but ramped up in 2020.

The battle to change the use of Native Americans in logos, team names and fan-driven behavior has often been in the bright spotlight due to major sports teams. The NFL’s Washington Commanders changed their decades-old name in 2019, while Cleveland’s baseball team became the Guardians in 2021. Protests are being planned at the Super Bowl once more in response to the Kansas City Chiefs.

But beyond the high-profile fights to change names, mascots and team identities, there are battles going on in local communities. It’s a rare move for the Pennsylvania district to reverse course, but it’s not the first time. At least two other school districts in Massachusetts and Connecticut reverted to logos that many Native Americans have called offensive.

A number of states have passed legislation to prohibit the mascots in the years since. Nationally, the largest nonprofit dedicated to representing Native nations, the National Congress of American Indians, has worked to challenge the use of Native imagery in logos and mascots. The organization maintains a database tracking Native mascots, and has found that nearly 2,000 schools still use them. At least 16 dropped their use of Native imagery or names between March 2022 and April 2023.

Numerous studies have found that mascots are harmful to the mental health of Native students, and increase negative stereotyping of Native people in non-Native students, said Laurel Davis-Delano, a professor of sociology at Springfield College.

The mascots are all historic — and often inaccurate — depictions, erasing the fact Native people exist today, she said. And though to some the mascots can seem like positive representation on the surface, they’re adapted from a “bloodthirsty warrior” stereotype, which was historically used in a genocidal way, Davis-Delano said.

“It’s hostile when the mascot exists, it’s hostile during the change and hostile afterwards because even when they eliminate Native mascots successfully, there’s still a backlash,” she said. “There’s still people holding on to it and purposefully displaying it. And that lasts for some years. Most of the time, people shift over and are good to go, but there are people who hang on.”

Maulian Bryant, Penobscot Nation tribal ambassador, remembers having a visceral reaction to seeing the mascots as she was growing up. Mentors in her life helped her speak out about it, and her work resulted in a 2019 law in Maine to prohibit them in public schools and colleges.

School has its pressure of homework, socializing and sports, Bryant said. Seeing non-Native peers act out stereotypes, dressed up with feathers and warpaint, adds another layer for Native students: “an assault on something core to who they are,” she said.

“Adults put their pride and their resistance to progress above what students really need,” she said. “The students and teams and towns are just as proud of the new mascots.”

Some schools — like the University of Utah and Florida State University — have agreements with local tribes to use their names and imagery. The Seneca Nation approved the use of Native imagery in the Salamanca School District, due to its location on the nation’s Allegany Territory, and large percentages of Native American students and staff.

One group, Native American Guardians Association, which has Native American membership, has pushed for the continued use of the mascots across the country. Speaking at Southern York County’s school board meeting on Jan. 18, members argued removing the logo would be erasure.

Supporters agreed, and said use of the warrior head image denoted positive features and didn't erase history. They sent droves of emails pushing for reinstatement, board member Jen Henkel said during the meeting.

But opponents — who vastly outnumbered supporters speaking at the board meeting — criticized reopening an issue that was decided years ago.

“Every single board member has voted to retire the logo, but one, has either lost their election or chose not to run for reelection,” said Jen Henkel. “Every single candidate not previously on the board who ran opposing the warriorhead logo’s return has lost. The majority community has spoken on this issue loud and clear. You might not like the results, but here we are.”

After a lengthy presentation, debate and public comment, the school board ultimately voted to reinstate it, 7-2. Board President Nathan Henkel did not return a message seeking comment.

The board's decision and Native American Guardians Association's push, though, is in direct contrast to the Native family in the community in southern Pennsylvania, and descendants of the local Conestoga-Susquehannock tribe who sent a letter decrying the decision. Today, their tribe — which is not federally or state recognized — has about 50 members.

“We give more energy to an inanimate object than we do to actual human beings,” said Chesterfield Hall, a member of the tribe.

Andrea Ligon, a tribal elder, said the mascot is a misrepresentation of their identity.

“This is fundamentally disrespectful and offensive. We are undermined by images of the mascot that disrespects historical and personal experiences of our tribe with a one-dimensional representation,” she said. “We are opposed to this mascot because they are playing an Indian with no understanding of the deeper meaning of feathers, face paint, chants and dancing, which are all part of our culture.”

Katy Isennock, who is a Sicangu Lakota citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, grew up in the district, going to school with the warhead mascot. As a teenager, she never felt she had the power to speak out about it, or the support of the community. Then she watched her children go through the renewed discussion of the mascot.

Her son — who is a Sicangu Lakota, Oglala Lakota and Seneca citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe — wears his long hair in a braid and has been made fun of for his hair. He has started to hide it, she said. It’s something that is so normal when they’re among other Native people, but has been scrutinized in a predominantly white community, making him feel embarrassed rather than proud, she said.

“He goes through so much, having hair like that, and he shouldn’t have to and it’s like — you guys have a Native mascot and you don’t know that?” she said.

Speaking to the board, she asked them to drop the politics.

“To put the mascot away is respect,” she told them. “Retiring it is respect — for the past, for the present and for the future. It is respect for my Native kids in the district and Native kids that may pass through here in the future.”

Brooke Schultz, The Associated Press

Opinion: Why I’m going to keep teaching the truth about racism in America


Opinion by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Thu, February 1, 2024 

Editor’s Note: Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard University, an organizer of the Freedom to Learn movement and co-host of the Some of My Best Friends Are podcast. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

Black History Month, which gets underway this week, is a chance to give Americans the timely reminder that you can’t teach our history honestly without understanding Black struggle and triumph.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad - Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project at Harvard Kennedy School

Take race and racism out of the American story and very little about the country is comprehensible. The way we elect our presidents. The civil rights enshrined in the 14th Amendment that gives birthright citizenship to formerly excluded Asian immigrants and grants marriage equality to same-sex couples. The nation’s intergenerational wealth accumulated during 350 years of slavery and segregation. And the outsize cultural visibility of African American creative talent on the world stage.

Because Black patriots have carried the flame of American democracy for everyone, and for centuries, Black people continue to be overrepresented in pro-democracy movements in the United States — the very movements that some people, particularly some top Republicans and leading figures on the right — seek so desperately to destroy in their zeal to pass voter suppression laws and their efforts to diminish freedom of speech and assembly rights.

Nowhere are these attacks more evident right now than on college campuses. Many academics who teach about the history of race and racism in America, as I do, are being unjustifiably blamed for the rise in antisemitism on campus and falsely accused of creating racial divisions in the country. This has had the undesirable effect of putting us in the crosshairs of some of the most powerful people in the country, including Republican politicians, conservative activists and billionaire donors.

Last week, at my alma mater the University of Pennsylvania, about 100 faculty rallied against what they decried as “anti-democratic” attacks on diversity, academic freedom and free speech. Faculty and staff at private universities across the country now face a similar plight, as do many teachers, librarians and academics at public colleges and universities who have been censored, harassed, physically threatened and fired for doing their jobs over the past year.

As these dangerous assaults move to private universities, many academics are preparing for the worst. I count myself among them. Last year, for the first time in my 25-year career as an academic historian, my teaching was singled out by a powerful politician for causing hate.

When GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx opened the December 5 congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus, she targeted a class taught by me as a “prime example” of a “race-based ideology” that has caused Harvard University to be “ground zero for antisemitism following October 7.” Foxx also cited two additional campus examples of “institutional antisemitism and hate” — a Global Health seminar on “Scientific Racism and Anti-Racism” and an initiative at the Harvard Divinity School on “Social and Racial Justice.”

Then, on January 2, just hours after Claudine Gay announced her resignation under pressure Foxx promised to keep her congressional investigation into Harvard going because “postsecondary education,” the lawmaker wrote in a statement, has been hijacked by “political activists, woke faculty and partisan administrators.”

If by “woke” Foxx means teaching the truth about American history, then I’m guilty as charged. There are few aspects of America’s past that haven’t been impacted by conscientious Black people and their resistance to systemic racism and illiberal democracy.

The charge against me of promulgating a “race-based ideology” that fosters antisemitic views is especially preposterous since the coursework I teach on the history of anti-Jewish hatred and discrimination shows how Blacks and Jews have common enemies in neo-Nazis, replacement theorists and white domestic terrorists in the US. Members of these same groups frequently voice support for the current leader of the Republican Party, former President Donald Trump, who has employed language that resembles the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler.

Right-wing office holders targeting academics is the latest battlefront in a three-year-old political war on education that started with Trump’s ban on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training in federal agencies, and then metastasized to numerous states criminalizing books and curricula on racism, gender discrimination and sexuality in public primary and secondary schools. Florida recently banned sociology from the core curriculum of the nation’s largest public university system, which serves 430,000 students, because “it has been hijacked by left-wing activists,” according to the state commissioner of education.

Foxx and her political ilk want people to believe that what happens in my classroom and the classrooms of many other academics across the country is a part of a woke conspiracy meant to indoctrinate White Americans to hate themselves and their country. They want the public to believe that those of us who teach the truth about the history of race and racism are the real racists and antisemites in America, as these enemies of racial progress and democracy attempt to stand reality on its head.

The situation at Harvard has been made more dire by the university’s failure to push back sufficiently against broader political attacks. In his first university statement as interim president, Alan Garber issued a broad affirmation of the university’s commitment to “free inquiry and expression, in a climate of inclusion and mutual respect.” But as the new semester got underway in January, there was no written statement by senior university officials assuring faculty who teach about racism or staff who hold various functions in the area of DEI that we are safe to do our jobs.

Boilerplate assurances of academic freedom were commonplace before Gay became president and certainly were issued frequently before October 7, when antisemitism became weaponized against anyone teaching about racism or colonialism or who dared to speak about the history of Israel’s occupation of Gaza. And to be clear, I mean anyone — not just Black faculty. Just last week, on the first day of the spring semester, President Garber came under fire for appointing Derek J. Penslar, a prolific and well-respected scholar of Jewish history, to be the co-chair of Harvard’s reconstituted presidential task force combating antisemitism.

Penslar is accused of being soft on antisemitism by Bill Ackman, the billionaire donor who says DEI is the “root cause” of Harvard’s alleged antisemitism and is a prominent supporter of Foxx’s congressional investigation. Another vocal critic of Penslar is the former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who was also an outspoken opponent of Gay’s. He wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) that Penslar’s views are disqualifying because he has invoked “the concept of settler colonialism in analyzing Israel” and has labeled it “an apartheid state.”

The tragedy is that the academics most committed to learning from the past — who have dedicated their entire careers to staring into the abyss of oppression, in an effort to teach the concept of “Never Again” and how it applies to all people — are the ones least protected in this moment. Black faculty and staff feel especially vulnerable. As my friend who is a Black staffer at a Florida community college told me recently: “I am on the opposite end of the educational spectrum than Harvard, but our realities are the same in many respects.”

Some Black colleagues on my campus have told me they are concerned about the risk to their careers and reputations from “teaching while Black” in this climate. Even some Black alumni are weighing whether it is safe to speak up about Gay’s swift demise as Harvard’s first Black woman president, especially in light of what was believed by many of us to be a political hit job for her commitment to DEI. “People are afraid,” one alum told me. “If it can happen to her, it can happen to any of us.”

If the oldest, richest and most powerful American university won’t defend its own people and resist political efforts to interfere with unvarnished truth-telling and academic freedom, then shame on Harvard. As an academic institution, we should be leading the resistance to these assaults on higher education, not bowing to them.

Silence is a failure of leadership in times like these. Harvard, with its motto “Veritas” — truth — owes it to all of us on the frontlines of these false attacks to defend us for teaching and practicing the very values it claims to uphold.

And for those of us who believe that a rigorous, equitable, inclusive and above all else honest education is the only kind worth having in a multi-racial democracy, we must be courageous, stand together and continue teaching the truth.

Vibrations in cooling system mean new Georgia nuclear reactor will again be delayed


Thu, February 1, 2024 at 6:21 p.m. MST·2 min read

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Power Co. said Thursday that vibrations found in a cooling system of its second new nuclear reactor will delay when the unit begins generating power.

Plant Vogtle's Unit 4 now will not start commercial operation until sometime in the second quarter of 2024, or between April 1 and June 30, the largest subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. announced.

The utility said in a filing to investors that the vibrations “were similar in nature” to those experienced during startup testing for Unit 3, which began commercial operations last summer, joining two older reactors that have stood on the site near Augusta for decades

In that case, the utility found that a pipe vibrated during testing because construction workers hadn't installed enough bracing. Georgia Power said the Unit 4 problem has already been fixed but too much testing remains to be done to make the March 30 deadline.

Georgia Power said it's likely to lose $30 million in profit for each month beyond March that Unit 4 isn't running because of an earlier order by state utility regulators. The five members of the Georgia Public Service Commission ordered that the company can't earn an additional return on equity through a construction surcharge levied on Georgia Power's 2.7 million customers after March 30.

The typical residential customer has paid about $1,000 in surcharges over time to pay for financing costs.

The company said its construction budget won't be affected if Unit 4 starts by June 30 but it would have to pay $15 million a month in extra construction costs if the project extends into July.

Regulators in December approved an additional 6% rate increase to pay for $7.56 billion in remaining costs at Vogtle, expected to cost the typical residential customer $8.95 a month. That's on top of the $5.42 increase that took effect when Unit 3 began operating.

The new Vogtle reactors are currently projected to cost Georgia Power and three other owners $31 billion, according to calulations by The Associated Press. Add in $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid Vogtle owners to walk away from construction, and the total nears $35 billion.

The reactors were originally projected to cost $14 billion and be completed by 2017.

Units 3 and 4 are the first new American reactors built from scratch in decades. Each can power 500,000 homes and businesses without releasing any carbon. But even as government officials and some utilities are again looking to nuclear power to alleviate climate change, the cost of Vogtle could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power.

Georgia Power owns 45.7% of the reactors, with smaller shares owned by Oglethorpe Power Corp., which provides electricity to member-owned cooperatives; the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia; and the city of Dalton.

Some Florida and Alabama utilities have also contracted to buy Vogtle’s power.

Jeff Amy, The Associated Press

House Republicans are moving forward with a bill that would overhaul student-loan repayment and make it harder for Biden to get relief to borrowers

Ayelet Sheffey
Updated Wed, January 31, 2024 

Rep. Virginia Foxx.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

House Republicans are reviewing a bill that would overhaul the student-loan system.


It proposes limits on the education secretary for getting new forms of relief to borrowers.


Democrats introduced their own package to address student debt, but it's unlikely to advance.

House Republicans are moving forward with a bill that could make it harder for student-loan borrowers to get new forms of relief.

On Wednesday, the House education committee is set to move forward with a review and debate over the College Cost Reduction Act, introduced in early January by the GOP chair of the committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx.

The legislation outlines various priorities, including strengthened guidelines for college accreditation, caps on certain forms of financial aid, and limits to the education secretary's authority to implement new repayment and relief programs for borrowers.

While Foxx said in a statement that there's bipartisan agreement that student debt in the country is spiraling, there's likely to be some Democratic pushback when it comes to her proposals to put an end to President Joe Biden's efforts to shorten student-loan repayment for many borrowers.

"Student-loan debt is skyrocketing, and completion rates are plummeting. There's bipartisan agreement that lasting reforms are needed to correct course," Foxx told Business Insider.

However, she said her plan was "a responsible alternative to the Biden administration's free-college agenda, which is placing an enormous burden on students and taxpayers." She added: "This bill offers reforms to the Higher Education Act that will lower college costs, rein in executive overreach, and prevent colleges from endlessly raising the cost of tuition."

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have offered solutions to combat the student-debt crisis, but there's disagreement on the best way to do so. The Education Department is in the process of implementing student-debt relief for borrowers after the Supreme Court struck down Biden's first attempt. Along with that, the department has carried out targeted batches of forgiveness through account adjustments and has set up upcoming relief through its SAVE income-driven repayment plan.

However, many Republicans have opposed the department's efforts to make new repayment plans and implement streamlined processes for relief, saying the burden of debt forgiveness falls on taxpayers. Here's how Foxx's legislation would change things for borrowers.

What the GOP bill means for student-loan borrowers

Caps student borrowing. According to the bill's fact sheet, the bill would cap student-loan borrowing at $50,000 for undergraduate students, $100,000 for graduate students, and $150,000 for students in graduate professional programs.

The legislation would also sunset the grad and parent PLUS loan programs, which offer sums graduate students and parents can borrow in their own names to cover up to the full cost of attendance.

BI has previously spoken with parents who have struggled to repay their PLUS loans because of the high interest rates that can leave them with balances far larger than what they originally borrowed.

Streamlines repayment plans. When it comes to student-loan repayment in particular, the legislation aims to put constraints on the Education Department's ability to implement new programs. Specifically, the bill would establish two types of repayment plans: a 10-year "mortgage-style" plan and an income-driven repayment plan.

Limits debt relief. The fact sheet said the bill would prohibit "the Secretary from creating new repayment plans and from modifying an existing repayment plan in a manner that increases costs to the government."

The legislation would also repeal the Education Department's efforts to streamline the process for borrowers who say they were defrauded by their schools to get relief, along with rules that would ensure debt forgiveness for borrowers whose schools abruptly shut down.

The education secretary would also be required to confirm that any new rules related to student-loan programs would not increase costs to the government — if they did, the rules couldn't be implemented.

What Democrats are proposing

A day before the markup on the GOP bill, House Democrats on the education committee introduced their plan to address college affordability: the Roadmap to College Student Success.

It consists of a package of Democratic-led legislation that addresses strengthening the Pell Grant, improving the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, and making student loans more affordable.

Other bills in the package touch on pricing transparency when students are applying for financial-aid packages, along with partnerships with states to bolster tuition-free community-college programs.

"This campaign has three main objectives: first, bring down the cost of college; second, help students access a quality degree; and third — once students are in school — provide them with the support they need to graduate," the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Bobby Scott, said in a video about the package.

"A college degree is the best investment students can make for their future," he said. "And with our help, future generations may have the opportunity to enjoy the lifelong benefits that come with a college degree."

While Scott's proposal is unlikely to make headway in a GOP-controlled House, it's a reflection of where Democrats stand on college affordability — and where they differ with Republicans — ahead of the presidential election.

DESANTISLAND
Florida House votes to loosen child labor laws a year after tougher immigrant employment law

Thu, February 1, 2024



TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A year after Florida enacted a new law making it more difficult for employers to hire immigrants in the country illegally, the House passed a bill Thursday to let 16- and 17-year-olds work longer and later hours.

Supporters said teenagers and their parents know how to best manage their time and activities and lifting employment restrictions will help them build careers and earn money, especially with the current labor shortage. Opponents said the changes would make it easier for employers to exploit children and longer hours could negatively affect schoolwork.

“Nearly 1 million searches have been performed for ‘How can I get a job as a teen.’ They want to work. This bill gets government out of their way to choose a path that’s best for them,” said Republican Rep. Linda Chaney, who sponsored the bill.

The bill would remove restrictions prohibiting 16- and 17-year-olds from working more than eight hours when they have classes the next day and from working more than 30 hours a week when school is in session. The House passed it on an 80-35 vote.

Democrats opposing the bill argued that current law allows students plenty of time to work and attend school. Rep. Anna Eskamani questioned whether the measure was being proposed because the state's immigrant employment restrictions are making it more difficult to fill some jobs.

“The elephant in the room is that we see a labor shortage in different parts of the economy and part of that is tied to decisions this Legislature has made when it comes to immigration,” she said.

She also said employers should pay adults more for less desirable jobs rather than relying on children.

“I have concerns with saturating the workplace with cheap labor, which will make it harder for every person to be paid a wage they can live on,” Eskamani said.

The Senate has a similar bill that doesn't go as far as the House. Republican Senate President Kathleen Passidomo said she's heard too many concerns from parents about “young people working all hours of the day and night and not sleeping and not getting an education.”

The Senate bill needs approval from two more committees before reaching the full chamber.

"We want to allow students or kids that want to work to do that, but our number one priority is to make sure that they don’t sacrifice their education,” Passidomo said.

Brendan Farrington, The Associated Press

Florida Guard looks like DeSantis’ own militia —with no Legislature to keep him in check 

THE NEW KINGFISHER

Opinion
the Miami Herald Editorial Board
Thu, February 1, 2024 



After pulling the plug on his struggling presidential campaign, Gov. Ron DeSantis is again flexing his muscles in his home state with an announcement that he would send the Florida State Guard — custom created for him — to the Texas border.

The U.S. southern border crisis — and inaction by Congress and the White House to address the record numbers of people crossing it — have given DeSantis the perfect excuse to concentrate more power in his own hands via what looks more and more like his own taxpayer-funded militia.

The Legislature already revived the Florida State Guard and then expanded it at his request. Now lawmakers are working to give him even more power to deploy the unit while making it harder to hold its members accountable for on-duty acts.

DeSantis said Thursday State Guard members would be deployed to Texas alongside members of the Florida National Guard and Florida Highway Patrol troopers. Texas and the federal government are at a standoff over the state’s efforts to block migrants from crossing the border by setting up a concertina-wire barrier. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Biden administration could take down the barriers but Texas has vowed to continue erecting them — now with the help of Florida.

“The goal is to help Texas fortify this border, help them strengthen the barricades, help them add barriers, help them add the wire that they need so that we can stop this invasion once and for all,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Jacksonville.

In 2022, DeSantis pushed the Legislature to revive the State Guard, which had been inactive since 1947. The civilian volunteer force was originally planned as a non-military mission meant to provide relief after disasters like hurricanes but it has quickly evolved. Lawmakers expanded from 400 to 1,500 members and allowed DeSantis to deploy them out of state, while also allocating $100 million for planes and boats.

Following a surge of migrants arriving by boat in the Keys last year, a special unit took part in combat training in the Panhandle where trainees learned to use rifles, practice “aerial gunnery” and treat “massive hemorrhages.” Some military veterans who volunteered to be part of the State Guard quit over its militia-style training.

This is a far cry from handing out water bottles and hurricane relief supplies and closer to something resembling DeSantis’ own militia. That’s a realistic danger considering his authoritarian tendencies and how his rhetoric on immigration has grown more extreme with calls to shoot suspected drug smugglers “stone cold dead” at the Southern Border.

By granting DeSantis so much authority, the Legislature doesn’t seem to be considering what a future governor could do with the same powers.

And yet the Republican-led Legislature is now advancing a bill that would give the governor — whether that’s DeSantis or someone else — even more flexibility to activate the Guard. Under House Bill 1551, the governor could use the force during ”a declared state of emergency, period of civil unrest, or any other time deemed necessary and appropriate.” The legislation also would make it harder for people to sue members of the Guard for actions they committed while on duty by making plaintiffs pay for everyone’s attorney fees if they don’t prevail. Guard members would also be entitled to an attorney paid for by the taxpayers in criminal or civil court.

“Any other time deemed necessary” appears to be in the eye of the beholder. Let’s go back to the summer of 2020, when DeSantis proposed an “anti-riot” law following Black Lives Matter protests — despite the fact that, unlike in other parts of the country, the Florida protests were largely peaceful. What could the governor have done with a military-style State Guard that answers to him only?

DeSantis has used fear — of BLM protesters, “woke” culture and, now, an out-of-control Southern border — to justify spending millions of taxpayer dollars to make him more powerful. The Florida Legislature, so far, has shown no desire to keep him in check.

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