Japan acquits world's longest-serving death row prisoner

An 88-year-old man who was sentenced to death in 1968 for killing a family was cleared of all charges following a retrial in Japan. He spent most of his life on death row

A former Japanese boxer convicted more than 50 years ago of killing his boss and family was acquitted by a Japanese court on Thursday.

Shizuoka District Court ruled that 88-year-old Iwao Hakamada was innocent, in a retrial that was granted 10 years ago.

The court's presiding judge, Koshi Kunii, said the court acknowledged multiple fabrications of evidence and that Hakamada was not the culprit, according to broadcaster NHK.

Hakamada is the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan's post-war history. All four previous cases also resulted in acquittals.

Hundreds of people queued in the morning at the court to try and secure a seat for the verdict in what has become a high-profile case that has gripped the nation.
A long battle to clear his name

In 1968, Hakamada was convicted of the murder of a company director and three of his family members two years before.

He at first denied the crime, but confessed after what he later described as a brutal police interrogation that included beatings.

He was sentenced to death but lengthy appeals and the retrial process led to the postponement of his execution.

A first appeal for a retrial was dismissed by a court 27 years after his sentencing.

The latest retrial, which was finally approved by the court in 2023 after a second appeal was filed in 2008 by his sister, Hideko Hakamada, now 91, began in October.

Japan is the only major industrialized democracy other than the United States to retain capital punishment.

As of December, 107 prisoners were waiting for their death sentences to be carried out. The method used for execution is always hanging.

tj/rm (AFP, AP)

Graphene at 20: Here’s how this wonder material is quietly changing the world

The Conversation
September 25, 2024 

Graphene (Shutterstock)

Twenty years ago this October, two physicists at the University of Manchester, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, published a groundbreaking paper on the “electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films”. Their work described the extraordinary electronic properties of graphene, a crystalline form of carbon equivalent to a single layer of graphite, just one atom thick.

Around that time, I started my doctorate at the University of Surrey. Our team specialised in the electronic properties of carbon. Carbon nanotubes were the latest craze, which I was happily following. One day, my professor encouraged a group of us to travel to London to attend a talk by a well-known science communicator from the University of Manchester. This was Andre Geim.

We were not disappointed. He was inspiring for us fresh-faced PhD students, incorporating talk of wacky Friday afternoon experiments with levitating frogs, before getting on to atomically thin carbon. All the same, we were sceptical about this carbon concept. We couldn’t quite believe that a material effectively obtained from pencil lead with sticky tape was really what it claimed to be. But we were wrong.


The work was quickly copied and reproduced by scientists across the globe. New methods for making this material were devised. Incredible claims about its properties made it sound like something out of a Stan Lee comic. Stronger than steel, highly flexible, super-slippery and impermeable to gases. A better electronic conductor than copper and a better thermal conductor than diamond, as well as practically invisible and displaying a host of exotic quantum properties.

Graphene was hailed as a revolutionary material, promising ultra-fast electronics, supercomputers and super-strong materials. More fantastical claims have included space elevators, solar sails, artificial retinas, even invisibility cloaks.

Just six years after their initial work, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, further fuelling the enthusiasm around this wonder stuff. Since then, hundreds of thousands of academic papers have been published on graphene and related materials.
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But not everyone is on board. Skim through the comments section of any popular article on the material, and you’ll quickly find the sceptics. We have endured decades of empty promises about the real-world impact of graphene, they complain. Where are the game-changing products to enrich our lives or save the world from climate change, they ask.

So has graphene been a resounding success or a damp squib? As is so often the case, the reality is somewhere in between.
Graphene’s ups and downs


In terms of public perception, it’s fair to say that graphene has been held to an impossible standard. The popular media can certainly exaggerate science stories for clicks, but academics – including myself – are not immune from over-egging or speculating about their pet projects either. I’d argue this can even be useful, helping to drive new technologies forward. Equally, though, there can be a backlash when progress looks disappointing.

Having said that, disruptive technologies such as cars, television or plastic all required decades of development. Graphene is still a newcomer in the grand scheme of things, so it’s far too early to reach any conclusions about its impact.


What has quietly occurred is a steady integration of graphene into numerous practical applications. Much of this is thanks to the Graphene Flagship, a major European research initiative coordinated by Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. This aims to bring graphene and related materials from academic research to real-world commercial applications, and more than 90 products have been developed over the past decade as a result.

These include blended plastics for high-performance sports equipment, more durable racing tires for bicycles, motorcycle helmets that better distribute impact forces, thermally conductive coatings for motorcycle components, and lubricants for reducing friction and wear between mechanical parts.


Safer motorbike helmets are just one of many ways in which graphene is coming to market. n_defender

Graphene is finding its way into batteries and supercapacitors, enabling faster charging times and longer life spans. Conductive graphene inks are now used to manufacture sensors, wireless tracking tags, heating elements, and electromagnetic shielding for protecting sensitive electronics. Graphene is even used in headphones to improve the sound quality, and as a more efficient means of transmitting heat in air-conditioning units.

Graphene oxide products are being used for desalination, wastewater treatment and purification of drinking water. Meanwhile, a range of graphene materials can be bought off the shelf for use in countless other products, and major corporations including SpaceX, Tesla, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Apple are all rumoured or known to be using them to develop new products.

From promise to practicality

The impact of graphene on materials science is undeniable. The impact on consumer products is tangible, but not as visible. Once a material is embedded in a working product, there is little need to keep mentioning it, and proprietary concerns can make companies reluctant to get into details in any case. Consumers can therefore be blissfully unaware that their car, mobile phone, or golf club contains graphene, and most probably don’t care, as long as it works.

As production methods improve and costs decrease, we can expect graphene to become ever more widely adopted. Economies of scale will make it more accessible, and the range of applications is likely to continue to expand.

Personally, after two decades, I still get excited when I try it out for something new in the lab. While I may be guilty of having contributed to the initial hype, I remain optimistic about graphene’s potential. I’m still waiting for my ride on a space elevator, but in the meantime, I’ll take comfort in the fact that graphene is already helping to shape a better future – quietly and steadily.

Stephen Lyth, Strathclyde Chancellor's Fellow, Chemical and Process Engineering, University of Strathclyde

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The real threat to democracy: White men

D. Earl Stephens
September 25, 2024 

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump hugs Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), as he holds a rally for the first time with his running mate, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S. July 20, 2024. REUTERS/Tom Brenne

At a time when we’ve never needed good to prevail over evil more, I simply don’t trust enough of my fellow white men in America to do the right thing in November

As an expert spanning 64 years on this sore subject, I want to spend a few minutes kicking that — and us — around a bit today.

And a warning: This’ll be a hard and bumpy read, but I believe a necessary one given there can’t be a one of us who has recovered fully from the whiplash of that awful evening on November 8, 2016, when we hit rock bottom with a resounding thud.

Best we head into the next six weeks with both hands on the wheel and fully understanding what we’re up against. Like it or not, many of the same elements are in place that led to that catastrophic wreck eight years ago, namely America’s most notorious rock in the road: the angry white man ...

Fact is, most American white men endlessly discourage me, which is very candidly why I spend most of my time avoiding them. It is why I have so few male friends leftover from my youth, including my very best friend, who has been lost seemingly forever to the burgeoning island of the traitor Trump’s endlessly aggrieved.

It’s a shallow pool of water that my old best buddy swims in, where fact is fiction, love is hate, and losers think they’re winners.

I miss my friends for what I thought they were 10 years ago, but not for what they have officially become. They have been exposed by the reprehensible political company they keep, and there’s only so much frustration I can expend wondering just why in the hell they refuse to see it.

Their support for an orange madman, and his grotesque party who mean so many people and things harm is simply a bridge too far. While I have spent some time the past eight years attempting to cross the span to meet them halfway, I have finally decided they are no longer worth the effort.

I could lie and say I wish them well, but the truth is I wish them nothing at all. The divide is too great — my disappointment too profound. My worries endless. There are a helluva lot of these guys, folks, and they got their little minds made up.

I saw them everywhere this past weekend on my three-day drive through the guts of America that started in the Battleground State of Wisconsin and ended in the Battleground State of North Carolina. They are easy to spot, because they like it that way. They fly hateful, racist flags and drive ridiculously loud trucks that are made for conquering mud, and drowning out all their confusion.

They wear those stupid red hats, and litter their yards one after another with gigantic signs, because there’s no sense in being a small person unless you are fully willing to overcompensate for it.


What I didn’t see during my trip south was the quieter, stuffier ones who hole up in those garish country-clubs in the woods, and believe paying their fair share of taxes are what the little people do. How many of them do you see supporting Kamala Harris?

And how about the hundreds of thousands of lost souls who pile into the white churches that are conspicuously situated in the middle of these little towns to worship an orange idol, who treats the Ten Commandments like options on a fast-food menu, where he can super-size everything, and spit out whatever he doesn’t like?

Tell me: Just what in the hell can possibly be done about them?


And if you tell me I need to stop stereotyping here, well, I’ll tell you I got this completely right. Worse, you know it. After all, I’m the unfortunate expert on white men here.

As we head into the homestretch of the most critical election in the history of the United States of America, I take absolutely no pride in telling you very candidly that fully two-thirds of the white men in this damn country are once again gearing up to do the worst thing possible, and vote for the worst-possible person who has ever headed the ticket of one of our two major parties.

You can see it in their eyes, and in the stupid shit they are saying … and maybe more important, what they aren’t. Sure, maybe they’ll surprise us, but there is absolutely nothing to recommend it.


So we will have to get this done without them, and it won’t be easy, folks.

This is what keeps me up at night when I’m trying to turn out my lights, and dream of better things to come …

I do not trust the white man to do the right thing.


Say what you want about all these endless political polls, but one thing they tell us over and over again with astonishing consistency is that the majority of the white men in this country are a unified voting bloc, and are going to do whatever they possibly can to jam the wheels of progress.

Going places scares the hell out of them. Instead of blaming themselves for the rut they seem to want to be in, they blame others for putting them there. That’s some astonishing irony, given Democrats spent close to 100 years putting in place countless programs that would lift them up and out, if only they’d grow up and knock that childish chip they lug around on their hunched shoulders.

The economy is almost always better under Democrats, but willing ignorance is a powerful drug, and can literally lead to voting against your own interests.


Truth is, these white men have spent centuries somehow thinking they are better than everybody else, even if all the evidence has pointed in the other direction for at least that long.

One of those polls I was just typing about came courtesy of NBC-TV this past weekend, and featured the American-attacking Trump leading those white men without a college education by a whopping 61%-33%.

I don’t much like poll numbers that put the emphasis on education like that, because there are plenty of smart people out there who either didn’t go to, or never finished college like myself. (That’s a real opportunity right there for a punch line if you want to haul off and take a swing …)


Point is, a lot of folks of all races and genders aren’t college educated, but are doing the smart thing and putting their country before themselves by voting for the only sane and qualified candidate in this election, Kamala Harris.

For what it’s worth, and for the sake of accuracy, white women have a lot of their own answering to do, and also pose a significant threat to all that is supposed to be good and right in this country. We need only look at the 2020 election to see when it was our white “better half” voted for the despicable Trump over Joe Biden by a not-so-insignificant 53%-46% margin.

Do I expect them to improve on that shoddy showing this time around? Yes. Do I trust them more than men? You bet I do. Is that saying a whole helluva lot? It depends. Particularly if you are looking at it through the eyes of Black women, who went for Biden by a remarkably sensible 95%-5% clip, and Black folks overall, who voted overwhelmingly, 92%-8%, for the only reasonable candidate in that election.

Proof again, that if you are looking for the real patriots in this country, you need to stop looking at white people.

So no, I don’t fully trust white women, either, but because I’m no real expert on them, I’ll stay in my lane and type what I absolutely know to be true: White men are our nation’s biggest damn problem, and have been since they began overrunning this fruited plain more than 500 years ago.

Look, I do see plenty of reasons for optimism, and even things that make me smile when I take a 30,000-foot view of this election.

Harris is running a beautiful campaign, and hauled off and belted Trump in their lone debate. There won’t be another, because he’s terrified. It seems the more people get to know Harris, the more they like her. She’s smart, tough, and isn’t afraid to smile.

I believe the Democratic electorate is energized and know the stakes. I believe a woman’s right to choose could well be the difference. We simply have to win, because none of us are built for the alternative.

That said, nothing blows my mind more than when I hear or read a Democrat say, with everything we know about the despicable Trump, and the ascending Harris, how is this race even close? How isn’t she winning this thing easy?

Well, I hope I answered those questions for you today.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

The week Fox News finally faces its reckoning

Thom Hartmann
September 25, 2024 

CEO and founder of News Corporation Rupert Murdoch (AFP)

This week may well see a court decide the fate and future of Fox “News” and thus the Republican Party, at least in its current hard-right neofascist form. And odds are Fox viewers are blissfully ignorant about the pitched battle that just played out in a Reno courtroom over the future of their beloved propaganda outlet.

Sir Keith Murdoch was the notoriously racist and misogynist owner of a small newspaper chain in Australia. It was inherited by his son, Rupert, who — using sensationalism and bigotry — turned it into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that spans three continents.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called Rupert Murdoch “the greatest cancer on the Australian democracy” in the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, the New York Times of Australia. Noting that Murdoch owns about “two thirds of the country’s print media,” Rudd wrote:

“In Britain, Murdoch made Brexit possible because of the position taken by his papers. In the United States, Murdoch's Fox News is the political echo chamber of the far right, which enabled the Tea Party and then the Trump party to stage a hostile takeover of the Republican Party. In Australia, as in America, Murdoch has campaigned for decades in support of tax cuts for the wealthy, killing action on climate change and destroying anything approximating multiculturalism.”


When Rupert was divorcing his second wife he put most of the family’s businesses into a trust, apparently to prevent her from grabbing a larger share of his wealth. The terms of that trust stipulate that when Rupert dies, his four children — Lachlan, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence — would share equal votes and power over the business dynasty their father had inherited from his father.

But now Rupert — who’s 93 years old — is having second thoughts, because James, Elisabeth, and Prudence are apparently not all that enthusiastic about Fox “News” and other Murdoch media outlets nakedly lying to and whipping up hatred among their viewers and readers, both here, in Australia, and in the UK. Only Lachlan, Rupert’s oldest son, is loyal to his father’s vision of peddling-hate-for-billions-in-profits.
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So, Rupert went to court in Reno — the proceedings are sealed, but the case began last week and wrapped up yesterday (although we don’t yet know the result) — to try to break the trust and hand exclusive or primary control of his fiefdom to Lachlan.

Fox “News” viewers have no idea that they’re being constantly lied to, both by commission (like telling them the 2020 election was stolen by voting machines) and by omission. They think they’re seeing the world “as it is” and getting fair and balanced “truth” and “straight talk,” which is why Fox “News” is so potent.

Without Fox “News” there probably never would have been a January 6th coup attempt, and, given how thin their margins were, likely no 2000 Bush or 2016 Trump presidencies.


The stakes here are enormous. Some media observers believe that a major role in Barack Obama’s 2008 victory was Air America broadcasting my program and others to well over two-thirds of America with big stations in 62 major markets. (That ended when Mitt Romney decided to run for president and had his company buy Clear Channel, then flip all of the stations Air America was leasing from them from progressive talk to sports, killing the network in 2010.)

Similarly, the rise of Fox following Reagan fast-tracking Murdoch’s US citizenship has played a huge role in Republican victories across the nation and the solid hold the GOP has on red state America, where Fox and rightwing hate radio predominate.

Activist investors in the Fox media caliphate have tried to force a vote at the upcoming shareholders’ meeting that would require Fox “News” to label their opinion programming — which constitutes most of their programming — as “opinion.” An attorney for the activist shareholder group, Luke Morgan, told US News & World Report:


“There can hardly be a more significant issue for Fox than its misinformation problem. This is precisely the sort of issue that is appropriate for shareholder input.”


Nonetheless, to Murdoch’s great delight, no doubt, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled last week that Fox doesn’t have to start informing its viewers when their talent crosses the line from reporting to indoctrinating.

Weirdly, this drama within an Australian family may well determine the fate and future of the Republican Party and the conservative and MAGA movements in the US. The future of democracy in America.


It’s a real-life Succession drama and may take months to resolve.

Keep an eye on this story. While it’s probably the most under-reported major news story in America right now, the outcome will have far-reaching consequences for all of us.

Neo-Nazi Telegram users panic amid arrest of alleged online extremist leaders

A.C. Thompson, ProPublica

James Bandler, ProPublica

Brandon Roberts, Propublica
September 26, 2024 


Photo by Andras Vas on Unsplash

The recent crackdown on the social media platform Telegram has triggered waves of panic among the neo-Nazis who have made the app their headquarters for posting hate and planning violence.

“Shut It Down,” one person posted in a white supremacist chat on Tuesday, hours after Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced he would begin sharing some users’ identifying information with law enforcement.

With over 900 million users around the globe, Telegram has been both revered and reviled for its hands-off approach to moderating posted content. The platform made headlines this summer when French authorities arrested Durov, seeking to hold him responsible for illegal activity that has been conducted or facilitated on the platform — including organized drug trafficking, child pornography and fraud.

Durov has called the charges “misguided.” But he acknowledged that criminals have abused the platform and promised in a Telegram post to “significantly improve things in this regard.” Durov’s announcement marked a considerable policy shift: He said Telegram will now share the IP addresses and phone numbers of users who violate the platform’s rules with authorities “in response to valid legal requests.”

This was the second time in weeks that extremists had called on their brethren to abandon Telegram. The first flurry of panic followed indictments by the Justice Department of two alleged leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, a group of white supremacists accused of inciting others on the platform to commit racist killings.

“EVERYONE LEAVE CHAT,” posted the administrator of a group chat allied with the Terrorgram Collective the day the indictments were announced.

An analysis by ProPublica and FRONTLINE, however, shows that despite the wave of early panic, users didn’t initially leave the platform. Instead there was a surge in activity on Terrorgram-aligned channels and chats, as allies of the group tried to rally support for their comrades in custody, railed against the government’s actions and sought to oust users they believed to be federal agents.

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. have charged Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, two alleged leaders of the Terrorgram Collective, with a slew of felonies including soliciting the murder of government officials on Telegram.

Humber has pleaded not guilty. She made a brief appearance in federal court in Sacramento, California, on Sept. 13, during which she was denied bail. Humber, shackled and clad in orange-and-white jail garb, said nothing. Allison, who has not yet entered a plea, was arrested in Idaho but will face trial in California.

Attorneys for Humber and Allison did not respond to separate requests for comment.

The two are alleged Accelerationists, a subset of white supremacists intent on accelerating the collapse of today’s liberal democracies and replacing them with all-white ethno-states, according to the indictment.

Through a constellation of linked Telegram channels, the collective distributes books, audio recordings, videos, posters and calendars celebrating white supremacist mass murderers, such as Brenton Tarrant, who in early 2019 stormed two mosques in New Zealand and shot to death 51 Muslim worshippers.

The group explicitly aims to inspire similar attacks, offering would-be terrorists tips and tools for carrying out spectacular acts of violence and sabotage. A now-defunct channel allegedly run by Humber, for example, featured instructions on how to make a vast array of potent explosives. After their arrests, channels allegedly run by Humber and Allison went silent.

But within days of the indictments, an anonymous Telegram user had set up a new channel “dedicated to updates about their situation.”

“I understand that some people may not like these two, however, their arrests and possible prosecution affects all of us,” the user wrote. The criminal case, they argued, “shows us that Telegram is under attack globally.”

The channel referred to Humber and Allison by their alleged Telegram usernames, Ryder_Returns and Btc.

A long-running neo-Nazi channel with more than 13,000 subscribers posted a lengthy screed. “We are very sad to hear of the egregious overreach of government powers with these arrests,” stated the poster, who used coded language to suggest that white supremacists should forcefully overthrow the U.S. government.

One group closely aligned with the Terrorgram Collective warned like-minded followers that federal agents could be lurking. In a post, it said that it had been in contact with Humber since her arrest, and that she gave them information about an undercover FBI agent who had infiltrated the Accelerationist scene.

“If this person is in your chats, remove them,” said one post, referring to the supposed agent. “Don’t threaten them. Don’t say anything to them. Just remove them from contacts and chats.”

Matthew Kriner, managing director of the Accelerationism Research Consortium, said the Terrorgram Collective had already been badly weakened by a string of arrests in the U.S., Europe and Canada over the past two years. “Overall, the arrests of Humber and Allison are likely the final blow to the Terrorgram Collective,” Kriner said.

In the U.S., federal agents this year have arrested at least two individuals who were allegedly inspired by the group. The first was Alexander Lightner, a 26-year-old construction worker who was apprehended in January during a raid on his Florida home. In a series of Telegram posts, Lightner said he planned to commit a racially or ethnically motivated mass killing, according to prosecutors. Court records show that agents found a manual produced by the Terrorgram Collective and a copy of “Mein Kampf” in Lightner’s home.

Lightner has pleaded not guilty to charges of making online threats and possessing an illegal handgun silencer. His attorney declined to comment.

This summer, prosecutors charged Andrew Takhistov of New Jersey with soliciting an individual to destroy a power plant. Takhistov allegedly shared a PDF copy of a different Terrorgram publication with an undercover agent. The 261-page manual includes detailed instructions for building explosives and encourages readers to destabilize society through murder and industrial sabotage. Takhistov has not yet entered a plea. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Durov’s August arrest also sent a spasm of fear through the extremist scene. “It’s over,” one user of a white supremacist chat group declared.

“Does this mean I have to Nuke my Telegram account?” asked another member of the group. “I just got on.”

Their concerns grew when Telegram removed language from its FAQ page stating that the company would not comply with law enforcement requests regarding users in private Telegram chats.

Alarmed, Accelerationists on Telegram discussed the feasibility of finding another online sanctuary. Some considered the messaging service Signal, but others warned it was likely controlled by U.S. intelligence agencies. One post suggested users migrate to more obscure encrypted messaging apps like Briar and Session.

In extremist circles, there was more discussion about fleeing Telegram after Durov’s announcement this week. “Time is running out on this sinking ship,” wrote one user. “So we’re ditching Telegram?” asked another.

“Every time we have a success against one of them, they learn, they adapt, they modify,” said Don Robinson, who as an FBI agent conducted infiltration operations against white supremacists. “Extremists can simply pick up and move to a new platform once they are de-platformed for content abuses. This leaves law enforcement and intelligence agencies playing an endless game of Whac-a-Mole to identify where the next threat may be coming from.”

Restoring nature, 'adaptation' helped limit Storm Boris impact

Agence France-Presse
September 25, 2024 

Austrian officials say restoration efforts at the creek helped mitigate flooding © Alex HALADA / AFP

The restoration of a creek in Vienna reduced the impact of flooding caused by Storm Boris, authorities say, one of many projects experts believe helped central Europe endure the deluge better than in previous years.

Flooding unleashed by the storm burst dams and devastated entire villages in central Europe, killing at least two dozen people in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania.

The torrential rains that caused the flooding were "the heaviest ever recorded" in the region, according to the World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists, inundating homes and farmland.

But despite record rainfall, fewer people died during Storm Boris than in previous major European floods in 1997 and 2002, when more than 100 and 200 people lost their lives respectively, the WWA said in a report published Wednesday.

"We have seen investment for adaptation and mitigation in the affected countries after the events of 1997 and 2002," said Federica Remondi, a flood specialist at reinsurance giant Swiss Re.

"Without those adaptation measures the overall impact and losses might have been even worse," she added, calling for continued efforts despite resources being restrained in some countries.


Prevented 'greater damage'

In Austria's capital Vienna, where no deaths were reported, officials said efforts to restore damaged ecosystems helped offset the impact of the floods, including at Liesing creek on the outskirts of the city.

Workers have removed and knocked down the narrow concrete banks which line the waterway, where water levels rose during the flood by more than three meters to a 100-year-high.


\

The floods were caused by record rainfall © Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP

Without the restoration, heavy rainfall "would have led to greater damage", city official Josef Gottschall told AFP.

He dismissed criticism that the project -- which is projected to run until 2027 with a total cost of about 135 million euros ($151 million) -- was too costly and had a limited impact, saying that sums cannot be weighed up against "loss of life and damage".


According to experts, the construction of retention basins -- artificial ponds that collect storm water -- also played a role in lessening the impact of floods in the region, while early warning systems have become more effective.
Climate costs 'accelerating'

In the Czech Republic, where several people remain missing, flood protection has been beefed up, but is still considered inefficient in places like the village of Troubky, which was hit hard in 1997 and narrowly escaped another disaster.

When Storm Boris hit Austria, the Liesing creek's water rose up to the level where project manager Marlies Greussing stands © Alex HALADA / AFP

Experts suggest the recent storm might help accelerate work such as the construction of a dam on the Opava river which was scheduled to begin in 2027 but could be brought forward.

The cost of the disasters remains high, with the European Commission pledging 10 billion euros ($11 billion) in funds for affected countries.


In Austria, insurance companies estimate the total damage from the storm to reach 700 million euros, as economists predict several billions of euros. A similar estimate has been made for the Czech Republic.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said more than five billion euros, including EU funds, have been earmarked for reconstructing affected areas.
'Wake-up call'


Scientists also warn new infrastructure is needed as climate change worsens the impact of extreme weather events.

Around 80,000 hectares (197,600 acres) of farmland have been affected by the floods and more than 18,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, with thousands of people forced to evacuate.

Based on historical data, a four-day rainfall event is expected to occur on average about once every 100 to 300 years in today's climate with 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming, WWA said.


Global warming has doubled the likelihood of severe four-day downpours since the pre-industrial era and the costs of climate change are "accelerating", according to the WWA.

The floods are "another wake-up call that our climate is changing rapidly," researcher Hayley Fowler from Newcastle University told AFP.

"Our infrastructure is really not designed to deal with these levels of flooding," she said.


"The evacuation of whole cities, dams bursting and roads turning into rivers are now commonplace around the world. The question is not whether we need to adapt for more of these types of storm, but can we?"

© 2024 AFP

How a terrorism exhibit in Colorado distorts the story of Jan. 6

ITS NOT IDEAS THAT ARE DANGEROUS IT IS MEN

Quentin Young, Colorado Newsline
September 26, 2024

Visitors at the CELL terrorism exhibit in Denver view a video monitor at which 1 of 7 segments addresses the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Quentin Young/Colorado Newsline)

When the CELL first opened in 2008, Melanie Pearlman, the executive director, remarked to a Denver Post reporter that the exhibit transcended partisanship. Everyone could agree, after all, that terrorism should be countered.

“It can’t be taken to a partisan level,” Pearlman said.

Turns out, it can.

Rudy Giuliani got a private pre-opening tour of the exhibit. Those being simpler times, the Post referred to him as a “dignitary.” This was a sign from the future that aversion to terrorism is not exactly universal, since Giuliani would be a key figure 12 years later in a president’s attempted coup — a spectacular demonstration that many Americans are OK with violent extremism when it’s pursued by partisan allies.

The problem for the CELL, a permanent exhibit in downtown Denver on terrorism and violent extremism, is that partisanship has crept into its own mission.

Jan. 6 was one of the most consequential acts of anti-government domestic terrorism in U.S. history. A mob vowing to hang the vice president came within 40 feet of its mark after violently breaching security at the U.S. Capitol.

And yet the CELL — Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab — treats the day as if it were just one of the many regrettable instances of extremism that plague the world, not all that unlike far-left protests in Portland, arson during Black Lives Matter protests, or the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Worse, it almost entirely relieves former President Donald Trump of responsibility.

It might have been easy for the CELL to deal frankly with post-9/11 terrorism. Now that the standard bearer of a major political party is the spearhead of extremists, it finds itself incapable of telling the truth.


None of this would matter much, except the CELL commands outsize influence. It’s located in the heart of the city, across a plaza from the Denver Art Museum. When it reopened in May after a renovation, top political figures in the state — “dignitaries,” if you will — were on hand to celebrate. They included Gov. Jared Polis, Attorney General Phil Weiser and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. It boasts an A-list speaker series, which features defense secretaries, White House advisors, top military commanders, members of Congress, national journalists and other notables. It offers a terrorism preparedness program developed with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security that it says has trained more than 100,000 people in more than 75 municipalities.

What it says carries weight. So what does it say?

The CELL educates visitors on the causes of violent extremism, the impact of it, and how we can combat it. The exhibit comprises images, audio, interactive displays and interpretative stations. Sept. 11 has an appropriately large presence, but the exhibit ranges far and wide. Richard Spencer, Hezbollah, Timothy McVeigh, Anwar al-Awlaki, The Weather Underground, ISIS, left-wing, right-wing, foreign, domestic — it covers a lot of terrorism ground.


But none of these figures and groups managed to breach security at the seat of American democracy. No other act of terror was incited by a sitting U.S. president. Never before Jan. 6 had democracy in the U.S. come so close to demolition. And you’d never grasp the gravity of the insurrection from the CELL’s account of it.

The exhibit addresses Jan. 6 at a single video station on domestic terrorism, and a segment on the attack is only 1 of 7 short videos. It mentions that Trump on the morning of the Capitol attack “reiterated false claims of a stolen presidential election” and exhorted supporters to “fight back,” but it shifts blame for the attack to extremist groups like the Oath Keepers and says nothing about how the stop-the-steal movement was generated and stoked by the former president.

Was Jan. 6 even an act of terrorism? The CELL, by discussing it, thinks so, even if it botches the presentation. One of the most authoritative voices on this matter is a Trump appointee, Christopher Wray, director of the FBI.


“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism,” Wray told Congress

But many Americans, even if they agree that Jan. 6 was a form of terror, find it too awkward or painful to acknowledge what caused it, though the facts could not be more clear. Trump originated the lie that he had won the 2020 election. He gave encouragement to violent extremists. He called for supporters to join him Jan. 6, 2021, for a “wild” event. He fueled the Capitol mob even after it had broken into the building. He incited the attack as part of a multi-pronged attempted coup. He caused it. It’s well documented.

The CELL’s whole mission is to explain this. Any attempt to understand why it can’t has to note the political inclinations of Denver homebuilder Larry Mizel.


The exhibit opened as a subsidiary of the Mizel Museum, which highlights Jewish culture and heritage. Mizel co-founded that institution, and he sits on the CELL board of directors. He is also among the most influential Trump champions in Colorado. He was Trump’s Colorado fundraising chairman in 2016. In August, Mizel co-hosted a fundraiser for Trump in Aspen, and he’s reportedly planning to host a visit to Denver by Trump running mate J.D. Vance next month.

Given Mizel’s post-coup-attempt allegiance to Trump, it would be surprising if his terrorism museum could be forthright about the former president’s treachery. Newsline asked a CELL spokesperson questions about how it treats Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol and the nature of Mizel’s influence on the exhibit but did not receive a response.

This all reflects how Trump has deranged an entire society. He made it impossible for otherwise norm-respecting, law-abiding conservatives to find their moral bearings, and he forced even antagonists into fits of hypocrisy.

How else does this coup plotter get invited to a CNN town hall? How else does a former Trump cabinet member confess his boss was “off the rails” yet will vote for him again. How else does the Democratic presidential candidate bring herself to shake this felon’s hand on a debate stage? How else does the Democratic governor of Colorado promote an institution that launders the reputation of an authoritarian poised to seize power.

Republican operatives are again preparing to reject unfavorable election results in November. This is an active threat, and there is every reason to expect that the same forces that sparked terrorism after the last presidential election will do it again.

The CELL could empower visitors to combat the threat of violent extremism just months away. Its dishonesty about Jan. 6 does the opposite.


Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and X.

'There's empirical evidence:' Harris shuts down interviewer who tries to defend Trump

Kathleen Culliton

RAW STORY
September 25, 2024 


Kamala Harris (Shutterstock)

Vice President Kamala Harris pushed back at her MSNBC interviewer Wednesday evening over a controversial claim about former President Donald Trump.

"The 11th Hour host" Stephanie Ruhle grilled Harris about her new economic policy plan in an exclusive interview during which she tried to fact-check Harris — and found herself checked in return.

"Donald Trump," said Harris, "left us with the worst economy since the Great Depression when you look at, for example, the employment numbers."
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Ruhle cut it to remind Harris about the COVID-19 global pandemic.

"Unemployment was so high because we shut down the government, we shut down the country," said Ruhle.

But Harris came ready with rebuttal points that have a basis in fact.

"Even before the pandemic, he lost manufacturing jobs by most people's estimates at least 200,000," Harris said.

This number appears in an analysis from the BlueGreen Alliance, a group that represents the United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club.

"Ask the autoworkers how he lost auto plants," Harris continued. "We have grown over 20 new auto plants."

A Politifact fact check confirms auto manufacturing jobs climbed under President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama but stagnated under Trump.

Harris continued to pit her economic plan against Trump's to argue hers was the one that would bring opportunity to the middle class without punishing the rich for being rich.


"The facts remain that Donald Trump has a history of taking care of very rich people, and I'm not mad at anybody for being rich, but they should pay their fair share," she said.

"My perspective, on the economy, is when you grow the middle class, America's economy is stronger. And there's empirical evidence to prove my point correct."


Watch the video below or click here.

'No such thing as a little job': Harris laughs off Trump's strange McDonald's attack

Kathleen Culliton

RAW STORY
September 25, 2024 


Kamala Harris (Shutterstock)

Vice President Kamala Harris wants America to know there is no such thing as a little job — and she has experience behind a fast food joint's deep fryer to prove it.

Harris addressed a peculiar character attack from former President Donald Trump in her exclusive interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle, who told the Democratic presidential nominee, "I want to ask you about a little job and a big job."

Before Ruhle could continue, Harris cut in.
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"There's no little job," Harris said with a laugh. "There's no such thing as a little job."

Ruhle then brought up the strange attack from Trump, that Harris has lied about working at McDonald's as a student, and used a vintage commercial to do it.

"At any point in your life have you served two all-beef patties—" Ruhle asked as Harris burst out laughing, "—special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickle, onions—"

Both women then said together, "on a sesame seed bun?"

ALSO READ: (Opinion) Why Trump is barely campaigning

"Working at a McDonald's?" Ruhle asked Harris. "Yes or no, that's it."


"I have," Harris said. "But it was not a small job."

Before Ruhle could continue on to her "big job" question, Harris asked to take a moment to challenge the premise.

"The reason I even talk about having worked at McDonald's is because there are people who work at McDonald's in our country trying to raise a family," Harris said. "I think part of the difference between me and my opponent includes our prospective on the needs of the American people. And what our responsibility then is to meet those needs."


Watch the video below or click here.

Trump's plans would 'damage' American economy for more than a decade: study

Brad Reed
September 26, 2024 

A new study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics (NEO CON THINK TANK)  projected that former President Donald Trump's second-term policy proposals of mass deportations and massive tariffs on all foreign goods would do significant damage to the American economy.

As CNN reports, the study projected that Trump's plans "would cause weaker economic growth, higher inflation and lower employment," and that in some cases "the damage could continue through 2040."

Among other things, the paper found that even in a best-case scenario Trump's policies would send inflation shooting back upward to 6 percent by 2026, and by 2028 consumer prices would be 20 percent higher than what they are today.
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ALSO READ: 'Embarrassing': Impeachment witness shames Trump for learning about WWII 'the other day'

In a worst-case scenario in which Trump's tariffs spark an international trade war, the paper finds that "employment would be 9 percent lower than baseline by 2028 and inflation would surge to 9.3 percent by 2026." What's more, gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic health, would be nearly 10 percent lower as a result.

The most damaging aspect of Trump's proposals, said researcher Warwick McKibbin, would be the mass deportations Trump has pledged to carry out of undocumented immigrants, which he said would cause a supply shock to food prices.

“Can you imagine taking 16 percent out of the labor force in agriculture?” McKibbin asked rhetorically. “And unless you let them back in, you will have a permanent loss of supply.”

What's more, the researchers said that Trump's plan to make America rich by taxing foreigners "does more damage to the US economy than to any other in the world."

Behind Trump’s profoundly weird understanding of money

John Stoehr
September 26, 2024 

Donald Trump still doesn’t like being called weird, but that doesn’t stop him from acting that way. During a rally on Monday, the GOP nominee had this to say to women voters: “I am your protector. I want to be your protector ... you will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger ... You will no longer be thinking about abortion."

So the man most responsible for the fall of Roe and the disempowerment of American women is now promising to protect them? Yeah, that’s weird – and gaslight-y, too. He’s the villain who wants his victims to believe he’s their hero. That kind of lie forms the basis of many abusive relationships.

But I think we are missing what’s truly weird.

It’s his understanding of money.Donald Trump was born a multimillionaire. He never learned what it’s like to earn a living with his labor. He never learned what it’s like to pay for things with those earnings. And because he never had those experiences, and because he has no interest in other people’s lives, he has no idea what the meaning of money is to people who were not born multimillionaires.

To normal people, money is something we trade for our labor, which is usually our only asset. So when we pay for things, like groceries, it isn’t merely a transaction. It’s an emotional experience. We know what it feels like to pay for things, because we know what it takes to earn that money.

To someone like Trump, a dollar isn’t a dollar in the ordinary sense of the word. There’s no feeling behind it, because no labor went into earning it. Prices are irrelevant. To him, a $100 grocery bill could be $10,000 could be $100,000 – it makes no difference. $100 is just a number. It’s just an abstraction. It’s as abstract to him as being rich is to a normal person.

There’s always a sense of unreality whenever Donald Trump talks about America’s economic policy. He says that he’s going to slash your “energy bill” by 50 percent. He says that the price of gasoline is “5, 6, 7, 8 dollars” a gallon. He says that he will decrease the price of food by decreasing the food supply. He has “concepts of a plan” to bring down health-care costs.

None of this makes sense, because making sense is beside the point to a man who does not have a normal person’s understanding of money.

To a multimillionaire like him, prices are not real. Costs are not real. Money isn’t money. It’s power. It’s a tool for getting lesser mortals to do what he wants. Normal people just don’t think that way, because they earn their money. Not so for Donald Trump. He was born a multimillionaire.

That’s what makes him truly, profoundly weird.


And that’s what I think you should think about as you watch this clip.In it, Trump visits a supermarket in suburban Pennsylvania. As he’s leaving, he reaches into his coat pocket and takes out money. He tells the cashier that it’s a tip. Then he takes one of the bills, which is a $100, and hands it to a woman who’s being checked out. “It just went down a hundred bucks,” he says. “We’ll do that for you at the White House.”

Most of the commentary on this clip is focused on the fact that Trump appears to be bribing shoppers into voting for him. That’s as it should be. But I think this clip is representative of something much larger, which is Trump’s understanding of money. You haven’t seen weird until you’ve seen a very obscenely rich man throw around $100 bills like it’s nothing to him.

Weirder still?


Many Americans seem to believe that a candidate for whom prices are irrelevant is worth listening to when it comes to economic policy.

To me, Trump’s money-weirdness explains his fetish for tariffs.

As you know, tariffs are a tax on imported goods. Trump keeps talking about them, however, as if they were a tax on foreign nations, like China. He keeps talking about them as if this tax were going to generate “trillions and trillions” in revenue, so much money, in fact, that you won’t have to worry about the cost of child care anymore. (Yes, he really said that.)


Some say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Others say he’s just lying. But his weird understanding of money suggests both are wrong.

Donald Trump was born a multimillionaire. To him, money isn’t money. $100 isn’t $100. It’s just a number, a meaningless abstraction. Its only meaning is whether it can get people to do what he wants. It doesn’t matter if he makes no sense. It doesn’t matter if tariffs make everything more expensive, and they would. All that matters is if you vote for him.

He throws around the word “tariffs” like he throws around Benjamins.


It makes no difference to him.

That should be seen as truly, profoundly weird.

ALSO READ: GOP senator demands Democrats be 'intellectually honest' in their Mark Robinson attacks

Good vibes: Dutch takeaway firm expands to sex toy delivery

COULD YOU DELIVER TO THE KREMLIN?

ASKING FOR A FRIEND


By AFP
September 26, 2024


The unusual service will be rolled out to other markets in the coming weeks - Copyright AFP Hector RETAMAL

Vibrator with your vindaloo? An Amsterdam-based takeaway firm is adding sex toys to their delivery service for customers who fancy a happy ending to their meal.

The Just Eat service will offer clients in Austria, Britain and Denmark the possibility to order vibrators, lubricants and other sex accessories with their takeaway.

Age verification will ensure buyers are over 18. Sex toys will come in sealed, plain packaging with the receipt inside, the firm said in a statement.

No need to worry about what the neighbours might think: “No orders will be left on the doorstep,” the statement added.

The initiative will allow people to “incorporate sexual wellbeing into their daily lives with ease and discretion”, said Johannes Plettenberg, CEO of Lovehoney Group, which will supply the adult components.

The offer will be expanded to other markets in coming weeks.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/business/good-vibes-dutch-takeaway-firm-expands-to-sex-toy-delivery/article#ixzz8mx80ZfOr