It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, November 24, 2024
Maersk Surprises Industry Abandoning Felixstowe for Smaller London Gateway
Maersk a key part of Felixstowe is moving the Gemini Cooperation to the smaller London Gateway Port in 2025 (Hutchison Ports)
Maersk shocked the container shipping industry this week with the news that come February 2025 it will transition its large containerships along with those of its new partner Hapag-Lloyd from the UK’s Port of Felixstowe to the smaller London Gateway. It is a significant competitive blow for Hutchinson Ports operator of Felixstowe which has already been seeing DP World rapidly challenge it with the London Gate Terminal.
In an operational advisory issued on November 18, Maersk revealed it is replacing Felixstowe in favor of the London Gateway port. The decision was reported to be part of the new Gemini Cooperation’s launch in February with the declared goal of achieving an unheard-of industry schedule reliability of 90 percent.
The two lines are establishing the cooperation under the tagline of “The Network of the Future.” Maersk told customers that the change will affect the Asia–Europe trade which would join the Middle East–Europe trade at London Gateway. Its trans-Atlantic route with remain unchanged at Southampton. The company has been a major part of Felxistone where it typically has as many as two ships a week and makes up a key part of the nearly 2,000 ship calls annually at the Huthchison-operated port.
“This strategic decision comes as part of the ambition to reduce network complexity with mostly single operator loops and fewer port calls per service, and is aimed at enhancing reliability, reach, and speed for our customers. Due to this change, Felixstowe will not be a part of Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd’s shared Gemini network,” Maersk wrote to customers. They did not announce the timing of the switch but said it would be part of the Gemini Cooperation and be implemented as it phases out the current 2M alliance with MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company.
Felixstowe is one of the UK’s oldest ports tracing its historical roots to 1886 although the modern port is considered to have started in 1969 and its second terminal in 1986. Today it handles more than 4 million TEU annually.
London Gateway which was opened just 11 years ago in November 2013, highlights its convenient location on the River Thames just 28 miles from London. Currently, the London Gateway handles about 2 million TEUs annually.
The decision to transfer port calls to London Gateway is a major win for the port that is operated by DP World. In August, DP World said it will be investing £1 billion ($1.3 billion) in expanding the facility with the aim of increasing the terminal’s capacity and enhancing the UK’s international trade resilience. They also highlighted the installation of new cranes during the summer that they said would support a 50 percent increase in handling capacity.
The investment will go into building two additional berths and a second rail terminal, with the ultimate goal aimed at transforming the London Gateway to the largest port in the UK accounting for 55 percent of the UK’s cargo flow through the southeast region. Just this month, DP World launched the fourth berth at the facility constructed at a cost of £350 million ($451 million).
Beirut (Lebanon) (AFP) – Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell called for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war while on a visit to Lebanon on Sunday, as the militant group claimed a wave of cross-border attacks.
Earlier this week, US special envoy Amos Hochstein said in Lebanon that a truce deal was "within our grasp", and then headed to Israel for talks with officials there.
War between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in late September, nearly a year after the Iran-backed group began launching strikes in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas following its October 7 attack.
The conflict has killed at least 3,670 people in Lebanon since October 2023, according to the health ministry, most of them since September.
In the Lebanese capital, Borrell held talks with parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who has led mediation efforts on behalf of ally Hezbollah.
"We see only one possible way ahead: an immediate ceasefire and the full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701," Borrell said after his meeting with Berri.
Under Resolution 1701, which ended the last Hezbollah-Israel war of 2006, only Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be allowed to maintain a presence in the south, where Hezbollah holds sway.
It also called for Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon.
"Back in September I came and was still hoping we could prevent a full-fledged war of Israel attacking Lebanon. Two months later Lebanon is on the brink of collapse," Borrell said.
He said the European Union was ready to provide 200 million euros ($208 million) to help bolster the Lebanese armed forces. Air raid sirens
Hezbollah is one of the world's best-armed non-state forces, and was the only group in Lebanon that refused to surrender its arsenal after the 1975-1990 civil war.
The Lebanese army maintains a presence across the country's territory, but it is Hezbollah that holds sway in key areas along the border with Israel.
While the Lebanese army is not engaged in the Israel-Hezbollah war, it has suffered multiple fatalities among its ranks.
On Sunday, the army said an Israeli strike on a military post killed one soldier and wounded 18 others.
Also on Sunday, Hezbollah said it launched attacks using missiles and drones directed at a naval base in southern Israel and a "military target" in Tel Aviv.
It said it had "launched, for the first time, an aerial attack using a swarm of strike drones on the Ashdod naval base".
In also claimed to have carried out an operation against a "military target" in Tel Aviv using "a barrage of advanced missiles and a swarm of strike drones".
The Israeli military said air raid sirens were activated in several areas of central and northern Israel, adding that it had intercepted projectiles fired from Lebanon.
Israel's emergency medical service Magen David Adom said it had provided treatment to two people including a 70-year-old woman who was mildly injured.
On Saturday, Lebanon said Israeli strikes around the country killed more than 55 people, many of them in central Beirut.
"We saw two dead people on the ground... The children started crying and their mother cried even more," said Samir, 60, who lives in a building facing the one destroyed.
In a phone call with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Saturday, Washington's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin "reiterated US commitment to a diplomatic resolution" in the Lebanon war, a Pentagon spokesperson said.
A spokesman for Katz said he commended US efforts towards de-escalation in Lebanon, but said Israel would "continue to act decisively in response to Hezbollah's attacks on civilian populations in Israel". Hostage claim
On the Gaza front, Hamas's armed wing said Saturday that an Israeli hostage, captured during the group's October 7 attack which triggered the war, had been killed.
Israel's military said it could neither "confirm nor refute" the claim.
Israeli protesters held another of their regular Saturday rallies in Tel Aviv to demand their government reach a deal to free remaining hostages.
On Sunday, Gaza's civil defence agency said a drone strike had seriously injured a hospital chief in an attack on the healthcare facility, while Israeli raids killed 11 people across the Palestinian territory.
Hossam Abu Safiya heads the Kamal Adwan hospital, one of just two partly operating facilities in northern Gaza, as the territory is in the grip of a dire humanitarian crisis.
Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 44,211 people, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.
Criticism of Israel has mounted over its conduct of the war, and this week the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
It has also issued a warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, though it is unclear whether he is still alive.
Gisèle Pelicot slams 'macho' society that 'trivialises rape' in closing statement
In her closing statement of the mass rape trial that has sent shockwaves across the country, survivor Gisèle Pelicot said it was time for “macho” society that “trivialises rape” to change. “I’ve lost 10 years of my life that I’ll never make up for,” she added. The trial enters its final stages this week.
Gisèle Pelicot, subjected to mass rape organised by her husband over 10 years, on Tuesday condemned the cowardice of the dozens of men accused of abusing her who claim they didn't realise it was rape, adding that France's patriarchal society must change.
Dominique Pelicot, her husband, has admitted to drugging his wife, 71, and inviting strangers to their house to rape her while she was unconscious, in a trial that has attracted worldwide attention and turned into an examination of the pervasiveness of sexual violence.
Most of the 50 other men on trial have said they did not realise they were raping her, did not intend to rape her or put all the blame on her husband, whom they said had manipulated them.
"For me this is the trial of cowardice, there is no other way to describe it," Gisèle Pelicot said, adding that there was no excuse for abusing her when she was unconscious.
Video recorded by her husband and shown in court over the past weeks has repeatedly featured her motionless, sometimes snoring, while the accused, including her husband, abused her.
"When you walk into a bedroom and see a motionless body, at what point (do you decide) not to react," she said, in an address to the accused, many of whom were in the courtroom. "Why did you not leave immediately to report it to the police?"
Gisèle Pelicot only learnt of the abuse four years ago when police stumbled upon videos and pictures her husband recorded of the abuse he orchestrated and also carried out. 'Rape is rape'
Gisèle Pelicot told the court she was angry at the accused, not least because any of them could, at any time, have put an end to her ordeal if they had denounced her husband.
"They must take responsibility for their actions. They raped. Rape is rape," she added.
It is the third time she has addressed the court in Avignon, southern France, as the trial heads towards delivering its verdicts and sentences around Dec. 20.
France mass rape trial enters final stage as last defendants testify
Under French law, she could have asked for the trial to be kept behind closed doors. Instead she asked for it be held in public, saying she hoped it would help other women speak up and show that victims have nothing to be ashamed of.
"It is time for society to look at this macho, patriarchal society and change the way it looks at rape," she told the court. She said she would never forgive her husband.
On Monday, the Pelicots' two sons asked the court to punish him severely and also said they would never forgive him and that he was dead to them. Their sister, Caroline Darian, said she believed Dominique Pelicot had also drugged and abused her.
When it was Dominique Pelicot's turn to speak on Tuesday, he repeated that he had not abused Caroline Darian or his grand-children. At that point, his daughter interrupted him from the courtroom, shouting that he was a liar.
"You don't even have the courage to tell the truth!" she shouted. "You will die in a lie. You are alone in your lie."
Earlier in the trial, Dominique Pelicot admitted to raping his wife while she was unconscious, as well as inviting others to rape her, telling the court: "I am a rapist, just like all the others in this room."
(Reuters)
From the show
In this special edition, Annette Young heads to Avignon as the Pelicot case enters its closing stages. For nearly a decade, Gisèle Pelicot was regularly drugged by her husband and offered up to strangers for sex. Now seen as the most notorious rape trial ever to be held in this country, we meet the local women who offer their support to the 72-year-old grandmother by decorating Avignon’s streets with slogans. Annette Young also talks to Catherine Porter from The New York Times, who’s been covering the trial, about how this case is shifting societal attitudes. Plus we report on the growing pressure on French authorities to address the issue of drug-facilitated sexual assault.
Mounting economic costs of India’s killer smog
By AFP November 23, 2024 New Delhi is choked every year in noxious smog that authorities appear powerless to bring under control - Copyright AFP Money SHARMA
Arunabh SAIKIA
Noxious smog smothering the plains of north India is not only choking the lungs of residents and killing millions, but also slowing the country’s economic growth.
India’s capital New Delhi frequently ranks among the world’s most polluted cities. Each winter, vehicle and factory emissions couple with farm fires from surrounding states to blanket the city in a dystopian haze.
Acrid smog this month contains more than 50 times the World Health Organization recommended limit of fine particulate matter — dangerous cancer-causing microparticles known as PM2.5 pollutants, that enter the bloodstream through the lungs.
Experts say India’s worsening air pollution is having a ruinous impact on its economy — with one study estimating losses to the tune of $95 billion annually, or roughly three percent of the country’s GDP.
The true extent of the economic price India is paying could be even greater.
“The externality costs are huge and you can’t assign a value to it,” said Vibhuti Garg, of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Bhargav Krishna of the Delhi-based research collective Sustainable Futures Collaborative said “costs add up in every phase”.
“From missing a day at work to developing chronic illness, the health costs associated with that, to premature death and the impact that has on the family of the person,” Krishna told AFP.
– ‘Health and wealth hazard’-
Still, several studies have tried to quantify the damage.
One by the global consultancy firm Dalberg concluded that in 2019, air pollution cost Indian businesses $95 billion due to “reduced productivity, work absences and premature death”.
The amount is nearly three percent of India’s budget, and roughly twice its annual public health expenditure.
“India lost 3.8 billion working days in 2019, costing $44 billion to air pollution caused by deaths,” according to the study which calculated that toxic air “contributes to 18 percent of all deaths in India”.
Pollution has also had a debilitating impact on the consumer economy because of direct health-related eventualities, the study said, reducing footfall and causing annual losses of $22 billion.
The numbers are even more staggering for Delhi, the epicentre of the crisis, with the capital province losing as much as six percent of its GDP annually to air pollution.
Restaurateur Sandeep Anand Goyle called the smog a “health and wealth hazard”.
“People who are health conscious avoid stepping out so we suffer,” said Goyle, who heads the Delhi chapter of the National Restaurant Association of India.
Tourism has also been impacted, as the smog season coincides with the period when foreigners traditionally visit northern India — too hot for many during the blisteringly hot summers.
“The smog is giving a bad name to India’s image,” said Rajiv Mehra of the Indian Association of Tour Operators.
Delhi faces an average 275 days of unhealthy air a year, according to monitors.
– ‘Premature deaths’ –
Piecemeal initiatives by the government — — that critics call half-hearted — have failed to adequately address the problem.
Academic research indicates that its detrimental impact on the Indian economy is adding up.
A 2023 World Bank paper said that air pollution’s “micro-level” impacts on the economy translate to “macro-level effects that can be observed in year-to-year changes in GDP”.
The paper estimates that India’s GDP would have been 4.5 percent higher at the end of 2023, had the country managed to curb pollution by half in the previous 25 years.
Another study published in the Lancet health journal on the direct health impacts of air pollution in 2019 estimated an annual GDP deceleration of 1.36 percent due to “lost output from premature deaths and morbidity”.
Desperate emergency curbs — such as shuttering schools to reduce traffic emissions as well as banning construction — come with their own economic costs.
“Stopping work for weeks on end every winter makes our schedules go awry, and we end up overshooting budgets,” said Sanjeev Bansal, the chairman of the Delhi unit of the Builders Association of India.
Pollution’s impact on the Indian economy is likely to get worse if action is not taken.
With India’s median age expected to rise to 32 by 2030, the Dalberg study predicts that “susceptibility to air pollution will increase, as will the impact on mortality”.
Why is it still so hard to breathe in India and Pakistan?
The world’s worst air pollution is getting worse, but there are concrete ways to fix it.
VOX Commuters step out in a foggy winter morning amid rising air pollution, on November 19, 2024 on the outskirts of Delhi in India.
Sunil Ghosh/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
India and Pakistan are losing ground to a common deadly enemy. Vast clouds of dense, toxic smog have once again shrouded metropolises in South Asia. Air pollution regularly spikes in November in the subcontinent, but this year’s dirty air has still been breathtaking in its scale and severity. The gray, smoky pollution is even visible to satellites, and it’s fueling a public health crisis.
Last week, officials in the Punjab province in Pakistan imposed lockdowns on the cities of Multan, population 2.1 million, and Lahore, population 13.7 million, after reaching record-high pollution levels. “Smog is currently a national disaster,” senior Punjab provincial minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said during a press conference last week. Schools shut down, restaurants closed, construction halted, highways sat empty, and medical staff were recalled to hospitals and clinics.
Across the border in India, the 33 million residents of Delhi this week are breathing air pollution that’s 50 times higher than the safe limit outlined by the World Health Organization (WHO). The choking haze caused 15 aircraft to divert to nearby airports and caused hundreds of delays. Students and workers were told to stay home.
Despite all the disruption, air pollution continues to spike year after year after year.
Why? The dirty air arises from a confluence of human and natural factors. Construction, cooking fires, brick kilns, vehicles, and burning leftovers from crop harvests are all feeding into the toxic clouds. The Himalaya and Hindu Kush mountains to the north of lower-lying areas like Lahore and Delhi hold the smog in place. In the winter, the region experiences thermal inversions, where a layer of warm air pushes down on cool winter air, holding the pollution closer to the ground.
As populations grow in South Asia, so will the need for food, energy, housing, and transportation. Without a course correction, that will mean even more pollution. Yet history shows that air pollution is a solvable problem. Cities like Los Angeles and Beijing that were once notorious for dirty air have managed to clean it up. The process took years, drawing on economic development and new technologies. But it also required good governance and incentives to cut pollution, something local officials in India and Pakistan have already demonstrated can clear the air. The task now is to scale it up to higher levels of government.
We’re still not getting the full picture of the dangers of air pollution
Despite the well-known dangers and the mounting threat, it remains a persistent problem.
Part of the challenge of improving air quality is that air pollution isn’t just one thing; it’s a combination of hazardous chemicals and particles that arise in teeming metropolises in developing countries.
One of the most popular metrics around the world for tracking pollution is the Air Quality Index, developed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The index is not a measurement of any one pollutant, but rather the risk from a combination of pollutants based on US air quality standards. The main villains are ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and particles. The particles are subcategorized into those smaller than 10 microns (PM10) and smaller than 2.5 microns (PM2.5). (Earlier this year, the EPA modified the way it calculates the AQI, so numbers from this year are not an apples-to-apples comparison to levels from previous years.) The tiny particles are pernicious because they penetrate deep into the lungs and trigger breathing problems.
An AQI below 50 is considered safe to breathe. Above 200, the air is considered a health threat for everyone. At 300, it’s an emergency. In Delhi, the AQI this week reached 1,185. Lahore reached 1,900 this month. If a person breathes this air for over 24 hours, the exposure is roughly equivalent to smoking 90 cigarettes in a day.
Lahore, Pakistan, on a day when the air quality index was 37 (left) and on a day when the air quality index was 496 (right). Dawar Hameed Butt/Nature
However, air pollution poses a threat long before it’s visible. “Your eye is not a good detector of air pollution in general,” said Christi Chester Schroeder, the air quality science manager at IQAir, a company that builds air quality monitoring instruments and collects pollution data. “The pollutant that you have to be really careful about in terms of not being able to see it but experiencing it is ozone. Ozone levels can be extremely high on sunny days.”
IQAir has a network of air quality sensors across South Asia, including regions like Lahore and Delhi. The company tracks pollution in real time using its own sensors as well as monitors bought by schools, businesses, and ordinary people. Their professional-grade air monitors can cost more than $20,000 but they also sell consumer air quality trackers that cost $300. Both sources help paint a picture of pollution.
Many schools and businesses across South Asia have installed their own pollution monitors. The US maintains its own air quality instruments at its consulates and embassies in India and Pakistan as well.
Schroeder noted however that IQAir’s instruments are geared toward monitoring particles like PM2.5 and don’t easily allow a user to make inferences about concentrations of other pollutants like sulfur oxides and where they’re coming from. “When you’re looking at places that have a really big mixture of sources — like you have a mixture of transportation and fires and climate inversion conditions — then it gets to be much murkier and you can’t really sort of pull it apart that way,” Schroeder said.
Politics lies at the core of the air pollution problem
Air quality monitors in India and Pakistan show that air pollution can vary over short distances — between neighborhoods or even street by street — and that it can change rapidly through the day. Nearby bus terminals, power plants, or cooking fires contribute a lot to local pollution, but without tracking systems in the vicinity, it can be hard to realize how bad the situation has become.
“I think the most surprising, interesting, and scary thing, honestly, is seeing the levels of pollution in areas that haven’t been monitored before,” Schroeder said.
Another complication is that people also experience pollution far away from where it’s produced. “This automatically creates a big governance challenge because the administrator who is responsible for providing you clean air in your jurisdiction is not actually the administrator who is governing over the polluting action,” said Saad Gulzar, an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University.
Take crop stubble burning, which accounts for up to 60 percent of the air pollution in the region this time of year. In late fall, farmers in northern India and Pakistan harvest rice and plant wheat. With little time between the reaping and sowing, the fastest and cheapest way for many farmers to clear their fields of leftover stems, leaves, and roots is to burn it. The resulting smoke then wafts from rural areas into urban centers.
The challenge is that farmers and urbanites are different political constituencies, and it’s hard to demand concessions from the former to benefit the latter. It has led to bitter political fights in both countries and between them. Farmers also point out that the reason they have so little time between crops is because of water conservation laws: To cope with groundwater depletion, officials in India imposed regulations to limit rice planting until after monsoon rains arrive in the early summer to top up reservoirs. Delaying planting means delaying harvest, hence the rush to clear their fields.
Both India and Pakistan have even gone as far as to arrest farmers who burn crop stubble, but there are millions of farmers spread out over a vast area, stretching enforcement thin. However, local efforts to control smoke from crop burning have proven effective when local officials are motivated to act.
Gulzar co-authored a study published in October in the journal Nature, looking at air pollution and its impacts across India and Pakistan. Examining satellite data and health records over the past decade, the paper found that who is in charge of a jurisdiction plays a key role in air pollution — and could also be the key to solving it.
When a district is likely to experience pollution from a fire within its own boundaries, bureaucrats and local officials take more aggressive action to mitigate it, whether that’s paying farmers not to burn stubble, providing them with tools to clear fields without fires, or threatening them with fines and arrest. That led fires within a district to drop by 14.5 percent and future burning to decline by 13 percent. These air pollution reductions led to measurable drops in childhood mortality. On the other hand, if the wind is poised to push pollution from crop burning over an adjacent district, fires increase by 15 percent.
Traders and customers gathered at a wholesale fish market engulfed in smog in Lahore, Pakistan, on November 21, 2024.
Arif Ali/AFP via Getty Images
The results show that simply motivating officials to act at local, regional, and national levels is a key step in reducing air pollution and that progress can begin right away.
But further air quality improvements will require a transition toward cleaner energy. Besides crop burning, the other major source of air pollution across India and Pakistan is fossil fuel combustion, whether that’s coal in furnaces, gas in factories, or diesel in trucks. These fuels also contribute to climate change, which is already contributing to devastating heat waves and flooding from torrential monsoons in the region. Both countries have made major investments in renewable energy, but they are also poised to burn more coal to feed their growing economies.
Solving the air pollution crisis in India and Pakistan will take years, and it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. But there are lifesaving measures both countries can take now.
The unexpected place that could become an immigration flashpoint under Trump
Trump’s immigration crackdown could extend to the US-Canada border.
VOX Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with Donald Trump during the G7 official welcome at Le Manoir Richelieu on June 8, 2018 in Quebec City, Canada.
Leon Neal/Getty Images
The US-Mexico border isn’t the only place where the impact of President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration policies is likely to be keenly felt. Major changes are likely to come to the US-Canada border, as well.
Tom Homan, who Trump recently named his “border czar,” has sought to sound the alarm about immigrants entering the US without authorization via the Canadian border, and has outlined plans to make entering the US through its northern border more difficult. Canada is also bracing for a potential influx of immigrants if Trump moves forward with his plans for mass deportations and to end temporary protections for more than 1 million immigrants in the United States.
The Canadian border isn’t often a focus of the US political debate over immigration, but policy discussions on both sides of the border suggest that may change in the next Trump administration. That could both strain normally friendly US-Canada relations and reshape domestic Canadian politics on immigration.
Changes are already underway in Canada. After Trump’s election, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reestablished a special Cabinet committee on relations between the two countries that will reportedly have a major immigration focus. Trudeau will now not only have to contend with Trump’s policies but also a Canadian public that has become increasingly resistant to accepting asylum seekers and refugees in the last four years.
Though it receives less attention than the US-Mexico border, the US-Canada border has become a flashpoint in the past. During his first administration, Trump sought to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a set of legal protections for citizens of certain countries experiencing upheaval. As a result, thousands of immigrants flocked to the northern border in 2018 to seek refuge in Canada.
In 2023, a dirt road in upstate New York also became an informal gateway for some 40,000 immigrants crossing over to Canada to seek asylum, most from Latin America but some coming from as far as Asia. The Canadian government eventually closed the crossing in 2023. Now, the border may again become a priority in US-Canada diplomacy.
Trump’s plans for the northern border
Trump himself has not outlined his plans for the Canadian border, but Homan has been clear on his recommendations.
Homan said in an interview with a local TV station in New York earlier this month that the northern border constitutes an “extreme national security vulnerability,” citing increasing numbers of migrant encounters in recent years, including of hundreds of people on the US terror watchlist. Border agents recorded almost 199,000 encounters along the northern border in fiscal year 2024, which ended in October, compared to about 110,000 just two years before.
Canada “can’t be a gateway to terrorists coming to the United States,” Homan said in the interview.
He added that he intends to tackle the pace of migration once at the White House by deploying more immigration enforcement agents to the northern border and encouraging Trump to negotiate with Trudeau to increase enforcement on the Canadian side.
Homan also suggested that a version of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy could be implemented in Canada. It’s not clear exactly what that might look like or whether Trudeau’s government would acquiesce to such a policy, but the original version forced tens of thousands of migrants to await decisions on their US immigration cases in Mexico for months. President Joe Biden ended the policy on the Mexican border, but Trump has signaled he intends to revive it.
Canada is bracing for an influx of immigrants from the US
Canadian authorities are reportedly preparing for a wave of immigrants arriving from the US under a second Trump presidency, just as they saw beginning in his first. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police recorded an increase in irregular border crossings between 2016 and 2023 — from only a few hundred arrivals in a three-month period to over 14,000 at their peak — resulting in part from Trump’s immigration policies.
The most direct example of that was Haitians who claimed asylum in Canada when Trump ended their TPS status, which had been in place since a devastating 2010 earthquake from which their home country never fully recovered. They arrived on foot and crossed the border between checkpoints.
There are reportedly concerns among some Canadian officials that Trump’s mass deportations policy and targeting of TPS and other programs shielding immigrants from deportation will drive people to the Canadian border. The New York Times reported earlier this month that Canadian authorities are “drawing up plans to add patrols, buy new vehicles and set up emergency reception facilities at the border between New York State and the province of Quebec.”
These resources might help prevent tragedies like a 2022 case in which a family, aided by smugglers, froze to death on the Canadian side of the border while trying to enter the United States
The Canadian government also reportedly intends to enforce its so-called “Safe Third Country” agreement with the US, which states Canada has the right to deport asylum seekers who travel through the US before trying to claim asylum in Canada. Those migrants would then have to apply for asylum in the US. Homan has indicated that the Trump administration intends to detain them for the duration of their court proceedings in the US. Currently, most migrants are released into the US while awaiting their court proceedings.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you,” Trudeau tweeted in 2017, just after Trump implemented his travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.
Seven years later, he said in a video statement that his government had “made some mistakes” on immigration in the post-pandemic era.
“We could have acted quicker and turned off the taps [of immigration] faster,” he said.
Nicole Narea covers politics and society for Vox. She first joined Vox in 2019, and her work has also appeared in Politico, Washington Monthly, and the New Republic.
Georgia Fires Entire Maternal Mortality Panel After Reporting on Abortion Ban Deaths
"This is how they cover up what abortion bans do—fire anyone who helps tell the stories of harm," said one journalist. "Everyone who is or can be pregnant will pay the price." Georgia Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey answers questions during a press conference at the State Capitol on April 27, 2020 in Atlanta. (Photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Georgia officials fired everyone on the Maternal Mortality Review Committee after ProPublicareported that the panel found the deaths of two women whose care was restricted by the state's abortion ban were preventable, the news outlet revealed Thursday.
ProPublica first exposed the committee's findings for Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller in September, sparking a flood of criticism directed at abortion care restrictions and the primarily Republican politicians who impose them. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who was running for the White House, even traveled to Atlanta to pay tribute to the two women.
"They didn't like that reporters found out that the state's ban killed two women."
Thurman and Miller's stories, as the news outlet acknowledged Thursday, "became a central discussion" in not only the presidential contest—ultimately won by Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who has bragged about the role he played in reversing Roe v. Wade—but also ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights in 10 states, seven of which succeeded.
In a November 8 letter obtained by ProPublica, Georgia Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey wrote that an "investigation was unable to uncover which individual(s) disclosed confidential information" despite state law and confidential agreements signed by panel members barring such disclosures.
Toomey explained that the committee was immediately "disbanded," a replacement panel will be formed through a new application process, and additional procedures are under consideration regarding confidentiality, oversight, and organizational structure.
ProPublica reported that the office of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp—who appointed Toomey—declined to comment and referred questions to the health department, whose spokesperson also declined to comment, saying that the letter, "speaks for itself."
As the outlet detailed: Reproductive rights advocates say Georgia's decision to dismiss and restructure its committee also could have a chilling effect on the committee's work, potentially dissuading its members from delving as deeply as they have into the circumstances of pregnant women's deaths if it could be politically sensitive.
"They did what they were supposed to do. This is why we need them," said Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, one of the groups challenging Georgia's abortion ban in court. "To have this abrupt disbandment, my concern is what we are going to lose in the process, in terms of time and data?"
Other reproductive rights advocates and journalists were similarly critical in response to the new reporting from ProPublica—which has also covered the deaths of two women in Texas: Josseli Barnica and Nevaeh Crain.
"Women died because they received no life-saving care as they were having miscarriages in Georgia and the state responded by simply eradicating the committee that investigated deaths of pregnant women," declared writer and organizer Hannah Riley.
The National Institute for Reproductive Health, an advocacy group, asserted that "when anti-abortion politicians find FACTS inconvenient, they dismantle the systems meant to hold them accountable."
New York magazine senior correspondent Irin Carmon, whose forthcoming book is about pregnancy in the United States, similarly said: "This is how they cover up what abortion bans do—fire anyone who helps tell the stories of harm. Everyone who is or can be pregnant will pay the price."
Jessica Valenti, author of the newsletterAbortion, Every Day and the bookAbortion, also argued that Georgia officials fired the panel members because "they didn't like that reporters found out that the state's ban killed two women."
"I wrote about this in my book—this is how they cover up our deaths," Valenti continued. "In Idaho, they disbanded the Maternal Mortality Review Committee altogether; in Texas, they put a well-known anti-abortion activist on there to skew the data."
"I guarantee you that when Georgia replaces those seats on the Maternal Mortality Review Committee, they're going to put anti-abortion activists on there," she added. "Just watch."
UN Program's 2025 Outlook Warns 343 Million Acutely Food Insecure
"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil," said WFP executive director Cindy McCain. "Yet funding is failing to keep pace." Palestinian child is seen with a pot as he waits to receive the food distributed by charitable organizations to those who fled Israeli attacks and took refuge in Khan Younis, Gaza on October 28, 2024. (Photo: Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The World Food Program offered a stark warning for the coming year Friday in its assessment of the escalating global hunger crisis: Due to climate catastrophe and violent conflicts around the world, without adequate funding, "2025 will be a year of unrelenting crises" that drive more people into food insecurity and starvation.
In the WFP 2025 Global Outlook, the agency emphasized that protecting more than 100 million people from devastating hunger in the coming year would require a relatively small investment—$16.9 billion, "roughly what the world spends on coffee in just two weeks."
That amount is a fraction of what the world's wealthiest countries—particularly the United States—put toward military spending in a year.
In total, the WFP found that 343 million people in 74 countries are acutely food insecure—a 10% increase from last year.
"Global humanitarian needs are rising, fueled by devastating conflicts, more frequent climate disasters, and extensive economic turmoil. Yet funding is failing to keep pace," said Cindy McCain, WFP executive director.
With $16.9 billion, the WFP said it could assist 123 million people who are most vulnerable to extreme hunger.
Among those are 1.9 million people who "are on the brink of famine," including those in Gaza, where access to food has been decimated in the last 13 months by Israel's near-total humanitarian aid blockade, repeated forced displacements, and U.S.-backed bombardment of the enclave. Many people in Gaza are now eating just one meal per day, and the United Nations this week warned of a "stark increase" in the number of households facing severe hunger in the southern and central parts of the territory.
More than 90% of people in Gaza are now "acutely food insecure," with 16% living in "catastrophic conditions," according to the United Nations.
"We urgently need financial and diplomatic support from the international community: to reverse the rising tide of global needs, and help vulnerable communities build long-term resilience against food insecurity."
People in Haiti and the sub-Saharan African countries of Mali, Sudan, and South Sudan were also identified as being most at risk for extreme hunger, with the region called "ground zero" for the humanitarian crisis.
Over 170 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are "acutely" food insecure, said the WFP. The region "accounts for 50% of WFP's projected funding needs in 2025," driven by climate extremes as well as violent conflicts in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the Sahel region.
The U.N. Famine Review Committee in August declared that famine had taken hold in a camp where hundreds of thousands of people live in North Darfur, Sudan, after being forcibly displaced by the civil war there.
The U.N. also reported on Thursday that 25.6 million people in the DRC—or 1 in 4—now suffer from "crisis or worse" levels of hunger, driven partially by fighting between armed groups.
"In such a fragile context, the cost of inaction is truly unthinkable," said Peter Musoko, WFP country director and representative for DRC. "Together, we need to work with the government and the humanitarian community to increase resources for this neglected crisis."
Across Asia and the Pacific, WFP said the hunger crisis facing 88 million people is caused largely by "increasingly frequent climate disasters."
In Afghanistan, approximately 12.4 million people faced acute food insecurity last month, linked to the "devastation caused by heavy rainfall and flooding."
The severe impact of Typhoon Yagi in Myanmar led to "even more displacement" and food insecurity, compounding the effects of an escalating civil war, and nearly 6 million people in eastern Bangladesh were also affected by severe flooding this year.
"At WFP, we are dedicated to achieving a world without hunger," said McCain. "But to get there, we urgently need financial and diplomatic support from the international community: to reverse the rising tide of global needs, and help vulnerable communities build long-term resilience against food insecurity."
US Plutocrats $276 Billion Richer Since Trump Win—And GOP Wants to Give Them Even More
"The tax fight is starting now," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "Will we sign our names to more giveaways to President-elect Trump's billionaire buddies, or will we fight for tax fairness for the American people?"
An analysis released Wednesday showed that the United States' 815 billionaires have seen their combined wealth surge by roughly $280 billion since Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election earlier this month, a finding that came as Republicans continued to lay the groundwork for another massive tax giveaway for the rich.
Citing Forbes data, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) noted that the collective net worth of the nation's billionaires jumped $276 billion between November 4—the day before Election Day—and November 12. Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man and a Trump confidant, accounted for 20% of the total billionaire wealth surge, with his net worth growing by $57 billion in just a week.
ATF found that U.S. billionaire wealth is now at an all-time high of $6.7 trillion—a fact that hasn't deterred Republican lawmakers from pursuing additional tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which they want to pay for in part by slashing Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
"Among the tax handouts the GOP hopes to offer America's plutocrats is a weakening or elimination of the estate tax, the federal government's only curb on dynastic wealth," ATF noted. "As proof of the party's intent, the new Republican majority in the U.S. Senate has chosen as its next leader the chamber's main champion of estate-tax repeal, John Thune (R-S.D.)."
The group observed that scrapping the estate tax would save billionaire households an estimated $2.7 trillion while depriving "working Americans of the exact same amount of funding for vital public services like Medicare, childcare, education, and housing."
Since the highly regressive 2017 Trump-GOP tax cut that Republicans are looking to extend and expand, U.S. billionaire wealth has risen by $3.8 trillion—over 131%—according to ATF.
"Instead of addressing the nation's growing economic inequality and the growing shortfall in federal revenue, President Trump and congressional Republicans plan to make the situation even worse by enacting a new tax cut package that gives billionaires tax breaks on the backs of working people," the group said Wednesday. "This Republican tax plan will start with extending all the expiring provisions in the 2017 Trump law—which alone will balloon the federal debt by $5 trillion over the next decade—but will likely include new handouts to the very wealthy, such as elimination of the estate tax."
During a hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) voiced similar concerns about the Trump-GOP tax agenda, which also includes cutting the statutory corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%.
"President-elect Trump has proposed making every single 2017 tax cut for the wealthy permanent," Warren said during the Senate hearing. "In fact, he plans to go further by cutting the corporate tax rate even more, so that giant corporations making record profits off struggling Americans can shovel even more cash to their rich executives and shareholders."
"The tax fight is starting now, and every person in the United States, every person in the Senate, needs to show the American people what side we stand on," said Warren. "Will we sign our names to more giveaways to President-elect Trump's billionaire buddies, or will we fight for tax fairness for the American people?"
Nearly 300 Green Groups Urge Biden to Block LNG Expansion Ahead of Trump
"As we prepare to resist Donald Trump and his promises to unleash U.S. LNG on the world, you must use the remaining days of your presidency to lock in as much climate progress as possible," the groups wrote.
Two demonstrators hold up signs protesting the export of liquefied natural gas in this undated photo. (Photo: John Smith/VIEWpress)
As the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan draws to a close and the second presidency of Donald Trump approaches, nearly 300 organizations from almost 40 countries are calling on the Biden administration to do everything in its power to stop the buildout of liquefied natural gas infrastructure.
The 282 groups, which included the Sunrise Movement, Oil Change International, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, the Center for Biological Diversity, and several branches of 350.org and Friends of the Earth, sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday outlining several steps he and his administration could take to use "the time it has left" to scupper the LNG expansion ahead of Trump's second term.
"As we prepare to resist Donald Trump and his promises to unleash U.S. LNG on the world, you must use the remaining days of your presidency to lock in as much climate progress as possible," they wrote.
"Now is the time to safeguard communities and the climate against the threat of growing LNG exports, which the administration can do by putting a stop any more risky buildouts from Big Oil."
In particular, the letter writers outlined four main actions Biden could take:Finalize an ongoing review of the studies that the Department of Energy (DOE) will use to determine whether or not LNG exports are in the public interest, using the latest information on the climate risks of LNG as well as the harms it poses to frontline communities and U.S. consumers; Order the DOE to reject all six permits for new LNG facilities awaiting approval, including Venture Global's "carbon bomb" Calcasieu Pass 2, which is vocally opposed by local Louisiana communities; Reach an agreement with Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries to end export credit agencies' backing of fossil fuels abroad; and Cancel all U.S. government funding of foreign LNG infrastructure and revoke the more than $5 billion earmarked by the from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation for an LNG project in Mozambique.
"The Biden administration has mere weeks to protect the planet from the threat of more LNG infrastructure, and the growing LNG boom under his watch is something we cannot afford," Raena Garcia, senior energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth U.S., said in a statement. "Now is the time to safeguard communities and the climate against the threat of growing LNG exports, which the administration can do by putting a stop any more risky buildouts from Big Oil."
Under Biden, the U.S. became the world's leading exporter of LNG, even as new research shows that the fuel could be as bad as coal for the climate, or even worse.
"The explosion of LNG exports from the U.S. represents an extreme grab of the limited carbon budget remaining to constrain global temperature rise," the letter writers, who come from more than 37 countries, argued. "This is especially egregious considering that the United States has already consumed far more than its fair share of the remaining carbon budget."
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the expansion in U.S. LNG exports was partly sold as a way for it to help its allies in Europe gain energy independence from Russia and survive an immediate wartime shortage of Russian gas. However, most of the new projects pushed by the industry in both the U.S. and Europe would not begin operating until 2026 and therefore were more about locking in reliance on gas than meeting an immediate need.
"The energy crisis in Europe is over," said Constantin Zerger, head of energy and climate protection at Deutsche Umwelthilfe. "There is no need for additional gas supplies from the United States for Europe. Instead of expanding already harmful fossil infrastructure, we need to turn the tide and accelerate the buildout of renewable energy. We must prioritize protecting climate targets and human rights over a second lifetime for a dirty industry."
The letter comes as Trump, whom the writers called "an impending nightmare for people and the planet," has promised to expand fossil fuel production and infrastructure and lift environmental regulations. His pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, has pledged to work toward "U.S. energy dominance" and his choice to lead the DOE, Chris Wright, is a fracking CEO who claims that "there is no climate crisis."
The environmental groups urged Biden to do "damage control."
"The next four years will test the limits of global resistance against fossil fuels," they concluded. "The next two months should be spent doing all that we can to protect communities in the U.S., the Global South, and throughout the world. We implore you to not act as though your climate presidency ended on November 5."
Trump’s Pick for Education Secretary Faces Lawsuit Over Alleged Mishandling Child Sexual Abuse While Poised to Overhaul Title IX
WASHINGTON - Today, Accountable.US issued a sharp rebuke of President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education. McMahon, who is being sued by former WWE employees for allegedly knowing sexual abuse was occurring under her leadership, is poised to oversee reforms to Title IX—a federal law critical for preventing sexual violence and discrimination in schools—and will spearhead the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education as outlined in Project 2025. “
Donald Trump’s nomination of Linda McMahon to lead the Department of Education is indefensible,” said Caroline Ciccone, president of Accountable.US. “This is someone accused of ignoring rampant sexual abuse under her watch. Putting her in charge of Title IX protections is like handing keys to an arsonist to run the fire department—it’s an insult to survivors and a blatant attack on the safety of students nationwide.”
The lawsuit, filed in October 2024, alleges that McMahon and other WWE executives knowingly allowed a ringside announcer, Mel Phillips, to groom and sexually abuse boys as young as 12. The plaintiffs, all survivors of this abuse, claim WWE leadership failed to intervene despite being aware of Phillips’s actions. The suit describes the abuse as “open and rampant,” facilitated by promises of access to wrestling stars.
“McMahon and her colleagues were reportedly aware of abuse happening right under their noses—and they did nothing,” Ciccone added. “Now she’s been chosen to oversee, and likely overhaul, the very protections designed to stop this kind of harm? The Senate must put an end to this sham of a nomination. She lacks the experience, the judgment, and the track record to protect students from harm. Our students need a champion who will uphold Title IX—not someone who has allegedly turned a blind eye to abuse”
McMahon’s nomination also threatens the progress made under the Biden administration, which expanded Title IX protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Trump’s agenda would roll back these vital safeguards, leaving LGBTQ+ students and survivors of campus sexual violence even more vulnerable.
In addition to her troubling record on abuse, McMahon has little experience in education. Her short tenure on Connecticut’s State Board of Education was marked by criticism over her lack of qualifications, and she resigned after less than a year to pursue an unsuccessful Senate campaign.
Accountable.US is calling on senators to reject McMahon’s confirmation and demand a nominee who will prioritize the safety and well-being of America’s students.
Firefighters battle the flames after a building was hit in an Israeli airstrike in south Beirut © - / AFP
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