'Schitt's Creek' sweeps comedy categories at Emmy Awards

© Provided by The Canadian Press

LOS ANGELES — “Schitt's Creek,” the little Canadian show about a fish-out-of-water family, made history at Sunday's Emmy Awards with a comedy awards sweep, something even TV greats including “Frasier” and “Modern Family” failed to achieve.

The Pop TV show's awards included best comedy series and awards for its stars, including Catherine O'Hara, and father-son Eugene and Daniel Levy.

"Our show at its core is about the transformational effects of love and acceptance, and this is something we need more now than ever before,” said co-creator and star Daniel Levy, who encouraged people to register and vote to achieve that goal.

O'Hara accepted the award virtually in the pandemic-safe ceremony, which included a number of winners who made a point that the Nov. 3 general election was near.

“Though these are the strangest of days, may you have as much joy being holed up in a room or two with your family as I had with my dear Roses,” O'Hara said, surrounded in a decorated room in Toronto by mask-wearing co-stars who play the Rose family members.

Levy called it “ironical that the straightest role I ever played lands me an Emmy for a comedy performance. I have to seriously question what I've been doing” for the past 50 years.

Moments later, Levy's son Daniel won the award for comedy writing for an episode of “Schitt's Creek,” then shared a directing award and captured the supporting actor comedy trophy. The supporting actress trophy went to his co-star Annie Murphy.

Daniel Levy thanked his father and O'Hara for teaching an extended “master class” in comedy. The show's sweep came for its much-acclaimed final season.

References to coronavirus were an ongoing part of the ceremony, with essential workers — including a teacher and a UPS deliveryman — presenting awards and Jason Sudeikis ostensibly getting a COVID-19 test onstage.

In a year with a record number of Black nominees, 35, there was a notable lack of diversity in the show’s early going. With “Schitt’s Creek” gobbling up comedy awards, that left “Insecure” and creator Issa Rae empty-handed Sunday.

That was also true of Ramy Youssef, creator-star of the semi-autobiographical comedy “Ramy,” about a young Muslim American’s love and religious life. Yousef tweeted a video of a hazmat suit-wearing person clutching an Emmy and waving goodbye after he lost the lost the comedy actor category.

There was a sign of change with the drama awards, which came in the latter part of the ceremony.

The powerful series “Watchmen,” a graphic novel-adaptation steeped in racial pain, was voted best limited series and star Regina King won lead actress for her work on the HBO show. She was showered by confetti as she accepted in an armchair, wearing a T-shirt that honoured police shooting victim Breonna Taylor.

“This is so freaky and weird,” said King, who regained her composure and called on viewers to vote.

Her co-star, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, won the Emmy for best supporting actor in a limited series. Uzo Aduba won the counterpart actress award for her portrayal of Shirley Chisholm in “Mrs. America.”

Anthony Anderson, a nominee for “black-ish,” came on stage to make his disappointment vigorously known, saying the awards should have been “Howard University homecoming Black.”

“This isn't what it should have been. ... But Black stories, Black performances and Black Lives Matter,” he said, urging host Jimmy Kimmel to shout with him.

"Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” was again honoured as best variety-talk series, with David Letterman announcing the award after being abandoned roadside by an annoyed ride-share driver.

Oliver joined the ranks of winners calling for Americans to vote, as did Mark Ruffalo, who won the limited series acting trophy for “I Know This Much is True"

Kimmel opened the show with a monologue that appeared to be defiantly delivered in front of a packed, cheering theatre — until it was revealed they were clips from past Emmy shows.

“Of course I’m here all alone. Of course, we don’t have an audience,” he said. “This isn’t a MAGA rally. It’s the Emmys.”

With more than 100 long-distance video feeds with nominees ahead, “what could possibly go right?”

A minor gaffe marred Saturday's virtual Emmys for technical and other honours, when Jason Bateman's name was announced for a guest acting award that belonged to Ron Cephas Jones of “This Is Us.” Other guest acting honours went to Eddie Murphy and Maya Rudolph for “Saturday Night Live” and Cherry Jones for “Succession.”

Bateman was one of the few people on hand at the Staples Center for Sunday’s show, sitting in the audience during Kimmel’s opening monologue. Bateman sat stone faced amid a collection of cardboard cutouts, trading jokes with Kimmel after the host pointed out he was there.

“Euphoria” star Zendaya could become the youngest winner in the drama actress category at age 24 (topping Jodie Comer, who was 26 when she won last year for “Killing Eve”).

The producers of Sunday's broadcast have said gaffes could occur. Kimmel is on stage at downtown LA's Staples Center, central command for camera feeds relayed from 130 nominees socially distanced at home or elsewhere in 10 countries and 20 cities.

Other recent awards shows, including the BET Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards, bowed to the coronavirus with a mix of pre-taped and live segments. How the Emmys fare may influence Hollywood's awards season.

The creative Emmys that were handed over five days, culminating Saturday, underscore the point: awards have been collected by 29 outlets representing cable channels, streaming services and broadcast networks. So far, longtime leader HBO and rising Netflix are tied with 19 awards each, followed by Disney+ and NBC with eight honours apiece.

“The Mandalorian,” home of the character dubbed “baby Yoda” by fans, earned the bulk of the Disney service's honours, seven to date. “Watchmen” has a matching number, with “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” led among comedies with four awards going into Sunday's ceremony.

___

Online: https://www.emmys.com/

Lynn Elber, The Associated Press


Video: 'Schitt's Creek' Cast Celebrate Emmy Sweep (ET Canada)

#NOTORIOUSRBG
Ginsburg's impact on women spanned age groups, backgrounds

© Provided by The Canadian Press

NEW YORK — Sure, there were the RBG bobbleheads, the Halloween getups, the lace collars, the workout videos. The “I dissent” T-shirts, the refrigerator magnets, the onesies for babies or costumes for cats. And yes, the face masks, with slogans like: “You can’t spell TRUTH without RUTH.”


But the pop culture status that Ruth Bader Ginsburg found — or rather, that found her — in recent years was just a side show, albeit one that amused her, to the unique and profound impact she had on women’s lives. First as a litigator who fought tenaciously for the courts to recognize equal rights for women, one case at a time, and later as the second woman to sit on the hallowed bench of the Supreme Court, Ginsburg left a legacy of achievement in gender equality that had women of varied ages and backgrounds grasping for words this weekend to describe what she meant to them.

“She was my teacher in so many ways,” said Gloria Steinem, the nation’s most visible feminist leader, in an interview. But even if she hadn’t known her personally, Steinem said, it was due to Ginsburg, who died Friday at 87 of complications of cancer, that “for the first time I felt the Constitution was written for me."

"Now, it wasn’t written for me — it left out most folks, actually, when it was written,” Steinem added. But, she said, by forcing the courts to address issues like workplace discrimination, sexual assault and a host of others, Ginsburg “literally made me feel as if I had access to the law, because Ruth was there.”

But the extent of Ginsburg’s influence was felt not only by older women like Steinem, 86, who understood from experience the obstacles Ginsburg faced, such as not being able to find a job at a New York law firm despite graduating at the top of her class at Columbia Law School.

Younger women and girls also say they were inspired by the justice's achievements, her intellect and her fierce determination as she pursued her career. Hawa Sall, 20, a first-generation college student in New York, said it was Ginsburg who inspired her to attend Columbia, where she's now an undergraduate studying human rights and planning on law school.

“Her resilience, her tenacity, her graciousness through it all — she’s always been one of my biggest inspirations in life,” said Sall, who lives in Brooklyn where Ginsburg was born, and whose family comes from Mali and Senegal. “She's what I’ve always wanted to be, and still want to be.”

Sall says she was fascinated by what she learned about Ginsburg when she attended an event at the Lower Eastside Girl's Club in Manhattan for the 2015 book, “Notorious RBG," by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik (the title played on the name of Brooklyn rapper The Notorious B.I.G.) That book was part of a wave of rock-star like fame that enveloped Ginsburg in her later years on the bench, making her a hero to a younger generation: There was also a famed impression by Kate McKinnon on “Saturday Night Live,” a feature film, starring Felicity Jones as Ginsburg, and the hit documentary “RBG,” both in 2018.

Julie Cohen and Betsy West, who co-directed “RBG,” saw firsthand how women of all ages quickly identified with Ginsburg.

“We’d go to screenings ... and afterward older women who had been through the kind of discrimination she faced as a young woman would be sobbing ... because they knew what she was up against, and what she did to help them and their daughters and granddaughters,” West said.

But also, Cohen added: “She became a huge symbolic figure for young women and even girls in a way that we hadn’t anticipated. So many children came to the movie, often little girls dressed in little robes. ... Girls seemed to find her just mesmerizing.”

West theorizes the fascination might have come from Ginsburg’s small stature. Her legacy, though, was nothing less than enormous, she said: “She changed the world for American women."

It wasn't just Democratic-leaning women who praised Ginsburg. Stacey Feeback, a 33-year-old Fayetteville, North Carolina, voter at a weekend rally for President Donald Trump, said the justice was “an inspirational woman.”

“She meant a lot to the (women's) movement," Feeback said. "She’s been an inspiration. She’s brought America and women forward in a generation.”

Ginsburg first gained fame as a litigator for the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which she directed in the ’70s. The project marked “a real turning point for situating women’s rights not just as a gender issue, but as a civil rights issue that affected all of us,” said Ria Tabacco Mar, its current head.

At the time, the Supreme Court had never applied the Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” to strike down a law because of gender discrimination. That changed in 1971 with a case in which Ginsburg helped persuade the high court to invalidate an Idaho law that called for choosing men over women to administer the estates of the dead.

Two years later, she again prevailed — making her first oral argument before the high court she would later join — in the case of a female Air Force officer whose husband was denied spousal benefits that male officers’ wives automatically received.

“For every gender injustice that we see today, Ruth Bader Ginsburg saw it first, and she fought it first,” said Tabacco Mar.

Devi Rao, one of Ginsburg's law clerks in 2013, said the justice had taught her that “law isn’t just about the law — it’s about the people whose lives are impacted by those laws."

Rao, who now works on appellate cases for a civil rights firm, said Ginsburg “distinguished herself in a man’s world and on a man’s court without looking like them or sounding like them, but simply because they couldn’t deny the power of her ideas. She teaches women and girls not to count themselves out even though they don’t look like those in power.”

It’s that lesson that mothers like Brianne Burger hope their daughters will understand. Earlier this year, Burger posted a photo of her daughter Adi, 5, on Facebook, outfitted as RBG in black robe and glasses for a school dress-up day in Washington, D.C. The girl came home delighted, her mother said, that so many people recognized her costume.

“She still talks about that day,” said Burger.

Asked what Adi understands about Ginsburg, the mother replied: “She knows that RBG made girls equal to boys.”

___

Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz in New York, Jessica Gresko in Washington and Bryan Anderson in Fayetteville, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

Jocelyn Noveck, The Associated Press

'Everything has changed': N.B. doctor describes racism after COVID-19 outbreak

© Provided by The Canadian Press

CBC VIDEO https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/everything-has-changed-nb-doctor-describes-racism-after-covid-19-outbreak/ar-BB19esBE?ocid=msedgdhp

After months of harassment and racist remarks, the doctor at the centre of a COVID-19 controversy that rocked New Brunswick says his life has been changed entirely.

Dr. Jean Robert Ngola, a physician of Congolese descent, said in a recent interview the fallout from allegations he was "patient zero" responsible for an outbreak put him under an uncomfortable spotlight.

"Since May ... everything has changed in my life," Ngola said by phone.

And now he wants the province to investigate his case to ensure nobody else endures a similar fate.

On May 27, in the face of a growing outbreak in Campbellton, N.B., Premier Blaine Higgs referred to an "irresponsible" health-care worker and said the matter was being handled by the RCMP. The outbreak eventually affected 40 people and resulted in two deaths.

News got out that Ngola, a family doctor working in the northern New Brunswick town at the time, was the suspect in the RCMP's investigation after his positive COVID-19 status was leaked on social media.

Ngola says a deluge of harassment and racist taunts followed, both online and in person, as the investigation unfolded into an overnight trip he took to Quebec.

Before he tested positive, Ngola had driven to Montreal to pick up his daughter, because her mother was travelling to Africa to attend a funeral.

On his way back to New Brunswick, he met with two colleagues in the Trois-Rivieres, Que., area before completing his trip, according to his lawyer, Joel Etienne. He did not self-isolate for two weeks when he returned, as provincial health guidelines direct, but Ngola has said that was consistent with the practice of other physicians at his hospital.

After it was revealed that Ngola was the health worker being investigated, he was suspended from his job at the hospital in Campbellton. Ngola said he had to disconnect his phone because people were harassing him, telling him to "go back to Africa" and calling him a "refugee."

Although he had already been planning to move to Quebec, Ngola hastened his departure because he didn't feel safe in Campbellton, he said.

"I was one of the good physicians, I think, in this small city. Everybody knew me in Campbellton," he said. "But in my own city, I cannot work. Even now I cannot go to my house."

Recently, however, he has been heartened after receiving a letter of support from fellow doctors in Canada. It was a sign, he said, that he "wasn't alone" as he continued to deal with the allegations against him. Though the RCMP investigation was dropped, Ngola still faces a charge of violating the province's Emergency Measures Act and has a court date Oct. 26.

"It was so emotional," Ngola said of the letter. "My tears flowed."

The letter was the work of Danusha Foster, an Ontario family doctor who followed Ngola's case and felt he was "unfairly targeted."

She said in an interview from Guelph, Ont., that she used an online social network to enlist hundreds of other signatories from across the country. She said the effort was intended as a private show of support, and the other physicians have not agreed to have their names made public.

Now, Etienne and his associates are calling for a probe into the handling of Ngola's case. After his initial positive test, Ngola had three tests come back negative, possibly indicating a false positive, his team argues, which would make it impossible for him to have triggered the outbreak.

His lawyers say the province failed in its responsibilities to protect Ngola's privacy and perform proper contact tracing for the Campbellton outbreak.

Ngola said he thinks an inquiry is necessary to protect others who may find themselves in similar circumstances as the pandemic continues.

"We have to know what happened to prevent (this) for the future, because discrimination is not tolerable, not acceptable, in Canada," he said.

He is now practising in Louiseville in central Quebec, and the hostility he faced in Campbellton has been replaced by a warm embrace.

Yvon Deshaies, the town's mayor, says people in the community who've come across Ngola at the local emergency clinic are happy to have him in the area.

Deshaies says it's not always easy attracting doctors to smaller towns like his, so New Brunswick's loss is his region's gain.

"He came here, and I'm happy about it," Deshaies said. "People who've had a chance to meet with him are happy with Dr. Ngola."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 20, 2020.

— With files from Sidhartha Banerjee

— — —

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Danielle Edwards, The Canadian Press

FEDERAL Liberals say a new climate plan is still in the works despite pandemic

Aaron Wherry CBC

© Tyson Koschik/CBC Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says the federal government must balance the immediate concerns posed by the COVID-19 pandemic with the need for a green recovery plan for the future. He says he intends to bring forward a…

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says he doesn't know why it was suggested recently that the Liberal government had shelved a green recovery plan ahead of Wednesday's throne speech.

But he said he is working on an "ambitious" climate plan — just as the Liberals promised during last year's election.

"Part of my mandate is to develop an enhanced climate plan for Canada that will demonstrate clearly how we will exceed our 2030 targets. I have been working on that since the day that I was sworn in as environment minister. And some of that work has accelerated during this period," Wilkinson said in an interview with CBC News on Friday.

"We do intend to bring forward that climate plan. It has not been shelved in any way. And we will be doing it well before the next [United Nations climate conference]," which is scheduled for November 2021.

So regardless of how much of a green recovery is laid out in the throne speech, there is good reason to expect a new green plan before too long.

But if the Liberals remain committed to even greater reductions in greenhouse gas emissions — and if they want to show meaningful steps toward that goal before the next federal election — there might be all the more pressure on them to seize every opportunity in the coming months to take action.
Tone shifted as COVID-19 cases began to rise

With the likely need for significant stimulus spending by the federal government to compensate for the economic damage that COVID-19 will leave behind, policy thinkers outside the government have spent the last several months touting and proposing plans for a green recovery.

Liberals themselves then began to talk this summer of a push for transformational change, including on climate policy. But as the fall approached — and as the number of new cases of COVID-19 began to rise — the government's tone shifted to more immediate concerns.

"There's a sensitivity to being perceived to hijack the moment for a green recovery," one senior Liberal source told CBC News last week.

That prompted fears the Liberals were not just changing their tone but their plans — Leadnow launched an "emergency petition" calling on the government to "reinstate" the green recovery plan that had reportedly been shelved.

"A strong second wave of the pandemic might delay the implementation of measures, but there is no reason it should delay announcements of legislative intent or the funding for a green recovery that puts people back to work solving the health and climate crises," said Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada.

© Reuters Advocacy groups have expressed concern that the Liberals were not just changing their tone but their plans for the environment due to a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases, but Wilkinson says that's not the case, and he's working on an 'ambitious' climate plan.

The government does have to be careful, Wilkinson said, that it's "not perceived in some way of taking advantage of the situation."

"I think that Canadians have to be assured that their governments are very much focused on the here and now in the context of the pandemic," he said. "But Canadians also expect their governments to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, right? They expect us to also be able to think about the future."
Further steps expected in coming months

There will likely be areas where green interests and pandemic-related problems overlap.

Wilkinson mentions one: Building retrofits to improve energy efficiency could be a significant source of employment, particularly for young people who have suffered disproportionately from the economic shutdown. (By coincidence, a focus on retrofits was one suggestion made by NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh during a speech on Friday.)

The pandemic has forced some changes to the government's broader plans. As reported this week by La Presse, the government has not yet planted any of the two billion new trees it promised in last year's campaign. Wilkinson links that to the fact that there wasn't a federal budget in the spring.

But Wilkinson said the government should be able to move forward with climate change accountability legislation in the fall or early in the new year. An expert panel to advise on the path to net-zero emissions by 2050 is also expected in the "near term," and Wilkinson said the government should have more to say about plastics in the "next couple months."

The Liberal platform already committed the government to meaningful action on building retrofits and promoting the use of zero-emission vehicles. As far as a plan to exceed the 2030 target — part of the Paris Agreement on climate change drafted in 2015 — Wilkinson also mentioned the use of hydrogen to fuel heavy-duty transportation and working with industry, including oil and gas, to reduce emissions.
Timing is 'urgent,' Wilkinson says

Asked whether he empathizes with or shares the desire for a green recovery, Wilkinson offered two thoughts with which environmentalists would likely agree.

"The timing around addressing climate change is urgent," he said. "We're almost at the end of 2020, we have a long way to go to meet — and we promised to exceed — our 2030 targets. So that's nine years. People think nine years is a long time. In the context of some of the changes that need to be made, that's not a very long time," Wilkinson said.© Natalie Thomas/Reuters Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise ship is seen floating near pieces of ice in the Arctic Ocean on Sept. 14. Scientists say climate change is altering the region's landscape, with rising temperatures and melting ice.

The Liberals announced their intention last year to exceed the 2030 target before they had even explained how they would get to that level. According to the most recent data, Canada is still projected to exceed its target for 2030 by 77 megatonnes — and it hasn't been easy to get even that close. Conservatives are now criticizing the imposition of a clean fuel standard, while the NDP's Singh chided the Liberals for still failing to do enough.

"I think that people see perhaps this as an opportunity for them to reflect. And I agree with that as well," Wilkinson said.

"One of the things that we do need to reflect on is we have been addressing a pandemic that has had some very terrible effects. And if you look at climate change, the effects, if we do not address it, will be far more significant than what we've already experienced with COVID-19.

"So I do think it's an important time to reflect and to then turn with urgency to how do we actually ensure that Canada's playing its part, both domestically and on the world stage, to move this agenda forward?"

Environmentalists will no doubt remind Wilkinson of these words — and the government's own commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 — if the Liberals seem to lack urgency in the months ahead.

'Our house is burning': student climate protesters urge their universities to go carbon neutral


Alexandra Villarreal

© Photograph: Jim West/Alamy The Detroit March for Justice, which brought together those concerned about the environment, racial justice and similar issues

As West coast wildfires color the skies dystopian red and orange and an aggressive hurricane season batters the US Gulf coast, college students are demanding their schools take bold action to address the climate crisis.

Caitlyn Daas is among them. The senior at Appalachian State University and organizer with the Appalachian Climate Action Collaborative (ClimACT) stands on the frontlines of her school’s grassroots push to go “climate neutral”, part of a years-long, national movement that has inspired hundreds of institutional commitments to reduce academia’s carbon footprint.

That concept, ‘our house is burning,’ was a metaphor. But really in 2020, it is literal.

Laura England

Carbon neutrality commitments typically require schools to dramatically cut their carbon emissions by reimagining how they run their campuses — everything from the electricity they purchase to the air travel they fund. Colleges across the country, from the University of San Francisco to American University in Washington DC have already attained carbon neutrality. Other academic institutions, including the University of California system, have taken steps to fully divest from fossil fuels.

But as young activists like Daas urge their universities to do their part to avert climate disaster, many are frustrated by tepid responses from administrators whom they feel lack their same sense of urgency and drive. Appalachian State, part of the University of North Carolina system, has committed to reaching net-zero emissions decades down the line, but Daas and her fellow activists fear that’s far too late. She’s baffled that an institution devoted to higher learning is seemingly ignoring the science around the climate emergency.

“If our voices don’t matter, can you please stop telling us that they do?” Daas says.

College activists concerned about the climate crisis have largely focused their efforts on two popular movements that go hand-in-hand: reaching carbon neutrality, and divesting university endowments. Broadly, the term “net carbon neutrality” means that a campus zeroes out all of its carbon emissions, says Timothy Carter, president of Second Nature, a nonprofit focused on climate action in higher education. This can be achieved through modifying campus operations, often with the help of alternatives, such as renewable energy certificates and voluntary carbon offsets (activities that atone for other emissions). In Second Nature’s definition, investment holdings don’t factor in a school’s carbon footprint. Carbon neutrality often falls within a wider umbrella of climate neutrality, which also incorporates justice and other concerns

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© Provided by The Guardian Students walk at the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina on 7 August 2020. Photograph: Jonathan Drake/Reuters

Divestment campaigns, meanwhile, pressure universities to shed investments in fossil fuels in their endowments. “We cannot truly be climate neutral if we continue to invest in a fossil fuel industry,” says Nadia Sheppard, chair of the Climate Reality Project campus corps chapter at North Carolina State University, where oil, gas and consumable, nonrenewable fuels account for around $43m in university investments.

Across North Carolina, the heated campus battles brewing over climate policy this fall represent a microcosm of the national conversation. The University of North Carolina system – which includes 16 universities and one gifted public residential high school – has set a 2050 goal to go carbon neutral, the same year as the state at large.

But students are frustrated by the distant deadline. “I do believe 2050 is realistic,” says Isaiah Green, president of the UNC system-wide Association of Student Governments. “But it’s so realistic that it’s just not enough, in my opinion.”

Laura England, a ClimACT member and senior lecturer in sustainable development at Appalachian State, approaches the issue with similar gravity as the undergraduates at her school. “That concept, ‘our house is burning,’ was a metaphor. But really in 2020, it is literal,” she says.

Students and faculty at Appalachian State are angling for net zero emissions by 2025, or at least 2035, but have felt unheard. ClimACT lambasted the school’s administration last week in a letter emancipating themselves from the official climate action planning process, at least until its leadership declares a climate emergency and responds accordingly. “The question we face is astonishingly simple,” the group wrote. “Do we have the political will to chart a path toward a safe and just climate future, or will we continue careening toward hot house earth?”

Lee F Ball Jr, chief sustainability officer at Appalachian State, admires young people’s passion and would “bottle” and “serve it” if he could. But to reach neutrality by 2025, the university would need to spend tens of millions of dollars it doesn’t have.


Something that I’ve learned since becoming involved with the campaign is that universities move slowlyKelsey Hall

“There’s no real silver bullet of clean energy out there that we’ve been able to find, so we’re in a wild west of carbon accounting and climate action,” Ball says. “There’s no rulebook, there’s no prescription for this stuff.”

Other students in the UNC system are advocating for more transparency and accountability around their school’s investments.

Kelsey Hall, the leader of a divest campaign at UNC Asheville, successfully pushed the school administration to divest around 10% of its endowment from fossil fuels last year. But the other 90% remains in the hands of the UNC management company, which invests in a nebulous category of “energy and natural resources” – oil, natural gas, power, etc.

“Returns [on investments] are very, very close” between the competing portfolios so far, says John G Pierce, vice-chancellor for budget and finance at UNC Asheville. But university leadership isn’t prepared to entertain divesting more of its endowment just yet.

“It’s frustrating,” Hall says. “But it’s something that I’ve learned since becoming involved with the campaign, is just that, like, universities move slowly.”

At Duke University, a top tier private institution in North Carolina, the administration has agreed to a much quicker 2024 climate neutrality date. There, students have been more concerned with how they arrive at that target.

They want the school to reduce actual emissions as much as possible, “rather than relying on more questionable, less rigorous ways of offsetting emissions in the books”, says Claire Wang, a recent Duke alumna and Rhodes scholar.

“It’d be very easy for a huge polluter to, you know, only pick a low-hanging fruit, maybe bring emissions down 10%, and instead buy very cheap carbon credits for the remaining 90% and say they’ve reached carbon neutrality,” Wang says.

Although student activists often direct their ire toward school administrations, their greatest antagonist may simply be a ticking clock. Undergraduates generally only get a four-year window on campus to make a difference, and they’ve lost precious time because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has in some ways pulled focus from climate issues.

Environmental campaigns, meanwhile, require long-term, dedicated attention spans. Gabriela Duncan, co-president of UNC Reinvest at UNC Chapel Hill, found article after article in her school paper about past divestment movements, and she knows that “there realistically is no way” that the university will divest during her academic career.

To avoid yet another loss of momentum, she’s focusing on creating “a really strong foundation, so that we can have a sustainable movement for many years”.

Hundreds of whales stranded on sandbar off Australian island


CBSNews

© AAP Image/The Advocate Pool/Brodie Weeding/REUTERS Whales are seen stranded on a sandbar near Strahan

© Provided by CBS News A pod of whales, believed to be pilot whales, is seen stranded on a sandbar at Macquarie Harbour, near Strahan, Tasmania, Australia, September 21, 2020. / Credit: AAP Image/The Advocate Pool/Brodie Weeding/REUTERS

Sydney — At least twenty-five whales have died and scientists are trying to rescue 250 more that are stranded in a remote bay on the Australian island of Tasmania, officials said Monday. Tasmania's environment department said the whales had become stuck on a sandbar in Macquarie Harbor, on the island's rugged and sparsely populated west coast.

Nic Deka, who is managing the incident response, said two large pods were stranded on sandbars a few hundred yards apart inside the harbor.


"They are in water but it's very difficult to see how many of those whales are deceased or what condition they're in," he told reporters in the nearby town of Strahan.

They are believed to be pilot whales but the environment department is yet to confirm the species

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© Provided by CBS News Stranded whales are seen in Macquarie Heads, Tasmania, Australia, September 21, 2020, in a picture obtained from social media. / Credit: RYAN BLOOMFIELD/REUTERS

Police are on site and marine experts are assessing the situation ahead of plans to launch a rescue mission early Tuesday morning.

"In terms of the tides, when we start making an effort tomorrow it will be with an outgoing tide, so that'll be in our favour, but obviously tides go up and come down so we'll be aiming to make the most of the windows that we have," Deka said.

© Provided by CBS News Dead whale detectives 01:57

Mass whale strandings occur relatively often in Tasmania, but the large numbers involved present a daunting rescue prospect.

Authorities may call on a network of local volunteers to assist but have cordoned off the area to the general public.

The latest stranding comes as a humpback whale that was stuck in a tropical river in Australia's north finally returned to the ocean after more than two weeks.

Public broadcaster ABC reported the creature, which spent 17 days in the crocodile-infested waters of Kakadu National Park, has been spotted in open seas off Darwin.

Scientists had been weighing options for guiding the humpback to safety after it became the first known whale to travel up the muddy river, but were relieved when it returned to sea on its own.

Guterres on World Peace Day: We face 'common enemy' in COVID-19

The flags of the United Nations and United States are seen outside of the U.N. building in New York City on Monday, one day before the start of the assembly's 75th General Debate. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 21 (UPI) -- The United Nations General Assembly on Monday preceded the first day of high-level debate in New York City with a call by leaders for world peace amid the global health crisis.

Peace between nations has been challenged during a time of COVID-19, Secretary-general Antonio Guterres said in a message to celebrate the International Day of Peace on Monday, which came ahead of Tuesday's opening of the assembly's annual General Debate session.

"Our world faces a common enemy," Guterres said. "A deadly virus that is causing immense suffering, destroying livelihoods, contributing to international tensions and exacerbating already formidable peace and security challenges."

The focus of this year's day of peace is "Shaping Peace Together."

"In that spirit, and to mark our 75th anniversary, the United Nations is bringing people together for a global conversation about shaping our future and forging peace in trying times," Guterres added.

Guterres said he will ask the assembly to vote on a cease-fire measure he introduced in March.

Earlier Monday, the secretary-general spoke of the birth of the United Nations in 1945 when governments agreed to form the body to prevent a response at the end of World War II.

"It took two world wars, millions of deaths and the horrors of the Holocaust for world leaders to commit to international cooperation and the rule of law," Guterres said. "A Third World War -- which so many had feared -- has been avoided. Never in modern history have we gone so many years without a military confrontation between the major powers."

With climate crises and public health threats worldwide fraying relationships, it's even more important to work together, he added.

"No one wants a world government -- but we must work together to improve world governance."

H.E. Volkan Bozkir, president of the U.N. General Assembly, said the global body was built on three pillars -- peace and security, development and human rights. Those three concepts, he added, "are equally important, interrelated, and interdependent.

"One cannot advance without the other."

International Peace Day, also known as World Peace Day, was established in 1981 and is dedicated to world peace, largely through the absence or war or violence. It used to be held on varying dates in September, but was permanently moved to Sept. 21 in 2001.

Calls to block DoJ official from court seat over role in Trump’s family separations


Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Eugene García/EPA

Immigrant rights groups are calling on New York senators to oppose the judicial nomination of a top Department of Justice official because of her role in the Trump administration’s child separation policy.

A letter to the senators signed by Families Belong Together (FBT), a campaigning group that opposes the Trump administration’s separation policies, said Iris Lan’s “involvement in and facilitation of” the administration’s policy made her unfit to serve on a lifetime seat as a federal judge in the southern district of New York.

Senate rules require district court judges to be informally approved by the state’s two home senators in order to proceed with their confirmation, in a secretive process that is known as giving judicial nominees a “blue slip”.

If Lan’s nomination were to be blocked by the two senators – Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand – it would mark the first time that a longtime career official who had knowledge of and involvement in the Trump administration’s separation policy would be blocked from career advancement.

The letter from Families Belong Together follows a report in the Guardian that described how Lan, who serves as an associate deputy attorney general, had played a role in the 2017 removal of a junior prosecutor in Texas after he had raised concerns with his superiors about migrant children who were going missing after their parents had been arrested for allegedly entering the US illegally.© Photograph: Eugene García/EPA Protest against immigrant family separations in Los Angeles in June 2018.

The Guardian also reported that Lan was present on a 2018 conference call in which her then boss, the now former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, instructed US attorneys in border states that there would be no exception to a “zero tolerance” policy to arrest all migrants who entered the US illegally, including families with children under the age of five.

In effect, the instruction meant that no child was too young to be separated from their parents.

“The family separation policy has led to profound emotional and psychological harm to these children, as well as lasting damage to the human rights leadership of the United States on the global stage,” the letter said. “Ms Lan’s involvement in and facilitation of the policy demonstrates her lack of fitness for the bench, and we urge you to oppose her confirmation.”

The letter was also signed by Demand Justice, a progressive advocacy group that campaigns against “extreme” judicial nominees.

Neither Schumer nor Gillibrand’s office responded to a request for comment.

The activist opposition Lan is facing raises questions about hurdles other longtime career officials may face when they are asked about the role they played in implementing the Trump administration’s most controversial – and sometimes illegal – public policies.

The Department of Justice has said it never espoused a “child separation policy”. It has also said that Lan did not have a role in making policy in her role as a career official.

But the department’s 2018 decision to implement a “zero tolerance” policy did, according to other former senior Trump administration officials, force the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to execute mass arrests of migrants who were then criminally prosecuted by US attorneys in border states for committing misdemeanor border crossing violations.

In previous administrations, families were either allowed to await their immigration trials on bail or were held together, except in circumstances when migrant children were seen as being in danger. But under the Trump administration, thousands of minors were separated from their parents under the new policy, including at least 105 children who were under the age of five, and 1,033 who were under the age of ten.

Asked about whether it was fair to target a career official who was not personally responsible for the administration’s policy, FBT director Paola Luisi, said she believed that focusing on Lan’s reputation for being “apolitical” was a “cop-out”.

“I don’t need to go to Harvard Law to understand that you shouldn’t rip a child out of a parents arms, and I don’t need to say that I’m ‘apolitical’ to take a stand. Across the board we’re seeing heroes standing up, who have the backbone to stand up to this sort of thing,” Luisi said.

“It is frankly pathetic to hide behind words like ‘I was just doing my job’. This goes beyond that. It is basic human dignity and compassion,” she added.

It took, she said “a whole bureaucracy” to enact the Trump administration policies that have come under fire.

Lan was nominated to serve on the court, one of the most prestigious judicial postings in the US, in December 2019 and was then renominated in May 2020.

The DoJ did not respond to a request for comment.

CANADA 

Federal Court hears certification arguments this week in MMIW lawsuit

© Provided by The Canadian Press

REGINA — A mother who alleges the federal government and RCMP took a a "negligent" and "lackadaisical" approach to investigating missing and murdered Indigenous women will attend a hearing this week that will determine if her lawsuit moves forward, her lawyer says.

Anthony Merchant says Diane BigEagle, whose daughter Danita Faith has been missing since 2007, will be there for the Federal Court certification hearing in Regina for the proposed class-action lawsuit by families of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Merchant says families of other murdered or missing Indigenous women will be there, too.

"We know the wrongs, we had the murdered and missing inquiry had a whole series of recommendations. The government said they were going to follow the recommendations but nothing has happened," Merchant said on Sunday.

The suit, which was launched in 2018, alleges systemic negligence on the part of the RCMP in investigating cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and says family members have been forced to endure mental anguish because of the RCMP's failure to properly investigate and prosecute the disappearances.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said in an emailed statement that the government opposes certification of the lawsuit "for legal reasons that are specific to this case, as it is unprecedented in its breadth, is inconsistent with previous rulings surrounding private duty of care, and contains cases where the RCMP is not the police of jurisdiction."

"This decision in no way lessens the findings of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, nor our commitment to ending this national tragedy," Blair said.

The national inquiry delivered its final report in June 2019, concluding that decades of systemic racism and human rights violations played a role in the deaths and disappearances of hundreds of Indigenous women and girls.

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki apologized to the affected families when she appeared before the inquiry in 2018.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said last week the national action plan is coming soon. But he said the plan also requires input from provinces, territories, civil society groups and Indigenous organizations in order to form a thorough, cohesive report.

BigEagle met with the RCMP more than 50 times about her daughter's disappearance, but investigators did not pay attention or take notes during the meetings, the documents in the lawsuit allege. When she first disappeared, police allegedly dismissed BigEagle's complaint, saying her daughter would probably come home.

"It's still concerning that so much time has gone by and nothing has happened," Merchant said.

Blair, while acknowledging more needs to be done to strengthen trust with Indigenous people, noted the government has taken steps such as eliminating gender discrimination in the Indian Act, enacting legislation to protect Indigenous languages, and investing in housing, shelters, and programs to end gender-based violence.

He added the RCMP is working to attract Indigenous applicants and is implementing new initiatives for missing persons investigations.

"We remain committed to honouring those who have been lost, helping their families find peace and ensuring that Indigenous Women, Girls and LGBTQ+ and Two Spirit people are safe where they live."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 21, 2020.

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