Ukraine's Holocaust center names Nazi Babi Yar killers


(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

YURAS KARMANAU
Wed, October 6, 2021,

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's Holocaust memorial center on Wednesday revealed the names of 159 Nazi SS troops who took part in the killing of Jews during the Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine eight decades after one of the most infamous Nazi mass slaughters of World War II.

Nearly 34,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in Babi Yar, a ravine in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, when the city was under Nazi occupation in 1941. SS troops carried out the massacre with local collaborators.

“Babi Yar is the biggest mass grave of the Holocaust ... the most quickly filled mass grave,” said Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the supervisory board of the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial center.


Presidents Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, Isaac Herzog of Israel and Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany are to attend a ceremony in Kyiv on Wednesday to remember the victims of the massacre.

“It is imperative to keep speaking about this horrific event and learn its lessons,” Herzog said before arriving in Ukraine on Tuesday on the first state visit of his presidency.

Zelenskyy, Herzog and Steinmeier are to also inaugurate a memorial center, still under construction, dedicated to the stories of Eastern European Jews who were killed and buried in mass graves during the Holocaust. Of the 2.5 million Jews in that region, 1.5 million died in Ukraine alone.

On Wednesday, the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial center revealed the initial 159 names of hundreds of Nazi troops who took part in the Babi Yar massacre on Sept. 29-30, 1941, when 33,771 Jews were murdered.


“Despite confessions, evidence and testimonies being submitted as late as the 1960s by some of the Nazi soldiers who carried out the murders, only a few of those involved ever faced justice for their heinous crimes,” it said.

“They were between 20 and 60 years old,” the memorial center said. “They were educated and uneducated, they included engineers and teachers, drivers and salespeople. Some were married and some were not. The vast majority of them returned to live a normal life after the war. They testified at trial and were found not guilty, except for very few commanders, not the soldiers who carried out the horrific massacre.”

Father Patrick Desbois, head of the center's academic council, said some of the 159 Nazi troops named “were shooters. Others extracted the Jews from their homes. Others took their belongings and their luggage. Others armed the weapons while others were serving sandwiches, tea and vodkas to the shooters. All of them are guilty.”

On Wednesday, the world-famous conceptual artist Maryna Abramovych was to present a new memorial object – “Crystal Crying Wall” — and within six months the first museum space will be unveiled.

“We are going to give the real faces to the Holocaust, whether it's the faces of the victims, of the executors or those who were helping to save Jews,” Sharansky told The Associated Press.

He noted that while some Ukrainians collaborated with the Nazi killers, at least 2,600 Ukrainian families were hiding Jews at the risk of their own lives.

“So we are going to recover the names of victims, and we are recovering more and more names of victims, the names of those who were saving Jews and the names of collaborators,” he said.

Artist Marina Abramovic's 'Crystal Wall of Crying' commemorates Jews killed in Babyn Yar massacre


Artist Marina Abramovic performs next to her artwork "Crystal Wall of Crying" in Kyiv


Margaryta Chornokondratenko
Wed, October 6, 2021, 


KYIV (Reuters) - A group of people walks slowly in silence past a stand-alone thick wall made of coal with large quartz crystals sticking out of it. People pause to touch the crystals and stand close to the 40-meter-long structure, some with eyes closed.

"The Crystal Wall of Crying", an interactive installation by world-renowned performance artist Marina Abramovic, was erected in Ukraine's capital to commemorate Jews killed in one of the biggest massacres of the Holocaust during World War Two.

It will be officially unveiled on Wednesday evening as part of a series of events to mark the 80th anniversary since Nazi troops gunned down nearly 34,000 Jewish men, women and children at the wooded ravine of Babyn Yar on Sept. 29-30, 1941.

A symbolic extension of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the artwork is a "wall for healing," Abramovic told Reuters in an interview ahead of the ceremony.

"You come here and you look that this is a park. There are so many trees, so much nature, it is so much life. You know, people come here to sit in the sun, little children are playing, but all of this, you know, is one part of reality," said the 74-year-old Serbian artist, speaking in English.

"But another part of reality - you know that something terrible, terrible happened at the same time. And that kind of memory can't leave you. So you have this mix of feeling beauty and heaviness and past which is there all the time."

The wall is one of several new installations in a memorial project for Babyn Yar. A synagogue built of wood and designed to unfold like a pop-up book opened in May.

Abramovic, known for her work with crystals, chose anthracite from Ukrainian mines and rock quartz crystals from Brazil.

"I want to create the image that is transcendental about any war at any time at any place," she said.

"Whatever we are doing, there is always violence, there is always a war somewhere, there is always something that we should not do as people. And I love to create images that teach us: 'stop that'".

(Editing by Matthias Williams and Gareth Jones)

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-first-major-massacre-in-holocaust.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/09/on-this-day-babi-yan-massacre-begins-in.html

NASA's 'Armageddon'-style asteroid deflection mission takes off in November



Devin Coldewey
Mon, October 4, 2021, 

NASA has a launch date for that most Hollywood of missions, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which is basically a dry run of the movie "Armageddon." Unlike the film, this will not involve nukes, oil rigs or Aerosmith, but instead is a practical test of our ability to change the trajectory of an asteroid in a significant and predictable way.

The DART mission, managed by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (!), involves sending a pair of satellites out to a relatively nearby pair of asteroids, known as the Didymos binary. It's one large-ish asteroid, approximately 780 meters across — that's Didymos proper — and a 160-meter "moonlet" in its orbit.

As the moonlet is more typical of the type likely to threaten Earth — there being more asteroids that are that size and not easily observed — we will be testing the possibility of intercepting one by smashing into it at nearly 15,000 miles per hour. This will change the speed of the moonlet by a mere fraction of a percent, but enough that its orbit period will be affected measurably. Knowing exactly how much will help us plan any future asteroid-deflection missions — not surprisingly, there isn't a lot of existing science on ramming your spacecraft into space rocks.

A companion spacecraft, called the Light Italian CubeSat for Imagine Asteroids, or LICIACube, just had the finishing touches put on it last week and will be launched shortly before the operation and will attempt to fly by at the very moment of impact and capture "the resultant plume of ejecta and possibly the newly-formed impact crater."

A very exciting and interesting mission to be sure, but had to be delayed past its original launch window of this summer, and November 23 marks the first day of the new launch window. DART is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg in Southern California at 10:20 PM on that date, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9.

With Osiris-Rex and Japan's Hayabusa-2 missions, Earth authorities are getting pretty good at reaching out and touching asteroids. We'll know more about the plan of attack on the Didymos binary in the run-up to launch.

Armageddon (1998) - IMDb

WYOMING 

THEY KILL EVERYTHING THEY SEE 
Hunters get into hot water over legal elk hunt that was a fiasco


David Strege
Tue, October 5, 2021


Out-of-state hunters in Wyoming did nothing against the law, but their ethics were called into question over an elk hunt in Jackson Hole that turned into a fiasco. Knowing what they know now, they’d never have done what they did in the first place.

Bob Geringer, 79, of Minnesota was hunting on Sept. 26 with two friends in an area unfamiliar to them along the Snake River when they spotted elk on a mid-river island, as reported by the Jackson Hole News and Guide.

The hunters, properly licensed as non-residents, legally shot three cow elk and a calf around 9 a.m. on the island, which is about 1½ miles north of Emily’s Pond.

“It turned out to be a…nightmare,” Geringer told Jackson Hole News and Guide. “We didn’t realize the river was quite the way it was, and it happened fast.”

What they didn’t realize was that the river was running faster than they thought and that it was located in an area used by dog walkers, joggers, and families and friends as a place to stroll near the river.

The hunters hadn’t thought about how they’d retrieve the carcasses and realized they’d be risking their lives if they tried to ford the river.

Meanwhile, people started showing up on the scene with one getting into a heated confrontation and others calling the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to report what they thought was suspicion illegal activity.

Jackson Hole resident Brad Nielson came upon the scene around 3 p.m. and was incensed. He told the hunters shooting the elk on the island was not fair to the animals.

“It’s an ethical question,” Nielson, a hunter, told News and Guide. “That’s not fair chase, cornering them on an island and mowing them down.

“I told them they’d set back years of effort to create goodwill between the non-hunting community and hunters.”

Game warden Jon Stephens met up with Geringer and the other two hunters Sunday evening to plan how to retrieve the elk.

“I chewed on them a little bit for the eyesore that they created,” Stephens told the News and Guide.

He then got help, procuring a canoe and wheelbarrow to use for extracting the meat. The first attempt resulted in a canoe capsizing and being washed away unmanned downstream.

The Jackson Hole News and Guide explained further:

Stephens could see that the makeshift meat recovery plan was futile, and he instructed the hunters to gut out the animals and then to get back across the river before nightfall. On Monday afternoon the Minnesotans returned, this time with the assistance of a local resident they commissioned to float out their elk meat with a raft. That operation went smoothly, the warden reported, and by 6 p.m. — some 33 hours after their gunfire — the Minnesotans’ meat was being rafted downstream toward the Wilson boat ramp.

Jane Frisch, who walks the levee nearly every day, voiced concern about mixing hunting with other uses in that area of the Snake River.

“There were young families playing in the river that day,” she told News and Guide. “On a Sunday afternoon there’s a lot of people out there, and a lot of people of all ages.” She added that the visual was “really upsetting” to a lot of people who passed by.

It would be surprising if Game and Fish didn’t readdress regulations for that area.

“If it’s a walking trail, why is it open for public hunting?” an apologetic Geringer told News and Guide.

Not everybody that happend upon the scene was displeased, however.

“You can’t imagine how many people congratulated us and were happy for us,” Geringer told News and Guide. “It’s just that the timing was wrong. If we had to do it again, there’s no way in the world any of us would have done that. It just happened.”

Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Brian Nesvik wouldn’t comment on the incident without hearing the details but agree with his warden that just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.

“Hunter ethics are very important,” Nesvik told News and Guide. “We do have laws that are based on ethics and fair chase, but you can’t regulate all of it. You’ve got to hope that hunters will do the right thing and be respectful of both the wildlife they’re hunting as well as the rest of the public.”

Photos courtesy of Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Wikipedia Commons.

Russia opens investigations into videos showing abuse in prison system


Russia's Investigative Committee on Wednesday opened probes into its prison system following videos appearing to show widespread abuse of inmates. 

File Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 6 (UPI) -- Russian law enforcement on Wednesday opened investigations into reports of widespread abuse within its prison system.

The nation's main investigations agency, the Investigative Committee, opened seven criminal probes after prison activist group Gulagu.net posted more than 1,000 videos it says depict abuse, humiliation and beatings in Russian prison facilities.

The investigative committee said it opened investigations into sexual assault and abuse of power in the prison system in the city of Saratov and crimes against four convicts in the city's prison system between January 2020 and May 2021.

Russia's prison service said Wednesday it fired four officers, including the head of a prison hospital in Saratov.

Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov said if the activity depicted in the footage was confirmed it "will lead to a very serious inquiry," The Moscow Times reported.

One of the videos published by Gulago.net appeared to show a man tied to a bed being abused with a long red stick, while another shows officers urinating on a man's face as he was tied up on the ground,

Vladimir Osechkin, who runs Gulagu.net, said the videos "prove that greave and especially violent crimes were regularly committed against prisoners, which were carefully concealed.

"We are planning to release batches of the videos step by step in the coming weeks now that the source is out of the reach of the Russian authorities," Osechkin added.

Tanya Lokshina, associate director at Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division, said her organization could not verify the videos but said they are "clearly reminiscent of previous documented cases of torture."

"It is crystal clear that this isn't just about some random incidents, the problem of torture in Russian prisons is very acute," she said. "It's an epidemic."

#MEDICAREFORALL   #PHARMACAREFORALL
Ban on negotiating Medicare drug prices under pressure
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR

1 of 4

Retiree Donna Weiner shows the daily prescription medications that she needs and pays over $6,000 a year through a Medicare prescription drug plan at her home, Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021, in Longwood, Fla. Weiner supports giving Medicare authority to negotiate drug prices. Negotiating Medicare drug prices is the linchpin of President Joe Biden's ambitious health care agenda. Not only would consumers see lower costs, but savings would be plowed into other priorities such as dental coverage for retirees and lower premiums for people with plans under the Obama-era health law. 

(AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Donna Weiner looks at Medicare’s prescription drug program from two different points of view.

As a participant, she wants to pay less for her medicines, which cost her about $6,000 a year. As a retired accountant who spent 50 years handling the books for companies, she sees a way to get there.

“You know from working in a business that it makes no sense for an administrator of a plan or a company not to be involved in what they have to pay out,” said Weiner, who lives near Orlando, Florida. For Medicare “to negotiate those prices down would be thousands of dollars back in my pocket every year,” she said.

Negotiating Medicare drug prices is the linchpin of President Joe Biden’s ambitious health care agenda. Not only would consumers see lower costs, but savings would be plowed into other priorities such as dental coverage for retirees and lower premiums for people with plans under the Obama-era health law.

To do that, Congress would have to change an unusual arrangement that’s written into law.

When lawmakers created Medicare’s Part D outpatient prescription drug program in 2003, they barred Medicare from negotiating prices. Republicans who controlled Congress at the time wanted insurers that administer drug plans to do the haggling. Medicare was sidelined, despite decades of experience setting prices for hospitals, doctors and nursing homes.

“I don’t know of any other situation where the government has one hand tied behind its back when dealing with people like big pharma,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is leading efforts to draft the Democratic plan in the Senate.

Known as the “noninterference clause,” the ban has been unbendable. That’s the way the pharmaceutical industry wants to keep it.

Former Medicare administrator Andy Slavitt recalls proposing a “modest experiment” on pricing. “You would have thought we had pressed the nuclear button and the country was going to blow up,” he said.

Drugs costing tens of thousands of dollars a month were rare when the prescription benefit was enacted nearly 20 years ago. Now they have become more common, and Democrats want to allow Medicare to negotiate over high cost brand-name drugs with little or no competition, as well as insulins.

Their legislation also would limit price increases for established drugs and cap annual out-of-pocket costs for Medicare recipients such as Weiner. Another part would overhaul the inner workings of the nearly $100 billion-a-year drug program to try to reduce costs for taxpayers.

Politicians including former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have supported Medicare negotiations. But it’s Biden, with Pelosi doing much of the lifting, who’s come closest to getting it done.

And it still might not happen.

Similar to the rest of Biden’s massive agenda, authorizing Medicare to negotiate hinges on a few Democratic holdouts. During committee deliberations in the House, three Democrats were opposed. In the Senate, a couple are seen as unconvinced.

Amid a furious lobbying and advertising campaign, the AARP, consumer groups, and health insurers are pressing for Medicare negotiations.

Business groups and the pharmaceutical industry are opposed. Drug companies have spent $171 million so far this year on lobbying, far above any other industry, according to the watchdog group OpenSecrets.

The industry says weakening the ban on negotiations would stifle investment in innovative ideas that can lead to lifesaving cures.

“The United States simply put is the bio-pharmaceutical engine for the world,” said Lisa Joldersma, a top executive of the lobbying group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA. “The investments that our companies make are what allow things like multiple vaccines and therapies to address a global pandemic to come to market in an unprecedented amount of time.”

PhRMA opposes constraints on launch prices for new drugs, as well as limitations on price increases for existing medicines. It says the government has other ways to shield Medicare recipients from high out-of-pocket costs and blames insurers for not passing manufacturer rebates directly to patients.

Joldersma points to research by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to support the industry argument that fewer drugs would come to market. The CBO found an approach similar to the legislation would lead to a slight reduction in new drugs in the first 10 years, growing with time to 8% fewer new drugs in the third decade.

PhRMA says the chilling effect would be deeper.

“If you are the patient ... it is certainly not a marginal issue,” said Joldersma.

Others say it’s unlikely that drug development would shrivel. Valuable medicines would go forward, but ones with fewer benefits would have a harder path, said biotethicist said Dr. Steven Pearson, head of the nonprofit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, or ICER, in Boston. The research organization recommends prices based on effectiveness.

“The big argument is at if the government lays a finger on the process, somehow that is going to stifle innovation,” said Pearson. “We can get even better innovation by being smart in how we pay.”

Responded industry official Joldersma: “I’m not aware that Steve Pearson of ICER has ever been in the business of discovering or bringing to market any treatment or cure.”

Juliette Cubanski, a Medicare expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, says “the level of hyperbole that we are hearing in this present drug debate suggests the industry is quite concerned.”

One of the biggest industry objections is that the House bill would use lower prices in other advanced counties as a yardstick for Medicare. The Trump administration tried a similar idea with a different set of Medicare medications. Drugmakers say U.S. patients may have to wait longer than they’re used to for new medications if that goes through.

A recent RAND Corporation study found that linking the cost of top U.S. drugs and insulins to prices abroad could reduce spending here for those drugs by about half.

Other countries try to balance incentives for research and development with prices that reflect the value to patients and society, said study author Andrew Mulcahy.

“If we just wrote a huge check to drug companies, would they do more research?” Mulcahy asked. “Probably some. But is that the socially optimal thing to do? Probably not.”

Eviction confusion, again: End of US ban doesn't cause spike  YET!

By ANITA SNOW

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Chandra Dobbs was stunned when the constable showed up on her doorstep with a fat packet of eviction papers. She thought she had more time.

“I didn’t think I was going to be evicted because I applied for rental assistance money,” Dobbs said a few days later. “But they didn’t want to wait the four to six weeks. So now we’re homeless - me, my 16-year-old son, my daughter and my grandchild, a toddler.”

Her confusion is a common theme across America at a time when the federal government has ended renter protections while doling out billions of dollars in rental assistance. Instead of the expected surge in evictions, many landlords are holding off, waiting for the federal money to come through.

But while a few jurisdictions bar landlords from evicting renters who have applied for the money, most do not.

Court records show the eviction judgment against Dobbs was for $3,837, which included $2,700 in rent plus late fees and court and legal costs. Encore Management LLC, which filed for the eviction, did not respond to a request for comment about its side of the case.

Dobbs, who was laid off from her job as an exotic dancer during the pandemic, said her family is staying temporarily with friends while working with a nonprofit to find a new home and get money for a rent deposit.

After a slow start, the pace to distribute the first $25 billion installment of $46.5 billion in rental assistance is picking up. Treasury Department officials said the program had served 420,000 households in August — up from 340,000 in July — and distributed $7.7 billion since January.

Treasury officials said the strong signs of progress came from New Jersey, New York and South Carolina, which at first struggled to get their programs going. New Jersey, for example, sent out no money in the first quarter but now has distributed 78% of its first-installment money and doubled the number of households served in August compared with July.

Spending in Florida increased from $60.9 million in July to $141.4 million in August while South Carolina went from $10.6 million to $25.3 million. New York saw a jump from $8.5 million to $307 million.

“These numbers are still early, uncertain and there is likely additional pain and hardship not showing up in these reports,” said Gene Sperling, who is charged with overseeing implementation of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package. “But what is out so far is certainly better than anyone’s previous best case scenario for the month after the moratorium.”

Pamphlets offer services for rental eviction residents are on display at the Arizona Workforce Connections center Friday, Sept. 24, 2021, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Sperling credited rental assistance and an increase in eviction diversion programs as key reasons the tidal wave predictions didn’t come through, adding that it was important to keep speeding relief money to landlords. On Wednesday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a new rule barring landlords from evicting tenants in HUD-subsidized public housing without providing them 30 days’ notice and information about available federal emergency rental assistance.

Some tenants have benefited from remaining eviction moratoriums including in California which ended last month, New York’s which runs through the end of the year and Boston’s which is ongoing.

Others have taken advantage of newly created programs from Washington to Texas to Philadelphia to New Hampshire that aimed at keeping eviction cases out of the courts and keeping renters in their homes. Some court systems have also put in place policies staying evictions if a tenant has applied for rental assistance while at least three states and 10 cities have approved measures providing tenants with free legal counsel in eviction proceedings.

Pima County Constable Kristen Randall arrives at an apartment complex to speak to a rental resident about their eviction case Friday, Sept. 24, 2021, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Pima County Constable Kristen Randall signs an eviction notice to a rental resident after taping the notice to the apartment window Friday, Sept. 24, 2021, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)


Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the low income coalition, said the nonprofit has encouraged leaders of state and local governments to maintain the few local eviction bans still remaining after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention moratorium ended in late August.

Landlord advocacy groups have encouraged members not to evict tenants who have applied for government funds to pay their back rent, but owners don’t always follow that suggestion. Smaller property owners in particular have struggled for months to pay their own mortgages and taxes with many tenants not paying rent.

“The vast majority of property owners have worked with their residents for nearly two years to keep people in their homes,” said Courtney Gilstrap LeVinus, president of the Arizona Multihousing Association.

She has defended landlords throughout the pandemic, noting that many have been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy.

Many property owners were more willing to offer concessions during the pandemic, waiving late fees and sometimes reducing or forgiving rent, according to a synthesis of two recent studies of mostly small landlords carried out by the Terner Center of Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

The findings also highlighted the financial hardships landlords have faced, with some opting to sell their properties, a move that could could lead to a loss of affordable housing stock in some communities.

Pima County Constable Kristen Randall, right, speaks to rental resident Paul Wunder, left, letting him know about his eviction notice and explaining to him the options he has for community programs Friday, Sept. 24, 2021, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

U.S. Marine veteran Paul Wunder, who was also on Constable Kristen Randall’s schedule the following week for eviction from his Tucson apartment, said all landlords should wait to receive federal money set aside for rental assistance so they can get the rent money they are owed.

“If they just wait one month, they’ll get all their money,” said Wunder, cradling his small dog Missy, a shaggy terrier mix, inside his apartment a few days before he was locked out. The 66-year-old was laid off early in the pandemic, then laid off again after getting another job as an air conditioner technician.

“If they throw us into the street,” he said, “they’ll get nothing.”

Rental resident Paul Wunder holds his dog, Missy, as he speaks about his eviction notice after meeting with Pima County Constable Kristen Randall Friday, Sept. 24, 2021, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

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Michael Casey contributed to this report from Boston.

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Follow Anita Snow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/asnowreports

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M IS LEGAL

As Lebanese got poorer, politicians stowed wealth abroad
By BASSEM MROUE

1 of 8

Bank customers hold up defaced posters of Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanon's Central Bank, right, and Makram Sadir, secretary general of the Association of Banks in Lebanon, with Arabic that reads: "Stole my future," during a protest in front of the Central Bank in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Dozens of Lebanese gathered outside a bank in Beirut's downtown demanding that they be allowed to withdraw their deposits that have been blocked amid Lebanon's severe financial and economic crisis. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)


BEIRUT (AP) — A trove of leaked documents confirmed that for years, Lebanon’s politicians and bankers have stowed wealth in offshore tax havens and used it to buy expensive properties — a galling revelation for masses of newly impoverished Lebanese, caught in one of the world’s worst economic meltdowns in decades.

Some of the newly outed holders of offshore accounts belong to the same ruling elite that is being blamed for the collapse and for derailing the lives of ordinary Lebanese who have lost access to savings and now struggle to get fuel, electricity and medicine.

Bold-faced names in the leaked documents include the longtime central bank governor, a pivotal figure in the failed policies that helped trigger the financial crisis, as well as Prime Minister Najib Mikati and his predecessor.

The documents, named the “Pandora Papers,” were examined by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, with the first findings released on Sunday. The ICIJ report exposes the offshore secrets of wealthy elites from more than 200 countries and territories.

It was based on a review of nearly 11.9 million records obtained from 14 firms that provide services in setting up offshore firms and shell companies. Clients of such firms are often trying to hide their wealth and financial activities.

Setting up an offshore company is not illegal, but reinforces the perception that the wealthy and powerful play by different rules — a particularly upsetting notion for many Lebanese.

The papers show how members of the political class were sending wealth abroad for years, even as they urged people to deposit money in Lebanon’s banks, assuring them that it was safe, said Alia Ibrahim, a Lebanese journalist.

“We are not talking about regular citizens,” said Ibrahim, a co-founder of Daraj, a Beirut-based independent digital media platform, and one of scores of journalists across the world who worked with ICIJ on the investigation into the documents.

“These are politicians who served in public office for years, and they are partly responsible for the current crisis Lebanon is going through,” she said.

Lebanon is in the midst of what the World Bank says is one of the world’s worst economic meltdowns in the past 150 years. More than 70% of the population has been thrown into poverty, their savings nearly wiped out in the crisis that began in late 2019 and was in part caused by decades of corruption and mismanagement by the political class.

Hundreds of thousands of people staged nationwide protests against corruption starting in late 2019. Yet two years later the same politicians still run the country in the same way, protected by the sectarian-based system.

One of the protesters, Samir Skaff, said that the Lebanese are not surprised to be told that the political class “is made up of a bunch of thieves.”

“We have been saying that for years,” he said.

Customers hold a banner with Arabic that reads: "Pandora (Papers) exposed you," during a protest in front of the Central Bank in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Dozens of Lebanese gathered outside a bank in Beirut's downtown demanding that they be allowed to withdraw their deposits that have been blocked amid Lebanon's severe financial and economic crisis. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)



Bank customers use stones to bang on a metal wall of a bank, during a protest in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Dozens of Lebanese gathered outside a bank in Beirut's downtown demanding that they be allowed to withdraw their deposits that have been blocked amid Lebanon's severe financial and economic crisis. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Bank customers bang on the metal walls of a bank, during a protest in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Dozens of Lebanese gathered outside a bank in Beirut's downtown demanding that they be allowed to withdraw their deposits that have been blocked amid Lebanon's severe financial and economic crisis. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

A customer holds a placard with Arabic that reads: "What was taken by force can only be regained by force," during a protest in front of the Central Bank, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Dozens of Lebanese gathered outside a bank in Beirut's downtown demanding that they be allowed to withdraw their deposits that have been blocked amid Lebanon's severe financial and economic crisis. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Offshore companies, though not illegal, can be used to elude taxes or hide illicitly gained money. The leaks only add further confirmation to what Lebanese have long said about their ruling class — though repeated reports of graft or illicit activity in the past have failed to bring change.

One of the 14 firms listed by ICIJ as providing offshore services is Trident Trust, with 346 Lebanese clients making up the largest group, more than double the second-place country, Britain.

One focus of the revelations is Riad Salameh, who has been Lebanon’s central bank governor for nearly 30 years.

Daraj reported that the documents showed Salameh founded a company called AMANIOR, based in the British Virgin Islands, in 2007. He is listed as its full owner and sole director, which Daraj said appeared to violate Lebanese laws forbidding the central bank governor from activity in any enterprise.

Salameh’s office told The Associated Press that the central bank governor has no comment on the documents. ICIJ quoted him as saying that he declares his assets and has complied with reporting obligations under Lebanese law.

Salameh, 70, is being investigated in Switzerland and France for potential money laundering and embezzlement. Local media reported over the past months that Salameh and his brother as well as one of his aides have been involved in illegal businesses, including money transfers abroad despite the capital controls imposed at home. Salameh had denied making such transfers.

Other documents showed that Marwan Kheireddine, chairman of Lebanon’s Al-Mawarid Bank, was involved in setting up a flurry of offshore businesses in the months just before the economic crisis hit in late 2019. In November that year, his bank and others began imposing capital controls that meant Lebanese could pull very little money out of their accounts even as the currency crashed, wrecking their savings’ value.

The Pandora Papers reveal that in 2019, Kheireddine received control of an offshore firm in the British Virgin Islands, which he then used to buy a $2 million yacht.

In January 2019, he and his brother set up four firms in Britain on the same day, all based at the same London address, and all registered as “small companies,” which Daraj said meant they are exempt from auditing. In 2020, Kheireddine bought a $9.9 million New York penthouse sold by American actress Jennifer Lawrence, Lebanese media reported at the time.

Kheireddine is a former Cabinet minister and a senior member of the Lebanese Democratic Party. He did not respond to calls and a text message by the AP.

Prime Minister Mikati, a businessman who formed a new government last month, has owned a Panama-based offshore company since the 1990s. He used it in 2008 to buy property in Monaco worth more than $10 million, Daraj reported from the documents.

The leaked documents also show that his son Maher was a director of at least two British Virgin Islands-based companies, which his father’s Monaco-based company, M1 Group, used to obtain an office in central London.

Mikati released a statement saying his family fortune was amassed prior to his involvement in politics and was “compliant with global standards” and regularly scrutinized by auditors. Contacted by the AP, Mikati’s media adviser Fares Gemayel said he had no comment.

Speaking to Daraj, Maher Mikati said it was common for people in Lebanon to use offshore companies “due to the easy process of incorporation” and denied the purpose was to evade taxes.

Mikati’s predecessor as prime minister, Hassan Diab, was a co-owner of a shell company in the British Virgin Islands, Daraj reported.

Diab’s office said in a statement Monday that he helped establish the company in 2015, but it did not do any business and he resigned from the firm and gave up his shares in 2019.

“Is the setting up of a company against the law?” the statement said.

Diab’s government resigned days after a massive Aug. 4, 2020, blast in Beirut that killed and injured hundreds and destroyed the city’s port and nearby neighborhoods. Diab was charged with intentional killings and negligence in the case. He denies any wrongdoing but has refused to be questioned by the judge leading the investigation.

MORE ON THE 'PANDORA PAPERS'

– Leaked records open a 'Pandora' box of financial secrets

– Jordanian king's properties undercut father figure image

– Pandora Papers leak prompts calls for action in Asia

New Jersey county pilots program for LGBTQ community

Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Lori Linskey speaks at a news conference Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021 in Freehold N.J. announcing an outreach program to the LGBTQ community, including a program where victims of bias crimes can seek temporary shelter in local businesses while waiting for authorities to arrive. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)

FREEHOLD, N.J. (AP) — Building relationships with the LGBTQ community and enrolling local businesses to act as shelters where bias crime victims can seek immediate help are parts of a new program rolled out Wednesday by a New Jersey prosecutor’s office.

Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Lori Linskey introduced the program to assign liaisons to members of the gay, lesbian and other communities to chip away at decades of distrust between them and law enforcement.

She enlisted the help of three Jersey Shore cities to conduct the pilot program called “Safe Place,” modeled after a similar initiative in Seattle. The program works with local businesses to display the rainbow-colored “Safe Place” logo in their windows to let victims of bias or hate crimes know their establishment is somewhere they can enter to seek shelter while authorities are called.

“It’s a goal of our program to build bridges and collaborate with the LGBTQ community, some of whom have a distrust of law enforcement,” Linskey said. “I want members of the LGBTQ community to feel if they need help, they can call on law enforcement and be treated with dignity and respect in times of crisis.”


David D'Amico, chief investigator with the Middlesex County Department of Corrections, left, and Lt. John Hayes of the New Jersey State Police, right, speak at a news conference Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021 in Freehold N.J. announcing an outreach program to the LGBTQ community, including a program where victims of bias crimes can seek temporary shelter in local businesses while waiting for authorities to arrive. (AP Photo/Wayne Parry)

Christian Fuscarino, executive director of Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s largest gay rights organization, welcomed the outreach. He said years of mistrust have built up between law enforcement, dating back to years when authorities would raid and close establishments catering to a gay clientele.

“We are working to address decades of injustices, and this should help,” he said. “There has been a culture of implicit and even explicit bias in law enforcement that needs to be addressed. This is an important step, and we commend Prosecutor Linskey for her help.”

The prosecutor said her office is also soliciting the help of members of law enforcement who are part of the LGBTQ community, pledging to support them in their jobs.

David D’Amico, chief investigator for the Middlesex County Department of Corrections, who is gay, said it can be challenging to work “in a profession that sometimes does not look at you as an equal.”

State Police Lt. John Hayes, who also is gay, said the program is “a step in the right direction.”

The Safe Space program will initially operate in Asbury Park, Long Branch and Red Bank, three of the county’s largest urban areas. Linskey said her agency is the 293rd to adopt such a program in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Rainbow flags hung in classrooms can send a signal that it’s a 'safe space.' Now schools are banning them.

Beth Greenfield
·Senior Editor
Tue, October 5, 2021

A rainbow flag can indicate a refuge — which is why some are upset that schools and towns across the country are banning them. (Photo: Getty Images)

In-person school is back, and with it, various bans — on the obvious weapons and drugs, but also the more questionable ripped jeans, brightly dyed hair, certain backpacks and, in a few districts, mask mandates.

But now a surprising number of schools — along with some small-town governments — have been banning something meant to symbolize safety and freedom: the LGBTQ pride flag.

"The rainbow flag is like an old-school 'safe place' sign — LGBTQ youth are able to see it and say, 'OK, I can be me here, I can be accepted and loved and safe without fear,'" says Carla Sue Castro, a mental health counselor and mom of two kids in the Bluffton, Ind., school district — which banned rainbow flags (and anything else not directly related to official lessons) after a mom said that one displayed in an eighth-grade classroom may have prompted homophobic bullying towards her son.

But that signal of acceptance, Castro tells Yahoo Life, "is huge for our kiddos."

Still, reports of similar incidents have come at such a fast clip with the start of this school year that it's been hard to keep up: Other school districts proposing or instituting pride-flag bans (with some also suppressing Black Lives Matter flags) have included those in Newberg, Oregon (currently being fought); Westfield, Indiana (prompting protests); and Davis County, Utah — not to mention incidents in Winterset, Iowa; Neosho, Missouri; and the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in California that have resulted in teachers being placed on leave, resigning or being fired for displaying pride flags (or, in the California case, jokingly suggesting students pledge allegiance to one) in their classrooms.

A mile-long pride flag, created by Gilbert Baker, was carried through the streets of New York City in 1994 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. (Photo: ANDREW HOLBROOKE/Corbis via Getty Images)More

Reasons given by administrations have often been vague, sometimes blaming the flags for "significant disruption" or being too "political," with some critics equating the rainbow flags to Confederate or Trump flags. However, noted a parent protesting the ban in Westfield, Ind., recently, "There’s a difference between flags that promote hate and flags that promote inclusion. The actual idea of removing a flag that promotes inclusive and that sense of value to me is just really sad."

Small towns and villages, meanwhile, that have restricted or proposed banning the flying of rainbow flags — either for Pride Month or all the time — have included Clayton, N.Y.; Suffield, Conn.; Arlington Heights, Ill.; Minot, N.D.; and Taunton and nearby Dighton, Mass., where openly gay Selectman Brett Zografos had originally proposed flying the flag in response to a homophobic rant of an email sent to town officials. "I think it's very important to the LGBTQ community…because violence against LGBTQ individuals is up, and our work didn’t end when SCOTUS legalized gay marriage in 2015," Zografos tells Yahoo Life.

Town officials' reasons for removal or banning rainbow flags have been similar to those of the schools — not wanting to show "favoritism" to any particular group chief among them.

But proponents of the pride flag say that critics are missing the point.

"Displaying an LGBTQ pride flag is an inclusive and harmless way to show LGBTQ people they are welcome and safe," GLAAD rapid response manager Mary Emily O'Hara tells Yahoo Life. "Pride flags and Progress flags are symbols to others in towns and schools about a community's values, to represent and support the most marginalized in the community."

Bans on the flags, and attempts to ban them, O'Hara adds, "are harmful messages that youth and adults alike recognize as hurtful discrimination, when the message should be that we include, protect and value the most vulnerable among us."

"The rainbow flag is different than any other flag," Charley Beale, board president of the Gilbert Baker Foundation — protecting the legacy of Baker, who created the flag — tells Yahoo Life. "As homosexuals, we start our lives invisible, we start in the closet and it's something you have to proclaim… The flag we consider to be a beacon with people struggling with the closet, and the first step into the light of freedom."

A participant at a "Raise the Rainbow" rally in New York City honored rainbow-flag creator Gilbert Baker shortly after his death in 2017. 

(Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

As that beacon, Beale adds, the flag is meant to be flown, not hidden. "It's a visibility tool. It only works as a 'visibility action,' as Gilbert would call it," he explains. "So, some are saying, 'we don’t fly this or that flag,' but these other people are not having trouble being visible as Americans."

Roots of the rainbow flag

Baker, an activist and vexillographer (flag designer), created the original rainbow flag in 1978. He believed that the dawning of the gay-rights era deserved a more positive symbol to replace the long-used pink triangle, which had a dark, stigma-based history rooted in Nazism. And the idea of a rainbow hit Baker when he was out dancing "in a swirl of color and light" with a friend one night.

"A Rainbow Flag was a conscious choice, natural and necessary," Baker, who died in 2017, wrote in his memoir. "The rainbow came from earliest recorded history as a symbol of hope. In the Book of Genesis, it appeared as proof of a covenant between God and all living creatures. It was also found in Chinese, Egyptian and Native American history. A Rainbow Flag would be our modern alternative to the pink triangle. Now the rioters who claimed their freedom at the Stonewall Bar in 1969 would have their own symbol of liberation."

Originally eight colors, with each having its own meaning — sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic, serenity and spirit — it was switched to six when demand increased and the flag became mass-produced.

Rainbow flag creator Gilbert Baker, pictured in 2016. 

(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The new symbol was embraced around the world, with notable moments including Baker's record-setting mile-long rainbow flag, carried by 5,000 people along Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1994 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, largely seen as the birth of the gay-rights movement.

So what might Baker say today in response to the banning of the flags? "Gilbert would say the flag is political for sure, and that… with art, we can change the world," Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, who leads the New York City's LGBTQ synagogue Congregation Beit Simchat Torah and was a close friend of Baker's in the years leading up to his death, surmises for Yahoo Life. "He would say, 'Hang more of them!'"

The pride flag, she adds, "has this incredible power with its beauty — it's full of joy, it's an expression of all we want the world to be, and it says, 'you're welcome here.'"

Beale notes that the reach of that message has expanded significantly since 1978.

"In the last probably 10 years of his life, we noticed it became a flag of sanctuary… It actually became bigger than the LGBTQ+ community…and I think that's sometimes why teachers use it, as a signifier of safety — not promoting or trying to call out one group or another, but actually to say, 'This is a safe place for people who are sexual and gender minorities or any other minority, frankly,'" he says. "It's amazing how the rainbow flag's meaning has grown."

Teacher Bev Balash's welcoming classroom wall in Indiana. 

(Photo courtesy Bev Balash)

That's exactly what spurred longtime eighth-grade science teacher Bev Balash to hang the rainbow flag on the wall of her Bluffton, Ind., classroom a few years ago — leading a parent to complain, and sparking this year's controversy and subsequent rainbow-flag ban.

"I put the pride flag up in the fall before the pandemic because one of my students asked me to. It is as simple as that," Balash tells Yahoo Life. "I told her that I would be happy to put it up. I thought it was important because it meant a lot to her and I knew there were other students that it would send a signal to say that my room is a safe space and that I support them."

She says that "since the hullabaloo over the flag, I have had numerous current and former students…reach out to me through email and telephone to thank me for hanging it. The flag wasn't hanging up when many of them were in my class, but they told me they always knew I supported them regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. That is what I have tried to do for 27 years and will continue to try to do."

In fact, in the wake of the ban, she's gotten clever with her classroom's decor, hanging the rainbow-and-prism Dark Side of the Moon album art and rainbow-hued signs declaring "Everyone is welcome" and "Everyone belongs."

"I also have a small sign on my door that is a rainbow with a quote by Maya Angelou," Balash adds. "It says, 'Try to be the rainbow in someone else's cloud.'"

GREEN CHEMISTRY

Nobel in chemistry honors ‘greener’ way to build molecules

By DAVID KEYTON, FRANK JORDANS and CHRISTINA LARSON

today

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Goran K Hansson, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, centre, announces the winners of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021. Professor Pernilla Wittung-Stafhede, is seated at left and Professor Peter Somfai at right. Two scientists have won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for finding an “ingenious” new way to build molecules that can be used to make everything from medicines to food flavorings. Benjamin List of Germany and Scotland-born David W.C. MacMillan developed “asymmetric organocatalysis.” Goran Hansson of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Wednesday that work has already had a significant impact on pharmaceutical research. 

(Claudio Bresciani/TT New Agency via AP)

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for finding an ingenious and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules — an approach now used to make a variety of compounds, including medicines and pesticides.

The work of Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan has allowed scientists to produce those molecules more cheaply, efficiently, safely and with significantly less hazardous waste.

“It’s already benefiting humankind greatly,” said Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede, a member of the Nobel panel.

It was the second day in a row that a Nobel rewarded work that had environmental implications. The physics prize honored developments that expanded our understanding of climate change, just weeks before the start of global climate negotiations in Scotland.

The chemistry prize focused on the making of molecules. That requires linking atoms together in specific arrangements, an often difficult and slow task. Until the beginning of the millennium, chemists had only two methods — or catalysts — to speed up the process, using either complicated enzymes or metal catalysts.

That all changed when List, of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and MacMillan, of Princeton University in New Jersey, independently reported that small organic molecules can be used to do the job. The new tools have been important for developing medicines and minimizing drug manufacturing glitches, including problems that can cause harmful side effects.

Johan Åqvist, chair of the Nobel panel, called the method as “simple as it is ingenious.”

“The fact is that many people have wondered why we didn’t think of it earlier,” he added.

MacMillan said that winning the prize left him “stunned, shocked, happy, very proud.”

“I grew up in Scotland, a working-class kid. My dad’s a steelworker. My mom was a home help. … I was lucky enough to get a chance to come to America, to do my Ph.D.,” he said.

David W.C. MacMillan, one of two winners of the Nobel Prize for chemistry, smiles as he is interviewed outside the Frick Chemistry Laboratory and Department of Chemistry at Princeton University, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021, in Princeton, N.J. The work of Benjamin List of Germany and Scotland-born David W.C. MacMillan were awarded for finding an "ingenious" and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that can be used to make everything from medicines to food flavorings. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

In fact, he said at a news conference in Princeton, he was planning to follow his older brother into physics, but the physics classes in college were at 8 a.m. in a cold and leaky classroom in rainy Scotland, while the chemistry courses were two hours later in warmer, drier spaces. As he told that story, he said he could hear his wife pleading with him not to share it.

His said the inspiration for his Nobel-winning work came when thinking about the dirty process of making chemicals — one that requires precautions he likened to those taken at nuclear power plants.

If he could devise a way of making medicines faster by completely different means that didn’t require vats of metal catalysts, the process would be safer for both workers and the planet, he reasoned.

List said he did not initially know MacMillan was working on the same subject and figured his own hunch might just be a “stupid idea” — until it worked. At that eureka moment, “I did feel that this could be something big,” the 53-year-old said.

H.N. Cheng, president of the American Chemical Society, said the laureates developed “new magic wands.”

Before the their work, “the standard catalysts frequently used were metals, which frequently have environmental downsides,” Cheng said. “They accumulate, they leach, they may be hazardous.”

Full Coverage: Nobel Prizes

The catalysts that MacMillan and List pioneered “are organic, so they will degrade faster, and they are also cheaper,” he said.

The Nobel panel noted that their contributions made the production of key drugs easier, including an antiviral and an anti-anxiety medication.

“One way to look at their work is like molecular carpentry,” said John Lorsch, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

“They’ve found ways to not only speed up the chemical joining,” he said, “but to make sure it only goes in either the right-handed or left-handed direction.”

The ability to control the orientation in which new atoms are added to molecules is important. Failing to do so can result in side effects in drugs, the Nobel panel explained, citing the catastrophic example of thalidomide, which caused severe birth defects in children.


German scientist Benjamin List arrives at the Max-Planck-Institute for Coal Research in Muelheim, Germany, Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021 after he was informed about winining the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Two scientists have won the Nobel Prize for chemistry for finding an "ingenious" new way to build molecules that can be used to make everything from medicines to food flavorings. Benjamin List of Germany and Scotland-born David W.C. MacMillan developed "asymmetric organocatalysis." (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

Since the scientists’ discovery, the tool has been further refined, making it many times more efficient.

Peter Somfai, another member of the committee, stressed the importance of the discovery for the world economy.

“It has been estimated that catalysis is responsible for about 35% of the world’s GDP, which is a pretty impressive figure,” he said. “If we have a more environmentally friendly alternative, it’s expected that that will make a difference.”

The NIH supported List’s research with a grant in 2002. MacMillan’s work has received funding from NIH since 2000, for a total of around $14.5 million to date.

“It’s a great example of supporting basic science that you don’t necessarily know where it’s going to go” but can have major impact, said Francis Collins, NIH director.

The Nobel comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor,, or more than $1.14 million. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

Over the coming days, Nobels will be awarded in literature, peace and economics.

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Jordans reported from Berlin and Larson from Washington. Associated Press journalists Mike Corder in Amsterdam and Ted Shaffrey in Princeton, New Jersey, contributed.

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Read more stories about Nobel Prizes past and present at https://www.apnews.com/NobelPrizes.

#ECOCIDE PENNSYLVANIA

Pipeline developer charged over systematic contamination
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM

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Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, at podium, speaks during a news conference at Marsh Creek State Park in Downingtown, Pa., Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021. Shapiro filed criminal charges Tuesday against the developer of a problem-plagued pipeline that takes natural gas liquids from the Marcellus Shale gas field to an export terminal near Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The corporate developer of a multi-billion-dollar pipeline system that takes natural gas liquids from the Marcellus Shale gas field to an export terminal near Philadelphia was charged criminally on Tuesday after a grand jury concluded that it flouted Pennsylvania environmental laws and fouled waterways and residential water supplies across hundreds of miles.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced the sprawling case at a news conference at Marsh Creek State Park in Downingtown, where Sunoco Pipeline LP spilled thousands of gallons of drilling fluid last year. The spill, during construction of the troubled Mariner East 2 pipeline, contaminated wetlands, a stream and part of a 535-acre lake.

Energy Transfer, Sunoco’s owner, faces 48 criminal charges, most of them for illegally releasing industrial waste at 22 sites in 11 counties across the state. A felony count accuses the operator of willfully failing to report spills to state environmental regulators.

Shapiro said Energy Transfer ruined the drinking water of at least 150 families statewide. He released a grand jury report that includes testimony from numerous residents who accused Energy Transfer of denying responsibility for the contamination and then refusing to help.

The Texas-based pipeline giant was charged for “illegal behavior that related to the construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline that polluted our lakes, our rivers and our water wells and put Pennsylvania’s safety at risk,” said Shapiro, speaking with Marsh Creek Lake behind him.

Messages were sent to Energy Transfer seeking comment. The company has previously said it intends to defend itself.

The company faces a fine if convicted, which Shapiro said was not a sufficient punishment. He called on state lawmakers to toughen penalties on corporate violators, and said the state Department of Environmental Protection — which spent freely on outside lawyers for its own employees during the attorney general’s investigation — had failed to conduct appropriate oversight.

In a statement, DEP said it has been “consistent in enforcing the permit conditions and regulations and has held Sunoco LP accountable.” The agency said it would review the charges “and determine if any additional actions are appropriate at this time.”

Residents who live near the pipeline and some state lawmakers said Mariner East should be shut down entirely in light of the criminal charges, but the administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has long ignored such calls to pull the plug.

The August 2020 spill at Marsh Creek was among a series of mishaps that has plagued Mariner East since construction began in 2017. Early reports put the spill at 8,100 gallons, but the grand jury heard evidence the actual loss was up to 28,000 gallons. Parts of the lake are still off-limits.

Libby Madarasz displays a placard as Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro speaks during a news conference at Marsh Creek State Park in Downingtown, Pa., Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2021. Shapiro filed criminal charges Tuesday against the developer of a problem-plagued pipeline that takes natural gas liquids from the Marcellus Shale gas field to an export terminal near Philadelphia. 

“This was a major incident, but understand, it wasn’t an isolated one. This happened all across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said Shapiro, a Democrat who plans to run for governor next year. He said that spills of drilling fluid were “frequent and damaging and largely unreported.”

The pipeline developer continued to rack up civil violations even after Mariner East became one of the most penalized projects in state history. To date, DEP said Energy Transfer has paid more than $20 million in fines for polluting waterways and drinking water wells, including a $12.6 million fine in 2018 that was one of the largest ever imposed by the agency. State regulators have periodically shut down construction.

But environmental activists and homeowners who assert their water has been fouled say that fines and shutdown orders have not forced Sunoco to clean up its act. They have been demanding revocation of Mariner East’s permits.

Carrie Gross, who has been living with the roar of Mariner East construction in her densely packed Exton neighborhood all day, six days a week, for much of the last four years, fears that criminal charges will be just as ineffectual as DEP’s civil penalties.

“I would say this is just another example of Energy Transfer paying to pollute, and that’s part of their cost of doing business. Until somebody permanently halts this project, our environment and our lives continue to be in danger,” Gross said.

The dental hygienist lives about 100 feet from the pipelines and works about 50 feet from them. She said she worries about the persistent threat of sinkholes, a catastrophic rupture or an explosion even after construction is over.

Shapiro’s news conference was originally rescheduled for Monday, but was abruptly postponed after the state environmental agency provided last-minute information to the attorney general’s office. The new information led to the filing of two additional charges, Shapiro said.

Energy Transfer acknowledged in a recent earnings report that the attorney general has been looking at “alleged criminal misconduct” involving Mariner East. The company said in the document it was cooperating but that “it intends to vigorously defend itself.”

The various criminal probes into Mariner East have also consumed DEP, which has spent about $1.57 million on outside criminal defense lawyers for its employees between 2019 and 2021, according to invoices obtained by The Associated Press.

The money was paid to five separate law firms representing dozens of DEP employees who dealt with Mariner East. Together, the firms submitted more than 130 invoices related to Mariner East investigations, performing legal work such as reviewing subpoenas and preparing clients to testify, the documents show.

When Mariner East construction permits were approved in 2017, environmental advocacy groups accused the Wolf administration of violating the law and warned pipeline construction would unleash massive and irreparable damage to Pennsylvania’s environment and residents.

“If we have a system where ... the punishment, the fines, are basically seen as just a price of doing business, then we’ll continue to have violations in the commonwealth,” said David Masur, executive director of Philadelphia-based PennEnvironment.

State officials “have a huge stick they could wield,” he added. “Maybe they just have to stop hesitating and use it.”

The Mariner East pipeline system transports propane, ethane and butane from the enormous Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale gas fields in western Pennsylvania to a refinery processing center and export terminal in Marcus Hook, outside Philadelphia.

Energy Transfer also operates the Dakota Access oil pipeline, which went into service in 2017 after months of protests by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others during its construction.

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