Portland, Oregon, to clear sidewalk tents to settle suit with people with disabilities

By CLAIRE RUSH

AP

May 25, 2023

Tents line the sidewalk on SW Clay St in Portland, Ore., on Dec. 9, 2020. Portland will remove tents blocking sidewalks under a tentative settlement announced Thursday, May 25, 2023, in a lawsuit brought by people with disabilities who said sprawling homeless encampments prevent them from navigating Oregon's most populous city. (AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer, File)

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Portland will remove tents blocking sidewalks under a tentative settlement announced Thursday in a lawsuit brought by people with disabilities who said sprawling homeless encampments prevent them from navigating Oregon’s most populous city.

The federal class action lawsuit, filed in September, alleged that the city violated the American with Disabilities Act by allowing tents to obstruct sidewalks. The plaintiffs included a caretaker and nine people with disabilities who use wheelchairs, scooters, canes and walkers to get around. The settlement still requires approval from the City Council and the U.S. District Court in Portland.

The settlement comes as City Council prepares to consider new restrictions on camping. The updates to the city’s camping code would ban camping between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. in many locations, including sidewalks. Mayor Ted Wheeler plans to present the ordinance Wednesday. The City Council previously voted in November to gradually ban street camping and create at least three large, designated campsites where homeless people will be allowed to camp.

Under the tentative lawsuit settlement, the city must prioritize removing tents that block sidewalks and clear at least 500 sidewalk-blocking encampments every year for the next five years. If there are fewer than 500 such campsites in a given year, the city will be found to be in compliance if it clears all that are blocking sidewalks.

The city must operate a 24-hour hotline for reporting tents that are blocking sidewalks and create an online reporting portal where people can upload photos. It will create a publicly accessible database of reported campsites and actions taken in response.

Portland will also limit its distribution of tents to homeless people and post “no camping” signs in areas where sidewalks are frequently blocked.

“People with disabilities deserve to use transportation corridors to pursue their daily activities unimpeded,” one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, John DiLorenzo, said in an email, adding that he was hopeful the settlement would make it easier for people with disabilities to navigate the city.

Under the tentative deal, the city will not admit wrongdoing or liability.

The settlement is expected to be presented to the City Council next week.

“I strongly believe that everyone should have access to sidewalks to navigate the City safely, and this is especially true for Portlanders with mobility challenges,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said in an emailed statement. “The settlement that will come before Council next week will help prioritize the City’s efforts to ensure accessibility to sidewalks.”

The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit described how unnavigable sidewalks complicate their lives and sometimes put them in harm’s way.

Among them is Steve Jackson, who is legally blind and uses a cane to walk. He said tents prevent him from navigating the sidewalk and accessing bus stops.

“Often there’s tents blocking the entire sidewalk, where I don’t see them because they weren’t there the day before, and I hit the tent and then people are mad at me and think I’m attacking them,” Jackson said during a news conference in September.

About 13% of Portlanders live with a disability, according to the lawsuit, including 6% with mobility impairments and 2.4% with visual impairments.

The city must devote at least $8 million in the 2023-2024 fiscal year to making sure the conditions of the settlement are met, and at least $3 million annually for the following four fiscal years, according to a copy of the settlement shared with reporters by DiLorenzo. It has also agreed to pay $5,000 to each of the 10 plaintiffs and reasonable attorney fees.

Oregon’s homelessness crisis has been fueled by an affordable housing shortage, a lack of mental health treatment, high drug addiction rates and the coronavirus pandemic.

In Multnomah County, home to Portland, there were more than 5,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2022 — a 30% increase compared with 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to federal point-in-time count data.
____

Claire Rush is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Egypt unveils recently discovered ancient workshops, tombs in Saqqara necropolis

AP
today

An Egyptian archeologist points at a colored painting showing offering sacrifices at a recently uncovered tomb that was said to belong to a top official of the fifth Dynasty named "Ne Hesut Ba" (2400 BC), at the site of the Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, 24 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, May 27, 2023. Saqqara is a part of Egypt's ancient capital of Memphis, a UNESCO World Heritage site. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil


CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian antiquities authorities Saturday unveiled ancient workshops and tombs they say were discovered recently at a Pharaonic necropolis just outside the capital Cairo.

The spaces were found in the sprawling necropolis of Saqqara, which is a part of Egypt’s ancient capital of Memphis, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the workshops had been used to mummify humans and sacred animals. They date back to the 30th Pharaonic Dynasty (380 BC to 343 BC) and Ptolemaic period (305 BC to 30 BC), he said.

Inside the workshops, archaeologists found clay pots and other items apparently used in mummification, as well as ritual vessels, Waziri said.

The tombs, meanwhile, were for a top official from the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, and a priest from the New Kingdom, according to Sabri Farag, head of the Saqqara archaeological site.

In recent years, Egypt’s government has heavily promoted new archaeological finds to international media and diplomats. It hopes that such discoveries will help attract more tourists to the country to revive an industry that suffered from political turmoil following the 2011 uprising.

Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, displays a recently unearthed ancient wooden sarcophagus at the site of the Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, 24 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, May 27, 2023. Saqqara is a part of Egypt's ancient capital of Memphis, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Waziri said the workshops had been used to mummify humans and sacred animals, dated back to the 30th Pharaonic Dynasty 380 BC to 343 BC and Ptolemaic period 305 BC to 30 BC. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Remains of 5 more Native American children to be disinterred in Pennsylvania

May 25, 2023

 A headstone is seen at the cemetery of the U.S. Army's Carlisle Barracks, Friday, June 10, 2022, in Carlisle, Pa. The remains of five more Native American children who died at a notorious government-run boarding school in Pennsylvania more than a century ago will be disinterred from a small Army cemetery and returned to descendants, authorities said.

   

 

(AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

CARLISLE, Pa. (AP) — The remains of five more Native American children who died at a notorious government-run boarding school in Pennsylvania over a century ago will be disinterred from a small Army cemetery and returned to descendants, authorities said Thursday.

The remains are buried on the grounds of the Carlisle Barracks, home of the U.S. Army War College. The children attended the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to assimilate to white society as a matter of U.S. policy.

The Carlisle school put children through harsh conditions that sometimes resulted in their deaths. Founded by an Army officer, the school cut their braids, dressed them in military-style uniforms and punished them for speaking their native languages. European names were forced upon them.

The Office of Army Cemeteries said the latest disinterment of remains will take place beginning Sept. 11. It will be the sixth such disinterment operation at Carlisle since 2017 as the military transfers remains to living family members for reburial. Twenty-eight children have been returned so far, according to cemetery officials.

The remains to be moved this fall include those belonging to 13-year-old Amos LaFromboise, of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe of South Dakota, who died in 1879, only 20 days after his arrival at the school. The tribe had written to the U.S. Army’s cemetery office in March to urge a faster return of the boy, who has been described as a son of one of the tribe’s most celebrated leaders. The Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate want to bury him next to his father on the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota.

The other students to be moved died between 1880 and 1910 while attending the Carlisle school, according to the Office of Army Cemeteries. They are Edward Upright from the Spirit Lake Tribe of North Dakota, Beau Neal from the Northern Arapaho Tribe of Wyoming, Edward Spott from the Puyallup Tribe of Washington state, and Launy Shorty from the Blackfeet Nation of Montana

More than 10,000 children from more than 140 tribes passed through the school between 1879 and 1918, including famous Olympian Jim Thorpe.

Starting with the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, the U.S. enacted laws and policies to establish and support Native American boarding schools across the nation. Hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools that focused on assimilation.

The federal government has been investigating its past oversight of the boarding schools.

LIKE HUNGARY, POLAND IS FASCIST
Poland’s lawmakers approve contentious law targeting opposition

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA

yesterday

1 of 7
Poland's opposition leader and former prime minister, Donald Tusk, watches lawmakers vote to approve a contentious draft law in parliament in Warsaw, Poland, on Friday, May 26, 2023. The law is for investigating Russia's alleged influence in Poland that is targeting the opposition, especially Tusk, and may affect the outcome of fall parliamentary elections. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)



WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish lawmakers on Friday approved a contentious draft law on Russia’s alleged influence in Poland that is targeting the opposition and may affect the outcome of fall parliamentary elections.

The new law would establish a state commission for investigating Russian influences in Poland. It is generally seen as targeting former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, now the main opposition Civic Coalition leader, at a time when early campaigning for the fall elections is underway.

The lower house, or Sejm, voted 234-219 with one abstention to approve the law proposed by the right-wing ruling party. It still needs approval from President Andrzej Duda to take effect. It was not clear whether Duda will approve it.

Tusk, who is not a parliament member, was present in the chamber during the vote.

He later said those who voted for the law were “cowards” who have “broken good parliamentary manners and the fundamental principles of democracy, out of fear of losing their power, out of fear of the people, out of fear of responsibility (they should face) after they lose the elections.”

He said the opposition has a strategy ready for the commission and called on the Poles to walk with him in pro-democracy marches June 4, the anniversary of partly free elections in 1989 that led to the ouster of communist from power in Poland.

Critics say that the draft law violates Poland’s constitution and a citizen’s right to face an independent court, and that it is a clear example of how the ruling party, Law and Justice, has been using the law for its own ends ever since coming to power in 2015.

They view the bill, dubbed “Lex Tusk,” as an attempt to create a powerful and unconstitutional tool that would help Law and Justice continue to wield power even if it loses control of the parliament in elections this fall.

“This regulation violates all the constitutional foundations,” said Slawomir Patyra, a constitution expert at Marie Sklodowska-Curie University in Lublin.

Patyra said the proposed commission would investigate and prosecute “anyone who will criticize the current political or economic order” because the definition of ‘Russian influences’ is vague.

Law and Justice accuses Tusk of having been too friendly toward Russia as prime minister between 2007-14 and making gas deals favorable to Russia before he went to Brussels to be the president of the European Council between 2014-19.

Opposition senator Krzysztof Brejza said the new law is a “Soviet-style idea stemming from the mentality of (Law and Justice leader) Jaroslaw Kaczynski and an attempt at organizing a witch hunt against Donald Tusk and eliminating him” from Poland’s politics.

Tusk and Kaczynski are long-term political rivals.

The bill foresees the creation of a state commission with the powers of prosecutor and judge. It could impose punishments, including 10-year bans on officials from positions that have control over spending public funds.

The lower house also debated another bill proposed by the ruling party that lowers the required quorum of the Constitutional Court. It is intended to speed up work on legislation that is stalled by divisions inside the court, which has been put under political control. Among those laws are new regulations that could unblock massive EU funds that Brussels froze amid the rule-of-law clash with Warsaw.

At stake is some 35 billion euros ($37 billion) in EU grants and loans as Poland’s government continues to spend huge amounts on social bonuses, pensions and weapons as the war in neighboring Ukraine continues.

A vote was postponed to next parliament session.

During heated debates in parliament earlier this week, one of the ruling party’s key lawmakers, Tadeusz Cymanski, said that the bill lowering the Constitutional Tribunal’s quorum is crucial because the party wants to “force the tribunal ... to issue a certain ruling that we are waiting for.”

The government’s policies, especially in the judicial system, have already put Warsaw at odds with the EU, which says they go against the principles of rule of law and democracy. The two drafts laws could add to the rift.

Climbers celebrate Mount Everest 70th anniversary amid melting glaciers, rising temperatures

By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA

AP

yesterday



KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — As the mountaineering community prepares to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the conquest of Mount Everest, there is growing concern about temperatures rising, glaciers and snow melting, and weather getting harsh and unpredictable on the world’s tallest mountain.

Since the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) mountain peak was first scaled by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay in 1953, thousands of climbers have reached the peak and hundreds of lost their lives.

The deteriorating conditions on Everest are raising concerns for the mountaineering community and the people whose livelihoods depend on the flow of visitors.

The Sherpa community, who grew up on the foothills of the snow-covered mountain they worship as the mother of the world, is the most startled.

“The effects of climate change are hitting not just the fishes of Antarctica, the whales or the penguins, but it’s having a direct impact on the Himalayan mountains and the people there,” said Ang Tshering, a prominent Sherpa who has been campaigning for years to save the Himalayan peaks and surrounding areas from the effects of global warming.

Almost every year, he and his Asian Trekking agency organize a cleaning expedition in which clients and guides alike bring down garbage left by previous Everest climbing parties.

The effects of climate change and global warming have been severe in the high Himalayan area, Ang Tshering said. “The rising temperature of the Himalayan area is more than the global average, so the snow and ice is melting fast and the mountain is turning black, the glaciers are melting and lakes are drying up.”

Growing up on the foothills of the mountain, Ang Tshering said he remembers sliding on the glacier near his village. But that’s gone now.

Other Sherpas also said they have seen the changes in the Khumbu Glacier at the foot of Everest, near the base camp.

“We don’t really need to wait for the future; we are seeing the impact already,” said Phurba Tenjing, a Sherpa guide who recently scaled the peak for the 16th time guiding foreign clients to the summit.

Phurba Tenjing has been climbing Everest since he was 17. He said both the snow and ice have melted and the trek that used to take five or six hours over the icy path now only takes half an hour because the glaciers have melted and bare rocks are exposed.

“Before, the building-like ice chunks of the Khumbu Glacier used to come all the way up to the base camp. But now we don’t see it near the base camp,” Phurba Tenjing said.

Recent research found that Mount Everest’s glaciers have lost 2,000 years of ice in just the past 30 years.

Researchers found that the highest glacier on the mountain, the South Col Glacier, has lost more than 54 meters (177 feet) of thickness in the past 25 years. A team of 10 scientists visited the glacier and installed two weather monitoring stations — the world’s highest — and extracted samples from a 10-meter-long (33-foot) ice core. The glacier, which sits around 7,900 meters (26,000 feet) above sea level, was found to be thinning 80 times faster than it first took the ice to form on the surface, according to research published in 2022.

The glaciers are losing ice at rates that likely have no historic precedent, said Duncan Quincey, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.

The change is happening “extremely rapidly” he said. “It’s causing challenges for everybody within that region and, of course, for the millions of people who are living downstream,” since much of Southern Asia depends on rivers that originate in the Himalayas for agriculture and drinking water.

Both floods and droughts are likely to become more extreme, he said.

“There’s a huge amount of unpredictability within these systems now, and it makes it very difficult for people who require water at a particular time of year to know that they’re going to have that water available,” he said.

Nepal’s government and mountaineering community plan to celebrate Everest Day on May 29 with a parade around Kathmandu and a ceremony honoring the climbers and veteran Sherpa guides.

___

Associated Press climate writer Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru, India, contributed to this report.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

 

  

THIRD WORLD U$A
Oregon man died waiting for an ambulance, highlighting lack of emergency responders

AP
yesterday

An American Medical Response vehicle drives in San Francisco, Monday, May 22, 2023. Lawyers sued medical transport provider American Medical Response West, saying the ambulance company's lax oversight allowed a paramedic to sexually assault two women in their 80s on their way to a hospital. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A man died while waiting over a half-hour for an ambulance after being struck by a hit-and-run driver last month, according to emergency dispatch logs, an incident that Portland firefighters say highlights their frustration at a lack of available ambulances to respond to emergency calls.

The Bureau of Emergency Communications 911 dispatch log was obtained by KGW-TV through a public records request. It revealed that American Medical Response, the private provider contracted by Multnomah County, was operating at level zero — a code meaning there are no ambulances available to respond to an emergency call.

“More and more, day after day, we’re seeing this level zero pop up, and as firefighters we’re getting frustrated,” Isaac McLennan, president of the Portland Fire Fighters’ Association, told KGW-TV. “This is a highly dangerous situation and it should be unacceptable not only just for firefighters, it should be unacceptable for everybody who lives in this community.”

Shortly after midnight on April 28, both firefighters and an ambulance crew were dispatched to the accident scene in northeast Portland. Police said it appeared the man, who has not been publicly identified, was attempting to cross the street in a wheelchair when he was hit.

The man was still alive when firefighters arrived, but 911 dispatchers repeatedly told them that American Medical Response was operating at level zero, according to dispatch logs. The firefighters worked to stabilize the man in the road while waiting for an ambulance.

The logs show the initial dispatch went out at 12:10 a.m. Firefighters arrived at 12:14, and an ambulance got there at 12:42. The ambulance left the scene five minutes later, as a hospital transport was no longer necessary because the man had died.

McLennan told KGW-TV there was no practical way firefighters could have taken the man to the hospital themselves as it was clear he needed an ambulance.

Global Medical Response, the parent company of American Medical Response, said in a statement to KGW-TV that the incident is still under review by the company as well as by county emergency officials.

“The safety of our patients is always our top priority. American Medical Response is committed to responding to all calls in a timely manner,” it said.

Official in Multnomah County, which is home to Portland, have said ambulances should arrive to 90% of emergency calls within eight minutes. However KGW-TV reported that during a five-month period ending in February, that mark was missed about a third of the time.

MORMONISM IS A CULT

Members of polygamous group arraigned in court on child sex abuse charges

By TERRY TANG and SAM METZ

P

yesterday

Family and followers of polygamous sect leader Samuel Bateman gather around as he calls from police custody following his arrest in Colorado City, Ariz., Sept. 13, 2022. Prosecutors have widened their case against the leader of a small polygamous group that resides near the Utah-Arizona border, adding child pornography charges and detailing Bateman's sexual encounters with children he took as wives in new charges filed earlier in May 2023. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, File)

PHOENIX (AP) — Members of a small polygamous group accused of child sex abuse of underage girls whom the group’s leader claimed as brides were arraigned in federal court on Friday.

Sam Bateman and the three women followers, who are each represented by different attorneys, entered not guilty pleas in a downtown Phoenix courtroom. They also waived having the charges read to them. None of them spoke.

All four were arrested last year and charged with kidnapping and impeding a federal investigation. Prosecutors earlier this month expanded the group’s charges.

Now 11 members of Bateman’s group face 51 felony counts for transporting children across state lines to facilitate sexual activity, recording it, destroying evidence and witness tampering.

Two women, including one with a baby in a carrier, sat in the gallery. They declined to give their names but said they were there to support all four defendants.

The group’s appearance in court is the latest development in a sprawling federal investigation spanning at least five states that became public last fall after authorities raided Bateman’s compound in Colorado City, Arizona. The site was long home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known by its acronym FLDS.

Colorado City and Hildale — an adjoining town across the Utah border — have changed dramatically since the group’s prophet, Warren Jeffs, was arrested more than a decade ago. But the case against Bateman serves as a reminder that its legacy remains and continues to evolve.

In court filings, investigators have alleged that Bateman, 47, persuaded followers to break off from the FLDS Church, convincing them that he was a prophet who succeeded Jeffs and was “doing ‘Uncle Warren’s’ will.”

Bateman has been accused of taking at least 20 wives, including many minors as young as 8 and 9 years old. But charges have mostly pertained to the decision by him and his adult followers to take the minors across state lines — including at one point breaking them out of Arizona foster care — and impeding the investigation.

A call to one of Bateman’s lawyers seeking comment was not returned Thursday.

The FLDS, from which Bateman originated, is itself a breakaway sect of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church. Polygamy is a legacy of the early teachings of the mainstream church, but it abandoned the practice in 1890 and now strictly prohibits it.

An indictment published earlier in May says Bateman traveled extensively between Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska and allegedly had sex with the minor girls on a regular basis. It also charges Bateman with recording some of the sexual activity, alleging some images may have been transmitted across state lines via electronic devices.

Relying on journals, day planners and text messages, it says Bateman initiated sexual encounters with groups of followers in hotel rooms, including one that began with a religious rite-inspired “washing of the feet.” A girl, who the indictment describes as 9 or 10 years old, called the sexual encounters “definitely terrifying.”

The indictment also claims several male and female followers denied the allegations of abuse, including of their own children, when interviewed by the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

Bateman was arrested last year and remains in federal custody pending his trial, which is scheduled for March 5, 2024. He previously pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges accusing him of kidnapping, child abuse and tampering with evidence.

___

Metz reported from Salt Lake City.

Rare James M. Cain story ‘Blackmail’ published for first time

By HILLEL ITALIE

yesterday

NEW YORK (AP) — The characters are pure noir: Pat, a “dark, heavily handsome thick-shouldered” young man; Myra, a “cheesecakey” woman whose “thick blonde hair” fell “off her bare head to brilliant brassy effect.”

And they talk the way crime fiction characters used to talk, as crafted by James M. Cain, in a short story rarely seen until now.

“Hello there,” she said.

“Hiya.”

“You looking for someone?”

“Sure am.

For Johnsie.”

“He just now left.

“In the taxi?”

“For the concert. He likes egghead music.”

Cain’s “Blackmail” is featured in the new issue of Strand Magazine, a quarterly which has unearthed obscure works by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson and many others. Written over the latter part of his life and left unpublished, “Blackmail” tells of a blind Korean War veteran known as Johnsie; Pat, the former comrade who now employs him; and Myra, a woman from the past with some hard-boiled ideas about money, and love.

“Here, Cain serves up vintage noir — complete with gritty dialogue, a damaged war hero, and a young femme fatale who thinks she’s a lot harder than she really is — only to then turn the tale on its head in the very final scene,” Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli wrote in a brief introduction.

The themes in “Blackmail” of betrayal, violence, rough sexuality — and blackmail — echo such Cain classics as “Double Indemnity” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” Paul Skenazy, a professor emeritus of at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has written books on Cain and Raymond Chandler among others, called the story minor, but compelling.

“‘Blackmail’ is the perfect title for a James M. Cain story,” Skenazy said. “Cain really had few other subjects: forbidden desire, the violence it leads to, the secrets we hide from ourselves and others, the price we pay to hide who we are and what we’ve done.”

“These are all wounded figures,” he added: “a man blinded in Korea, his friend whom he rescued, a mysterious woman from the past who enters their lives looking to make a quick buck.”

Cain, who died in 1977 at 85, is widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest crime fiction writers and would describe his work as having “some quality of the opening of a forbidden box.” Born in Baltimore in 1892, he wrote for years for The American Mercury and other magazines and newspapers before he published his first fiction, in his mid-30s. Starting with his million-selling debut novel, “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” he was a prolific fiction writer and screenplay writer in the 1930s and 1940s, and saw “Double Indemnity,” “Mildred Pierce” and other of his books adapted into classic Hollywood movies.

By the 1950s, his popularity was in decline and his style was seen as outdated. Cain had lived in Los Angeles over the previous two decades, but returned to Maryland and quit such longtime vices as drinking and smoking. Skenazy noted that “Blackmail,” set in Washington, D.C., has a more forgiving view of human nature than in his earlier work.

“In Cain’s best work,” he said, ”no one is exempt from Cain’s irony and life’s brutality. Here, the exemptions abound. Those exemptions don’t make for his best writing but do provide a more generous, sentimental, even humane ending than we generally expect from Cain.”

NON UNION RIGHT TO WORK STATE
Hyundai and LG announce $4.3 billion plant in Georgia to build batteries for electric vehicles

By JEFF AMY

today

 Chung Eui-sun, center left, executive chairman of Hyundai Motor Group, shakes hands with Georgia Gob. Brian Kemp as dignitaries join in for the official groundbreaking ing for the Hyundai Meta Plant, Oct. 25, 2022, in Ellabell, Ga. Hyundai and LG Energy Systems say they will build a $4.3 billion electric battery plant in Georgia. The factory would be on the site of the new electric vehicle assembly plant that Hyundai Motor Group is building near Savannah. The companies will split the investment, starting production as early as late 2025. 

(Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News via AP, File)

ATLANTA (AP) — Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution announced Thursday they will build a $4.3 billion electric battery plant as part of Hyundai’s new electric vehicle assembly plant in southeast Georgia.

The companies will split the investment, starting production as soon as late 2025.

Hyundai Motor Co. CEO Jaehoon Chang said in a statement that the battery plant would “create a strong foundation to lead the global EV transition,” explaining the company wants to speed up efforts to produce electrified Hyundai and Kia vehicles in North America.

“Hyundai Motor Group is focusing on its electrification efforts to secure a leadership position in the global auto industry,” Chang said.

The South Korean automaker said in 2022 it would invest $5.5 billion to assemble electric vehicles and batteries in Ellabell, just west of Savannah. The site is supposed to have 8,100 employees and is slated to begin producing vehicles in 2025.

Garrison Douglas, a spokesperson for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, said the 3,000-job battery plant would be part of the 8,100 overall jobs and the $4.3 billion investment would be part of the previously announced $5.5 billion total.

The Hyundai/LG plant is supposed to be able to supply batteries for 300,000 electric vehicles per year, which is the initial projected production of the adjoining vehicle assembly plant. Hyundai has said the Georgia plant could later expand to build 500,000 vehicles annually.

“This is exactly what we envisioned when Georgia landed the Hyundai Metaplant in May of last year, and this project is the latest milestone in Georgia’s path to becoming the EV capital of the nation,” Kemp said in a statement.

In addition to the assembly and battery plants, auto parts suppliers have pledged to invest more than $2 billion and hire 4,800 people in the region around the Hyundai site.

The announcements are part of an electric vehicle and battery land rush across the United States. Under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, EVs must be assembled in North America, and a certain percentage of their battery parts and minerals must come from North America or a U.S. free trade partner to qualify for a full $7,500 EV tax credit.

Currently, no Hyundai or Kia vehicles are eligible for the tax credit unless they are leased. Hyundai opposed having foreign-made vehicles excluded, in part because it’s building American factories. Kemp has supported that position, but Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff says Hyundai should wait until it is producing vehicles domestically, using American-made batteries.

“As soon as those vehicles are produced in Georgia, they can be eligible for the credits through the incentives in the IRA,” Ossoff told reporters in an online news conference Friday morning. “These manufacturing incentives are attracting and accelerating billions of dollars of investments in jobs and advanced energy and electric vehicle production capacity here in the state of Georgia.”

LG said this would be its seventh battery plant in operation or under construction in the U.S., saying it was concentrating efforts to expand production in the country, in one example of how federal incentives are luring manufacturers.

This is the second huge electric battery plant that Hyundai is partnering to build in Georgia. Hyundai and SK On, a unit of South Korea’s SK Group, announced in December they would jointly invest $4 billion to $5 billion to build a new plant northwest of Atlanta that would supply electric batteries for Hyundai and Kia electric vehicles assembled in the U.S. That plant, in Cartersville, is planned to begin production in 2025 and employ a projected 3,500 people.

Hyundai will need batteries for more than just vehicles made in Ellabell. The company is already assembling electric vehicles at its plant in Montgomery, Alabama, and announced in April it would start assembling its electric Kia EV9 large SUV at the Kia plant in West Point, Georgia.

Partnering with LG and SK also will diversify Hyundai’s supplier base, giving the automaker more than one battery manufacturer from which to buy.

Because the battery plant is part of the overall Hyundai complex, Douglas said no additional incentives would be offered.

The state of Georgia and local governments already have pledged $1.8 billion in tax breaks and other incentives. It’s the largest subsidy package a U.S. state has ever promised an automotive plant, according to Greg LeRoy, executive director Good Jobs First, a group skeptical of subsidies to private companies.

How busy will Atlantic hurricane season be? Depends on who wins unusual battle of climatic titans

By SETH BORENSTEIN

yesterday

 Homes are flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Aug. 30, 2021, in Jean Lafitte, La. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday, May 25, 2023, announced its forecast for the 2023 hurricane season.

 (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

Two clashing climatic behemoths, one natural and one with human fingerprints, will square off this summer to determine how quiet or chaotic the Atlantic hurricane season will be.

An El Nino is brewing and the natural weather event dramatically dampens hurricane activity. But at the same time record ocean heat is bubbling up in the Atlantic, partly stoked by human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas, and it provides boosts of fuel for storms.

Many forecasters aren’t sure which weather titan will prevail because the scenario hasn’t happened before on this scale. Most of them are expecting a near-draw — something about average. And that includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, saying there’s a 40% chance of a near-normal season, 30% chance of an above-average season (more storms than usual) and a 30% chance of a below-normal season.

The federal agency Thursday announced its forecast of 12 to 17 named storms, five to nine becoming hurricanes and one to four powering into major hurricanes with winds greater than 110 mph. Normal is 14 named storms, with seven becoming hurricanes and three of them major hurricanes.

“It’s definitely kind of a rare setup for this year. That’s why our probabilities are not 60% or 70%,” NOAA lead hurricane seasonal forecaster Matthew Rosencrans said at a Thursday news conference. “There’s a lot of uncertainty this year.”

No matter how many storms brew, forecasters and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Deanne Criswell reminded U.S. coastal residents from Texas to New England and people in the Caribbean and Central America that it only takes one hurricane to be a catastrophe if it hits you.

“That’s really what it boils down to is: Which is going to win or do they just cancel each other out and you end up with a near-normal season?” said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. “I respect them both.”