The 'agricultural mafia' taking over Brazil's Amazon rainforest • FRANCE 24 English

 

Encouraged by Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and local authorities who want to see the development of agribusiness, an "agricultural mafia" is taking over the Amazon rainforest. In the Brazilian state of Rondonia, organised groups set up camps for small farmers – sometimes the size of a city – within national forest parks that are supposed to be protected by law or on land stolen from indigenous peoples. Our reporters investigated this "agricultural mafia", from the small farmer who is promised a patch of land and a future, to the politicians pulling the strings.

Tearing the web: Invasive trout disrupt Glacier park's lakes


Susan Guynn, The Frederick News-Post, Md.
Sat, December 4, 2021

Dec. 4—GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, Mont. — In civilization, invaders change the language, diet and customs of the places they conquer. Invasive fish don't ride on chariots or tanks, but their disruption leaves almost warlike marks on the ecology.

That contest plays out right now between Montana's native bull trout and invasive lake trout in the Flathead River Basin. New research indicates that while the lakers have run like Genghis Khan, the bulls might hang on if they get help.

A new study from the University of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station shows just how big and permanent an impact invasive species have had on regional waterways.

"Once we get to a tipping point, things go bad quickly for bull trout," said Shawn Devlin, an aquatic ecologist at the Flathead Biological Station and co-author of the study.

"This work has showed if you give bulls a chance before that tipping point — before they're in a spiral they'll never come back from — they can be managed for conservation," he added. "And the good news is, these lakes were invaded a lot longer than anyone realized but it took longer than expected for the effects to take hold. It was a neat finding. That gives hope to managers, that there's more time below that tipping point than we realized."

Bull trout in lakes play the same ecological role as grizzly bears on land — the No. 1 predator in their native habitat. They eat other fish, grow large and reproduce slowly.

Lake trout fill a similar niche in their home waters of the Great Lakes and Midwest rivers. But they have a crucial spawning advantage.

Bull trout live a salmon-like life cycle of hatching in small creeks before reaching maturity in big rivers and lakes and then returning to spawn in that same creek they were born in. That makes them vulnerable to lots of other predators when young, as well as human threats like river dams, irrigation systems, and sedimentation from logging or road-building.

Lake trout spawn on deep-water rock outcrops. While grizzlies and eagles can harry bull trout in their shallow spawning streams, few competitors reach the lake trout egg deposits. And when they grow up, the lakers eat the same fish bull trout target.

Since they were artificially introduced into Flathead Lake in the early 20th century, lake trout have become a popular game fish because of their capacity to reach lunker size. Then a separate effort to enhance Swan Lake's artificial Kokanee salmon population by adding mysis shrimp had an unintended consequence. The tiny shrimp flowed down the Swan River into Flathead Lake, where they became a new food source for the lake trout. The laker population quickly expanded, sending ripples through the ecology of every other fish species in the system.

Such transformations are called "trophic cascades." In Flathead Lake's case, young lake trout outcompeted the Kokanee for zooplankton and other tiny organisms, while mature lakers ate the schools of Kokanee out of existence. They also preyed on the native cutthroat and bull trout, depleting both their populations and their food supplies.

And then the lake trout started spreading through the Flathead River network, invading the bull trout strongholds of Glacier National Park's west and south sides. Hungry Horse Dam prevented them from getting far into the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex to the south. But McDonald, Logging, Quartz, Bowman and Kintla lakes all saw their bull trout populations crash.

Study lead author Charles Wainright of the U.S. Geological Survey spent 49 days prowling 10 remote Montana lakes. That included Glacier Park battlegrounds like Quartz and Logging and Arrow lakes, as well as sites in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex that still have undamaged bull trout habitat, such as Big Salmon Lake.

The bodies of water in the park comprise almost a third of the entire bull trout habitat in the Lower 48 States. Bull trout have "threatened" status under the federal Endangered Species Act.

"If we lose bull trout out of these lakes, the system will never shift back to what it looked like," Devlin said. What the study found was that one species doesn't just over-eat the other. Everything around them gets affected.

"The whole lake is important, not just the traditional food path of small things to big things," Devlin said. "Bull trout are not good at finding other food. When they can't get the large fish they used to eat in the middle of the lake, they're forced into the shallows and littoral zones with sub-optimal food. Then their growth rate gets stifled. Meanwhile, lake trout are growing like gangbusters."

That change also affects everything around the two trout species: the phytoplankton, insects, frogs, spiders and everything else that feeds from the lake or falls into it. As bull trout shift from eating other fish to eating bugs, that affects bug populations as well as other trout like cutthroat and rainbow that hunt bugs. The entire food web gets frazzled, and can fray apart.

Which brings up the other important finding of the study: the time factor.

By looking at both the ratios of invader fish to native fish, and what everything was eating, the study gave ways to gauge how far along — how close to permanent — an invasion had become. And it turned out, the process takes longer than most researchers expected.

That gives wildlife managers more options. Late-stage interventions might have to be as complicated as Glacier Park's effort to create bull trout sanctuaries while gillnetting infested lakes. An early invasion might fall to simple fishing regulations, like no-limit takes on lake trout in protected waters. Flathead Lake has passed that point.

'Rock snot' reaches Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Why it could be bad news for trout

Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press
Mon, December 6, 2021, 

It's not as slimy as it sounds, but it could mean trouble for Michigan's prized trout fishery.

The Michigan departments of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy and Natural Resources on Monday announced the detection of "rock snot" — didymo, a freshwater alga — in the Lower Peninsula for the first time.

A person holds hands full of didymo alga, or rock snot, during a major bloom on the Duval River in Quebec, Canada in this 2013 photo.

The course, woolly textured alga was found in a portion of the Upper Manistee River in Kalkaska County. It has plagued streams in the western and eastern U.S., forming thick mats that cover river and stream bottoms, reducing the habitat for macroinvertebrates, the tiny organisms at the bottom of the food chain upon which small fish feed. Those small fish in turn provide food for Michigan's prized sports fish, such as trout.

Extensive mats of didymo were found on the Michigan side of the St. Marys River near Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Peninsula in 2015.

"Didymo has potential to be a nasty nuisance species in Michigan’s cold-water fisheries," said Samuel Day, a water quality biologist with the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. "Unlike the harmful algal blooms that plague areas of the Great Lakes due to warm temperatures and excess nutrients, didymo blooms form in cold, low-nutrient streams that most folks would generally consider pristine and great habitat for trout."

Fishermen play a role in the alga's spread — and can play a role in keeping it contained, said Bill Keiper, an aquatic biologist with EGLE’s Water Resources Division.

"Didymo can attach to fishing equipment, wading gear and other hard surfaces and be moved to new waterways," he said. "With each new detection, it becomes more important for people who fish, wade or boat to clean boats and equipment, including waders, after each use."

According to Michigan State University Extension, didymo is thought to be native to Lake Superior, parts of Canada and Northern Europe. Its invasive character was only recorded beginning in the late 1990s. It’s not known what conditions cause didymo to alter its native, non-invasive character and form dense invasive mats, but some speculate that climate change could be playing a role.

Didymo was found east of the Mississippi in 2005 in Tennessee, and west of the Mississippi in Montana, Utah, Colorado and South Dakota in 2004. It was even documented in New Zealand the same year.

QUIT FLUSHING GOLDFISH 

Photos show ridiculously large goldfish taking over Canadian harbour after being released into the wild

National Post 

Have you ever wondered what happens when an unwanted pet goldfish gets released into the wild?

© Provided by National Post

 “In large numbers, goldfish can destroy aquatic habitats by tearing up aquatic plants for food and clouding the waters.”

It turns out it grows and grows until it becomes a comically large version of its former self.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada posted photos to Facebook that show some of the humongous, large-bellied goldfish that were found in Ontario’s Hamilton Harbour.

“The ones my dad flushed 40 years ago must be as big as whales by now!” one person commented on the Facebook post. Others said they had seen bigger, adding that goldfish grow to adapt to their environment.

Don't want your goldfish anymore? Rehome it on Kijiji

Monster-sized goldfish are taking over Alberta city (2017)

But the giant goldfish are taking away key spawning sites from other native fish species, the ministry said.

Spawning is a mass method of fertilization. Female fish release their eggs into the water, and the males release sperm to fertilize them. Spawning sites are key to the reproduction of native species, including the Northern Pike.

Invasive goldfish are a “big problem,” Fisheries and Oceans Canada wrote in a Facebook post last week. “In large numbers, goldfish can destroy aquatic habitats by tearing up aquatic plants for food and clouding the waters, which means less sunlight and less food for our native species. They can also thrive on toxic blue-green algae and may even aid in toxic algal growth.”

Hamilton is tracking invasive goldfish using acoustic tags — small sound emitting devices that allow for remote tracking in aquatic environments, like the Hamilton Harbour. Officials have found that the goldfish in the harbour are rapidly reproducing, quickly becoming classified as an invasive species.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has a few recommendations to prevent introducing invasive species to waterways: “Learning about them, including how to recognize them, cleaning, draining and drying any equipment used in the water before storing it or moving it to a different body of water, never moving species, organisms or water from one body of water to another and keeping any aquatic plant or animal, such as live bait or pets from aquariums, out of the natural environment or sewers.”

Norwegian archaeologists find late Iron Age longhouses

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Norwegian archaeologists said Monday they have found a cluster of longhouses, including one of the largest in Scandinavia, using ground-penetrating radar in the southeastern part of the country — in an area that researchers believe was a central place in the late Nordic Iron Age.


The longhouses — long and narrow, single-room buildings — were found in Gjellestad, 86 kilometers (53 miles) southeast of Oslo near where a Viking-era ship was found in 2018 close to the Swedish border.

“We have found several buildings, all typical Iron Age longhouses, north of the Gjellestad ship. The most striking discovery is a 60-meter (197-foot) long and 15-meter (49-foot) wide longhouse, a size that makes it one of the largest we know of in Scandinavia,” archaeologist Lars Gustavsen at Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research said in a statement.

The importance of Gjellestad during that time period wasn't immediately known. But the body, known by its Norwegian acronym NIKU, said it was working on finding that out.

This autumn, archaeologists covered 40 hectares (about 100 acres) south, east and north of were the Gjellestad ship was found with the radar system, and one of the next steps are archaeological excavations, NIKU said.

The surveys are the first part of a research project called “Viking Nativity: Gjellestad Across Borders” where archaeologists, historians and Viking age specialists have examined the development of the area during the Nordic Iron Age that began at around 500 B.C. and lasted until approximately A.D. 800 and the beginning of the Viking Age.

“We do not know how old the houses are or what function they had. Archaeological excavations and dating will help us get an answer to this,” said Sigrid Mannsaaker Gundersen, another archaeologist.

They have also found several ploughed-out burial mounds in nearby fields.

“We are not surprised to have found these burial mounds, as we already know there are several others in the surrounding area,” Gustavsen said. “ Still, these are important to know about to get a more complete picture of Gjellestad and its surroundings.”

The Associated Press

California officials determine cause of city’s ‘stench of death’

Katharine Gammon in Los Angeles 

Since early October, residents of Carson, California, have been sickened by a noxious smell coming from the Dominguez Channel that has been likened to “a rotten egg” or “the stench of death”. Now, officials have pinpointed a cause: a fire at a warehouse that stored beauty and wellness products.

South Coast Air Quality Management District, the agency tasked with investigating the foul stench, said on Friday that the large warehouse fire, which began on 30 September and took several days to extinguish, caused vast amounts of chemicals to flow into the 15-mile canal. That spurred a die-off of plants living in the waterway, which in turn produced huge amounts of hydrogen sulfide, a flammable and colorless gas that can be harmful to human health.

The agency has issued notices of violation to four companies connected to the warehouse.

The rancid odor was first reported on 3 October, and by 6 October the air management agency was receiving more than 100 complaints per day. Residents of Carson, a city in Los Angeles county that is home to predominantly people of color, were complaining of severe headaches, fatigue and respiratory issues as levels of the gas increased. According to the air quality district, hydrogen sulfide levels at one point reached nearly 7,000 parts per billion, about 230 times higher than the state nuisance standard.

Related: ‘The stench of death’: California city plagued by extraordinary odor for weeks

More than 3,000 people moved into hotels – paid for by the county – to escape their symptoms, and 27,000 air purifiers were delivered to homes to mitigate the scent. Even now, residents say the smell is not gone. On a Facebook group set up by residents, people are still reporting issues.

For Ana Meni, a resident who temporarily relocated to a hotel, the ordeal is not over. She has since returned home and says the smell is not as bad as before, but she is still suffering from headaches almost on a daily basis and problems with throat irritation. “Over-the-counter medicine doesn’t help,” she says. “The only relief I have is to get out of the city. The moment I do, the headaches go away.”

Meni says her sister has even worse symptoms, with non-stop nosebleeds that have forced her to visit the emergency room a few times since they returned home.

Mark Pestrella, the Los Angeles county public works director, reported to the county board of supervisors that his department had spent about $54m on cleaning the channel, as well as on hotel rooms and air purifiers for residents. That could increase to $143m if the cleanup lasted until March, he said.

As for the companies whose products caused the die-off, last month, the LA county counsel, Rodrigo A Castro-Silva, sent a letter to their attorneys, telling them that they must preserve anything that could be considered evidence if the county took legal action.

The LA Times reports that the letter says the September fire was ignited by illegally stored flammable materials, including hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes. Eight residents have filed a class-action lawsuit against the companies, alleging that the fire caused the hazardous smell.

Meni says she’s trying to be optimistic, given the new actions by authorities. LA county and the city of Carson have considered the situation finished, but residents are left wondering about the lingering smell and its long-lasting impacts. “I have no idea what it is in the air that is still making us all sick,” she says. “It wasn’t like this at all before the Dominguez Channel incident.”

Hydrogen sulfide | H2S - PubChem

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/hydrogen-sulfide

Hydrogen sulfide can also result from industrial activities, such as food processing, coke ovens, kraft paper mills, tanneries, and petroleum refineries.Hydrogen sulfide is a flammable, colorless gas with a characteristic odor of rotten eggs. It is commonly known as hydrosulfuric acid, sewer gas, and stink damp. People can smell it at low levels.

Hydrogen Sulfide - Overview | Occupational Safety and ...

1. https://www.osha.gov/hydrogen-sulfide

   Hydrogen sulfide (also known as H2S, sewer gas, swamp gas, stink damp, and sour damp) is a colorless gas known for its pungent "rotten egg" odor at low concentrations. It is extremely flammable and highly toxic. Hydrogen sulfide 

THOSE ARE ALBERTA GRIZZLIES
Montana seeks to end protections for Glacier-area grizzlies

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Montana is asking the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to lift threatened species protections for grizzly bears in the northern portion of the state, including areas in and around Glacier National Park, officials said Monday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The request, if granted, would open the door to public hunting of grizzlies in Montana for the first time in three decades. It comes after bear populations have expanded, spurring more run-ins including grizzly attacks on livestock and periodic maulings of people.


Removing federal protections would give state wildlife officials more flexibility to deal with bears that get into conflicts, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte said. But wildlife advocates warned of overhunting if protections are lifted.


GLACIER NATIONAL PARK IS SHARED WITH CANADA, BECAUSE ITS THE ROCKIES
Northwest Montana has the largest concentration of grizzlies in the Lower 48 states, with more than 1,000 bears across Glacier National Park and nearby expanses of forested wilderness, an area known as the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem.

In March, U.S. government scientists said the region's grizzlies are biologically recovered, but need continued protection under the Endangered Species Act because of human-caused bear deaths and other pressures.

Hunting of grizzlies is banned in the U.S. outside Alaska. Bears considered problematic are regularly killed by wildlife officials.

“We’ve shown the ability to manage bears, protect their habitat and population numbers," Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Director Hank Worsech said in a statement. "It’s time for us to have full authority for grizzly bears in Montana.”

But wildlife advocates cautioned against giving the state control over grizzlies, after Republicans including Gianforte have advanced policies that make it much easier to kill another controversial predator, the gray wolf.

“We don't believe that there should be hunting of these iconic, native carnivores,” said environmentalist John Horning with the group WildEarth Guardians. “I have no doubt the state would push it to the absolute limit so they could kill as many grizzlies as possible.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service had not received the state's request and had no immediate comment, spokesperson Joe Szuszwalak said.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who oversees Fish and Wildlife Service, co-sponsored legislation while in Congress to increase protections for bears and reintroduce them on tribal lands. Haaland declined to say how she would approach the issue when questioned during her February confirmation hearings.

A legal petition to lift protections across northern Montana will be filed following a Dec. 14 meeting of state wildlife commissioners, said Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesperson Greg Lemon. The commission would be in charge of any future hunting season for grizzlies.

As many as 50,000 grizzlies once ranged the western half of the U.S. Most were killed by hunting, trapping and habitat loss following the arrival of European settlers in the late 1800s. Populations had declined to fewer than 1,000 bears by the time they were given federal protections in 1975.

Montana held grizzly hunts until 1991 under an exemption to the federal protections that allowed 14 bears to be killed each fall.

Protections were removed for more than 700 bears in and around Yellowstone National Park in 2017, but later restored by a federal judge.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said in September he will ask the federal government to remove protections for Yellowstone region grizzlies and permit the region’s three states to manage and potentially allow hunting of the big bruins in certain areas.

___

Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter: @MatthewBrownAP

Matthew Brown, The Associated Press

Lakota group harvests bison, passing on spiritual and practical knowledge

Jordan Smith, The Free Press, Mankato, Minn.
Mon, December 6, 2021

Dec. 6—The 1,220-pound bison hung on the forklift by a chain tethered to its two front legs, its neck limp.

Two men grabbed either hind leg and walked alongside the machine as it drew closer to a grassy mound where those gathered would host a prayer ceremony over the animal's body before harvesting its hide, meat, bones and insides.

"There's an educational purpose for us to do this," said Marla Bull Bear, executive director of Lakota Youth Development, which was founded in 1992. "We're helping (youth) to reclaim their culture, their spiritual ways. And we consider the buffalo nation as a relative."

She and more than a dozen other Lakota people — including her daughter Megan Schnitker, who owns Lakota Made natural goods store on Riverfront Drive — had come from the Rosebud Indian Reservation of South Dakota to a farm at the halfway point between that state and Mankato. The bison farm is one of two owned and operated by Sleepy Bison Acres of Sleepy Eye.

The Sunday event furthered the youth organization's mission to restore the American buffalo's sacred role in Lakota history.

Tribes followed tens of millions of Tatanka across vast swaths of the high plains, directly relying on America's national mammal for shelter, tools and food. During the 1800s, Euro-American settlement and U.S. legislation decimated the bison population to hundreds.

Sunday's harvest was also a practical demonstration of how to honor the animal's sacrifice by making use of every body part. Several young people watched, and others will later see the process in educational videos.

"When we do this, it's with prayer and it's with ceremony and a respect and responsibility that weighs heavy on us because we take a life," she said. "It's not a sporting event."

Craig Fischer, owner of Sleepy Bison Acres, said it was the first time he sold a bison for a Native American harvesting ceremony. The 2 1/2 -year-old bull he shot Sunday for Lakota Youth Development was kept calm early that morning so stress wouldn't negatively alter the meat.

About an hour before the ceremony, Fischer rode an ATV to a fenced-in hillside where dozens of his 80 bison roam.

The Minnesota State University graduate said the animals have both a simple and complex appeal to him. They can run 35 mph and jump like deer and are plain "cool" to observe, yet they also embody a connection to the land that spans millennia.

The health benefits of the high-protein, low-fat meat hooked him because his grandfather died of a heart attack while Fischer was in high school.

Eight years ago he chose to enter the niche market. Now he feeds his kids and himself with heart-healthy bison meat, viewing it as akin to an insurance policy.

The Lakota reverence for buffalo and their resolve to eat or use the whole animal was crucial in his decision to provide the bull. Fischer's goal is for "one bad moment" to infringe as little as possible on the life of contentment he tries to provide bison.

"With how cool these animals are, the history behind them, how many thousands of years they've been here and adapted to our lands, it's hard not to respect them," he said. "I think there's something magnetizing about them.

"When we're performing a harvest I want to continue to respect them throughout their life, and the harvest is one of the most important times of their life."

Later Sunday morning, as Schmidt prepared to fire his gun in an area separate from the group, people talked quietly. They became silent when a shot rang through the air.

Charles Bull Bear, Marla's husband, has lived on the Rosebud Reservation his entire 64 years of life. He said the Lakota culture is gradually disappearing as elders grow old and fewer young people devote time to native rituals. The youth organization has resisted the trend for decades.

Leaning against his pickup truck Sunday, he said he felt an emotional tie to his ancestors whose rugged survival depended on bison. He doesn't take for granted that he can now easily get the meat and feed it to his grandchildren, who stood bundled up in coats and scarves nearby.

"They survived on what they found," he said of his ancestors, "and only took what they needed."

Schmidt estimates the bull harvested Sunday will provide about 500 pounds of meat. Three and a half ounces of it contains only 2.4 grams of fat and 140 calories, statistics that along with its nutrient density make it a salve to the diabetes-stricken Rosebud Reservation.

To increase the availability, the Rosebud Sioux tribe announced in May it will commit 28,000 acres of native grassland to support up to 1,500 bison, which would be the largest North American herd managed and owned by Native Americans.

The Department of Interior began sending bison from federally managed herds to Rosebud last fall and will continue to over a five year span.

The population of Native-owned bison will increase by 7% if the project succeeds.

Native elders such as Jerome Kills Small, a 76-year-old who stood on the mound and led the prayer ceremony, task themselves with conveying a message of interdependence to younger generations.

Having been raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation of central South Dakota, he said his Lakota upbringing was second nature that he didn't analyze before going to college.

When he noted others' interest in the cultural and spiritual norms, he majored in English as a way to share his part of the story. He went on to become a professor at the University of South Dakota, teaching courses in Lakota language and history along with American Indian thought.

Coming from a tradition of oral storytelling, part of his life's focus is how to sustain rituals through which the word is passed.

One story he tells: During a Sun Dance, the most important religious ceremony historically practiced by the Lakota, his ancestors cut effigies of a man and a buffalo.

They then tied them to opposite sides of a large cottonwood tree cut for the ceremony.

The moral is Mitakuye Oyasin, a Lakota phrase which translates to "we are all related."

"We're the buffalo nation," he said, "because we depended on the buffalo for our life."

US Treasury wants more oversight of all-cash real estate deals



AAMER MADHANI
Mon, December 6, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is looking to expand reporting requirements on all-cash real estate deals to help crack down on bad actors' use of the U.S. market to launder money made through illicit activity.

The Treasury Department was posting notice Monday seeking public comment for a potential regulation that would address what it says is a vulnerability in the real estate market.

Currently, title insurance companies in just 12 metropolitan areas are required to file reports identifying people who make all-cash purchases of residential real estate through shell companies if the transaction exceeds $300,000.

“Increasing transparency in the real estate sector will curb the ability of corrupt officials and criminals to launder the proceeds of their ill-gotten gains through the U.S. real estate market,” said Himamauli Das, acting director of Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Das said the move could “strengthen U.S. national security and help protect the integrity of the U.S. financial system.”

The metropolitan areas currently facing reporting requirements are Boston; Chicago; Dallas-Fort Worth; Honolulu; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Miami; New York City; San Antonio; San Diego; San Francisco; and Seattle.

The U.S. real estate market has long been viewed as a stable way station for corrupt government officials around the globe and other illicit actors looking to launder proceeds from criminal activity.

The use of shell companies by current and former world leaders, and those close to them, to purchase real estate and other assets in the U.S. and elsewhere was recently spotlighted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' publication of the “Pandora Papers.”

The leaked documents acquired by the consortium showed King Abdullah II of Jordan, former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair and other prominent figures used shell companies to purchase mansions, exclusive beachfront property, yachts and other assets for the past quarter-century.

The tax dodges can be legal but have spawned various proposals to enhance tax transparency and reinforce the fight against tax evasion.

The effort to push for new real estate market regulation comes as the Biden administration on Monday issued its “U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption.”

The strategy was published as President Joe Biden prepares to host the first White House Democracy Summit, a virtual gathering of leaders and civil society experts from more than 100 countries that is set to take place Thursday and Friday.

The strategy offers broad brushstrokes for confronting corruption at home and abroad. It includes calls for the U.S. government to shore up regulatory gaps, elevating anti-corruption in U.S. diplomatic efforts and bolstering the protection of civil society and members of the media, including investigative journalists, who expose corruption.

Watchdog: Israel freezes plan for east Jerusalem settlement


FILE - A woman and her child walk on a pedestrian ramp to the Qalandia checkpoint to the West Bank from Jerusalem, next to the site where Israel planned to build a massive Jewish settlement on the site of a long-abandoned airport, Nov. 24, 2021. An Israeli monitoring group said Monday, Dec. 6, 2021, that Jerusalem municipal officials have frozen plans to build a large Jewish settlement at the abandoned airport in east Jerusalem in the wake of heavy U.S. opposition to the project.

 (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)


Mon, December 6, 2021

JERUSALEM (AP) — Jerusalem municipal officials on Monday froze plans to build a large Jewish settlement at an abandoned airport in east Jerusalem, a monitoring group announced.

The decision to halt the Atarot settlement plan came in the wake of heavy U.S. opposition to the project.

Plans for the settlement called for building 9,000 housing units marketed to ultra-Orthodox Jews in an open area next to three densely populated Palestinian communities, one of which is behind Israel’s controversial separation barrier.

Hagit Ofran of the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said Monday that the Jerusalem district planning committee that was to approve the plan instead decided to put it on hold, saying an environmental survey should first be conducted.

“Let's hope they will use the time to understand how illogical this plan is for the development of Jerusalem and how much it damages the chances for peace,” said Ofran, who attended the meeting.

There was no immediate comment from city officials. But earlier Monday, Israel's foreign minister, Yair Lapid, indicated the Israeli government is in no hurry to give final approval to the plan.

Speaking to reporters, Lapid said the plan requires approval by the national government and needs “full consensus” of the various parties in the coalition. “This will be dealt with at the national level and we know how to deal with it. It is a process and will make sure it doesn’t turn into a conflict with the administration,” he said.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israel also seized in that war.

Israel views all of Jerusalem as its unified capital and says it needs to build housing to address the needs of a growing population.

The Palestinians view the continual expansion of Israeli settlements as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace, a position with wide international support. The Atarot project is considered especially damaging because it lies in the heart of a Palestinian population center.

The Biden administration has repeatedly criticized settlement construction, saying it hinders the eventual resumption of the peace process, but Israel has continued to advance settlement plans.

More than 200,000 Israeli settlers live in east Jerusalem and nearly 500,000 live in settlements scattered across the occupied West Bank. Israel’s current prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is a strong supporter of settlements and is opposed to Palestinian statehood.

There have been no substantive peace talks in more than a decade.

Lucid Stock Plunges After EV Maker Reveals SEC Investigation



Craig Trudell and Elisabeth Behrmann
Mon, December 6, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Lucid Group Inc. disclosed it’s become the latest electric-vehicle maker to come under U.S. investigation following a merger with a blank-check company, sending its shares plummeting.

The maker of the $169,000 Air sedan said in a regulatory filing Monday that it received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Dec. 3. Lucid said the probe appears to relate to the carmaker’s combination with Churchill Capital Corp. IV, the special purpose acquisition company that took Lucid public in July.

Lucid shares plunged as much as 19% to $38.06 shortly after the start of regular trading Monday. The stock had roughly doubled since its debut on July 26 through last week’s close.

The investigation is a blow to one of the more promising upstarts trying to take on Tesla Inc. in the EV market. Before Lucid, the SEC opened investigations into Nikola Corp., Lordstown Motors Corp. and Canoo Inc., all of which have gone public since last year following mergers with SPACs.

Unlike in a traditional initial public offering, going public through a combination with a SPAC allows companies to make forward projections to investors before their listings. Founders of Nikola, Lordstown Motors and Canoo have left their respective companies since last year, with each struggling to execute since their stock market debuts.

Lucid has had a smoother run since since it went public. In September, the Air sedan supplanted Tesla’s highest-range vehicle, the Model S, with a 520-mile rating. Lucid started production of cars for its first customers later that month, and the company recently reiterated a forecast that it will make 20,000 vehicles next year.

The Churchill Capital SPAC that merged with Lucid was the largest run by Michael Klein, a former Citigroup Inc. investment banker. Klein has been a prominent financial adviser to Saudi Arabia, which first invested in Lucid in 2018.

The SEC has been subjecting SPACs to more scrutiny under Chairman Gary Gensler, filing 434 enforcement actions in its latest fiscal period, up 7% from the previous year. The agency singled out cryptocurrencies and SPACs as “emerging threats” it’s concerned with.

El Salvador's plan to power Bitcoin by volcano 'will end in environmental disaster'


Simeon Tegel

THE TELEGRAPH
Sun, December 5, 2021

Aerial view of energy extraction at the La Geo Geothermal Power Plant - Alex Pena/Getty Images

The grandiose plans of El Salvador’s millennial president Nayib Bukele to power the world’s first “Bitcoin city” by volcano have been ridiculed by the country’s leading environmentalist.

Mr Bukele unveiled the project last month, proposing to issue bonds worth 300,000 Bitcoins, equivalent to £12 billion, to fund the building of a city at the base of Conchagua, a volcano beside the Pacific Ocean.

The idea is that tapping into the mountain’s geothermal power will solve one of the biggest challenges facing cryptocurrencies - the vast, unsustainable levels of energy required to power the computers that encrypt transactions.

But the troubled Central American nation, which often suffers power cuts, should first focus on meeting the existing electricity needs of its population of six million, Ricardo Navarro, a winner of the Goldman Prize - the green movement’s equivalent of the Nobel - told The Telegraph.

“Geothermal still costs more than oil, otherwise we would already be using more of it. What will end up happening is that we will just be buying more oil,” warned Mr Navarro, who heads the El Salvadoran Center of Appropriate Technology, a local think tank.

He would usually support climate-friendly geothermal energy, but said the policy was misguided.

“Talking about building this city beside a volcano is like thinking you are rich because you live next to a bank. Geothermal energy doesn’t need volcanoes. It needs groundwater, steam. But we already have problems with not enough water in El Salvador.”

Currently, El Salvador imports roughly one quarter of its energy, with the rest coming from hydroelectric dams, geothermal and oil plants.

The city will be in the shape of the round Bitcoin logo and, according to the president, feature everything from museums to an airport. Other than VAT, residents will pay no taxes.

The ambitious plans have excited cryptocurrency advocates. Samson Mow, of tech company Blockstream, went so far as to claim that it would make the troubled Central American nation, plagued by poverty and one of the world’s highest murder rates, “the financial centre of the world.”

El Salvador became the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender this year. But some have accused Mr Bukele, 40, of using cryptocurrencies as a smokescreen to deflect attention from his failings as a president.

The move came shortly after the United States put several of Bukele’s closest allies on a corruption blacklist. Meanwhile, his promises of badly needed jobs, including Amazon opening a regional headquarters in El Salvador and Lufthansa launching a new airport, have failed to materialise.

Nevertheless, depending on the time frame - something the president has not made clear - his Bitcoin city plans could work, says Marit Brommer, executive director of the Germany-based International Geothermal Association.

“El Salvador is known for its geothermal potential. But if he is promising anything in the next six months, that would not be feasible,” she said. “Geothermal has a long lead time. We need to identify the resources, do modelling, drill wells. It would likely take at least two or three years, and probably longer before you could generate any electricity.”

It has been calculated that global cryptocurrency transactions already consume more electricity each year than the Netherlands.

Democrats eye massive shift in war on wildfires: Prevention

Jennifer Haberkorn
Mon, December 6, 2021

The Dixie fire destroys trees Aug. 21 in Gensee, Calif. (Ethan Swope / Associated Press)

Democrats are proposing a potentially seismic shift in how the nation battles wildfires by dramatically increasing funding for efforts that aim to prevent blazes, rather than focusing on the tools to put them out.

Under the social safety-net and climate bill passed by the House and now being negotiated in the Senate, Democrats would funnel $27 billion into the nation’s forests, including a sizable $14 billion over a decade for clearing vegetation and other dry debris that can fuel a fire.

Known as "hazardous fuels reduction," such proactive measures have been "underfunded for so long,” said Ann M. Bartuska, a senior advisor at environmental nonprofit Resources for the Future and former Forest Service official. “This really cries out and says, ‘All right, we get it, we need to reduce wildfire risk.’”

The growing effects of climate change as well as the intensity of wildfires in the past two years — more than 7 million acres of California went up in flames, sending its smoke across the United States to Congress’ doorsteps in Washington — have forced lawmakers to reconsider how they spend wildfire dollars.

But the funding is not yet secured. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), a key moderate who has not committed to the bill, has long expressed concern about the overall cost and scope of the $1.85-trillion plan. He has specifically indicated he doesn’t want to see overlap between the recently approved bipartisan infrastructure plan and the social spending bill. That could put a bull's-eye on the wildfire prevention efforts, which got $3.3 billion in the bipartisan plan.

Still, proponents of the wildfire plan are holding out hope the forestry provisions will survive. A group of Democratic senators from the West took their concerns directly to Manchin earlier this year.

“Six of us from fire-prone states had a chance to sit and describe all the challenges we're facing,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said.

Negotiations over the bill are expected to continue before a vote in the Senate planned for late December. As the entire package was scaled down from the original $3.5-trillion price tag, the scope of the forestry provision has also been halved from $60 billion.

Still, the $27 billion would represent the largest investment the federal government has made in its forests, according to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who introduced a similar forestry bill this year. Funding for the preventative hazardous fuels reduction — to be spread over a decade — is more than double what Congress spent on such efforts annually between 2011 and 2020, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Traditionally, the federal government has focused its wildfire spending on suppression at the expense of prevention. The Interior Department and Forest Service are even allowed to unilaterally move money from any of its programs, including fire prevention, to fund more urgent suppression efforts.

“When you combine the effects of climate change with the profound negligence of the federal government in terms of managing its national forests, these places are profound dangers to our communities and to our economy,” Bennet said.

Local fire officials in California and elsewhere in the West have viewed the federal government as a poor partner in combating wildfires, largely because it has left the Forest Service underfunded.

“It’s very frustrating considering they own over half of the forest land in the state and they’re just not putting up the effort to provide the resources needed,” said Ken Pimlott, a retired chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "The investments, the money they’re getting and the commitments from the federal government have been woefully inadequate.”

While prevention requires more upfront spending, advocates say it is a better economic deal. According to Bennet, fighting fire costs an average of $50,000 per acre. But fire mitigation is a bargain at $1,500 per acre.

And the need is dire: 1 in 8 acres in California burned over the last decade, Pimlott said, citing Cal Fire statistics.

According to estimates by Resources for the Future, the $14 billion could address about 25 million acres, or about half of the nation's wildfire treatment backlog on federal and non-federal land.

The bill puts an emphasis on the transition areas between wildlands and concentrated human populations, which are particularly susceptible to deadly fire, as seen in the 2018 Camp fire.

In addition to the mitigation money, there is $2 billion to support local governments’ forest restoration and resilience projects on non-federal lands and another $1 billion for their wildfire protection plans, such as purchasing firefighting equipment and conducting training. Another $1.8 billion would go toward vegetation management, such as prescribed burns or restoring the habitat.

If the wildfire efforts are ultimately included in the bill, the government agencies responsible for implementing them will be asked to quickly scale up on the manpower and tools needed to complete the work.

Advocates like Bartuska are eager to see the agencies strategically use the funding for large projects where they can have a meaningful impact instead of dropping small amounts in many different places.

“There may be some areas that need greater intensity,” Bartuska said. The highest priority, she said, should be areas of forests that threaten human populations, followed by watersheds that supply water to other communities.

The projects are likely to face scrutiny from environmental groups worried that hazardous fuels reduction will open the door to more commercial logging.

“The other side of this is we’re really going to have to see oversight of how the money is spent, and I think it’s in the interest of every California congressional representative to be on this,” said Michael Wara, a senior research scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford.

The social spending and climate bill represents Congress’ largest effort on wildfire prevention, but there are others.

The bipartisan infrastructure plan, which was approved by Congress and signed by President Biden, includes $600 million to improve the federal firefighter workforce by increasing salaries and converting 1,000 seasonal positions to permanent positions.

The annual defense reauthorization bill, which has been approved by Congress each year for six decades, is expected to require the Defense Department to analyze whether civilian agencies can replicate an existing classified program that uses military satellites to track wildfires, according to an amendment authored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

A civilian model would circumvent the Defense Department’s resistance to making the program permanent.

The House is also expected to take up a bill, authored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), that would fund new research into the science of fires and smoke, such as creating better prediction models and improving building codes for fire-prone areas.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

From Siberia to the U.S, wildfires broke emissions records this year


Specialists put out a forest fire in Omsk Region

Mon, December 6, 2021, 
By Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Wildfires produced a record amount of carbon emissions in parts of Siberia, the United States and Turkey this year, as climate change fanned unusually intense blazes, the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said on Monday.

Wildfires emitted 1.76 billion tonnes of carbon globally in 2021, Copernicus said. That's equivalent to more than double Germany's annual CO2 emissions.

Some of the worst-hit hotspots recorded their highest wildfire emissions for any January-November period since Copernicus' dataset began in 2003, including parts of Siberia's Yakutia region, Turkey, Tunisia and the western United States.

"We have seen extensive regions experience intense and prolonged wildfire activity. Drier and hotter regional conditions under a changing climate have increased the risk of flammability and fire risk of vegetation," said senior Copernicus scientist Mark Parrington.

Globally, the wildfire emissions total wasn't the highest since 2003, but Copernicus said such emissions were likely to increase as the impacts of climate change unfold.

Yakutia in northeastern Siberia produced its highest CO2 emissions from wildfires for any summer since 2003, while in western Siberia, a "huge number" of blazes churned out daily CO2 emissions far above the 2003-2021 average.

In North America, fires in Canada, California and the U.S. Pacific Northwest emitted around 83 million tonnes of CO2, emitting huge smoke plumes that drifted across the Atlantic to reach Europe, Copernicus said.

California's "Dixie fire", which ravaged nearly a million acres, was the largest recorded fire in the state's history.

In the Mediterranean, a hot and dry summer fanned intense blazes in countries including Greece and Turkey. Thousands of people in those countries were evacuated from their homes, and Copernicus said the region's air quality deteriorated as the fires caused high levels of health-damaging particular matter.

(Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Nick Macfie)

WW3.0
Ukraine shows off U.S. military hardware, vows to fight off Russia




Ukraine celebrates Army Day

Mon, December 6, 2021, 
By Natalia Zinets and Matthias Williams

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday said his armed forces were capable of fighting off any Russian attack, as the country marked its national army day with a display of U.S. armoured vehicles and patrol boats.

U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged his "unwavering support" to Ukraine in its standoff with Moscow and will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to try to defuse the crisis. Zelenskiy is set to speak to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday.

Ukraine has accused Russia of massing tens of thousands of troops near its border in preparation for a possible large-scale military offensive, raising the prospect of open war between the two neighbours.

"The servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to fulfil their most important mission - to defend the freedom and sovereignty of the state from the Russian aggressor," Zelenskiy said in a statement.

"The Ukrainian army ... is confident in its strength and able to thwart any conquest plans of the enemy," he said.

Russia has dismissed talk of a new assault on Ukraine as false and inflammatory but told the West not to cross its "red lines" and to halt the eastward expansion of the NATO alliance.

NATO MEMBERSHIP

Decked out in khaki armour and helmet, Zelenskiy flew east to shake hands with soldiers at the frontline in the Donetsk region, where Ukraine's army has fought Russian-backed forces in a conflict that Kyiv says has killed 14,000 people since 2014.

He then flew to Kharkiv, a city near Ukraine's northeastern border with Russia and a traditional centre for weapons manufacturing, to mark a delivery of tanks, armoured personal carriers and armoured vehicles made in the city's factories.

Standing in front of rows of soldiers, tanks and planes on the city's main square on Monday evening, Zelenskiy trumpeted the ways in which Ukraine's military had equipped itself with the help of NATO allies.

Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that now aspires to join the European Union and NATO, has received Javelin anti-tank missiles from the United States, sophisticated drones from Turkey and signed a deal with Britain to build ships and new naval bases on Ukraine's southern coast.

Several cities across Ukraine are marking the 30th anniversary of the creation of an independent military after winning independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

"Today, together with the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, I am here in Kharkiv on Freedom Square," Zelenskiy said in an address.

"This is significant, because freedom for us is the greatest value," he said, adding: "it is a symbol of our state, all of Ukraine, which was defended from Russia's aggression in 2014 by our soldiers and continues to be defended by them today."

Kyiv, Lviv and the southern port city of Odessa displayed U.S.-made Humvees. In Odessa, there was also a ceremony to hand over two recently delivered U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats intended to bolster Ukraine's navy.

Ukraine has urged NATO to accelerate its entry into the military alliance and said Moscow had no right to veto such a move. NATO's leadership has been supportive but said Ukraine must carry out defence reforms and tackle corruption first.

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Paul Simao)

Exxon Employees Won't See Big Pay Raise Despite Jump In Profits

Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, December 6, 2021,

Despite the company's good year so far, Exxon's coming pay raises for employees will come in below inflation, new reports suggest.

Salaries are going to rise about 3.6% for employees who deserve the merit-based raises, reporting from the Seattle Times and Bloomberg says. The largest increases are going to be going to those working in the company's upstream division that drills for oil and natural gas, the report says.

Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said: “Total compensation is highly competitive relative to other companies with whom we compete, both in the marketplace and for talent. Inflation is one of many variables we assess.”

The increases will apply to Exxon’s U.S. office employees and not union contract workers, many of whom already have earned promotions and will get a 5% boost on top of their regular raises.

Bloomberg writes that the below-inflation increases are a sign of how many white-collar Americans aren’t in line for the kind of salary raises seen for other cohorts such as truck drivers and factory workers amid labor shortages and a spike in inflation". '

Recall, just two days ago, we reported that Exxon said it was on track to meet its 2025 emissions goals four years early.

In Exxon's full new corporate plan, which can be found on its website here, the company said it "plans to increase spending to $15 billion on greenhouse gas emission-reduction projects over the next six years while maintaining disciplined capital investments."

The oil supermajor also said it plans on maintaining capital investments between $20 to $25 billion, per year, through 2027. The company said it has repaid $11 billion in debt, to date, in 2021. Exxon says it'll be "comfortably" in its range of targeted debt-to-capital ratio by year end.

These plans, of course, follow our reporting in October that the company was considering abandoning some of its oil and gas projects to appease environmental advocates.

The company's board, we noted in October, which includes three directors nominated by activist investors, had "expressed concerns about certain projects, including a $30 billion liquefied natural gas development in Mozambique and another multibillion-dollar gas project in Vietnam."

The change in strategic direction comes as Exxon's board is facing growing pressure from investors to restrain its fossil fuel investments and limit its carbon footprint. The board is also considering the carbon footprint of the new projects, and how they would affect the company's ability to meet environmental promises it has made.

Back in September we reported that as part of appeasement of the ESG lobby, the oil giant planned on implementing disclosures of shale emissions. The company announced it would start measuring its methane emissions from production of natural gas at a facility it owns in New Mexico. Exxon joins other shale gas producers, like EQT, who already provide similar data.

By Zerohedge.com