El Salvador president's mass arrests 'punitive populism'

MARCOS ALEMÁN and CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN
April 14, 2022,

An elderly woman watches as soldiers patrol in the San Jose del Pino Community in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, Wednesday, April 6, 2022, during the government's unprecedented crackdown on gangs. El Salvador's congress, pushing further in the government's crackdown, has authorized prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce or disseminate messages from the gangs, alarming press freedom groups. 

SANTA TECLA, El Salvador (AP) — A day after the bloodletting -- 62 gang killings that convulsed El Salvador -- the crackdown began.

Before dawn on Sunday, March 27, just hours after congress approved a state of emergency, heavily armed police and soldiers entered the packed, gang-controlled neighborhood of San Jose El Pino.

Freed from having to explain an arrest or grant access to a lawyer, they went door to door, dragging out young men. They established a perimeter with barbed wire barricades where they controlled who entered and who left, demanding identification and searching everyone.

President Nayib Bukele has responded to the surge in gang killings with mass arrests in poor neighborhoods like San Jose El Pino, each day posting the growing arrest total and photos of tattooed men. The highly publicized roundups are not the result of police investigations into the murders in late March, but propel a tough-on-crime narrative that critics are calling “punitive populism.”

In just over two weeks, more than 10,000 alleged gang members have been arrested — a huge number for a small country of 6.5 million people. They can be held for 15 days without charges, one of the measures decried by international human rights groups and the U.S. government.

“They came in with everything,” said 36-year-old Héctor Fernandez on his way to his factory job on a recent morning. “Whoever didn’t open the door, they knocked it down. They were looking for the guys. I think they took almost all of them, but others managed to get out.”

Critics say the mass arrests are more show than substance. They note that amid all of the chest-thumping rhetoric and slickly produced videos of roughly handled prisoners, authorities are not talking about the investigations or arrests of those suspected of actual involvement in the March 26 killings. But many Salvadorans are pleased to see action against gangs that have long-terrorized their communities.

“It’s for everyone’s safety,” Fernandez said, nervously looking around to see if anyone was watching. He said he minds his own business and hasn’t had trouble with the Mara Salvatrucha, the gang that controls his neighborhood. “I leave, (police and soldiers) search me. I go to work, come back in the evening, they search me. I pass and go home.”

Bukele, a highly popular master of social media, has filled his platforms with photos of handcuffed and bloodied gang members, orders to his security cabinet and attaboys from his supporters. At the same time, he has lashed out at human rights organizations and international agencies critical of some measures.

“If we don’t rid our country of this cancer now, then when will we ever do it?” Bukele said to a parade ground of soldiers -- and the world -- in a video he released last week. “We will go and find them wherever they are. Regardless of who protests. Regardless of how angry the international community gets.”

Gangs control swaths of territory through brutality and fear. They’ve driven thousands to emigrate to save their own lives or the lives of their children who are forcibly recruited. Their power is strongest in El Salvador’s poorest neighborhoods where the state has long been absent. They are a drain on the economy, extorting money from even the lowest earners and forcing businesses that can’t or won’t pay to close.

The wave of violence at the end of March -- it stretched across the country and its victims included a municipal maintenance worker, a taxi driver, a farmer-- demanded a government response. Bukele chose a state of emergency provided for in the constitution.

But El Salvador’s security forces and justice system had the legal tools to investigate and prosecute those involved in the killings without the suspension of fundamental rights, critics say. What they did not have was the carte blanche that has yielded the media spectacle of the past two weeks, starring Bukele as savior-in-chief.

“There are a lot of doubts about whether the measures that Bukele’s government has taken to confront the wave of murders are really aimed at investigating the crimes and responding to the victims,” said Leonor Arteaga, a Salvadoran who is program director at the Due Process of Law Foundation in Washington.

Instead, she said, it seems Bukele is using the situation “to advance his authoritarian plans and in his intention to control all critical voices and squash any dissident.”

Bukele’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Abraham Ábrego, director of the strategic litigation program at Cristosal, a non-governmental organization in El Salvador, said his group was working to document arbitrary arrests and other abuses.

Bukele has shown himself to be masterful at building and controlling narratives, he said. “There is a term that we use called ‘punitive populism,’ which is using the state’s powers of criminal persecution to show strength, to show toughness,” Ábrego said.

On Tuesday, the head of a national police union said some high-ranking police officials had pressured officers to make false statements justifying some arrests to meet arrest quotas, including in a small remote town with no gang presence.

Omar Serrano, vice rector at Central American University José Simeón Cañas, said that like previous administrations, the president has opted for a more militarized approach to dealing with the gangs.

“This is not going to solve the country’s serious problems,” Serrano said. The government line is that the problem of the gangs is one of national security, “when deep down it is a social problem.”

After the congress approved the state of emergency, Bukele returned to lawmakers multiple times for changes to the country’s criminal code. Among other things, they lengthened sentences, reduced the age of criminal responsibility to 12 and established prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for journalists who disseminate gang messages that could cause anxiety or panic among the people.

He had already ordered his head of prisons to keep all gang members confined to their cells 24 hours a day and to reduce their meals to twice daily. “Message for the gangs: because of your actions, now your ‘homeboys’ will not be able to see a ray of sunlight,” Bukele wrote on Twitter.

Human Rights Watch, the international advocacy organization that Bukele has taken to mocking as “Homeboys Rights Watch,” said the government had overreached.

“The Salvadoran government should adopt rights-respecting measures to protect people from heinous gang violence, dismantle these groups, and bring those responsible for crimes to justice,” said Juan Pappier, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Instead, Bukele’s government has enacted overbroad, harshly punitive laws that undermine the fundamental rights of all Salvadorans.”

But Salvadorans seem to be ambivalent about the crackdown. In a leafy park in front of Santa Tecla’s municipal market and short distance from San Jose El Pino, Adela Maravilla Ceballos walked with her groceries on a recent morning.

“It’s good what they’re doing, they took long enough,” the 52-year-old homemaker said. “These guys don’t understand anything else. Who is going to be against security? Only the criminals.”

Still, some of the images had bothered her. Her two sons went to the United States years ago looking for better opportunities.

“I am a mother and sometimes it hurts me when they grab them and hit them and I see how they cry,” she said.

___

Sherman reported from Mexico City. AP writer E. Eduardo Castillo in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Men are detained by the police, suspects in a homicide near a market in San Salvador, El Salvador, Sunday, March 27, 2022. 

A soldier guards the perimeter of a crime scene at a small market in San Salvador, El Salvador, Sunday, March 27, 2022. 

Heavily armed police guard the streets in down town San Salvador, El Salvador, Sunday, March 27, 2022. 


Soldiers man a checkpoint at the entrance to the Las Palmas Community, a neighborhood that is supposed to be under the control of Barrio 18 Gang in San Salvador, El Salvador, Sunday, March 27, 2022.


FILE - El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele speaks to the press at Mexico's National Palace after meeting with the President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico City, March 12, 2019. El Salvador’s president has threatened Tuesday, April 6, 2022, that he will cut off food for imprisoned members of street gangs if they “unleash a wave of crimes.” 

(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)



Children walk behind concertina wire as soldiers guard the entrances of the San Jose del Pino Community in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, Wednesday, April 6, 2022, during the government's unprecedented crackdown on gangs. El Salvador's congress, pushing further in the government's crackdown, has authorized prison sentences of 10 to 15 years for news media that reproduce or disseminate messages from the gangs, alarming press freedom groups. 


Soldiers search the backpacks of locals as they walk in the San Jose del Pino Community in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, Wednesday, April 6, 2022, during the government's unprecedented crackdown on gangs. 


A woman talks to her son who has been arrested by the police, as he is taken to El Penalito temporary prison in Ciudad Delgado, El Salvador, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. 

A couple of youths are taken to El Penalito temporary prison in Ciudad Delgado, El Salvador, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele's has declared a state of emergency in a crackdown against gangs, suspending constitutional guarantees of freedom of assembly and loosening arrest rules for as much as thirty days, or more. 

(AP Photos/Salvador Melendez)

BMW CEO warns against electric-only strategy

 German Economic and Climate Protection Minister Habeck at BMW in Munich

By Doyinsola Oladipo

April 14, 2022


NEW YORK (Reuters) -BMW Chief Executive Officer Oliver Zipse said companies must be careful not to become too dependent on a select few countries by focusing only on electric vehicles, adding that there was still a market for combustion engine cars.

"When you look at the technology coming out, the EV push, we must be careful because at the same time, you increase dependency on very few countries," Zipse said at a roundtable in New York, highlighting that the supply of raw materials for batteries was controlled mostly by China.

"If someone cannot buy an EV for some reason but needs a car, would you rather propose he continues to drive his old car forever? If you are not selling combustion engines anymore, someone else will," said Zipse.

He has long advocated against all-out bans on combustion engine car sales in the face of rising pressure from regulators on the auto industry to curb its carbon emissions and environmental impact.

Offering more fuel-efficient combustion engine cars was key both from a profit perspective and an environmental perspective, Zipse argued, pointing to gaps in charging infrastructure and the high price of electric vehicles.

Companies also needed to plan for energy prices and raw materials to remain high by being more efficient in their production and stepping up recycling efforts to keep costs down, he said.

"We have a peak now, they might not stay at the peak, but they will not go back to former prices," he said. "How much energy you need and use, and circularity, is important - for environmental reasons but even more for economic reasons."

(Reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo; Writing by Victoria Waldersee; Editing by Christoph Steitz and Mike Harrison)

Mercedes-Benz completes 1,000 km electric drive on energy-efficient design

April 13, 2022, 4:06 PM2 min read

Bangkok International Motor Show

BERLIN (Reuters) - Mercedes-Benz aims to produce electric cars consuming as little as 10 kilowatt hours of energy per 100 km (62 miles), its chief technology officer (CTO) said on Thursday, a third more efficient than the current average for electric cars.

Speaking as the carmaker celebrated the successful test drive of its EQXX prototype vehicle over more than 1,000 km from Sindelfingen in Germany to the Cote d'Azur on a single charge, CTO Markus Schaefer said efficient design was key to maximising an electric car's range.

"First we optimise efficiency, and then we can see how many battery modules we put in the car," Schaefer said at a media roundtable, adding that customers should be able to decide the size of the battery they want based on their needs.

Carmakers from Mercedes-Benz to Tesla to China's Nio are in a neck-to-neck race to produce higher range cars that dispel consumer anxiety over the lack of widespread charging infrastructure for electric vehicles.

Mercedes unveiled its Vision EQXX prototype, boasting a 1,000 km-range with a battery half the volume of its flagship EQS model, in January, promising that some of the car's components would make their way into series vehicles in 2-3 years time.

The car spent 8.7 kilowatt hours of energy per 100 km on its 11-and-a-half hour drive to France, Mercedes-Benz said, about twice as efficient as Mercedes models on the market and Tesla's longest-range car on offer, the Model S 60.

Mercedes' EQS has the highest range on the market as of yet, according to car comparison portal carwow, with 768 km, followed by Tesla's Model S Long Range with up to 652 km.

"There'll be a further increase for some time before a fall, which will happen once charging infrastructure is as available as petrol stations," Schaefer said, although he declined to state what range Mercedes was targeting in future models.

(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee and Ilona Wissenbach; editing by Richard Pullin)

Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov's $735 million superyacht, Dilbar — the largest in the world — has been impounded in Germany

Dominick Reuter
April 13, 2022, 

The Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov "indirectly transferred assets" including the Dilbar yacht to his sister, according to the EU.

Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images, Sabri Kesen/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images


German authorities have impounded a $750 million superyacht associated with Alisher Usmanov.


Police said an investigation into "offshore concealment" found the owner was Usmanov's sister.


Dilbar was speculated to have been seized last month, but officials denied it at the time.

Germany's Federal Police have seized the largest megayacht in the world after determining it to be owned by the sister of Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov.

The police said they were able to find the owner after an investigation into "offshore concealment" and that the boat would remain at a shipyard in Hamburg.



The European Union's sanctions lists include Alisher Usmanov's sister Gulbakhor Ismailova and say that he "indirectly transferred assets," including Dilbar, to her.

The 512-foot yacht was thought to be under German government control in March when it was spotted at the Blohm+Voss shipyard, where it had been undergoing a refitting since October. Officials denied those reports at the time.

Shortly afterward, the yacht's crew was fired after wages could not be paid because of sanctions, Forbes reported.

With two helipads and the largest indoor pool ever installed on a yacht, Dilbar is worth between $600 million and $735 million and costs $60 million a year to maintain, according to the US Treasury Department.

The UK government estimated Usmanov was worth $18.4 billion from interests in metals, mining, and telecoms, and the EU called him one of "Putin's favorite oligarchs."

Dilbar is named for Usmanov's mother.

'We want to use our own names': Language experts explain importance of Ukrainian cities' spellings

Ella Lee, USA TODAY
April 13, 2022, 

Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, is nearly empty on Feb. 24, 

the day Russian forces invaded.

In March, Ukraine asked the world to practice its spelling.

"High time to finally discard the outdated Soviet spelling of our cities and adopt the correct Ukrainian form," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a tweet, adding the hashtag #KyivNotKiev.

As the war between Russia and Ukraine rages in its second month, a leader's focus on spelling might seem trivial. But Ukrainian language experts said the distinctions between Russian and Ukrainian spellings and pronunciations, particularly of cities, are vital to recognizing the two countries as separate.

"The way a place name is spelled has far-reaching political implications, particularly in the context of two countries, one of which is an imperial metropolis and another one that used to be its colony," said Yuri Shevchuk, a Ukrainian language lecturer at Columbia University with expertise in languages' ties to culture, identity and politics.

Here's what you need to know about the distinctions.

Languages at odds

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the cultures of Russia – then known as Muscovy – and Ukraine grew closer, Shevchuk said. Threatened by that, Muscovite czars ordered Ukrainian Gospels be deemed heretical. More than 150 laws and rules were passed aimed at prohibiting and disappearing Ukrainian language from public use.

"The Ukrainian language was viewed as something hostile, as something to be destroyed," Shevchuk said. "The history of Russian-Ukrainian relations has always, for centuries, been a history of culture war."

Unlike other colonizing empires, such as Britain or France, Russia didn't simply ban public use of the Ukrainian language. It sought to take it apart.

Russia interfered with the inner structure of the Ukrainian language, trying to bring it closer to the Russian language at the levels of phonetics, vocabulary and syntax. For example, Ukrainian has a vocative case – the noun or pronoun used to address a person directly – while Russian does not. In the early 1930s, Russia declared there was no need to use the vocative case, causing generations of Ukrainians to learn the language without using it, despite its presence in classical Ukrainian writings, Shevchuk said; that lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Russia's intent, Shevchuk said, was to strip Ukrainians of anything that made the language interesting, attractive or unique.

"Then, Ukrainians themselves would decide 'independently' or 'voluntarily' to switch from Ukrainian to Russian, because Ukrainian is a poor, pale simulacrum of Russian, lacking prestige and lacking political and symbolic capital – and Russian having it all galore," he said.
Cities' names

Russia's actions against Ukraine's language and historical status affected city names.

Many of Ukraine's cities are named after saints or rulers. To make names possessive, Ukrainian adds an -iv while Russian adds an -ov or -ev, because of a 12th-century sound change in Ukrainian that didn't occur in Russian, according to Michael Flier, professor of Ukrainian philology at Harvard University.

Take Kyiv: The founder of Ukraine's capital was named Kyi in Ukrainian, or Kiy in Russian. So Kyi's city became "Kyiv" in Ukrainian, whereas it became "Kiev" in Russian.

"Some city names sound differently in Russian and in Ukrainian – say, Kharkiv is Kharkov in Russian; Lviv is Lvov in Russian," said Serguei Oushakine, a professor of Slavic languages and literature at Princeton University. "It is like, English Moscow is Moskva in Russian or Paris is Parizh in Russian."

The Ukrainian city of Odesa is spelled “Odessa” when transliterated from its Russian form.

"There are two different pronunciations, but since history will show you that it was the Russian empire that had the attention of the world, (Ukraine) was always in a position not to forge ahead with his own name because the Russians were in charge," Flier said. "And so therefore, it was the Russian spelling and pronunciation that held true until now."

Opinion: Why do we say 'Kyiv,' not 'Kiev'? The political history behind Ukraine's capital city

Why it's relevant

Though the names of Ukrainian cities have historically been transliterated from Cyrillic using their Russian spellings, years of tension between the nations and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February have caused many to question why.

"This is a technical issue, but nothing in language is technical; everything is political," Oushakine said.

Ukrainian became the official state language in 1989, but the Russian spellings of Ukraine's cities persisted. There are often emotional and historical attachments to the names of cities, amplifying the desire to have others get it right. Flier compared the misspellings of cities to the misspellings of names, akin to insisting on calling an American "Pierre" instead of "Peter."

"It's recognition that Ukraine is no longer a part of the Soviet Union; it's no longer under the command of Russia, and therefore, you know, we want to use our own names," Flier said.

In 2018, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry launched the campaign "CorrectUA" to hold Western media outlets accountable for spelling its cities wrong.

The ministry's online campaign used the hashtag #KyivNotKiev and featured posts with incorrect spellings of Kyiv by The New York Times, BBC and Reuters, according to a news release on the effort.

As a result, those outlets and others, including The Associated Press and The Washington Post, adjusted their style guides to reflect the Ukrainian spellings. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names within the Department of Interior retired the spelling of "Kiev" and adopted "Kyiv." Kiev is considered an unofficial variant name.

"I think it was always the case that in Ukrainian, (city names) were pronounced the way that they're now written, the Ukrainian way, but it's just that Ukrainians always had to play second fiddle to Russia because the Russians were in charge of the country. ... It really comes down to just letting Ukraine show itself for what it is – letting Ukraine have its own identity," Flier said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kyiv or Kiev? Why the spellings of Ukrainian cities matter

Stranded seafarers escape Ukraine, others trapped - ILO, sources

Emma Farge
April 14, 2022, 

FILE PHOTO: Cargo ship is docked in Black sea port of Odessa

By Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) -Some of the estimated 1,000 seafarers trapped in Ukraine have escaped, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and industry officials told Reuters, while voicing concern for those remaining trapped onboard ships or unaccounted for.

Several foreign cargo ships have been struck by crossfire in Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24 and U.N. agencies have called for urgent action https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_841806/lang--en/index.htm to protect some 1,000 seafarers, including in the besieged port city of Mariupol that has been under bombardment for weeks.

An estimated 100 vessels have been prevented from departing because of risks of drifting sea mines https://shipping.nato.int/nsc/operations/news/-2022/risk-of-collateral-damage-in-the-north-western-black-sea-2, industry sources say.

Fabrizio Barcellona, seafarers' section coordinator at the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), said the "vast bulk" of the seafarers, from at least 20 countries including India, Syria, Egypt, Turkey the Philippines and Bangladesh, as well as Ukraine and Russia, had left, traveling overland to Poland and Romania.

He cited information from Philippine government sources saying seafarers of the Philippines had left. The Philippine Labour Ministry said 371 had been repatriated, 68 had resumed work outside of Ukraine, and some 15 remained there.

"A small number (of the estimated 1,000) remain stranded and unable to return home due to the ongoing threat of potential military crossfire," Barcellona said.

An ILO spokesperson said in an email that some seafarers were still trapped on their ships, within earshot of shellfire, without giving details. Others had been disembarked, including some who were repatriated home, while others were under the protection of the Ukrainian army.

Russia said on Wednesday it had taken control of Mariupol's trading port and had freed what it called "hostages" from vessels.

On April 11 a letter was circulated to International Maritime Organization members by Dominica maritime authorities about its ship that sank in Mariupol this month, saying the crew was hiding on other vessels "under an immense amount of intense fear and distress."

Barcellona said the ITF, which represents some 200 seafarers' unions, had been seeking to establish "blue corridors", or safe passage routes, but this was impossible due to mines.

The International Committee of the Red Cross urged parties to the conflict to allow civilians, including commercial crews, to leave and said it would raise this with authorities.

(Reporting by Emma Farge, additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales in Manila; Editing by William Maclean and David Holmes)

Kremlin crackdown silences war protests, from benign to bold

The Associated Press
April 14, 2022

Dmitry Reznikov holding a blank piece of paper with eight asterisks that could have been interpreted as standing for "No to war" in Russian, stands next to a Police van as he was detained in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, March 13, 2022. The court found him guilty of discrediting the armed forces and fined him 50,000 rubles ($618) for holding the sign in central Moscow in a mid-March demonstration that lasted only seconds before police detained him. (SOTA via AP)

FILE - A worker paints over graffiti saying 'Yes to Peace!' on a wall of an apartment building in St. Petersburg, Russia, March 18, 2022. 

(AP Photo, File)

Marat Grachev, director of a shop that repairs Apple devices, poses with a sign in Russian that reads "No to war" in the background, in Moscow, Russia, on Wednesday, March 16, 2022. Customers who came into the store expressed support when they saw the sign, but one elderly man demanded it be taken down, threatening to report Grachev to the authorities. Police soon showed up, and Grachev was charged with discrediting the military as part of an official crackdown against protests.

 (Anna Matveeva via AP)

FILE - A poster that says "No War" hangs over Nevsky Prospect, the main street in St. Petersburg, Russia, on March. 1, 2022. (AP Photo, File)

A former police officer who discussed Russia's invasion on the phone. A priest who preached to his congregation about the suffering of Ukrainians. A student who held up a banner with no words — just asterisks.

Hundreds of Russians are facing charges for speaking out against the war in Ukraine since a repressive law was passed last month that outlaws the spread of “false information” about the invasion and disparaging the military.

Human rights groups say the crackdown has led to criminal prosecutions and possible prison sentences for at least 23 people on the “false information” charge, with over 500 others facing misdemeanor charges of disparaging the military that have either led to hefty fines or are expected to result in them.

“This is a large amount, an unprecedentedly large amount" of cases, said Damir Gainutdinov, head of the Net Freedoms legal aid group focusing on free speech cases, in an interview with The Associated Press.

The Kremlin has sought to control the narrative of the war from the moment its troops rolled into Ukraine. It dubbed the attack a “special military operation” and increased the pressure on independent Russian media that called it a “war” or an “invasion,” blocking access to many news sites whose coverage deviated from the official line.

Sweeping arrests stifled antiwar protests, turning them from a daily event in large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg into rare occurrences barely attracting any attention.

Still, reports of police detaining single picketers in different Russian cities come in almost daily.

Even seemingly benign actions have led to arrests.

A man was detained in Moscow after standing next to a World War II monument that says "Kyiv" for the city's heroic stand against Nazi Germany and holding a copy of Tolstoy's “War and Peace.” Another was reportedly detained for holding up a package of sliced ham from the meat producer Miratorg, with the second half of the name crossed off so it read: “Mir" — “peace” in Russian.

A law against spreading “fake news” about the war or disparaging the military was passed by parliament in one day and took force immediately, effectively exposing anyone critical of the conflict to fines and prison sentences.

The first publicly known criminal cases over “fakes” targeted public figures like Veronika Belotserkovskaya, a Russian-language cookbook author and popular blogger living abroad, and Alexander Nevzorov, a TV journalist, film director and former lawmaker.

Both were accused of posting “false information” about Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine on their widely followed social media pages -– something Moscow has vehemently denied, insisting that Russian forces only hit target military targets.

But then the scope of the crackdown expanded, with police seemingly grabbing anyone.

Former police officer Sergei Klokov was detained and put in pretrial detention after discussing the war with his friends on the phone. His wife told the Meduza news site that in casual conversation at home, Klokov, who was born in Irpin near Kyiv and whose father still lived in Ukraine when Russian troops rolled in, condemned the invasion.

Klokov was charged with spreading false information about the Russian armed forces and faces up to 10 years in prison.

St. Petersburg artist Sasha Skochilenko also faces up to 10 years in prison on the same charge: She replaced price tags in a grocery store with antiwar flyers. On Wednesday, a court ordered Skochilenko to pretrial detention for 1 1/2 months.

The Rev. Ioann Burdin, a Russian Orthodox priest in a village about 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) northeast of Moscow, was fined 35,000 rubles ($432) for “discrediting the Russian armed forces” after posting an antiwar statement on his church’s website and talking to a dozen congregants during a service about the pain he felt over people in Ukrain'e dying.

Burdin told AP his speech elicited mixed reactions. “One woman made a scene over the fact that I’m talking about (it) when she just came to pray, ” he said, adding that he believed it was one of those hearing the sermon who reported him to the police.

Marat Grachev, director of a shop that repairs Apple products in Moscow, similarly got in trouble when he displayed a link to an online petition titled, “No to war” on a screen in the shop. Many customers expressed support when they saw it, but one elderly man demanded it be taken down, threatening to report Grachev to the authorities.

Police soon showed up, and Grachev was charged with discrediting the military. A court ordered him to pay a fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,236).

Another court ruled against Moscow student Dmitry Reznikov for displaying a blank piece of paper with eight asterisks, which could have been interpreted as standing for “No to war” in Russian -- a popular chant by protesters. The court found him guilty of discrediting the armed forces and fined him 50,000 rubles ($618) for holding the sign in central Moscow in a mid-March demonstration that lasted only seconds before police detained him.

“It’s the theater of the absurd,” his lawyer Oleg Filatchev told AP.

A St. Petersburg court last week fined Artur Dmitriev for a sign containing President Vladimir Putin’s quote – albeit with a few words omitted for brevity – from last year’s Victory Day parade marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

“The war brought about so many unbearable challenges, grief and tears, that it’s impossible to forget. There is no forgiveness and justification for those who once again are harboring aggressive plans,” Putin had said, according to the Kremlin website.

Dmitriev was fined 30,000 rubles for discrediting the Russian military. That prompted him to post Friday on Facebook: “The phrase by Vladimir Putin, and ergo he himself … are discrediting the goals of the Russian armed forces. From this moment on, (internet and media regulator) Roskomnadzor must block all speeches by Putin, and true patriots -– take down his portraits in their offices.”

Net Freedoms' Gainutdinov said that anything about the military or Ukraine can make a person a target. Even wearing a hat with the blue and gold of the Ukrainian flag or a green ribbon, considered a symbol of peace, have been found to discredit the military, the lawyer added.

Reznikov, who is appealing his conviction for the poster with asterisks, said he found the crackdown scary. After his first misdemeanor conviction, a second strike would result in criminal prosecution and a possible prison term of up to three years.

Both Burdin and Grachev, who also are appealing, received donations that exceeded their fines.

“I realized how important it is, how valuable it is to receive support,” Grachev said.

Burdin said the publicity about his case spread his message far beyond the dozen or so people who initially heard his sermon — the opposite of what the authorities presumably intended by fining him.

“It’s impossible to call it anything other than the providence of God," the priest added. "The words that I said reached a much larger number of people.”

—-

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Manifesto published in Russian media reflects Putin regime's ruthless plans in Ukraine

Susanne Sternthal,

 Lecturer in Post-Soviet Government and Politics, 

Texas State University
THE CONVERSATION
April 14, 2022,

A forensic worker exhumes several bodies from a grave in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 12, 2022. Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images

Shortly after footage emerged of the carnage Russian troops left behind in the town of Bucha, Ukraine, an article was published April 4, 2022, in one of the largest Russian state-run media companies.

The article called for even more bloodshed in Ukraine.

Written by journalist and Kremlin-aligned political operative Timofey Sergeytsev and published in RIA-Novosti, the article answers the question posed by its headline: “What should Russia do with Ukraine?”

The answer, Sergeytsev writes, is total annihilation. He writes that “all who have associated themselves with Nazism should be liquidated and banned.”

Sergeytsev urges Russian soldiers to be merciless and force Ukraine to its knees and calls for more of the same inhumane tactics that took place in Bucha and the towns of Mariupul and Berdyansk.

As an academic focusing on Russian government, politics and society, I believe the article demonstrates what is foremost on the mind of President Vladimir Putin’s regime.
The silencing of independent Russian media

Sergeytsev’s piece merits close attention because RIA-Novosti is one of the three largest news agencies in Russia and has a mass circulation. It functions as a loyal mouthpiece of the Russian government and has an inordinate impact on what Russians see and hear about the war in Ukraine.

This is the result of the Russian government’s ever tightening control over independent media since 2000, when Putin became president. In his first year in power, Putin shut down companies of media businessman Vladimir Gusinsky.

Since then, Putin has used what is known as the Roskomnadzor, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information technology and Mass Media, a federal agency that monitors and censors Russian mass media and decides which need to be shut down.

Russia President Vladimir Putin visits the Vostochny cosmodrome in Belarus on April 12, 2022. Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images

In 2022 alone, Putin closed the last remaining independent sources of information in Russia: liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy, online television channel TV Rain, bilingual news site Meduza and Novaya Gazeta, whose editor, Dmitry Muratov, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021.

The Russian government not only has total control over all media, but it dictates what can be seen and heard. The war in Ukraine, for instance, can only be referred to as “a special military operation.” Anyone who calls it a “war” is subject to a prison term of 15 years.

Given where it appeared, Sergeytsev’s article must have been published with the knowledge and approval of the Russian government.

Who is Sergeytsev?

Sergeytsev is an experienced Russian political operative who worked on behalf of the Russian government to prop up pro-Russian Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma in 1991. He also supported Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, whose questionable election victory, promoted by Putin, resulted in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004.

Sergeytsev is also a member of the Russian far right Zinoviev Club, named after Alexander Zinoviev. Zinoviev was a champion of Josef Stalin as a model leader, the murderous dictator who ruled the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953.

Given this pedigree, it’s not surprising that it was Sergeytsev who wrote the answer to the question about what Russia should do about Ukraine.

A fight against Nazis?

In the invented world he describes in his article, Sergeytsev accuses both Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko and current President, Volodymyr Zelensky, of using “total terror” against the Russian “anti-fascists in Odesa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol and other Russia cities.”

As for the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Lukhansk in Ukraine’s east, where pro-Russian separatists have fought Ukraine over the past eight years, Sergeytsev says they have been bravely rebelling “against Ukrainian Nazism.”

Sergeytsev calls for the destruction of all “Nazis that have taken up arms” and that they “should be destroyed to the maximum on the battlefield.”

He includes the Ukrainian armed forces, the national battalions, the territorial defense forces and “a significant part of the masses, which are passive Nazis” and “are also guilty.”

In this April 11, 2022 photograph, Grigori Zamogilni (R) and Anna Zamogilnaya (L), have been married for 58 years and continue to live in Bucha, Ukraine in time of heavy Russian attacks. Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

All “are equally involved in extreme cruelty against the civilian population, equally guilty of the genocide of the Russian people, and do not comply with laws and customs of war,” Sergeytsev writes.

In this piece of bald disinformation, Sergeytsev further writes that the majority of Ukrainians have been drawn to the Nazi politics of their government and “this fact is the basis of the policy of denazification.”

The idea of Zelensky, the only Jewish president outside of Israel, subscribing to Nazi ideology along with his government has nothing to do with reality.

Russian propaganda

Sergeytsev’s choice of words, such as “de-Ukrainization” and “denazification,” are terms calling for the destruction of Ukraine. In his April 4 article of 1,700 words, Sergeytsev uses the word Nazi 69 times.

In order to achieve the ultimate goal of “de-Ukrainization,” Sergeytsev calls for a rejection of Ukrainian ethnicity and the peoples’ right to self-determination.

Echoing Putin, Sergeytsev writes that Ukraine has never been a nation state, adding that its attempts at becoming independent have led to “Nazism.”

Sergeytsev calls on all of Ukraine’s elite to be “liquidated” and “the social swamp which actively and passively supports it should undergo the hardship of war and digest the experience as a historical lesson and atonement.”

The constant use of the word “Nazi” triggers a visceral reaction among the Russian population. During World War II, the Soviet Union suffered horrible atrocities at the hands of the Nazis. In one example, the Nazi blockade of Leningrad lasted from September 1941 until January 1944, a total of 900 days. An estimated over 1 million people died from systematic starvation.

A Russian soldier steps over the rubble inside the Mariupol drama theater on April 12, 2022, in Ukraine. Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images

Using the word “Nazi” is bearing fruit for the Kremlin.

The independent polling center Levada showed in late March polls, one month into the invasion, that 83% of Russians approved of Putin.

But despite Russian media efforts to falsely portray Ukrainians as Nazis, there have been reports of Russian soldiers captured by Ukrainian military confused by the purpose of the war, saying they couldn’t find any Nazis or fascists.

Old and new boundaries

In addition to calling for the need for “de-Ukrainization,” Sergeytsev writes that Ukraine “must be returned to its natural boundaries.”

These boundaries were the ones formed between 1765 and 1783 after Russia’s Empress Catherine the Great defeated the Turks, annexed Crimea and incorporated the entire southern part of today’s Ukraine known as Novorossiya into the Russian empire.

Sergeytsev says that the five regions in western Ukraine, which he refers to as the “residual Ukraine in a neutral state,” are not likely to become part of the pro-Russian territories and will remain hostile to Russia. “The haters of Russia will go there,” he writes.

For Sergeytsev, compromising with the United States, NATO and other Western nations is not an option.

The reason, Sergeytsev concludes, is because the “collective West itself is the designer, source and sponsor of Ukrainian Nazism.”


This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Susanne Sternthal, Texas State University.

Read more:

Ukraine: Zelensky’s ‘special mechanism’ for prosecuting war crimes explained

Russia isn’t likely to use chemical weapons in Ukraine – unless Putin grows desperate

Susanne Sternthal is affiliated with the Democratic Party.

ANTI-ANTI-SATELLITE

A satellite operator is asking the US government to stop blowing up spacecraft

REUTERS/US NAVY

In 2008, the US launched a missile from a warship to destroy a satellite.

By Tim Fernholz
QUARTZ
Senior reporter
Published April 14, 2022

Testing weapons is a dangerous business. When the US Air Force wants to practice blowing stuff up, it uses places like the Nevada Test and Training Range, a huge swathe of desert where it can drop bombs far from civilians.

But when militaries want to test missiles designed to destroy satellites, they shoot down spacecraft in orbit, scattering broken pieces into the path of other satellites. It’s the rough equivalent of testing air-to-ground missiles by blowing up trucks on public highways. In November 2021, for example, Russia tested an anti-satellite missile by destroying one of its decommissioned satellites. The explosion created thousands of pieces of debris in orbit and forced astronauts on the International Space Station to seek emergency shelter.

One firm that tracks objects in orbit coined the term “conjunction squall” to describe what happens when a cloud of spacecraft debris intersects with active satellites, creating record numbers of close passes. Operators are forced to maneuver their satellites away from danger, if they can, or simply cross their fingers and hope for the best.

Planet, a company with hundreds of Earth-observation satellites affected by these debris storms, has had enough. This week, it made a formal call for the US to unilaterally halt tests of “kinetic” anti-satellite weapons (as opposed to tests of weapons that attack satellites by jamming them or frying their electronics, without physically destroying them).

The first company to call for a kinetic ASAT test ban

Planet is the first satellite operator to call for such a moratorium, even though more established space companies operate billions of dollars of on-orbit hardware that is also at risk. The Satellite Industry Association, a US trade group representing dozens of companies, did not have any comment on Planet’s call to end US satellite weapons tests. A spokesperson noted the organization condemned Russia’s test, but its list of sustainability principles doesn’t mention the topic.

While sources won’t speculate publicly about why companies haven’t taken a harder line on anti-satellite weapons, it’s clear that traditional links between the US military and space contractors make them reluctant to push an arms control policy. Another reason for complacency is that the risk of outright collision remains fairly low for now. But with more and more satellites being launched, and more debris being created, the fear is that danger could increase exponentially.

“If I were the commercial sector, I’d be screaming about this,” says Victoria Samson, a military space expert at the Secure World Foundation. “I’m surprised they are not. I fervently hope that they will follow Planet, or if the US government releases a moratorium, they will support it.”

Space’s economic importance is linked to national security

Planet’s founders aren’t new to this problem. In 2003, CEO Will Marshall and chief strategy officer Robbie Schingler worked on the first Space Security Index, a report designed to assess whether nations were meeting treaty obligations to maintain free and safe access to space. At the time, the reduction of anti-satellite weapons testing by the US and Russia after the Cold War was cited as reducing debris in space.

But the same trends that helped Marshall and Schingler launch Planet in 2010—the growing importance of space to the military and global economy—have also increased interest in space warfare, which is documented in this recently-released Secure World Foundation report. China’s first anti-satellite test in 2007 was matched by the US in 2008. In 2019, India became the fourth nation to destroy a satellite—a move Planet condemned even as it launched satellites on an Indian government rocket weeks later. Russia’s latest test in 2021 only generated more global criticism.

There are hints that Planet’s call might see some government follow-through. Kathleen Hicks, a senior defense official, said last fall that the US “would like to see all nations agree to refrain from anti-satellite weapons testing that creates debris.” If the Biden administration pursues that policy, it may be a step towards the new norms and rules for space we hear so much about.

A version of this story was originally published in Quartz’s Space Business newsletter.

Noam Chomsky, 93, issues warning: 'We're approaching the most dangerous point in human history'

Jane Nam
NEXT SHARK
April 13, 2022


With the ongoing climate crisis and the looming possibility of nuclear war, Noam Chomsky, 93, often hailed as one of the world’s most important intellectuals alive, warns that “we’re approaching the most dangerous point in human history.”

The renowned linguist and social critic has lived through several consequential events of the 20th century. In a recent interview with The New Statesman, he recalled feeling terrified while “listening to Hitler’s speeches on the radio” at the age of 6 and writing about the 1939 fall of Barcelona at the age of 10.

It is now, however, that Chomsky says we are “facing the prospect of destruction” of human life on Earth.

Climate change

Climate change has been the central topic of Chomsky’s most recent works, in which he writes about the inextricable tie between global warming and capitalism. He has deemed Earth as unsalvageable within the “time scale” that capitalist countries such as the U.S. have made for it, even with the establishment of policies committed to decreasing carbon output.

“There is no one other than Donald Trump –in history– who has done more to try to drive the human race to extinction,” said Chomsky, who added that “nothing else mattered” if the future was destroyed. He listed Trump’s policies focusing on “maximizing fossil fuels” and “cutting back” regulations that addressed climate change.

Chomsky also likened “Trump’s fanaticism” to Hitler’s Nazis rallies, describing, in particular, the strong base of Republicans against addressing climate change as “a truly dangerous insurgency.” He described the party’s disregard of global warming as “a death warrant” for humankind.

Russia-Ukraine

Chomsky’s father, who was of Jewish descent, was born in present-day Ukraine. When asked what Russian president Vladimir Putin’s motivations for invading Ukraine might have been, Chomsky declared that it is not enough to simply write the conflict off as a matter of Putin’s “twisted” mind.

“Putin is as concerned with democracy as we are,” Chomsky told the Statesman, referring to the U.S.’ history of political and economic reach in the East. He cited September 2021, when the U.S. sent Ukraine advanced weapons in the name of “enhanced military cooperation,” as an example.

Chomsky also pointed to “Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973” before saying, “But we are supposed to honor and admire Washington’s enormous commitment to sovereignty and democracy.”

Russia-China

When asked about Russia’s relationship with China and whether he thought there was a chance of them joining forces to become a superpower under the current circumstances, Chomsky responded that it was a relationship based on strategy rather than a true “partnership.”

Drawing comparisons to the lack of global military support for the U.S.’ invasion of Iraq, which he has denounced as a crime disguised as “noble intentions,” Chomsky predicted that China, along with the rest of the world, would remain largely absent from the war in Ukraine.

Flooding kills hundreds in South Africa: 'This disaster is part of climate change'

David Knowles

Senior Editor
April 14, 2022,

More than 300 people have been killed in flooding following days of extreme rainfall in eastern South Africa, with some areas receiving up to six months’ worth of rain in a single day.

Touring the devastated region on Wednesday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the severity of the downpours was further evidence of the consequences of climate change.

“This disaster is part of climate change. It is telling us that climate change is serious, it is here,” said Ramaphosa, adding, “We no longer can postpone what we need to do, and the measures we need to take to deal with climate change.”

KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa saw the heaviest single-day rains in more than 60 years, the country's national weather service reported.

“We’re traumatized, we can’t even eat. For the whole day I didn’t eat because I don’t know what to do,” Boniswa Shangase, a resident of Durban whose home was washed away in the flooding, told the BBC.

As the waters quickly rose around the hillside home where she raised her two daughters, Shangase jumped out a window before it gave way.

“Now I’m homeless,” she told the BBC. “We can’t live here anymore.”

A destroyed bridge in Durban, South Africa. (Rogan Ward/Reuters)

Numerous scientific studies have found that rising global temperatures are increasing the amount of moisture in the atmosphere, and that as a result, certain regions are now at greater risk of flash flooding due to extreme precipitation events.

“Extreme precipitation is expected to intensify with global warming over large parts of the globe as the concentration of atmospheric water vapor which supplies the water for precipitation increases in proportion to the saturation concentrations at a rate of about 6-7% per degree rise in temperature according to the thermodynamic Clausius-Clapeyron relationship,” stated a 2020 study by Hossein Tabari, who researches how climate change affects the hydrologic cycle.

The study added, however, that where the intensification will be experienced globally depends on a variety of factors.

While the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that the western portion of South Africa can expect to see drought in the coming years, eastern parts of the country face the possibility of an increased number of extreme rainfall events.

“Future warming is likely to be greatest over the interior of semi-arid margins of the Sahara and central southern Africa,” stated a study by researchers at the University of Oslo. “Projected changes in precipitation will lead to a drying throughout southern Africa and increases in rainfall over parts of eastern Africa."

Destruction from floodwaters north of Durban. (Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images)

A massive continent, Africa will see an array of climate change impacts, the IPCC said in its latest report, such as the crippling drought that has endangered the lives of 350,000 children in Somalia and displaced more than 700,000 people over the last three years. By 2030, the IPCC warned in its report, “half the continent of Africa could be displaced as a result of climate change.”

In KwaZulu-Natal province, where power lines snapped from the force of rushing water, bridges were destroyed and thousands were left homeless, this week’s storms provided yet another preview of the climate change future.

“The heavy rainfall that has descended on our land over the past few days has wreaked untold havoc and unleashed massive damage to lives and infrastructure,” the province said in a message posted to its Facebook page.

US Supreme Court may toss an 'important tool' for regulating climate change

Ben AdlerSenior Editor
April 14, 2022,

The Supreme Court is on the verge of restricting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

The court’s conservative majority appears likely to side with Republican-controlled states and coal companies in West Virginia v. EPA, for which the court heard oral arguments on Feb. 28 and is expected to issue a ruling in June. Such a ruling could eliminate some of the key methods that the Biden administration can use to accelerate the power sector’s transition to cleaner sources of energy, potentially hamstringing its ability to meet the president’s goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Experts say the court is virtually guaranteed to side with the petitioners — a coalition of red states and coal companies — but that the still unknown logic and details of the ruling may determine the shape of U.S. climate regulation in the future.

“Taking the case is a very clear sign that they’re going to rule against EPA in some way, but we don’t know how," David Doniger, senior strategic director of the Climate & Clean Energy Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Yahoo News. “It wasn’t clear from the oral argument what the dominant approach would be.”

Observers do not expect the Supreme Court to overturn previous rulings that give the EPA authority to regulate carbon pollution, but they say it’s possible the court may say the agency cannot use certain tools in doing so.

“It’s about how [and] what kind of regulation EPA can put in place,” Doniger said.

“From the oral argument, it looks like the Supreme Court is likely to rule in favor of the petitioners, but it could be a broad ruling or a narrow ruling,” Jeff Holmstead, who heads the Environmental Strategies Group at the law firm Bracewell, told Yahoo News. “Most of us who have been following the cases for a while suspect that their reasoning will set some limits on EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions — not just from power plants but from industrial plants more generally.”

To understand how the case reached this point, it’s necessary to go back to 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Massachusetts v. EPA that the agency is obligated to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. But the EPA did not write any regulations of carbon emissions under then-President George W. Bush.

Then-President Barack Obama speaking at the largest photovoltaic solar plant in the U.S., in Boulder City, Nev., in 2012. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

When President Barack Obama took office, he focused on trying to get Congress to pass a bill to regulate carbon emissions across the economy, which would have displaced the EPA’s regulatory authority. After unified Republican opposition blocked that effort in the Senate, the EPA drafted regulations, which were finalized in 2015 under the rubric Clean Power Plan.

The rules for new power plants essentially required such low emissions that no new coal-fired power plants would be built unless they included technology to remove carbon dioxide from the smokestack and store it underground. This is an expensive practice known as carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS. Since gas-fired power plants and renewable sources of energy — such as wind and solar — are cheaper than coal when starting from scratch, that rule actually made little difference.

The more contentious question is how to regulate existing power plants, which may be active for decades to come. The Clean Power Plan answered that with an innovative approach to gradually reducing emissions: Instead of just requiring new pollution controls like CCS, it set limits for the emissions of a state’s entire energy portfolio that could be met through approaches like buying solar and wind power produced elsewhere or reducing demand for electricity by helping consumers weatherize their homes. In the parlance of energy policy wonks, these tactics are called “outside the fence line” of a power plant.

Coal-friendly states sued, arguing that this approach went beyond the EPA’s power under the Clean Air Act, and the Supreme Court stayed the rule in 2016. The Democrats then lost the White House that year to Donald Trump, a climate science denier and coal industry booster. In 2017, Trump’s EPA — arguing that “outside the fence line” rules go beyond the agency’s authority — revoked the Clean Power Plan and replaced it with a regulation called the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, which eliminated those measures and actually could allow for more carbon pollution by changing the way it is calculated.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler prepares to sign the Affordable Clean Energy rule in June 2019 as Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Council on Environmental Quality chairman Mary Neumayr look on.

 (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A group of Democratic-controlled states sued to block the Trump-era ACE rule, arguing that the EPA was wrong to determine that only very modest pollution-control technology additions at power plants could be required. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed and overturned the ACE rule, and the conservative state and coal industry challenges to that ruling are what the Supreme Court is now considering.

So, experts say, the court is likely to overturn that decision and find that the Trump rule was valid. But doing that and nothing else would merely signal to future Republican administrations that they can get away with writing toothless carbon regulations; it wouldn’t stop Biden’s EPA from devising a much stronger one.

A broader decision could have a broader impact, though: If the court holds that the federal government lacks the authority to require lowering emissions through anything but pollution control technology, the Biden administration will not be able to write a new rule that includes other approaches.

“The oral argument was focused almost exclusively on the legality of the Clean Power Plan and whether the EPA in the Clean Power Plan exceeded its authority by what its opponents have termed the ‘beyond the fence line’ generation-shifting feature of it,” Richard Revesz, a professor at New York University School of Law, told Yahoo News.

And so the future of climate regulation hangs in the balance.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan indicated two weeks ago that “the EPA is waiting for the Supreme Court decision to guide what it would like,” Revesz noted.

The Supreme Court. (Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

If the court rules that “outside the fence line” rules are not allowed, “it’s a significant constraint on EPA’s ability to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of existing power plants,” Revesz said.

“You’re taking an important tool out of the EPA’s toolkit,” he added. “It might ultimately affect the stringency of the rule, and if it doesn’t affect the stringency of the rule, it might end up being more costly.” That’s because the only way to require similarly significant emissions cuts is by requiring carbon capture and sequestration.

“It will have lost the ability to get significant reductions that are low-cost,” Revesz said. That’s why most energy utilities actually supported the EPA in this case.

The upcoming ruling and subsequent power plant regulations are central to Biden’s climate legacy because it increasingly appears that he will not be getting major action to address climate change through Congress. Since Biden’s sweeping Build Back Better legislation — which includes large investments in clean energy and electric vehicles — has failed to pass the Senate, his administration has argued that the United States can still meet its pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the U.N. Climate Change Conference last November, special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry told reporters that “we’re not dependent on the schedule of Congress” because “we’re already doing” what needs to be done on climate change through executive action.

The expected Supreme Court ruling against the EPA will follow a string of rulings limiting environmental regulations. Earlier this month, the court overturned a lower court ruling that had struck down a Trump-era rule limiting state and tribal authority to veto projects such as pipelines that could pollute their waters.

Oldest evidence of Mayan calendar found in Guatemala


An exterior view of the Great Jaguar, main building of Tikal, the most important city of the ancient Maya civilization at the province of Peten, Feb. 28, 2011. Tikal was one of the main cultural centers of the Maya civilization. The oldest known fragments of the Maya calendar were found in San Bartolo, Guatemala. 

Photo by Sandra Sebastian/EPA


April 14 (UPI) -- The oldest evidence of the Maya calendar has been excavated at San Bartolo, Guatemala, found among fragments of painted murals.

Acording to a new study, two fragments with a "7 deer" date notation date to between 300 and 200 BCE, based on radiocarbon dating.

Authors of the study said that the finding "represents a day in the 260-day divinatory calendar used throughout Mesoamerica and among indigenous Maya communities today."

"It's the one calendar that survives all the conquests and the civil war in Guatemala," the latter of which was waged from 1960 to 1996, study first author David Stuart told Live Science.

"The Maya of today in many communities have kept it as a way of connecting to their ideas of fate and how people relate to the world around them. It's not a revival. It's actually a preservation of the calendar," said Stuart, the Schele professor of Mesoamerican art and writing at the University of Texas at Austin.

Stuart was part of the team that discovered the San Bartolo site in 2001.

The 7 Deer day record represents the earliest securely dated example of the Maya calendar, according to the study.

The previous oldest known evidence of the Maya calendar also came from San Bartolo. the new discovery pre-dates that one by 150 years.

The fragments from the Maya calendar came from an architectural complex known as the Las Pinturas pyramid.

It consists of a pyramid with seven construction phases and several auxiliary structures.

The researchers say the fragments indicate it is a record in the Mesoamerican 260-day calendar, "7 Deer," or, in the colonial Maya system of 16th century Yucatán, "7 Manik."

The 260-day count is the traditional divination calendar used throughout ancient Mesoamerica, surviving up to the present day among some indigenous communities in southern Mexico and Guatemala, according to the study.

Until these fragments were discovered all early Maya calendar records came from stone monuments.

Quebec Health Ministry tweets adult video rather than COVID advice

The ministry in the Canadian province said it was investigating why it tweeted a link to pornographic material. The department has apologized for the "inconvenience" caused by posting "inappropriate content."

Quebec's Health Ministry tweeted out a link containing "inappropriate content"

The Health Ministry in the Canadian province of Quebec apologized on Thursday after publishing a tweet that linked "inappropriate content."

The tweet was reportedly meant to connect users to Quebec's COVID-19 portal.

But the local branch of the CTV News broadcaster reported that the tweet featured a link to a fetish video on pornography streaming site PornHub.

'Out of our control'

"Due to a situation out of our control, a link containing inappropriate content was published on our Twitter account," the ministry tweeted after the incident.

"We are searching for the causes of this," the ministry added, before apologizing for the inconvenience.

Pornhub is based in Montreal and owned by Canadian pornography firm MindGeek.

In 2021, dozens of women filed a lawsuit against MindGeek, accusing the company of profiting from sexual exploitation.

AFP material contributed to this report.

Edited by: John Silk