Alberta NDP choose Nathan IP to run in Edmonton-South West

Hamdi Issawi - 

Edmonton Journal

Alberta's NDP nominated Edmonton Public School Board trustee Nathan Ip Saturday to run in the Edmonton-South West riding, currently held by UCP Labour and Immigration Minister Kaycee Madu.

Alberta’s Opposition nominated Edmonton Public School Board trustee Nathan Ip to run in the capital’s only riding held by the United Conservative Party.

In a Saturday news release, the province’s New Democratic Party announced Ip as their candidate for Edmonton-South West in Alberta’s 2023 election. Labour and Immigration Minister Kaycee Madu currently represents the riding, and is the only UCP MLA with a seat in the city.

Ip, a three-term trustee for Ward H in southwest Edmonton, said he’s “deeply worried” about the province’s direction, and listed the UCP’s draft kindergarten to Grade 6 curriculum among his complaints.

“I’m excited for the chance to be a voice for my community, and to build a future for Alberta where no one is left behind,” he said, adding that the riding is home to a young and fast-growing community that deserves a representative who will stand up for it.


Ip announced he was joining the race for the Edmonton-South West nomination on March 29, and has said he’s running to protect publicly funded education, help build new schools, and provide leadership that serves community needs.

“We are in dire need for new schools in the growing areas of Edmonton-South West,” he said Saturday.

— With files from Lisa Johnson

A horse seized in a tax fraud case was sold back to its owner after authorities realized how much it cost to look after: report


Ryan Hogg
Sat, June 18, 2022

Getty Images

US authorities seized Lex, a $750,000 showjumping horse, as part of a $1.3 billion fraud case.


Federal agents realized it would cost up to $55,000 a year to care for, Bloomberg reported.


Christine Fisher, daughter of the man indicted, paid $25,000 to get the horse back, per Bloomberg.

The US Government sold a $750,000 showjumping horse back to its owner for just $25,000 after realizing it would cost too much to look after, Bloomberg reported.

Authorities initially seized the horse, called Lex, after its owner, the Atlanta accountant Jack Fisher, was indicted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in connection with tax fraud worth $1.3 billion along with four other individuals.

Fisher had bought the horse, a 15-year-old Holsteiner, for his daughter Christina. She pleaded with authorities to leave Lex, saying: "Take whatever you want that's monetary, but you can't treat a living animal like this."

"I feel violated and helpless," Christina told Bloomberg. "I'm not a part of the case. I'm not a part of the business. I was completely caught off guard, and they took an innocent animal."

Bloomberg reported that federal agents soon realized it would cost between $45,000 to $50,000 a year to feed and care for Lex, excluding medical costs.

The horse's value had dropped sharply, with an examination determining it to be worth $145,000, according to the report.

The US Attorney's Office in Atlanta then agreed to return the horse to Christina for $25,000, on the understanding that they could collect more if her father was convicted. She planned to ride the horse down the aisle on her wedding day.

Documents released by the Justice Department in February show Jack Fisher used proceeds of the tax fraud to buy the horse, as well as properties worth millions of dollars, and $225,000 tickets for a Super Bowl "Hall of Fame Experience."

US authorities use the proceeds from selling seized assets to compensate the victims of fraud and deter crime, in a process known as federal forfeiture.

The seizure of horses has some precedent. In 2012, authorities raised $4.8 million by selling more than 150 horses belonging to then-comptroller of Dixon, Illinois, Rita Crundwell after she was indicted on misappropriating city funds to fund a "lavish lifestyle."

But Fisher's case highlights the running costs associated with maintaining assets before they can be sold.

The US is facing huge costs to maintain assets such as superyachts seized from Russian oligarchs, according to US national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

The Justice Department and the IRS didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider

A Chinese Telescope Did Not Find an Alien Signal. The Search Continues.

Dennis Overbye
Sat, June 18, 2022

It was a project that launched a thousand interstellar dreams.

Fifty years ago, NASA published a fat, 253-page book titled, “Project Cyclops.” It summarized the results of a NASA workshop on how to detect alien civilizations. What was needed, the assembled group of astronomers, engineers and biologists concluded, was Cyclops, a vast array of radio telescopes with as many as 1,000 100-meter-diameter antennas. At the time, the project would have cost $10 billion. It could, the astronomers said, detect alien signals from as far away as 1,000 light-years.

The report kicked off with a quotation from astronomer Frank Drake, now an emeritus professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz:

“At this very minute, with almost absolute certainty, radio waves sent forth by other intelligent civilizations are falling on the earth. A telescope can be built that, pointed in the right place and tuned to the right frequency, could discover these waves. Someday, from somewhere out among the stars, will come the answers to many of the oldest, most important and most exciting questions mankind has asked.”

The Cyclops report, long out of print but available online, would become a bible for a generation of astronomers drawn to the dream that science could answer existential questions.

“For the very first time, we had technology where we could do an experiment instead of asking priests and philosophers,” Jill Tarter, who read the report when she was a graduate student and who has devoted her life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, said a decade ago.

A book published 50 years ago titled

I was reminded of Cyclops and the work it inspired this week when word flashed around the world that Chinese astronomers had detected a radio signal that had the characteristics of being from an extraterrestrial civilization — namely, it had a very narrow bandwidth at a frequency of 140.604 MHz, a precision nature doesn’t usually achieve on its own.

They made the detection using a giant new telescope called the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, or FAST. The telescope was pointed in the direction of an exoplanet named Kepler 438 b, a rocky planet about 1 1/2 times the size of Earth that orbits in the so-called habitable zone of Kepler 438, a red dwarf star hundreds of light years from here, in the constellation Lyra. It has an estimated surface temperature of 37 degrees Fahrenheit, making it a candidate to harbor life.

Just as quickly, however, an article in the state-run newspaper Science and Technology Daily reporting the discovery vanished. And Chinese astronomers were pouring cold water on the result.

Zhang Tong-Jie, the chief scientist of China ET Civilization Research Group, was quoted by Andrew Jones, a journalist who tracks Chinese space and astronomy developments, as saying, “The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed or ruled out. This may be a long process.”

Dan Werthimer, of the University of California, Berkeley, who is among the authors of a scientific paper on the signal, was more blunt.

“These signals are from radio interference; they are due to radio pollution from earthlings, not from E.T.,” he wrote in an email.

This has become a familiar story. For half a century, SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has been a game of whack-a-mole, finding promising signals before tracking them down to orbiting satellites, microwave ovens and other earthly sources. Drake himself pointed a radio telescope at a pair of stars in 1960 and soon thought he had struck gold, only to find out the signal was a stray radar.

More recently, a signal that appeared to be coming from the direction of the sun’s closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, was tracked down to radio interference in Australia.

Just as NASA’s announcement last week that it would make a modest investment in the scientific study of unidentified flying objects was intended to bring rigor and practicality to what many criticized as wishful thinking, so, too, was the agency’s Cyclops workshop held at Stanford University over three months in 1971. The conference was organized by John Billingham, an astrobiologist, and Bernard Oliver, who was the head of research for Hewlett-Packard. The men also edited the conference’s report.

In the introduction, Oliver wrote that if anything came of Cyclops he would consider this the most important year of his life.

“Cyclops was, indeed, a milestone, largely in pulling together a coherent SETI strategy, and the clear calculations and engineering design that followed,” said Paul Horowitz, an emeritus professor of physics at Harvard University who went on to design and start his own listening campaign called Project Meta, funded by the Planetary Society. Movie director Steven Spielberg (“E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) attended the official opening in 1985 at the Harvard-Smithsonian Agassiz Station in Harvard, Massachusetts.

“SETI was for real!” Horowitz added.

But what Oliver initially received was only a “Golden Fleece” award from Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., who crusaded against what he considered government waste.

“In my view, this project should be postponed for a few million light years,” he said.

On Columbus Day in 1992, NASA did initiate a limited search; a year later, Congress canceled it at the behest of Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev. Denied federal support ever since, the SETI endeavor has limped along, supported by donations to a nonprofit organization, the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. Recently, through a $100 million grant, Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner set up a new effort called Breakthrough Listen. Horowitz and others have expanded the search to what they call “Optical SETI,” monitoring the sky for laser flashes from distant civilizations.

Cyclops was never built, which is just as well, Horowitz said, “because, by today’s standards, it would have been an expensive hulking monster.” Technological developments like radio receivers that can listen to billions of radio frequencies at once have changed the game.

China’s big new FAST telescope, also nicknamed “Sky Eye,” was built in 2016 partly with SETI in mind. Its antenna occupies a sinkhole in Guizhou in Southwest China. The size of the antenna eclipses what was the iconic Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which collapsed ignominiously in December 2020.

Now FAST and its observers have experienced their own trial by false alarm. There will be many more, SETI astronomers say.

The generation of astronomers who were inspired by the Cyclops report is getting old. Billingham died in 2013. Oliver died in 1995. Tarter retired from the SETI Institute in 2012, proud that she had never sounded a false alarm.

Those who endure profess not to be discouraged by the Great Silence, as it is called, from out there. They’ve always been in the search for the long run, they say.

“The Great Silence is hardly unexpected,” said Horowitz, including because only a fraction of a percent of the 200 million stars in the Milky Way have been surveyed. Nobody ever said that detecting that rain of alien radio signals would be easy.

“It might not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen,” Werthimer said.

“All of the signals detected by SETI researchers so far are made by our own civilization, not another civilization,” Werthimer grumbled in a series of emails and telephone conversations. Earthlings, he said, might have to build a telescope on the backside of the moon to escape the growing radio pollution on Earth and the interference from constellations of satellites in orbit.

The present time, he said, might be a unique window in which to pursue SETI from Earth.

“One hundred years ago, the sky was clear, but we didn’t know what to do,” he said. “One hundred years from now, there will be no sky left.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

• China Says It May Have Detected Signals From Alien Civilizations

Biden Proposes Changes to Help Rescue California Nuclear Plant


Mark Chediak
Fri, June 17, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- The US Department of Energy is proposing changes requested by California Governor Gavin Newsom that will allow the state’s last nuclear power plant to qualify for federal financial assistance.

The Energy Department proposed removing a requirement that would have prevented PG&E Corp.’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant from getting a portion of $6 billion in funds the Biden Administration is making available to rescue reactors at risk of closing early because they are losing money. The Energy Department posted the suggested amendment on its website and asked for public comments by June 27.

Newsom is reconsidering a state plan to retire Diablo Canyon in 2025 because of projected electricity shortages that could lead to blackouts in the state.

The effort to keep Diablo Canyon open would gain momentum if the plant can qualify for federal financial aid. California’s potential reversal of its anti-nuclear power stance underscores the crisis the state is facing as it seeks to decarbonize its grid.

Last month, Newsom asked the Energy Department to amend its nuclear funding criteria so Diablo Canyon would be eligible. The federal program was originally designed to help nuclear plants that were financially struggling in competitive wholesale power markets, which wasn’t the case with Diablo Canyon.

The Energy Department suggested that it would eliminate a requirement that a nuclear reactor applying for funds not recover more than 50% of its costs from regulated rates or contracts. The costs of PG&E’s Diablo Canyon plant are recovered through bill charges to its customers.

NO NEED FOR A MASK

In a pinch, you might be able to breathe through your butt

Cassidy Ward
Sat, June 18, 2022

We generally don’t like to think about the fact that there is a large worm-like organ inside of our abdomens. That’s the sort of thing which you usually only have to make peace with when watching horror comedies like Slither, but it doesn’t stop it from being true. Your intestines stretch for roughly 15 feet inside your body, winding a path between your stomach and rectum.

Despite being among the creepiest of your internal organs, your intestines play a crucial role in your everyday life, taking up nutrients from the food you eat and ridding your body of waste, but their job ends at your end. They can’t, for instance, help you breathe right?

Getting the oxygen needed for survival is achieved through various processes in the animal kingdom. Insects gather oxygen through holes in in their bodies known as spiracles, and some vertebrate animals can breathe through their butts. Sort of.

In the winter, turtles slow their metabolism and get most of their oxygen through their cloaca in a process known as cloacal respiration. Other reptiles and amphibians use similar respiration techniques to breathe without using lungs. If you happen to be a mammal, however, it’s long been believed that if your lungs are out of commission than you are out of luck. At least until recently.

We’ve long known that the intestines could take up chemical components and deliver them to the rest of the body. That’s one of the ways your gut microbiome communicates with your brain, but it was unclear if the same or similar processes could be used to get oxygen into the blood stream.

To test the hypothesis, scientists created a scenario in which pigs and mice in a laboratory were deprived of normal respiration and ventilated via the intestines. To improve the likelihood of oxygen uptake, some animals had their intestines scrubbed in order to thin the mucosal lining and reduce the barrier to the blood stream. Their findings were published in the journal Clinical and Translational Resource and Technology Insights.

Unsurprisingly, control animals who were deprived of respiration and received no intestinal ventilation, died after about 11 minutes. Animals who received intestinal ventilation without the intestinal scrubbing survived almost twice as long, about 18 minutes, indicating that there was some oxygen uptake. Lastly, 75% of those animals who had been scrubbed and received pressurized oxygen into the rectum, survived for an hour, the total length of the experiment.

This seemed to prove that mice and pigs are capable of intestinal respiration under the right conditions, giving researchers reason to believe that other mammals — like humans — might have the same capability.

However, the process of scrubbing the intestines is potentially dangerous and researchers wanted to uncover if there was an alternative solution which could achieve similar results. Their answer turned out to be oxygen-rich liquids known as perfluorocarbons. They repeated a similar experiment, again using mice and pigs, but this time they flooded the intestines which perfluorocarbons instead of gaseous oxygen. They found that the animals experienced increased blood oxygen levels which measured at normal levels.

While the effect has not yet been tested on humans, scientists suggest it might serve as an effective alternative respiration technique when conventional methods like mechanical ventilation don’t work. It’s also possible that introducing high levels of oxygen into the digestive tract will have a negative impact on the microbiome, but that’s generally a secondary concern if you can’t breathe. Further testing is needed to determine if intestinal ventilation might be an effective lifesaving tool in people.

With any luck, most of us won’t ever been in a situation where we’ll need intestinal ventilation. However, if a respiratory disease knocks us on our butts and our lungs are bottoming out, we might be willing to consider a little derri-air.

ANOTHER USE FOR MASKS
Pollution from California's 2020 wildfires likely offset decades of air quality gains

Tony Briscoe
Fri, June 17, 2022

Wildfire smoke drifts through Los Angeles in September 2020.

 (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

It was a nightmare fire season that California won't soon forget.

As more than 9,000 wildfires raged across the landscape, a canopy of smoke shrouded much of the state and drifted as far away as Boston.

All told, more than 4.3 million acres would be incinerated and more than 30 people killed. Economic losses would total more than $19 billion.

But the damage caused by California's 2020 wildfire season is still coming into focus in some respects, particularly when it comes to the air pollution it generated.

In an analysis published this week in the annual Air Quality Life Index, researchers found that wildfire smoke probably offset decades of state and federal antipollution efforts, at least temporarily.

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic took cars off the road and temporarily halted some industries, particulate pollution — widely considered one of the greatest threats to life expectancy — soared to some of the highest levels in decades in parts of California in 2020, according to the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, which produces the report estimating how air pollution may reduce life expectancy.

Nationally, 29 of the top 30 counties with the highest level of particulate pollution that year were in California, researchers found.

The report is the latest to highlight the dangerous health effects of wildfire smoke at a time when drought and climate change are fueling extreme wildfire behavior. Now, as the state enters what is expected to be another serious wildfire season, researchers say the toll these natural disasters can take on human health is striking.

“Places that are experiencing frequent or more frequent wildfires are going to experience higher air pollution levels, not just for a couple of days or weeks, but it could impact the annual level of exposure,” said Christa Hasenkopf, director of air quality programs at the University of Chicago institute. “It can bump up that average to unsafe and unhealthy levels that really do have an impact on people’s health. When we think of wildfires, we think of short-term events — and hopefully they are — but they can have long-term consequences [considering] your overall air pollution exposure.”

Mariposa County, a sparsely populated county seated in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, typically enjoys cleaner air than much of the state. But in 2020 it led the nation in annual average concentrations of fine particulate at 22.6 micrograms per cubic meter — more than four times the World Health Organization recommended guidelines. Likewise, more than half of all counties in California experienced their worst air pollution since satellite measurements began collecting data in 1998.

If the particulate concentrations Mariposa County experienced in 2020 were sustained, the average resident’s life would be shortened by 1.7 years, according to the report. That’s compared to if residents were permanently breathing air in line with widely accepted international health guidelines.

In Tulare County, levels of fine particulate were twice the national average in 2020.

Donelda Moberg, a longtime resident of Lindsay who has emphysema, has grown accustomed to enduring air pollution that drifts to her corner of the San Joaquin Valley from nearby Bakersfield and Fresno. However, in 2020, with many people housebound due to the pandemic, she remembers the skies were much clearer than normal.

By autumn, conditions had taken a dramatic turn with the wildfires.

Moberg, 67, recalls the haze being so thick she couldn’t see the hill six blocks from her home. The pall of smoke above the valley obscured the stars at night and made the sun appear blood-orange during the day. And the abundance of ash falling from the sky regularly coated cars along the street.

For weeks, she didn’t leave the house except to go grocery shopping, or for church services and doctor appointments.

“The sky was a clay color and it made the sun a funny color — it didn’t look normal,” Moberg said. “You could always tell whether it was safe to go out or not by just looking at the way the sun shined.”

Between 1970 and 2020, five decades since the Clean Air Act was passed, the United States has witnessed tremendous progress in curtailing air pollution, including a 66.9% reduction in fine particulate — the pollutant that increases chances of lung disease, heart attack and stroke, the report said.

These reductions have prolonged the lives of most Americans, including those in Los Angeles County, where levels of particle pollution has been halved, extending the average Angeleno’s lifespan by 1.3 years, according to a University of Chicago analysis.

In recent years however, wildfire smoke has accounted for up to half of all fine-particle pollution in the Western United States.

Fine particulate matter has been viewed as one of the preeminent threats to public health. When inhaled, these microscopic particles — 30 times smaller than a human hair — can venture deep into the lungs and into the bloodstream, increasing the chance of lung disease and potentially triggering a heart attack or stroke.

Recent research suggests the fine particulate generated by wildfires to be much more dangerous than other sources of combustion, such as vehicle exhaust or gas-fired power plants.

“When you have a wildfire, they burn everything,” said Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. “They burn cars, they burn buildings, they burn plastic. So it’s not only the level of [particulate pollution] that gets really high, but the type of [this pollution] that you’re breathing.”

The pollution emanating from the 2020 wildfires likely resulted in 1,200 to 3,000 premature deaths for seniors, according to estimates from Stanford University.

In September 2021, the World Health Organization lowered its recommended guideline from 10 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter to 5, a revision scientists say signals that lower levels are detrimental to human health. According to the updated guidelines, nearly 93% of people in the United States lived in counties with unhealthful levels of pollution in 2020, including the entire population of California.

In addition to wildfires, fine particulate is also produced by car tailpipe emissions and smokestacks of fossil fuel power plants. Issues with this pollution are compounded by California’s mountainous terrain, which traps air pollution and allows it to linger, especially within inland valleys that are beyond the reach of ocean breezes.

But the rising threat of wildfires remains on the minds of many.

Amid a third year of drought, much of the San Joaquin Valley is primed for wildfires. All it takes is a bolt of lightning, a spark from a transmission line or a negligently discarded cigarette.

Moberg, who lives in the shadow of hills covered in dry brush, is aware of the delicate balance. But there’s not much she can do besides pray fires and smoke don’t return.

“We’re always like, ‘Please, don’t catch fire, hills.’”



This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Pakistan to stay on terror financing watchdog's 'gray list'



A Pakistan watches news channel flashing news regarding FATF decision, at a market in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, June 17, 2022. An international watchdog said Friday it will keep Pakistan on a so-called "gray list" of countries that do not take full measures to combat money-laundering and terror financing but raised hopes that its removal would follow an upcoming visit to the country to determine its progress. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)More

MUNIR AHMED
Fri, June 17, 2022

ISLAMABAD (AP) — An international watchdog said Friday it will keep Pakistan on a so-called “gray list” of countries that do not take full measures to combat money laundering and terror financing but raised hopes that its removal would follow an upcoming visit to Islamabad to determine its progress.

The announcement by Marcus Pleyer, the president of the Financial Action Task Force, was a blow to Pakistan's newly elected government, which believes that it has mostly complied with the organization's tasks.

Expectations were high in Pakistan that FATF would announce its removal from the list at Friday's meeting in Berlin.

Instead, Pleyer said an onsite inspection by FATF in Pakistan would take place before October, and that a formal announcement on Pakistan's removal would follow. He said FATF is praising Islamabad for implementing the organization's action plans — a clear indication that Pakistan is moving closer to getting off the “gray list."

“Pakistan’s continued political commitment to combating both terrorist financing and money laundering has led to significant progress," FATF said in a statement. The country's efforts were sustained, it said and added that Pakistan’s “necessary political commitment remains in place to sustain implementation and improvement in the future."

Pakistan's foreign ministry said FATF reviewed Pakistan’s progress in countering terror financing during a four-day meeting this week and “acknowledged the completion of Pakistan’s" action plans. It said a visit to Pakistan was authorized as a final step toward exiting from the FATF’s “gray list."

Also Friday, FATF removed Malta from its “gray list" but added Gibraltar. Pleyer urged Gibraltar to take steps in the right direction, including focusing on the gatekeepers to the financial system.

The Paris-based group added Pakistan to the list in 2018. The “gray list” is composed of countries with a high risk of money laundering and terrorism financing but which have formally committed to working with the task force to make changes.

At the time, the south Asian country avoided being put on the organization's “black list” of countries that do not take adequate measures to halt money laundering and terror financing but also have not committed to working with the FATF. The designation severely restricts a country’s international borrowing capabilities.

Still, being on the Paris-based international watchdog's “gray list” can scare away investors and creditors, hurting exports, output and consumption. It also can make global banks wary of doing business with a country.

Pakistan has said it continues to detain suspects involved in terror financing to comply with tasks set by the watchdog. A Pakistani-based independent think tank, Tabadlab, has estimated that it has cost the country’s economy $38 billion since it was put on the gray list in 2018.

The FATF is made up of 37 member countries, including the United States, and two regional groups, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the European Commission. Currently, only Iran and North Korea are blacklisted.

Canada's national police force cost lives in the country's worst mass shooting: report


Isabella Zavarise
Sat, June 18, 2022

A memorial for the 22 people that died in a mass shooting in Portapique, Nova Scotia

Tim Krochak/Getty Images

In April 2020, 22 people were killed in Portapique, Nova Scotia.

The Mass Casualty Commission determined police made crucial errors that cost numerous lives.

The commission was created after criticism from victims' family members about how police handled the event.

A public inquiry into Canada's worst mass shooting has revealed fatal mistakes by police.

In April 2020, amidst the COVID-19 lockdowns, 22 people were killed in Portapique, Nova Scotia, by 51-year-old denturist Gabriel Wortman. An investigation led by an independent public inquiry, also known as the Mass Casualty Commission determined Canada's national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, made errors that cost people's lives.

The shootings took place in the rural community of Portapique, and the communities of Wentworth, Debert, and Enfield, Nova Scotia.

Mistakes ranged from officers accidentally shooting at a fire station in their attempts to stop Wortman, to the RCMP notifying the public on Twitter and Facebook that there was a mass shooting instead of issuing a province-wide alert.

According to Vice News, police initially thought Wortman had died or was hiding in the immediate area after he killed multiple people. During this time he drove hundreds of miles to an area an hour outside the province's capital.

The only reason Wortman was eventually shot and killed was due to a chance encounter with police while filling up the gas tank of a stolen car.

Saltwire reported that at one of the commission testimonies, Dave MacNeil, chief of the Truro Police Service said "there had to be a lot of catastrophic failures for this guy to be on the loose for 13 hours, driving through Nova Scotia."

The commission was created in response to public criticism from victims' family members about the RCMP's response. It is expected to continue its investigation in the coming months and have a final report ready by November.

Apple employees at Maryland store vote to unionize, a first for the tech giant in U.S.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers' president called the vote a "historic victory" for labor.

An Apple store in Maryland

June 18, 2022
By Dennis Romero

Employees of an Apple store in Towson, Maryland, have voted in favor of union representation, a first for the tech giant in the United States.

A majority of store employees voted to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, or IAM, according to the union.

The vote tally, which was announced Saturday, was 65-33 according to IAM.

The mall-based store outside of Baltimore is the first Apple location in the U.S. to unionize.

The IAM on Saturday described the vote as one for history as workers seek representation, often unsuccessfully, in the tech field.

“I applaud the courage displayed by CORE members at the Apple store in Towson for achieving this historic victory,” IAM International President Robert Martinez Jr. said in a statement.

“I ask Apple CEO Tim Cook to respect the election results and fast-track a first contract for the dedicated IAM CORE Apple employees in Towson,” he said.

The Towson Town Center store employees recently paired up with the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees to send a letter to Cook “informing him of the decision to organize,” according to the union’s statement.

The letter implores Cook not to use the resources of one of the world's most valuable companies to "engage in an anti-union campaign to dissuade us."

Apple has so far opposed unionization of its stores. The company had no comment about the vote.

Apple will be required to bargain with the union after the National Labor Relations Board certifies the votes.

WHITE POWER
Building anger in rural New Mexico erupts in election crisis

Otero County, New Mexico Commissioner Couy Griffin speaks to reporters at federal court in Washington, Friday, June. 17, 2022. Griffin, who is a central figure in a New Mexico county’s refusal to certify recent election results based on debunked conspiracy theories about voting machines, has avoided more jail time for joining the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol. He was sentenced to 14 days behind bars, which he has already served. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)Less

MORGAN LEE
Sat, June 18, 2022

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Behind the raw public frustration and anger over election security that has played out this week in New Mexico was a hint of something deeper -- a growing divide between the state’s Democratic power structure and conservative rural residents who feel their way of life is under attack.

In Otero County, where the crisis over certifying the state’s June 7 primary election began, County Commissioner Vickie Marquardt struck a defiant tone as she relented under pressure from the state’s Democratic attorney general, Democratic secretary of state and a state Supreme Court dominated by Democratic appointees.

One of the main explanations she gave for reversing course had nothing to do with questions over the security of voting machines — the reason the all-Republican, three-member commission had originally refused to certify its election.

“If we get removed from office, nobody is going to be here fighting for the ranchers, and that’s where our fight should be right now,” said Marquardt, the commission chairwoman in a county where former President Donald Trump won nearly 62% of the vote in 2020.

Otero County is similar to the handful of other New Mexico counties where residents have questioned the accuracy of election results and given voice to unfounded conspiracy theories about voting systems that have rippled across the country since former President Donald Trump lost re-election in 2020.

In the state’s vast, rural stretches, frustration over voting and political representation has been building for years. Residents have felt marginalized and overrun by government decisions that have placed limits on livelihoods — curtailing access to water for livestock, shrinking the amount of forest land available for grazing, or halting timber operations and energy developments due to endangered species concerns.

Tensions have mounted as Democrats in New Mexico consolidate control over every statewide office and the Supreme Court. Democrats have dominated the Legislature for generations.

Even as they voted to certify their elections, sometimes reluctantly, commissioners from several New Mexico counties said they were bound by the law to take that step — thanks to legislation passed by Democrats. They urged their residents to take the fight to the statehouse.

Some bemoaned what they felt was an encroachment by the state on the powers of local government. Marquardt, from Otero County, complained of her commission’s meager “rubber stamping” authority under laws enacted by Democrats and an election certification “railroaded” through by larger forces.

Otero County is among more than a dozen self-proclaimed 2nd Amendment “sanctuary” counties in rural New Mexico to approve defiant resolutions against recent state gun control laws. The county also has embraced resistance to President Joe Biden’s goals for conservation of more private land and waterways for natural habitat, arguing it will cordon off already limited private land.

Amid alienation, skepticism about the security of elections has taken flight.

On Friday, Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin was the lone dissenting vote in the election certification, though he acknowledged that he had no evidence of problems or factual basis for questioning the results of the election. His vote came after the county elections clerk said the primary went off without a hitch and that the results were confirmed afterward.

The former rodeo rider and co-founder of Cowboys for Trump dialed into the meeting because he was in Washington, D.C., where hours before he had been sentenced for entering restricted U.S. Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Applause rang out when Griffin declared, “I think we need to hold our ground.”

The developments in New Mexico can be traced to far-right conspiracy theories over voting machines that have spread across the country over the past two years. Various Trump allies have claimed that Dominion voting systems had somehow been manipulated as part of an elaborate scheme to steal the election, which Biden won.

There has been no evidence of widespread fraud that would have changed the results of the 2020 presidential election, and testimony before the congressional committee investigating the insurrection has made clear that many in Trump’s inner circle told him the same as he schemed to retain power.

The election clash that erupted this past week worries Dian Burwell, a registered independent and coffee shop manager in the Otero County seat of Alamogordo.

“We want people to vote and when they see all this, they’ll just say, ‘Why bother?’” Burwell said.

Despite New Mexico counties’ eventual votes to certify their primary results, election officials and experts fear the mini-rebellion is just the start of efforts nationwide to sow chaos around voting and vote-counting, building toward the 2024 presidential election. The New Mexico secretary of state’s office said it had been inundated with calls from officials around the country concerned that certification controversies will become a new front in the attacks on democratic norms.

In another New Mexico county where residents angrily denounced the certification, commissioners were denounced as “cowards and traitors” by a hostile crowd before voting. Torrance County Commissioner LeRoy Candelaria, a Republican and Vietnam veteran, voted to certify the results without apologies, despite the personal insults.

The semi-retired rancher and highway maintenance foreman said he has taken time outside commission meetings to explain his position that New Mexico’s vote-counting machines are well-tested and monitored.

“Our county clerk did an excellent job. I don’t think there’s a vote that went wrong in any way,” Candelaria said later in a telephone interview. “My personal opinion is there are people who are still mad about the last presidential election. ... Let’s worry about the next election and not take things personally.”

___

Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Anita Snow and Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed to this report.

DOMINION VOTING MACHINES ARE A CANADIAN COMPANY USED FOR FEDERAL, PROVINCIAL AND MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS FOR DECADES, SECURELY 

AMERIKA REMAINS A SLAVE STATE

Group of federal lawmakers working to remove slavery loophole in U.S. Constitution


Kirstin Garriss
Fri, June 17, 2022

Juneteenth is now a federal holiday marking the end of slavery, but a group of lawmakers says there’s a loophole that has allowed another form of slavery to evolve with forced involuntary labor inside the nation’s prison system.

The ACLU estimates that incarcerated workers produce at least two $2 billion in goods and $9 billion dollars worth of prison maintenance services a year, but those prisoners don’t earn much.

Daniel Rosen said he knows firsthand after serving 6 years in prison.

“You feel like property of the state. A lot prison uniforms say property of that state and it’s not about clothes you’re wearing it’s about the person,” said Rosen, a formerly incarcerated individual who now works for Worth Rises.

Rosen and Robert Willis, who spent 7 years in prison collectively, are part of a national push to improve workforce conditions for prisoners. These two formerly incarcerated men say they understand being held accountable for their crimes, but they say the process should be humane.

“Being dehumanized, not appreciated, and it actually affects you when you return back into society because you just spent the last number of years being you know in slave-like conditions,” said Robert Willis, formerly incarcerated individual and now Justice Advocacy Coordinator for Latino Justice.

A new ACLU report examining prison labor at the state and federal levels shows some states pay prisoners an average of 15 and 52 cents per hour but the state prison systems in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas don’t pay at all for a majority of its prison work

In a statement to the Washington News Bureau, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said humane treatment is a top priority and that “an inmate’s job assignment shall be made with consideration of the institution’s security and operational needs, and should be consistent with the safekeeping of the inmate and protection of the public.”

Georgia Congresswoman Nikema Williams is leading the effort to remove the slavery clause from the 13th amendment that still allows it as punishment for a crime.

“We’re building towards the future, we’re correcting those things from the past and this is one of those stains of our past that we absolutely need to address, she said.

Congresswoman Williams said she has more than 130 sponsors for the bill in the House which includes some Republican support.

“This an education piece, because I’ll be honest with you, before I came to Congress, I didn’t realize that this was a part of the Constitution,” said Williams. “I’m grateful to be having conversations with you so that we can make sure that people understand that this is still legal in our United States Constitution and that’s why we have to remove it…it’s about making sure that people are aware, and then taking the action to actually do something about it.”

Williams said she will need a two-thirds majority to pass because this is a Constitutional amendment. But Some Republicans aren’t supportive of the measure.

“Requiring convicted, able-bodied criminals, to perform meaningful work is in no way comparable to the atrocity of slave ownership,” said Congressman Ralph Norman (R – South Carolina) in a written statement. “This is another glaring example of how soft on crime the Democrat party has become. Prison is not a bed & breakfast, and it’s not asking too much for convicted criminals to work, especially since the rest of society is shouldered with the massive costs of their incarceration.”

But for Rosen and Willis, they say removing that clause sends a message to the prison system.

“That human rights matter because at the end of the day this is a human rights issue,” said Willis.

The ACLU is also pushing for incarcerated workers to get the same labor protections as other workers which would include earning minimum wage, setting health and safety standards and protection from discrimination.

LGBTQ/HUMAN RIGHTS 

VS RELIGIOUS RITES

Lithuanian bishops call for scrapping of same-sex partnership bill


 LGBTQ2 Pride parade in Vilnius


Sat, June 18, 2022
By Andrius Sytas

VILNIUS (Reuters) - Lithuanian bishops have called on politicians to vote down proposed same-sex partnership legislation, quoting words used by Pope Francis to argue that civil unions distort the concept of marriage and family.

Lithuania's parliament last month voted to accept for further debate a draft bill legalizing same-sex civil partnerships, after voting down a similar bill in May 2021.

In a pastoral letter to the faithful, the Lithuanian Bishops Conference -- a body which unites the country's bishops -- quoted a 2016 treatise by Pope Francis which states "de facto unions or unions of the same sex cannot simply be equated with marriage".

"The draft law on civil unions essentially proposes what Pope Francis urges us not to do - to equate de facto unions and same-sex unions with marriage. We cannot support this bill, which distorts and devalues the concepts of marriage and the family," the bishops wrote.

The bishops said civil partnership could be "a Trojan Horse" leading to civil marriage.

The letter did not touch on Pope Francis' 2020 declaration that gays should be protected by civil union laws.

An April 2021 an opinion poll found 70% of adult Lithuanians oppose same-sex partnerships.

Three quarters of Lithuania's 2.8 million population identify as Roman Catholics, and several parliamentarians called homosexuality a "sin" during the debate before the vote on taking the bill up for further readings.

In a nod to critics, the same-sex bill in the parliament no longer defines partnerships as an "emotional connection" or allows partners to assume a common surname.

"The law could better defend human dignity, but support was needed and this (wording) was the lowest threshold possible," said Gabrielius Landsbergis, head of the ruling Homeland Union party.

Lithuanian bishops have thrown their weight behind an alternative bill, also under consideration in the parliament, that would allow a group of people to declare a "close connection" and be given additional rights.

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Editing by Christina Fincher)

Archaeologists Examining 'Extremely Rare' 1,300-Year-Old Ship They Need to Water Every 30 Minutes

Abigail Adams

Fri, June 17, 2023

An archaeologist from the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) sprays water during a hot day to maintain the moisture of an unearthed mysterious 1,300-year-old wreck during its presentation to the media in Villenave-d'Ornon near Bordeaux, southwestern France, on June 14, 2022.

PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty

Archeologists in France have uncovered an "extremely rare" yet fragile shipwreck in France believed to be 1,300 years old.

The French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) revealed the 12-meter (40-foot) boat to the public Wednesday in Villenave-d'Ornon on the banks of the Garonne in southwest France, according to NBC News.

However, the wreck's beams of oak, chestnut and pine are delicate enough that air could destroy it, having not been in contact with oxygen or light since it sank, per the report.

Excavation leader Laurent Grimber told the outlet that workers "are watering" the partial remains of the wreck "every 30 minutes" as they aim to "limit the degradation of the wood."

Doing so, Grimber explained, is "especially" important at the moment as southwest France experiences a heatwave.

Two archaeologists from the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) look at a unearthed mysterious 1,300-year-old wreck before its presentation to the media in Villenave-d'Ornon near Bordeaux, southwestern France, on June 14, 2022.

PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty

On its website, Inrap described the vessel as an "exceptional testimony to the naval architecture of the high Middle Ages," with radiocarbon dates between A.D. 680 and A.D. 720, per NBC News.

The excavation and dismantling portion of the shipwreck project is running on schedule and "should be finished by mid-September," Grimber told NBC News.

As it is cleared, the shipwreck will be "documented by photo surveys, 3D restitution, [and] topography," according to the institute. The pieces of wood will also be recorded "and numbered piece by piece" as the ship is taken apart.

An archaeologist from the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) removes a water pump keeping dry an unearthed mysterious 1,300-year-old wreck during its presentation to the media in Villenave-d'Ornon near Bordeaux, southwestern France, on June 14, 2022.

PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP via Getty

Inrap called the wreck "an exceptional testimony to a little-known period of history, navigation and shipbuilding" and hopes to learn more about the ship's environment "and the reasons for its presence."

"This dismantling will allow a detailed analysis of the construction of the boat," the institute said on its website, calling the wreck "an essential operation to determine the naval architectural tradition to which it is attached."

Inrap said the shipwreck "is in a good state of preservation," with some items such as ropes "still present inside." Archeologists believe the ship "could carry bulk goods" due to "the presence of a floor" among the wreckage.

"Each piece of wood that is dismantled teaches us more about the shipbuilding techniques of the early Middle Ages," Grimber told NBC News.

Pleas for help as Myanmar awaits high-profile executions





Kyaw Min Yu, one of the leaders of the 88 Generation Students Group, talks to reporters during the group's press conference in Yangon

Sat, June 18, 2022

(Reuters) - The wife of pro-democracy figure Kyaw Min Yu, sentenced to be executed on the orders of Myanmar's ruling generals, says that if her husband dies he will take with him the beliefs he has carried throughout a life spent fighting dictatorship.

Kyaw Min Yu, better known as Jimmy, and former lawmaker and hip-hop artist Phyo Zeya Thaw are set to be the first people since 1988 to be executed judicially in Myanmar.

They were sentenced to death in January for treason and terrorism in a closed-doors trial, accused of helping militias to fight the army that seized power last year and unleashed a bloody crackdown on its opponents.

The military has not said when they would be hanged, but speculation is rife in Myanmar that the executions are imminent.

The planned executions have been strongly condemned abroad and two U.N. experts have called them a "vile attempt at instilling fear" among the people.

Kyaw Min Yu's wife, Nilar Thein, said her husband, a political prisoner for 18 years under Myanmar's last military dictatorship, was being made an example of for refusing to cooperate with his captors.

"He would never trade his political beliefs with anything. He will continue to stand by his beliefs," Nilar Thein, who is in hiding, told Reuters by phone.

"Ko Jimmy will continue to live in our hearts."

Kyaw Min Yu, 53, and Phyo Zeya Thaw, a 41-year-old ally of ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, lost their appeal earlier this month.

It is not clear how they pleaded in their trial, nor the extent of their alleged involvement in the resistance movement, which is fighting what it calls a "people's defensive war" against the junta.

Asked if Kyaw Min Yu was involved, his wife said she would not acknowledge the military's portrayal of him, but said the whole country was involved in a revolt, against the generals' "terrorist acts".

'SYSTEMATIC ATTACK'

Several foreign governments, including the United States and France, and rights groups have fiercely criticised the planned executions.

"The world must not lose sight of the fact that these death sentences are being meted out in the context of the military murdering civilians nearly every day in its widespread and systematic attack on the people of Myanmar," said Tom Andrews, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, and Morris Tidball-Binz, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial summary or arbitrary executions.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said it has documented 114 people sentenced to death in Myanmar since the February 2021 coup, in what it called secretive tribunals with "lightning convictions" aimed to chill dissent.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), appealed in a letter this month to junta leader Min Aung Hlaing not to carry out the executions, relaying deep concern among Myanmar's neighbours.

The junta has signalled it will not back down and has called Western criticism "reckless and interfering". 

On Thursday, its spokesperson said the sentence was appropriate.

"Required actions are needed to be done in the required moments," Zaw Min Tun told a news conference.

Phyo Zeya Thaw's wife said the two men were targeted because of their status among a youth movement that held months of anti-coup demonstrations last year. She said the decision to resume executions would be a test of international support for the opposition, and appealed for foreign intervention.

"The junta is trying to kill the revolution," Thazin Nyunt Aung told Reuters by phone from an undisclosed location.

"We have been fighting this revolution with the mindset that we have nothing but ourselves. Now, we have started to question whether we have the world with us or not," she said.

(Reporting by Reuters Staff; Editing by Martin Petty and Frances Kerry)

Yellowstone flooding rebuild could take years, cost billions

LINDSAY WHITEHURST and BRIAN MELLEY
Sat, June 18, 2022,

Created in 1872 as the United States was recovering from the Civil War, Yellowstone was the first of the national parks that came to be referred to as America’s best idea. Now, the home to gushing geysers, thundering waterfalls and some of the country’s most plentiful and diverse wildlife is facing its biggest challenge in decades.

Floodwaters this week wiped out numerous bridges, washed out miles of roads and closed the park as it approached peak tourist season during its 150th anniversary celebration. Nearby communities were swamped and hundreds of homes flooded as the Yellowstone River and its tributaries raged.

The scope of the damage is still being tallied by Yellowstone officials, but based on other national park disasters, it could take years and cost upwards of $1 billion to rebuild in an environmentally sensitive landscape where construction season only runs from the spring thaw until the first snowfall.

Based on what park officials have revealed and Associated Press images and video taken from a helicopter, the greatest damage seemed to be to roads, particularly on the highway connecting the park's north entrance in Gardiner, Montana, to the park's offices in Mammoth Hot Springs. Large sections of the road were undercut and washed away as the Gardner River jumped its banks. Perhaps hundreds of footbridges on trails may have been damaged or destroyed.

“This is not going to be an easy rebuild,” Superintendent Cam Sholly said early in the week as he highlighted photos of massive gaps of roadway in the steep canyon. “I don’t think it’s going to be smart to invest potentially, you know, tens of millions of dollars, or however much it is, into repairing a road that may be subject to seeing a similar flooding event in the future."

Re-establishing a human imprint in a national park is always a delicate operation, especially as a changing climate makes natural disasters more likely. Increasingly intense wildfires are occurring, including one last year that destroyed bridges, cabins and other infrastructure in Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California.

Flooding has already done extensive damage in other parks and is a threat to virtually all the more-than 400 national parks, a report by The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization found in 2009.

Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state closed for six months after the worst flooding in its history in 2006. Damage to roads, trails, campgrounds and buildings was estimated at $36 million.

Yosemite Valley in California's Yosemite National Park has flooded several times, but suffered its worst damage 25 years ago when heavy downpours on top of a large snowpack — a scenario similar to the Yellowstone flood — submerged campgrounds, flooded hotel rooms, washed out bridges and sections of road, and knocked out power and sewer lines. The park was closed for more than two months.

Congress allocated $178 million in emergency funds – a massive sum for park infrastructure at the time – and additional funding eventually surpassed $250 million, according to a 2013 report.

But the rebuilding effort once estimated to last four to five years dragged out for 15, due in part to environmental lawsuits over a protected river corridor and a long bureaucratic planning and review process.

It's not clear if Yellowstone would face the same obstacles, though reconstructing the road that runs near Mammoth Hot Springs, where steaming water bubbles up over an otherworldly series of stone terraces, presents a challenge.

It’s created by a unique natural formation of underground tubes and vents that push the hot water to the surface, and would be just one of many natural wonders crews would have to be careful not to disturb, said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Along with the formation itself, there are also microbes and insects that thrive in the environment found almost nowhere else. And the park will need to avoid damaging any archaeological or cultural artifacts in the area with a rich Native American history.

“They’ll have to look at all the resources the park is designed to protect, and try to do this project as carefully as possible, but they’re also going to try to go fairly quickly,” Hartl said.

Having to reroute the roadway that hugged the Gardner River could be an opportunity to better protect the waterway and the fish and other species that thrive there from oil and other microscopic pollution that comes from passing vehicles, Hartl said.

“The river will be healthier for it,” he said.

The Yosemite flood was seen by the park as an opportunity to rethink its planning and not necessarily rebuild in the same places, said Frank Dean, president and chief executive of the Yosemite Conservancy and a former park ranger.

Some facilities were relocated outside the flood plain and some campgrounds that had been submerged in the flood were never restored. At Yosemite Lodge, cabins that had been slated for removal in the 1980s were swamped and had to be removed.

“The flood took them all out like a precision strike,” Dean said. “I’m not going to say it’s a good thing, but providence came in and made the decision for them.”

Yellowstone's recovery comes as a rapidly growing number of people line up to visit the country’s national parks, even as a backlog of deferred maintenance budget grows into tens of billions of dollars. The park was already due for funding from the Great American Outdoors Act, a 2020 law passed by Congress that authorizes nearly $3 billion for maintenance and other projects on public lands.

Now it will need another infusion of money for more pressing repairs that Emily Douce, director of operations and park funding at National Parks Conservation Association, estimated could hit at least $1 billion.

The southern half of the park is expected to reopen next week, allowing visitors to flock to Old Faithful, the rainbow colored Grand Prismatic Spring, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and its majestic waterfall.

But the flood-damaged northern end may not reopen this year, depriving visitors from seeing Tower Fall and Lamar Valley, one of the best places in the world to see wolves and grizzly bears. Some days during the high season, an animal sighting can lead to thousands of people parked on the side of the road hoping to catch a glimpse.

Whether some of these areas are reopened will depend on how quickly washed-out roads can be repaired, downed trees can be removed and mudslides cleared.

Maintaining the approximately 466 miles (750 kilometers) of roadway throughout the park is a major job. Much of the roadway originally was designed for stagecoaches, said Kristen Brengel, senior vice-president of public affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association.

“Part of the effort of the last couple of decades has been to stabilize the road to make it safe for heavier vehicles to travel on it,” she said.

Located at a high elevation where snow and cold weather is not uncommon eight months of the year and there are many tiny earthquakes, road surfaces don't last as long and road crews have a short window to complete projects. One recently completed road job created closures for about two years.

“I think it’ll probably be several years before the park is totally back to normal," Hartl said.

15,000 turnout expected at Asian American-led march on National Mall

“This is not just symbolic,” one organizer said.

 “We are actually trying to get folks to get plugged into the issues that they care about the most and by participating, show our political power.

People gather in view of the Washington monument.

Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images file


June 15, 2022,
By Tat Bellamy-Walker

Approximately 15,000 people are expected to gather at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., later this month for a first multicultural march led by the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.

The Unity March will be held June 25 and include more than 50 Asian American nonprofit organizations and other diverse groups. Advocates are pushing for more civic participation within the AAPI community and across other racial groups, as well as an emphasis on racial and economic justice.

"The Unity March is a historic moment because it’s the first march on Washington led by Asian Americans," Kevin K. Hirano, a spokesperson for the march, wrote in an email. He said the goals were to unite community groups and to "demonstrate our collective strength as Asian Americans and allies to make change."

The march will include Asian American advocacy groups, including Asian Americans Advancing Justice — AAJC, Gold House, Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote) and Sikh American Legal Defense Fund (SALDEF). Organizations representing other historically marginalized communities, such as Voto Latino and the NAACP, will also take part.

The organizers also hope to use their platform to highlight other key issues impacting communities of color. This includes creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented people, strengthening voting rights, and supporting state and local efforts for multicultural studies in K-12 and university systems.

“This is not just symbolic,” Tiffany Chang, a spokesperson for Unity March, previously told NBC Asian America. “We are actually trying to get folks to get plugged into the issues that they care about the most and by participating, show our political power.”

Exclusive: China firms in advanced talks with Qatar for gas field stakes, LNG offtake - sources

Fri, June 17, 2022,

By Chen Aizhu

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - China's national oil majors are in advanced talks with Qatar to invest in the North Field East expansion of the world's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) project and buy the fuel under long-term contracts, three people with knowledge of the matter said.

It would be the first such partnership between the two nations, among the world's top LNG consumers and producers, as the Middle Eastern energy exporter shifts to expand its Asian client base at. Global energy corporations used to be the main investors in Qatar's gas industry.

The Qatari supply deal will help China create a buffer against spot price volatility and diversify its imports; relations with two major suppliers, the United States and Australia, are at a low point, and another, Russia, is in the midst of a war and faces widespread sanctions. Beijing views gas a strategic bridge fuel to replace coal on its path to carbon neutrality by 2060.

Qatar was China's largest LNG supplier after Australia in the first five months of 2022, data on Refinitiv Eikon showed.

GRAPHIC: China's share of LNG imports from Qatar jumped to 24.9% in Jan-May 2022 from 11.7% in Jan-May 2021 

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/mypmnrgnbvr/ChinaLNGfromQatar.png

State-controlled CNPC and Sinopec are expected to invest a 5% stake each in two separate export trains, part of the nearly $30 billion North Field expansion project, the three sources with knowledge of the discussions told Reuters.

"The participation, even of a small stake, would give Chinese direct access to the highly globalized project and learn its management and operational expertise," said one of the sources, a senior Beijing-based industry official.

The North Field Expansion includes six LNG trains that will ramp up Qatar's liquefaction capacity from 77 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) to 126 mtpa by 2027, consolidating its status as the world's largest producer. Qatar treats each export train as one joint venture and CNPC and Sinopec will invest in one train each, the sources said.

Sinopec declined to comment. A CNPC representative said he had no information to share.

QatarEnergy did not respond to Reuters' request for comment.

In addition, CNPC and Sinopec are negotiating with state-run QatarEnergy to buy up to 4 mtpa of LNG each for up to 27 years, said two of the sources, in what would be the single-largest purchase deals of the super-chilled fuel between the two nations.

China in 2021 imported nearly 9 million tonnes of LNG from Qatar, or 11% of the country's total LNG imports.

Discussions are focused on the pricing of long-term supply deals that will be linked to the global oil market, another of the three sources said.

QatarEnergy said on Sunday that TotalEnergies had become its first partner for the project, winning a 25% stake in one train. Asian buyers are expected to make up half the market for the project, and buyers in Europe the rest, QatarEnergy's chief executive said.

Exxon Mobil Corp, Shell, ConocoPhillips and Eni had also submitted bids for the project.

GRAPHIC: Key global LNG prices 

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/znvnegzempl/KeyLNGPricesJune2022.png

"Chinese participation in the trains are more of a financial investor as the stake is very small. The key is the price negotiations for the long-term gas offtakes," the third source said.

This person added that Indian companies are also interested in discussing stakes with Qatar, but did not elaborate.

China, the world's top LNG buyer in 2021, imports 45% of its natural gas needs and sees Qatar as a reliable long-term supplier after a flurry of purchase agreements with the United States in late 2021.

(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; additional reporting by Marwa Rashad and Ron Bousso in London and Andrew Mills in Doha; editing by)