Using paleogenomics to elucidate 10,000 years of immune system evolution

by Pasteur Institute

Explanatory diagram. Credit: Gaspard Kerner, Institut Pasteur

In the 1950s, the geneticist J.B.S. Haldane attributed the maintenance or persistence of the mutation responsible for anomalies in red blood cells commonly observed in Africa to the protection these anomalies provided against malaria, an endemic infection that claims millions of lives. This theory suggested that pathogens are among the strongest selective pressures faced by humans. Several population genetics studies subsequently confirmed the theory.

But major questions remained, especially regarding the specific epochs during which the selective pressures exerted by pathogens on human populations were strongest and their impact on the present-day risk of developing inflammatory or autoimmune disorders.

To address these questions, scientists from the Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, the CNRS and the Collège de France, in collaboration with the Imagine Institute and The Rockefeller University (United States), adopted an approach based on paleogenomics.

This discipline, which studies the DNA from fossil remains, has led to major discoveries about the history and evolution of humans and human diseases, as illustrated by the decision to award the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to the paleogeneticist Svante Pääbo.

In the study led by the Institut Pasteur, published on January 13 in the journal Cell Genomics, the scientists analyzed the variability of the genomes of more than 2,800 individuals who lived in Europe over the past ten millennia—a period covering the Neolithic, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Middle Ages and the present.

By reconstituting the evolution over time of hundreds of thousands of genetic mutations, the scientists initially identified mutations that rapidly increased in frequency in Europe, indicating that they were advantageous. These mutations that evolved under "positive" natural selection are mainly located in 89 genes enriched in functions relating to the innate immune response, including especially the OAS genes—which are responsible for antiviral activity—and the gene responsible for the ABO blood group system.

Surprisingly, most of these positive selection events, which demonstrate a genetic adaptation to the pathogenic environment, began recently, from the start of the Bronze Age, around 4,500 years ago. The scientists explain this "acceleration" in adaptation by the growth in the human population during this period and/or by strong selective pressures exerted by pathogens in the Bronze Age, probably linked to the spread of severe infectious diseases such as plague.

At the same time, the scientists also looked at the opposite situation, in other words, mutations whose frequency fell significantly over the past ten millennia. These mutations are probably subject to "negative" selection because they increase the risk of disease.

They noted that once again, these selection events mainly began in the Bronze Age. Many of these disadvantageous mutations were also located in genes associated with the innate immune response, such as TYK2, LPB, TLR3 and IL23R, and have been confirmed in experimental research to have a deleterious effect in terms of infectious disease risk. The results emphasize the value of adopting an evolutionary approach in research on genetic susceptibility to infectious diseases.

Finally, the scientists explored the theory that the selection exerted by pathogens in the past gave an advantage to alleles conferring resistance to infectious diseases, but that in turn these alleles have increased the present-day risk of autoimmune or inflammatory disorders. They investigated the few thousand mutations known to increase susceptibility firstly to tuberculosis, hepatitis, HIV or COVID-19, and secondly to rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus or inflammatory bowel disease.

By looking at the evolution of these mutations over time, they observed that those associated with an increased risk of inflammatory disorders—including Crohn's disease—became more frequent over the past 10,000 years, while the frequency of those associated with a risk of developing infectious diseases decreased.

"These results suggest that the risk of inflammatory disorders has increased in Europeans since the Neolithic period because of a positive selection of mutations improving resistance to infectious diseases," explains Lluis Quintana-Murci, director of the study and Head of the Human Evolutionary Genetics Unit (Institut Pasteur/CNRS Evolutionary Genomics, Modeling and Health Unit/Université Paris Cité).

The results of the study, which harnessed the huge potential of paleogenomics, show that natural selection has targeted human immunity genes over the past ten millennia in Europe, especially since the start of the Bronze Age, and contributed to present-day disparities in terms of the risk of infectious and inflammatory diseases.

More information: Gaspard Kerner et al, Genetic adaptation to pathogens and increased risk of inflammatory disorders in post-Neolithic Europe, Cell Genomics (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.xgen.2022.100248

Provided by Pasteur Institute Ancient DNA reveals clues about how tuberculosis shaped the human immune system

CBC DOES OPPO RESEARCH FOR TORIES

Poilievre calls for parliamentary probe of Liberals' relationship with McKinsey consulting firm

SAY MERCI PIERRE

Story by Peter Zimonjic • Tuesday- Global News

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Tuesday he wants a Commons committee to probe the Liberal government's relationship with McKinsey & Company after a report revealed that the value of federal contracts held by the consulting firm has increased dramatically since 2015.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he wants a Commons committee to investigate the Liberal government's relationship with consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

© Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Radio-Canada reported recently that the cost of McKinsey's federal contracts has increased 30-fold under the current Liberal government.

"It's time for Canadians to get answers," Poilievre said. "We need to know what this money was for, what influence McKinsey has had in our government, and it is time for Canadian taxpayers to have answers to these questions."

According to public accounts data from Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), McKinsey was awarded $2.2 million in federal contracts during the Harper years. Over Trudeau's seven years in office, the company has received $66 million from the federal government.

McKinsey, an American firm with 30,000 consultants in 130 offices in 65 countries, provides advice to both private and public entities — which sometimes have conflicting interests — and does not disclose its business ties.

McKinsey has advised many national governments on their COVID-19 pandemic response in recent years, including those in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Mexico.

Radio-Canada's analysis showed that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) account for 44 per cent of federal contracts issued to the consultancy since 2015.

IRCC alone has given McKinsey $24.5 million in contracts for management advice since 2015.

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada also hired the firm for management advice, science and research services, while the Department of National Defence paid McKinsey several million dollars for leadership development.

Since the start of 2021, PSPC has called upon McKinsey on behalf of various federal entities for contracts worth more than $45 million. All of those contracts were sole-source, according to documents obtained by Radio-Canada.

Amount paid to consulting firm McKinsey by the Trudeau government

Poilievre said that he is not calling for a full public inquiry. He said a Conservative MP will propose a motion before a parliamentary committee calling for a probe into the firm's relationship with the Liberal government.

"We want to know what all this money was for," Poilievre said. "We also want to know about the outsized influence of this company in the operation of our government, our democracy."

Related video: Blanchet calls for 'scrutiny' as Conservatives press for committee probe of McKinsey contracts (cbc.ca)  Duration 2:14  View on Watch

The Conservative leader said his MPs will be requesting copies of all contracts the Liberal government has with McKinsey as well as all text messages, emails and other communications between officials regarding the firm's work.

In a statement issued Tuesday, McKinsey said its work for the federal government has been nonpartisan and focuses on managerial and operational issues.

"Our firm does not make policy recommendations," the statement said, adding that the company has followed federal procurement rules.

"We are proud of the work we do on behalf of the Government of Canada and the programs which we have strengthened through our independent analyses and advice," the statement said.

The statement said the company would appear before a committee if asked to do so.

Blanchet says opposition must scrutinize Liberal government

Poilievre said a future Conservative government led by him would get better value for money by relying less on consultants and more on the public service.

The federal government said it employs consulting firms to provide high-quality services and ensure the best possible value for taxpayers. It said departments are required to award contracts in a fair, open and transparent manner.

The governments of Quebec and Ontario also hired McKinsey to advise them on their pandemic responses and plan for the economic recovery.

An investigation by the French Senate accused consulting firms like McKinsey of undermining national sovereignty and making the state dependent on them.

McKinsey also has been under investigation in France over tax filings, the awarding of contracts and its role in President Emmanuel Macron's 2017 and 2022 election campaigns.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet stopped short of accusing the Liberal government of wrongdoing. He said that while he may have his suspicions, his job is to find out what's going on.

"Our job is to make sure that we know as much as possible and for each and every detail that we will not know. The population of Quebec and Canada will have to ask questions themselves," he said.

Blanchet would not weigh in on the Quebec provincial government's use of McKinsey, saying his job is to focus on holding the federal Liberals to account.

"This government cannot be left alone. It has to be under scrutiny all the time because they have some bad really habits," he said.

The NDP also supports a parliamentary review of the contracts.

NDP ethics critic Matthew Green issued a statement Tuesday noting the Conservatives also awarded McKinsey $2.2 million in contracts when they were in power. He said Canadians are "disgusted" by the enormous contracts awarded under the Liberals.

"Canada has a strong public service who can do this work at a fraction of the cost, so there's no reason for Trudeau to choose to hand buckets of money to his billionaire CEO friends instead," Green said.

"This is part of a sustained campaign to undermine our public service workers. The Liberals should be ashamed of themselves."

KILL A WORKER GO TO JAIL
Worker died after getting tangled in rolling machine, feds say. Company pleads guilty

MURDER NOT MANSLAUGHTER


Julia Marnin
Wed, January 11, 2023 

A woman died within months of starting a job as a machine operator at a plastic manufacturing plant in Alabama, according to federal prosecutors. They argue the company running the facility was to blame for her death.

Catalina Estillado, who also went by Eva Saenz, became tangled in a set of moving rollers as part of machinery producing flat plastic sheets and was killed while working for ABC Polymer Industries LLC in Helena, a city about 20 miles south of Birmingham, court documents state.

The machinery was supposed to have a barrier in place while active under Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, according to prosecutors. However, it wasn’t in place when Estillado was pulled into it on Aug. 16, 2017, officials said.

Now, ABC Polymer on Jan. 10 pleaded guilty to an OSHA violation causing the employee’s death, the Justice Department announced in a Jan. 11 news release.

Estillado’s “tragic death was entirely preventable,” Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim, of the department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement.

The company could be sentenced to paying up to a $500,000 fine at a hearing on Jan 24, according to officials.

Erica Williamson Barnes, a company spokeswoman, told McClatchy News in a statement on Jan. 11 that ABC Polymer has “worked tirelessly” since Estillado’s death by making “its manufacturing operations safer by installing new equipment, implementing new policies and procedures, and engaging a third party safety consultant.”

Barnes added that the government has recognized this effort in the company’s plea agreement and that the company “welcomes the opportunity to close this dark chapter in its history and move forward.”

In June, Estillado’s husband was awarded $3 million in damages in a wrongful death lawsuit he filed after his wife was killed, The Birmingham News reported.

More on the case

ABC Polymer, an international plastics manufacturer headquartered in Alabama, hired Estillado on April 25, 2017, according to court documents.

The facility’s machinery Estillado worked with molded materials into plastic sheets before the sheets got pulled through a set of rollers, prosecutors said. Then, the sheets would get sliced into smaller pieces of plastic, according to officials.

For safety, the machinery had an installed barrier guard near the rollers that was supposed to be pulled down while it was moving, according to court documents.

ABC Polymer’s safety policies in place since 2008 stated that the barrier guards were there to protect employees from the equipment, court documents show.

However, this was not the case on Aug. 16, 2017, when Estillado was working unsupervised and got “entangled in the roller drums,” prosecutors said.

ABC Polymer knew employees would lift the barrier guards to cut off plastic that became tangled on the rollers because it trained them to do so, according to officials.

Now the company has “admitted that it knew or should have known that these practices exposed employees to a risk of injuries and death in violation of federal law,” the release said.

ALBERTA

Victim's parents call for better jobsite safety after 28 charges laid in oilsands tailings pond death

Story by Wallis Snowdon • Tuesday

The parents of a 25-year-old oilsands worker who died in a frozen tailings pond in northern Alberta say charges in the case reveal disturbing details about safety failures on site.

Suncor and Christina River Construction face a total of 28 charges under the Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Act in the death of Patrick Poitras.

Poitras was operating a bulldozer on Jan. 13, 2021, at Suncor's base mine about 30 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, when the ice beneath the machine gave way.

Three days later, his body was pulled from the pond.

"Someone didn't do their job and I lost my son because of that," Marcel Poitras said in an interview from his home in New Brunswick.

"My son gave his life for that job."

The charges, laid in November, allege the companies ignored a series of safety protocols when they directed Poitras to operate a dozer on dangerously thin ice.

The case details how the companies allegedly failed to properly check the thickness of the ice and ignored previous measurements that showed it was too thin to bear the weight of the machine.

Christina River Construction, owned by Fort McMurray 468 First Nation, is facing nine charges in the death of their contractor. Suncor is facing 19 counts.

A plea hearing is scheduled for March 15 in Fort McMurray provincial court. Suncor declined to comment on the case as it is before the court. Christina River Construction has not responded to questions about the charges.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Poitras said his son's death was preventable and someone needs to be held accountable.

"It's not the first time this has happened," he said. "With the safety we have today, this is not supposed to happen."

Suncor, one of the largest players in the Alberta oilsands, has been under increased scrutiny for its safety record. At least 12 workers have died at its Alberta oilsands operations since 2014.

Former CEO Mark Little pledged to address the problem, including a promised independent safety review, but stepped down in July 2022, a day after a 26-year-old contractor died after being struck by equipment at Suncor's Base Mine.

Poitras's mother, Cathina Cormier, said she felt grief and disbelief when she learned of the allegations.

"I know there is no price for a human being but when I read the charges, I was angry," Cormier said.

"I had told myself it was just a bad accident."

Cormier said learning details of her son's death has made her grief raw again. She wants answers about what went wrong that day.

"The question and keep asking myself is who sent him there? Who sent my son to do that job?

"I cannot lay my boy to rest because of this."

According to the charges, Poitras was directed to operate a John Deere dozer on the ice of a tailings pond when available ice measurements showed the minimum ice thickness was less than 17 inches, as required by Suncor's safety plan.

The companies are accused of failing to complete adequate ice checks and failing to ensure ground-penetrating radar was used for ice profiling before dozers were permitted to operate.

They also allegedly failed to ensure dozer operators were wearing personal flotation devices when on the ice.

It is also alleged the companies failed to have a safety plan in place directing Poitras to keep his seatbelt off — and the door unlatched — while he was operating the dozer on the pond.

Suncor also faces a charge for underestimating how much the dozers weighed, and failing to account for the weight of snow when calculating required ice thickness.

It's further alleged that Suncor ignored its own winter geology guidelines that called for work to be deferred on any sites with more than one metre of standing water.

Marcel Poitras said Patrick called him the night before he died and told him that he was worried about safety at the site. He said he was scared to go out on the ice.

"I said, 'If you find that it's dangerous, please stop, because I need you more than you know. I don't want to lose you.' And he said, 'Dad, I'm here to work.'"

Poitras, of Saint-André, N.B., had worked in the oilsands for six years. He had recently returned to New Brunswick for Christmas and planned on moving home for good that spring.



Patrick Poitras died after the dozer he was operating plunged through the ice on an oilsands tailings pond. He was 25.© Patrick Poitras/Facebook

Cormier said her son was serious about his work, but also a "goof" with a penchant for sporting a mullet and making people laugh.

After two years of uncertainty and overwhelming grief, she hopes the outcome of the case will give her some closure.

She is still coming to grips with her son's death, and the death of her father weeks later.

She hopes Patrick's legacy will be ensuring other workers are protected on the job.

"I just want this to never happen again. It's a worst nightmare for a mother.

"Our family went through hell for this."

NBC News and MSNBC Lays Off 75 Staffers Across Networks


Loree Seitz
Thu, January 12, 2023 

NBC News and MSNBC are laying off about 75 employees scattered across the networks, a source with knowledge confirmed Thursday to TheWrap.

The layoffs are a result of targeted programming and editorial changes that will allow the networks, which have a cumulative workforce of around 3,500 staffers total, to invest in key growth areas, according to the source.

Though both branches have recently created hundreds of roles in digital streaming and core television programming, MSNBC and NBC News plans to create new positions in the coming weeks in areas of growth.

The layoffs come a day after Noah Oppenheim stepped down as president of NBC News to take a production deal at NBC Universal. As part of an NBC News reorganization, New York Times deputy managing editor Rebecca Blumenstein takes over the reins as president of editorial, duties for which she’ll share with NBC News execs Libby Leist and Janelle Rodriguez, who will be promoted as part of the reorg.

The news resumes the growing media layoff bloodbath as CNN and Gannett laid off hundreds of employees across their news operations in December, while BuzzFeed slashed 12% of its workforce and the Washington Post let go of 10 staffers from its print Sunday magazine. Gannett, which owns USA Today as well as 100 daily papers and nearly 1,000 weeklies in 44 states, announced that they would axe 6% of its 3,440-person news division.

Earlier in the fall, Morning Brew laid off 14% of its staff and Vice Media trimmed 2% of its digital news and publishing staff last month, while the tech news website Protocol shut down, eliminating 60 jobs, and video news startup The Recount also plans to suspend operations.

CNN’s Oliver Darcy first reported the news.

Also Read:
Will Gonzalez, NBCUniversal EVP and Chief Data Officer, to Oversee Newly Created Television & Streaming Team

ANDREA MITCHELL IS RIGHT

Awkward Silence After MSNBC Anchor

Interrupts Reporter Who Said 'Pro-Life'

Lee Moran

Fri, January 13, 2023 

MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell interrupted NBC News’ Garrett Haake after he used the controversial term “pro-life” while quoting a Republican lawmaker during a segment on Thursday.

Mitchell had asked Haake to explain why Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) expressed reservations about proposed GOP abortion legislation while still voting for it. Haake said Mace told reporters that “at the end of the day, she was, as she described herself, ‘pro-life.’”

Mitchell jumped in, saying: “Let me just interrupt and say that ‘pro-life’ is a term that they, an entire group, wants to use, but that is not an accurate description.”

“I’m using it because that’s the term she used to describe herself, Andrea,” he responded.

“I understand,” Mitchell acknowledged.

A short silence between the pair followed.

“Anyway, that was her explanation,” Mitchell eventually said before turning the conversation to beleaguered Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.).

Watch the exchange here:

The Associated Press recommends using the term ― as well as “pro-choice” and “pro-abortion” ― only if it’s in quotes or part of a proper name.

 

THE AP WRITERS GUIDE IS THE STANDARD FOR JOURNALISM FOR OVER 50 YEARS

Calmes: Republicans have rediscovered fiscal conservatism. Don't believe it for a minute.

Jackie Calmes
Thu, January 12, 2023

Speaker Kevin McCarthy, like the rest of the House Republican conference, is a faux fiscal conservative.

(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)

With a Democrat inhabiting the White House, perhaps the most predictable thing about House Republicans’ return to power is this: They’ve rediscovered their faux fiscal conservatism.

All week members of the Republican majority have been chest-beating about how, thanks to the new House rules they devised, they will restore rectitude to federal budgeting. Income will be balanced against spending and debt reduced, just as American families have to do at their kitchen tables.

Don’t take that promise to the bank. It’ll bounce. And not because Republicans are up against the supposedly profligate Democrats who control the White House and Senate. As we begin what’s sure to be a chaotic two years of Republican governance in the House, a little fiscal history is in order, no green eyeshades needed.

In short, Republicans forfeited the title "fiscal conservatives" so long ago, most Americans weren't even born yet.

A fiscal conservative advocates for small government and low taxes but is open to higher taxes if necessary to erase deficits. That kind of thinking defined the Republican Party for most of the 20th century.

Starting with the Reagan era, however, the party flipped its orthodoxy on its head: Republicans became so anti-tax that each time their party took power, they willfully drove up deficits in the higher cause of slashing taxes for businesses and the rich. And each time, Republicans’ claims that the tax cuts would pay for themselves (economic growth!) were disproved by the record — Reagan’s, George W. Bush’s and Donald Trump’s.

Yet to hear House Republicans lately, you’d think Democrats and a few RINOs were responsible for the entire $31-trillion gross federal debt. Heck, we’re still paying on debt from Bush’s administration, when, for six of his eight years, Republicans also controlled Congress. Republicans’ red ink, which quickly washed away a budget surplus Bush had inherited, flowed largely from tax cuts, an unnecessary war in Iraq and a big, unfunded domestic program, Medicare Part D, to cover seniors’ prescription drugs.

Democrats for years had wanted to add a drug benefit for older Americans, but were stymied by the cost; in 1990, they’d agreed with the first President Bush (a true fiscal conservative, mostly) that new tax cuts or spending on entitlement programs like Medicare would be paid for with separate spending cuts or tax increases. The second Bush and his Republican allies simply got rid of the rule, so they could cut taxes and enact Part D, deficits be damned. (As Vice President Dick Cheney famously said, deficits didn’t matter anymore.)

Democrats, in true fiscally conservative fashion, revived the “pay as you go” rule when they regained power in Congress. President Obama’s Affordable Care Act was mostly paid for with spending cuts and new taxes on businesses that stood to benefit from additional paying patients. When Trump was elected and Republicans took charge again, those taxes were repealed, adding some Obamacare debt to the nation’s tab and once again rendering Republican claims to fiscal rectitude hollow.

That move was responsible for just a fraction of the debt we’re now shouldering from Trump’s tenure. Lest the former president’s defenders rush to argue that he was blindsided by a costly pandemic, know this: Before COVID-19 struck, Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress had piled up nearly $5 trillion in debt, projected over a decade, from both higher spending and tax cuts. That’s according to the (truly) fiscally conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Trump left behind almost $8 trillion in total debt after four years, more than either the second Bush or Obama did in each man’s eight years as president, as the conservative Manhattan Institute found.

Did the purported deficit-hawk Republicans now running the House complain? Of course not. On that, like any other outrage of the Trump years, they were silent. And complicit.

But they’ve found their voices now that Joe Biden is president, although their tough talk goes only so far: Tax cuts don’t have to be paid for under the new Republican rules, which require that only of some new spending.

Three times during Trump’s term, Republicans quietly went along in raising the federal debt limit, so that the government could keep borrowing to cover costs that they, along with past presidents and Congresses, had run up on the nation’s credit card. No drama, no conditions. Yet even before House Republicans won power in the midterm elections, they were promising to hold the debt limit hostage unless Biden and Democrats would agree to huge spending cuts.

“We’re not just going to keep lifting your credit card limit, right?” then-minority leader and now Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in October.

“Your” credit card, says the man who’s been a member of Congress for 16 years, and in the House Republican leadership for 14. Over time, he voted for countless unfunded tax cuts and more spending than he’d admit to.

Raising the debt limit doesn’t add a cent to deficits and debt; it merely ensures that the government can pay existing bills. But refusing to raise it could be catastrophic, for the nation and for a global economy that relies on the United States for a stable dollar. When House Republicans seriously flirted with blocking a debt ceiling increase in 2011, under Obama, the threat rocked markets.

To play this game again would be the most fiscally irresponsible and least fiscally conservative thing that Republicans could do. But as history warns us, don’t put it past them. They're fiscal fakers.

@jackiekcalmes
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

White House blasts 'backwards' Republican proposal on Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Alexander Nazaryan
·Senior White House Correspondent
Thu, January 12, 2023 

Pumping gas in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The White House on Thursday sharply criticized what it called a “backwards” bill introduced by House Republicans that would limit presidential authority to tap the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which President Biden has done repeatedly in an effort to bring down gas prices.

Known as the Strategic Production Response Act, the bill was introduced earlier this week by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., to prevent the president from releasing any oil from the reserve (except in case of a carefully defined “severe energy supply interruption”) unless the president at the same time opens up more federal lands to oil and gas drilling — something Republicans have sharply criticized Biden for resisting.

“To cover up his failed policies driving our energy and inflation crisis, President Biden is draining our nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves at an alarming rate,” McMorris Rodgers said in a statement about another, related proposal — which would prohibit the sale of oil from the reserve to China — that passed the House on Thursday.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., at the Capitol on Wednesday. 

(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

The White House, which spent much of 2022 fending off criticisms from Republicans — and some Democrats — that it was not doing enough to address the cost of gas, appeared eager to engage on this familiar political battleground in 2023.

“It’s absolutely backwards for House Republicans to keep putting wealthy special interests ahead of middle-class families in this way,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told Yahoo News. “They’re attempting to hike gas prices and neuter one of the best tools we have to deliver Americans relief from global oil spikes in the future, all to help Big Oil as they make record profits.”

In October, Biden announced a release of 15 million barrels of crude from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Republicans immediately criticized the move, though they had not objected when President Donald Trump did the same thing in 2019.

Pointing out that oil companies are enjoying tens of billions of dollars in annual profits, Biden accused them of restricting supply instead of easing price pressures on consumers.

(Some disagreed with the president’s charge, describing it as unfair.)

President Biden delivering remarks on the economy and inflation in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Thursday. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The president also argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had constrained the world’s energy supply, leading to global price increases that had nothing to do with his policies. The price of oil shot up by $34 per barrel in the weeks following Russia’s invasion in late February 2022, in what the White House took to describing as “Putin’s price hike.”

Recent months have brought the SPR to its lowest level — 450 million barrels — since the 1980s. The White House has argued that its drawdowns were necessary to help Americans who were paying more than $5 per gallon in parts of the country. Prices have plummeted, but deep disagreements over energy policy remain.

Most energy experts point out that oil prices are set by the forces of global supply and demand, which are beyond Washington’s control. And even if the pace of leasing on federal land were accelerated, developing wells would take far too long to help consumers anytime soon.

“The [oil] exploration activities in these [federal] areas are marginal,” Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy watchdog, told Yahoo News last February. “They’re not going to have an appreciable impact on domestic or global supply-demand balances.”

Instead, many industry analysts say, the only path to protecting consumers from oil supply shocks is to switch to electric vehicles and renewable energy.

A bank of electric car chargers. (Getty Images)

Always eager to draw a contrast with what the president has described as a pro-Trump or “MAGA” faction of the GOP, the White House blasted the bill as evidence that House Republicans are not serious about the business of governing.

Under a court order, the president did allow for new leases on federal lands last year. Still, Republicans remain convinced that he wants to do away with fossil fuels and transition to an economy entirely reliant on renewable sources of energy like wind and solar.

They have also indicated they would like to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed last year and includes $370 billion for clean energy initiatives, by far the biggest such federal investment to date.

The GOP’s first vote this week was to nullify a portion of the IRA that increases funding for the Internal Revenue Service.

The coming months are all but certain to see investigation of the president’s family, his handling of classified records and his administration’s record throughout the last two years. The White House is already moving to counter those investigations and to highlight its own efforts at bipartisanship.

McMorris Rodgers, who is the new chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also introduced H.R. 22, which would ban the sale of oil from the petroleum reserve to China.

A Strategic Petroleum Reserve storage facility in Freeport, Texas.

 (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

“Let's pass H.R. 22 and prevent the Biden administration from wasting our strategic reserves. It's the first step towards flipping the switch and unleashing American energy production,” she tweeted on Thursday morning, ahead of the measure’s relatively narrow but expected passage.

Some oil from the reserve has been exported overseas, because the Department of Energy is mandated to accept the highest bid for each offering.

Although neither McMorris Rodgers’s bill nor an Inflation Reduction Act repeal stands any chance of becoming law, since the Senate remains in Democratic control, the proposals are a likely preview of dynamics in Washington for the next two years, with Republicans introducing legislation to undo or prevent Biden’s achievements and the White House blasting those Republicans as obstructionists and extremists.

Bates, the White House spokesman, told Yahoo News it was telling, in the White House’s view, that the Republicans' first vote after gaining control of the lower congressional chamber was “a massive tax welfare for rich tax cheats at the expense of everyone else,” a reference to the IRS-defunding measure.

More such legislative efforts are on their way, especially since the crucial House Rules Committee — which acts as a kind of legislative traffic control officer — is now largely beholden to the same MAGA forces that Biden relishes in confronting.

THE OTHER CIA
Canadian Institute of Actuaries joins United Nations initiative on financial sustainability


Canadian Institute of Actuaries
Wed, January 11, 2023 

OTTAWA, Jan. 11, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA) has earned official status as a Supporter of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI).

The initiative connects the United Nations with financial institutions worldwide to help shape a sustainable financial agenda. Through this collaboration, UNEP has established sustainability frameworks that examine global environmental, social and governance challenges through a financial lens.

“Understanding the close relationship between climate change and sustainability risks and the global economy is key to mitigating these risks and developing a necessary action plan,” says CIA President Hélène Pouliot, FCIA. “As a leader in risk quantification and risk management and our country’s national actuarial professional organization, the CIA is pleased to share its expertise for the benefit of the global financial system.”


While membership in UNEP FI is restricted to financial institutions, Supporter status is available to other organizations that play a key role in delivering sustainable finance and have the desire to work with UNEP in pursuing this agenda. Currently, 15 organizations hold Supporter status in North America.

In joining this initiative, the CIA aims to share its expertise on a national and global level by helping financial institutions address sustainability targets and implement sustainability frameworks, and by undertaking thematic research, providing guidance and supporting communities of practice.

CIA chief in rare visit to Libya, meets Tripoli-based PM

Thu, January 12, 2023

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — The CIA chief has met with one of Libya's rival prime ministers, the government in the country's capital of Tripoli said Thursday. It was a rare visit by a senior U.S. official to the war-torn country, currently split between two rival administrations.

The Tripoli-based government said CIA Director William Burns and Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah discussed cooperation, economic and security issues. It also posted a hand-shaking photo of the two on one of its social media pages.

The statement gave no indication as to when exactly the meeting took place. There was no immediate comment from Washington about Burns' trip.

Burns' visit followed the surprise extradition last month of a former Libyan intelligence officer accused of making the bomb that exploded on a commercial flight above Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing all onboard and 11 people on the ground.

In December, Washington announced that Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, wanted by the United States for his role in bringing down the New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 since 2020, was in their custody and would face trial.

His handover by Dbeibah's government raised questions of its legality inside Libya, which does not have a standing agreement on extradition with the United States. Dbeibah’s mandate remains highly contested after planned elections did not take place in late 2021.

Torn by civil war since a NATO-backed uprising against former autocratic ruler Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, Libya has for years been divided between rival governments in the east and west, each backed by international patrons and numerous armed militias on the ground.

Militia groups have amassed great wealth and power from kidnappings and their involvement in Libya’s lucrative human trafficking trade. Amid the chaos, in 2012, a terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

FOX NEWS REJOICES
UN takes aim at Biden border measures, warns of threat to 'fundamental human rights'



Adam Shaw
Wed, January 11, 2023 

The United Nations is taking aim at President Biden’s new border security announcements, accusing the administration of undermining human rights with its efforts to limit the ability of illegal immigrants to claim asylum in the United States.

"The right to seek asylum is a human right, no matter a person’s origin, immigration status, nor how they arrived at an international border," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement.

Turk was reacting to announcements by the administration last week of measures designed to stem the overwhelming migrant crisis at the southern border which has seen hundreds of thousands of migrants hitting the border each month.

President Biden announced an expansion of a humanitarian parole program for Venezuelans to include Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans. The program will allow 30,000 of those nationalities to enter the U.S. each month if they have not crossed illegally and if they have a sponsor in the country already.

MEXICAN PRESIDENT THANKS BIDEN FOR NOT BUILDING ANY MORE BORDER WALL, PUSHES FOR AMNESTY

However, that expansion comes hand-in-hand with an expansion of Title 42 expulsions to include 30,000 illegal immigrants each month of those nationalities. Mexico had previously not been receiving Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans under the Trump-era public health order. Additionally, the administration announced an increased use of an alternative removal authority — expedited removal — to remove those who do not claim asylum and who cannot be expelled under Title 42

Separately, the Department of Homeland Security announced a rule that would make illegal immigrants ineligible for asylum if they "circumvent available, established pathways to lawful migration" and do not claim asylum in a country through which they traveled to get to the U.S.

BIDEN ANNOUNCES BORDER VISIT, NEW MEASURES AS PRESSURE GROWS OVER OVERWHELMING MIGRANT SURGE

"We anticipate this action is going to substantially reduce the number of people attempting to cross our southwest border without going through a legal process," Biden said.

While immigration rights groups and Democrats welcomed the expansion fo the humanitarian parole program, the expansion of Title 42 -- which the Biden administration has sought to end – the limit on asylum sparked their ire.

DEMOCRATS, IMMIGRANT ADVOCATES RAISE FLAGS OVER BIDEN BORDER PLAN

In his statement, Turk said that the measures "appear to be at variance with the prohibition of collective expulsion and the principle of non-refoulement."

"While I welcome measures to create and expand safe and regular pathways, such initiatives should not come at the expense of fundamental human rights, including the right to seek asylum and the right to an individual assessment of protection needs," he said. "Limited access to humanitarian parole for some cannot be a replacement for upholding the rights of all to seek protection of their human rights."

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas anticipated criticism of the tougher asylum measures last week, fending off accusations that it was similar to the Trump-era transit ban that immigration activists had similarly opposed.

Mayorkas noted that asylum seekers could claim asylum at ports of entry and with the help of a new CBP One app, and argued the limits were different from the prior administration due to the availability of legal pathways. He also noted that the rule would include humanitarian exceptions.

"If they do not use that application, then they will need to have applied for humanitarian relief in one of the countries through which they have traveled," he said. "And if they were denied, then — then they are not subject to — not a ban, but a rebuttable presumption of ineligibility. And there’s a marked difference between the two," he said on Sunday.

Colombia's VP hears UN condemnation of attempt on her life

EDITH M. LEDERER
Wed, January 11, 2023 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Colombia’s vice-president on Wednesday listened to many members of the Security Council condemn the recent attempt against her life and then thanked the U.N.’s most powerful body for their solidary against violence in the country, which she said is aimed at undermining the new government’s efforts “for peace, social justice and the development and deepening of democracy.”

Francia Marquez said she was addressing the Security Council as “the daughter of an ancestral land, as the spokesperson of the Colombian people and representative of a government that has come to power to change the history of my country.”

The government, she said, will “confront violence, social injustice and structural inequalities” with policies “to make Colombia a global power of life.”

Marquez, the first Black vice-president of Colombia, was pressed by reporters afterward about the seven kilograms of explosives her security team found buried next to a rural road leading to her home in the southwestern province of Cauca, which she described as an assassination attempt. She wouldn’t speculate on who was responsible for planting the explosives and said the incident is in the hands of the attorney general.

The vice president, who has previously faced death threats, said the new assassination attempt won’t stop her advocacy for peace and equality.

She was elected last September along with President Gustavo Petro, an economist and former guerilla fighter, who is attempting to raise taxes on the wealthy, increase government spending and start peace talks with the nation’s remaining rebel groups.

“Armed violence has affected our entire society,” the vice-president told the council, saying 10 million people, a fifth of Colombia’s population, are “direct victims of war” and “in every household of our country there are wounds and scars from what happened.” She added that “the fears, the hatred, the revenge, have been transmitted from generation to generation.”

Marquez said the government is seeking to overcome “the fragmented peace” in the country and achieve “total peace,” which will enable it to reach historically excluded and marginalized territories.

The Colombian government signed a peace agreement in 2016 with the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia movement, and asked the U.N. to establish a political mission to focus on reintegrating leftist rebels into society after more than 50 years of war that caused over 220,000 deaths and displaced nearly 6 million people.

Last month, the government and its largest remaining rebel group, the National Liberation Army, said they would continue to hold peace talks in Mexico following three weeks of negotiations in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, that yielded only modest results.

Before the vice-president spoke, council members addressed the current situation in Colombia, many mentioning the threat against her.

Brazil’s U.N. Ambassador Ronaldo Costa Filho said his country strongly condemns “the unacceptable attempt” on the vice-president’s life and expresses “unshakeable trust that political extremism and attempts to block progress on policies of inclusion will not flourish on our continent.”

France’s deputy ambassador Nathalie Broadhurst also strongly condemned the attempt on her life. And Japan’s U.N. Ambassador Ishikane Kimihiro, the current council president, expressed “solidarity with the vice-president whose life came under threat.”

At the start of the council meeting, members unanimously adopted a resolution expanding the mandate of the U.N. Verification Mission in Colombia to include monitoring implementation of chapters in the peace agreement on rural reform and ethnic issues, a move vice-president Marquez called “clear testimony to the importance of this agreement for the world.”

She invited the Security Council to hold a meeting in Colombia “in order to express support for peace from our own territory” and to see firsthand some of the challenges the government is confronting.

JUST ANOTHER WEEKLY RAID

Israeli army kills 3 Palestinians during West Bank raids





KILL SHOT

Palestinian gunmen take part in the funeral of Ahmed Abu Junaid, 21 in the West Bank refugee camp of Balata, Nablus, Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023. During a pre dawn Israeli military incursion into the hardscrabble Balata refugee camp, Israeli forces shot Abu Junaid in the head and he died several hours later, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

 (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

ISABEL DEBRE
Wed, January 11, 2023 

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military shot and killed three Palestinians during arrest raids in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Palestinian health officials said, the latest bloodshed in months of rising violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

The military, which has been carrying out near-nightly raids in the territory since early last year, said soldiers who entered the Qalandia refugee camp before dawn were bombarded by rocks and cement blocks. In response, the military said troops opened fire at Palestinians throwing objects from rooftops. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man killed as Samir Aslan, 41.

Aslan's sister, Noura Aslan, said Israeli security forces broke into their house at 2:30 a.m. to arrest his 18-year-old son, Ramzi. As Ramzi was being hauled away, his father sprinted to the rooftop to see what was happening, she said. Within moments, an Israeli sniper shot him in the back.

Aslan's wife called an ambulance, but Noura said the army initially prevented medics from reaching the house. As Aslan was bleeding, his family dragged his body down the stairs and called for help. An ambulance picked him up some 20 minutes later, Noura said.

The Israeli army also raided the northern occupied West Bank on Thursday, entering the village of Qabatiya south of the flash point city of Jenin and surrounding a house in the town. The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that Israeli forces fatally shot 25-year-old Habib Kamil and 18-year-old Abdel Hadi Nazal.

The Israeli army said security forces entered Qabatiya to arrest Muhammad Alauna, a Palestinian suspected of planning militant attacks. The army said soldiers shot at a number of Palestinians during the raid, including a man who tried to flee the scene with Alauna, a gunman who fired at the forces from inside his car as well as a group of Palestinians throwing rocks at Israeli troops. It was not immediately clear what Kamil was doing when he was shot.

The deaths on Thursday bring the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank this year to nine, including two Palestinians killed Wednesday in separate incidents in the West Bank. One was killed during an Israeli military arrest raid in the territory’s north and another after stabbing and wounding an Israeli man in a southern settlement.

Israel ramped up its military raids last spring, after a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis killed 19 people. Israel says the operations are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see them as further entrenchment of Israel's 55-year, open-ended occupation of land they seek for their future state.

The raids sharply escalated tensions and helped fuel another wave of Palestinian attacks in the fall that killed 10 Israelis. Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 2022, Israeli rights group B'Tselem reported, making last year the deadliest since 2004.

The heightened violence comes as Israel's new ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox government — it's most right-wing ever — is charting its legislative agenda, one that is expected to take a tough line against the Palestinians and drive up settlement construction in the West Bank.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories the Palestinians want for their future independent state. Israel has since settled 500,000 people in about 130 settlements across the West Bank, which the Palestinians and much of the international community view as an obstacle to peace.

In Ukraine, power plant workers fight to save their 'child'


 

HANNA ARHIROVA
Thu, January 12, 2023

A POWER PLANT, Ukraine (AP) — Around some of their precious transformers — the ones that still work, buzzing with electricity — the power plant workers have built protective shields using giant concrete blocks, so they have a better chance of surviving the next Russian missile bombardment.

Blasted out windows in the power plant's control room are patched up with chipboard and piled-up sandbags, so the operators who man the desks 24/7, keeping watch over gauges, screens, lights and knobs, are less at risk of being killed or injured by murderous shrapnel.

“As long as there is equipment that can be repaired, we will work,” said the director of the plant that a team of Associated Press journalists got rare access to.

The AP is not identifying the plant nor giving its location, because Ukrainian officials said such details could help Russian military planners. The plant’s director and his workers also refused to be identified with their full names, for the same reason.


Because the plant can't function without them, the operators have readied armored vests and helmets to wear during the deadly hails of missiles, so they can stay at their posts and not join less essential workers in the bomb shelter.

Each Russian aerial strike causes more damage, leaves more craters and more blast holes in the walls already pockmarked by explosions, and raises more questions about much longer Ukraine's energy workers will be able to keep homes powered, heated and lit in winter's subzero temperatures.

And yet, against the odds and sometimes at the cost of their lives, they keep power flowing. They're holding battered plants together with bravery, dedication, ingenuity and dwindling stocks of spare parts. Each additional watt of electricity they manage to wring into the power grid defies Russian President Vladimir Putin's nearly 11-month invasion and his military's efforts to weaponize winter by plunging Ukrainians into the cold and dark.

Power, in short, is hope in Ukraine and plant workers won't let hope die.

In their minds, the plant is more than just a place where power is made. Over decades of caring for its innards of whirring turbines, thick cables and humming pipes, it's become something they have come to love and that they desperately want to keep alive. Seeing it slowly but systematically wounded by repeated Russian attacks is painful for them.

“The station is like an organism, each organ in it has some significance. But too many organs are already damaged," said Oleh. He has worked at the plant for 23 years.

“It hurts me so much to watch all this. This is inhuman stress. We carried this station in our arms like a child,” he said.

Successive waves of Russian missile and exploding drone attacks since September have destroyed and damaged about half of Ukraine's energy system, the government says. Rolling power cuts have become the norm across the country, with tens of millions of people now getting by with only intermittent power, sometimes just a few hours each day. The bombardments have also forced Ukraine to stop exporting electricity to neighbors Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Poland and Moldova.

Russia has said the strikes are aimed at weakening Ukraine's ability to defend itself. Western officials say the suffering the blackouts cause for civilians is a war crime.

The plant that AP’s team visited has been struck repeatedly and heavily damaged. It still powers thousands of homes and industries, but its output is down significantly from pre-invasion levels, its workers say.

All parts of the facility bear scars. Missile fragments are scattered around, left where they landed by workers too busy to clear up. Workers say their families send them off to their shifts with the words: “May God protect you.”

Mykola survived one of the strikes. He started work at the plant 36 years ago, when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union.

“The windows flew out instantly, and dust began to pour from the ceiling,” he recalled. So he could immediately assess the damage, he put on his armored vest and helmet and ventured outside rather than taking cover in the bomb shelter.

“We have no fear,” Mykola said. “We’re more scared for the equipment that is needed to provide light and heat.”

Russian missile targeters seem to be learning as they go along, adapting their tactics to cause more damage, Oleh said. Missiles used to detonate at ground level, blasting out craters, but now they explode in the air, causing damage over wider areas.

As soon as it's safe, the plant's repair teams scramble — a dispiriting cycle of destruction and rebirth.

“The Russians are bombing and we are rebuilding, and they are bombing again and we are rebuilding. We really need help. We can’t handle it here by ourselves,” Oleh said. “We will restore it as long as we have something to repair it with.”

 The Ailing Power Plant

A worker transmits the parameters from the control panel of the power plant in central Ukraine, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023. When Ukraine was at peace, its energy workers were largely unheralded. War made them heroes. They're proving to be Ukraine's line of defense against repeated Russian missile and drone strikes targeting the energy grid and inflicting the misery of blackouts in winter.

(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
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John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.

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