Analysis-Why Biden pushes an assault weapons ban despite the political odds






Fri, January 27, 2023
By Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Flags are lowered, sorrowful statements are issued, pleas to lawmakers are made, again.

In the wake of two mass shootings in California this week, President Joe Biden has followed a heartfelt and familiar script of outrage and grief over gun violence in America, coupled with a renewed call for Congress to pass legislation banning assault-style weapons.

Such a ban has little chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives or the Senate, which is narrowly controlled by Democrats, political experts say.

But Biden's stubborn strategy continues: make a ban the focus of public discourse whenever a mass shooting occurs and put pressure on lawmakers who oppose one. The White House hopes to build on already strong public support for stricter gun safety laws overall, and ultimately try to pressure Republicans in Congress into changing their thinking.

Janice Iwama, assistant professor at American University's Department of Justice, Law and Criminology, said that even if Biden fails to win a national ban, bringing attention to the issue could prompt some state legislatures to act.

"And it can happen a lot faster at the state level," Iwama said.

This week, after 18 people were killed over two days in California, the president asked lawmakers to send a bill to his desk as quickly as possible.

"It's really needed badly," he told Democratic leaders at a meeting on Tuesday. "We're going to ban assault weapons again," he said on Thursday at a Lunar New Year reception at the White House, to applause.

Republican opposition has not changed.

"There's not going to be any further legislative action there. We pretty much exhausted the possibilities a few months ago," Senator John Cornyn told Reuters.

The White House says Biden will not give up.

“The president’s strategy has been to make an assault weapons ban a winning issue so we can build a pro-gun safety Congress, and we’re making progress on that,” a second White House official said.

Biden's strategy may have longer-term political benefits going into the 2024 presidential election.

"I do suspect part of Biden's re-election plans over the next year is to try to contrast himself as a moderate, centrist, pragmatic figure versus the extremes," said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.

SIMPLE MATH, NOT ENOUGH SUPPORT

A decade after 20 first-graders and six adults were killed in the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, the U.S. federal government has put few limits on weapons like the high-capacity AR-15 used in the attack, or on the estimated 400 million guns in the country. Over 150 rounds were fired in just five minutes at the school, investigators said.

The recent shootings in California, which killed 18 people, show how even the strictest state laws can be ineffective thanks to a patchwork of federal regulation.

Biden has railed against assault-style weapons for years and repeatedly throughout his presidency. He was instrumental in getting a decade-long ban passed in 1994.

As vice president, he spearheaded a set of gun control proposals for Barack Obama after Sandy Hook that included a recommendation for a new assault weapons ban. None passed Congress, opposed by Republicans and the National Rifle Association lobby.

Last year, however, Biden signed into law the first major federal gun reform in three decades. It cracks down on overall gun sales to perpetrators of domestic violence and expands some background checks to juveniles.

These and even stricter measures have strong public support.

A June Quinnipiac poll showed nearly three out of four Americans support raising the age at which a person can buy a gun to 21, and 92 percent supported background checks for all gun buyers.

However the Quinnipiac and other polls show that just about half of Americans support an assault weapons ban.

To pass one, the president would need 60 votes in the Senate - nine Republicans and all 51 Democrats and independents - and a simple majority of 218 votes in the House of Representatives, which has 222 Republicans and a Republican speaker, who would have to consent to bringing a bill to the floor for a vote.

The June law won support from 14 Republicans in the House and 15 in the Senate, after mass shootings in Texas and New York killed more than 30 people, including 19 children at an elementary school.

The U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms, and that issue is a hot button one for many Republicans, and backed by millions in donations from gun rights groups and manufacturers.

"Violent crime is on the rise and the people are anxious for solutions. But instead of setting an obvious course - like actually punishing the offenders or addressing our woefully inadequate mental health system - the President is attempting to resurrect an initiative that had zero effect on violent crime," said NRA spokesperson Lars Dalseide.

The White House points to statistics, including from University of Massachusetts researcher Louis Klarevas, that show gun massacres sank 37 percent and gun massacre deaths dropped 43 percent during the 10-year period of the assault rifle ban, compared to the previous decade.

Even though an all-out assault weapons ban seems unlikely, a very thin Republican majority in the House means that something more modest, such as raising the age to 21 to buy assault weapons, could be possible, the University of New Hampshire's Scala said.

Advocates say the White House has other options it can pursue to reduce gun violence even if Congress does nothing for two years, from executive action to budgeting to enforcement of existing laws.

Biden's team says it is cognizant of the political odds.

“Our job is to keep trying. The president is going to keep using the bully pulpit, keep pursuing executive action, keep building on the legislation he got done last summer," the second White House official said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan; Editing by Heather Timmons and Nick Zieminski)

Russia rules out talks with Japan on fishing near disputed islands

 No annual Russia-Japan talks on fishing near disputed islands - Moscow


Sat, January 28, 2023

(Reuters) -Russia said on Sunday it will not hold annual talks with Japan on renewing a pact that allows Japanese fishermen to operate near disputed islands, saying Japan has taken anti-Russian measures.

The islands, off the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, are known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories and have been at the core of decades of tension between the neighbours.

"In the context of the anti-Russian measures taken by the Japanese government ... the Russian side informed Tokyo that it could not agree on the holding of intergovernmental consultations on the implementation of this agreement," the RIA state news agency reported, citing Russia's foreign ministry.

Japan, a major U.S. ally, imposed sanctions on dozens of Russian individuals and organisations soon after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year.

On Friday, it tightened sanctions on Russia in response to Russian air attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Russia in June suspended the 1998 agreement that allowed Japanese boats to fish near the islands and Japan's chief cabinet secretary on Monday told a news conference that Japan would demand that Russia engages in the annual talks so this year's fishing operations could begin.

But the Russian ministry said there would be no improvement in ties unless Japan showed "respect".

"To return to a normal dialogue, the Japanese neighbours should show elementary respect for our country, a desire to improve bilateral relations," the ministry said, according to the RIA news agency.

Reuters could not reach Japanese foreign ministry officials for comment outside regular business hours.

Russia and Japan have not formally ended World War Two hostilities because of their standoff over the islands, seized by the Soviet Union at the end of the war.

(Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne, Kaori Kaneko in Tokyo; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Hawaii youth file lawsuit against state regarding emissions


Timothy Hurley, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Fri, January 27, 2023 

Jan. 27—Attorneys representing 14 Hawaii youths appeared in court Thursday to argue in favor of a lawsuit that claims the state Department of Transportation is violating their client's state constitutional rights by not doing enough to stem the emissions that are contributing to climate change.

Attorneys representing 14 Hawaii youths appeared in court Thursday to argue in favor of a lawsuit that claims the state Department of Transportation is violating their client's state constitutional rights by not doing enough to stem the emissions that are contributing to climate change.

The suit, the first of its kind in Hawaii, argues that the DOT's system is causing the plaintiffs, ages 10 to 20 and living across the island chain, significant harm and affecting their ability to "live healthful lives in Hawai 'i now and into the future."

Circuit Court Environmental Judge Jeffrey Crabtree heard arguments on the state's motion to dismiss the case before a packed courtroom of plaintiffs, their parents and supporters Thursday morning.

He ended the hearing by saying he would make a ruling on Navahine F. v, Hawaii Department of Transportation later, after studying the issues further.

The lawsuit is the latest attempt by young people in the U.S. to hold governments accountable for the climate crisis.

Representing the Hawaii youth are lawyers from Earthjustice and Oregon-based Our Children's Trust, which describes itself as "the world's only nonprofit public interest law firm that exclusively provides strategic, campaign based legal services to youth from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate." Our Children's Trust is also part of youth climate lawsuits in Montana, Virginia and Utah.

Attorney Bryan Killian, representing the state of Hawaii, told the judge that Hawaii is indeed addressing climate change and is in fact one of the leaders among the 50 states in doing so. Gov. Josh Green has made climate change a high priority in his administration, and he has selected a new director (Ed Sniffen ) to work with him on his policies.

The state's motion to dismiss, he said, stresses the proper process for addressing climate change. He said the complaint is flawed because it does not allege any violations of climate laws, and it doesn't argue that any of the defendant's own greenhouse gases are causing harm.

State targets on emission reductions are statewide targets, Killian said, not just for the DOT. In addition, the department has to deal with competing goals, including not only reducing emissions, but user equity, reducing costs and "maximizing the throughput of people."

Killian said the complaint falls short of meeting the standards and precedents required for judicial oversight of a state department.

Leina 'ala Ley, an Earthjustice attorney representing the Hawaii youth, told the court the transportation sector is responsible for a majority of the state's greenhouse gas emissions and that these emissions are going up, not down, in violation of the department's constitutional duties to protect the public trust and the plaintiff's right to health, well-being and their culture practices.

"While other sectors have taken significant steps in the past few decades to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Hawaii Department of Transportation remains trapped in the past, doing business as usual and failing to take advantage of opportunities that are available now to provide Hawaii's residents with more and cleaner transportation options that can help mitigate climate harm, " Ley said.

Following the hearing, attorneys from Earthjustice and Our Children's Trust said that no matter what Crabtree rules, the case will move forward, either in Circuit Court or on appeal.

If the case is dismissed, "We would try to get to the state Supreme Court as quickly as possible given the urgency of the case and the harm these youth are suffering, " said Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel for Our Children's Trust.

Andrea Rodgers, senior litigation attorney with Our Children's Trust, told a news conference outside the Honolulu courtroom that the state's lawyers argued that climate change is a problem that can be dealt with 20 years down the line.

"They said they're doing the best that they can and that they shouldn't be pushed into doing things they just don't want to do—even though the science, the Legislature, has all commanded them to de-carbonize the transportation system as soon as possible. It's frustrating when you hear that from your government entity. This is an existential crisis that needs to be addressed today."

Taliya Nishida, a 15-year-old Kamehameha Schools Hawaii island student, said she joined the suit in an effort to make a difference in the climate crisis.

"Instead of being a bystander and just hearing about it, this time I can actually go to court and create a change, " she said.

Nishida said her house in Kamuela is off-grid, and her family lives off catchment water. The problem is there's precious little rain.

"We have no water in the catchment tank, " she said. "So we're flushing our toilets from buckets of water that we get from in town. For showers I only get one or two minutes."

Plaintiff Messina, a 15-year-old from Kailua, who declined to give her last name, said she was seething in the courtroom as she heard the state's attorney offering up excuses.

"It's very hard to hear, " she said. "We know this is an issue that needs to be dealt with now, and the more they postpone it, the more they are showing to us that it doesn't matter to them, and we're just like little pests in the way of their scheme. That's really what it felt like in every argument they made."

Before he concluded the hearing, Crabtree paused to say he was encouraged by the fact that the young people were coming forward and trying to make their community better.

But Environmental Court, he cautioned, is not the Environmental Protection Agency. It is a court and not friendly to one side or the other.

"We endeavor to do our best to make decisions based on the law, the facts and judicial procedure. That's it, " the judge said. "Sometimes the environment wins in this courtroom, and sometimes it loses. That's just the way it is."

Relics found in 23 lead boxes in Mexico City cathedral


The Mexican national flag flies at half-mast on top of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City, Sept. 9, 2017. During the reconstruction work on the Cathedral which was damaged in the 2017 earthquake, workers found in the central dome, small lead boxes containing religious objects, the government reported on Friday, Jan. 27, 2023. 

(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Fri, January 27, 2023 

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Experts restoring the interior of Mexico City’s Roman Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral said Friday they found 23 lead boxes containing religious inscriptions and relics like small paintings and wood or palm crosses.

The lead containers are about the size of a mint box, and had written inscriptions dedicated to particular saints. A handwritten note found in one suggests they were found previously in 1810, and reburied.

The note said that one of the boxes had been found by a group of masons and painters in 1810, and asked whoever found it to “pray for their souls.”

They were found in niches carved into walls of the base of the cathedral’s lantern, the slender skylight that sits atop the dome. The niches were covered with clay panels and were hidden under plaster.

Experts said Friday they were found Dec. 30 during work to restore the plaster. The National Institute of Anthropology and History said they may have been placed there to provide divine protection for the cathedral or the city.

The institute said that once they were catalogued, the boxes and their contents would be returned to their niches and re-covered with plaster.

The cathedral was built in a centuries-long process between 1573 and 1813. One of the reasons it took so long was that almost as soon as construction started, the massive, heavy building began sinking into the soft subsoil that characterizes the city.

It is not the first time that relics have been found buried within the cathedral's walls.

In 2008, researchers found a time capsule from 1791 that was placed atop a bell tower in the cathedral, apparently to protect the building from lightning.

The lead box filled with religious artifacts, coins and parchments was placed in a hollow stone ball to mark the celebration on May 14, 1791, when the building’s topmost stone was laid, 218 years after construction began.

A perfectly preserved parchment found in the box described the time capsule’s contents, including 23 medals, 5 coins, and five small crosses made of palms. The parchment says “all are for protection from the storms.”

Three More Sailors Die by Suicide While Their Carriers are Stuck in Shipyards



Konstantin Toropin
Fri, January 27, 2023

Three more sailors stationed aboard Navy aircraft carriers undergoing refits have died by suicide in the past two months, with the latest death occurring on Monday.

Cmdr. Robert Myers, a Navy spokesman, confirmed that a sailor stationed aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington died at a private residence in Newport News, Virginia, on Monday. A spokeswoman for the Newport News Police department told Military.com that they considered the death a suicide.

Military.com is not releasing the name of the sailor, because the Navy says family notification has not been completed.

Meanwhile, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier undergoing a maintenance period at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state, lost Boatswain's Mate 3rd Class Christopher Carroll on Jan. 18 and Electrician's Mate (Nuclear) 3rd class Jacob Slocum on Dec. 5.

Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin Anderson, a spokesman for the ship, confirmed the deaths to Military.com but said that both remain under investigation. The Kitsap County medical examiner's office confirmed suicide was the cause of death for both sailors in a phone call with Military.com on Thursday.

The suicide aboard the George Washington comes just over a month after the Navy released its first report on the last three suicides the ship experienced in April. Military.com initially reported that sailors were told the ship had experienced 10 suicides in under a year by its commander, Capt. Brent Gaut.

Since then, the Navy has offered differing and lower figures, but it has never confirmed or denied what Gaut told his crew. The Navy also disclosed that a string of suicides on that ship goes back to at least November 2019.

One key aspect that connects the two carriers is the shipyard environment that they currently exist in -- an environment that Navy leaders have repeatedly admitted is arduous and challenging.

Sailors lived aboard the George Washington from April 2021 until the suicides forced the Navy to move the crew off the ship at the end of last April. Following the suicides, it became clear that living conditions aboard the ship, with frequent outages of heat or ventilation, power and running water as well as constant construction noise and debris, were a key complaint for the crew.

The recently released Navy investigation found that sailors would resort to sleeping in their cars or paying for rent in town despite not having a housing allowance.

While an investigation into the three April suicides concluded that they had no direct connection to living conditions on the massive docked ship, which has been in the shipyard since 2017, that report also revealed a climate where leaders were oblivious to the problems of their sailors and a Navy whose efforts to offer mental health care were insufficient and rife with mistrust. As a result, sailors struggled all alone.

The Roosevelt, like the Washington, is undergoing a refit. The ship has been at the Puget Sound shipyard since August 2021, though Anderson noted that none of the ship's roughly 2,700 sailors lives aboard the ship.

However, Slocum's family told Military.com that conditions in the shipyard and an unsympathetic chain of command took a toll on the young sailor.

Elspeth Slocum, the sailor's stepmother, said his long working hours led him to struggle to complete his qualifications, and as a result, his superiors sent him to captain's mast -- a form of non-judicial punishment where sailors are tried and punished by their commanding officer.

Elspeth said she spoke with her stepson a few days before the captain's mast.

"He tried so hard that day to complete qualifications, searching for an officer willing to test him," she told Military.com on Thursday, before adding that "he was unsuccessful."

In another instance, Elspeth said her stepson told her he searched for an officer to help him with his qualifications for four hours.

Military.com asked Anderson about the captain's mast and was told that "performance at work is being examined as part of an ongoing investigation into the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of ... Jacob Slocum," but that "further details cannot be provided at this time while the investigation is active."

Elspeth said that the young sailor "broke down and requested a transfer" during the captain's mast but was denied. In the end, according to his stepmother, Slocum was put "on restriction" for 40 days -- typically a punishment that means the sailor cannot freely leave the ship. In an effort to cheer him up, she tried to send him his favorite tea in the mail.

"He never received them," she said. "Weeks later, he died by his own hand."

Anderson said that "caring for and strengthening a sailor's mental and physical health and well-being -- regardless of their job performance -- is a sacred trust to all levels of leadership on USS Theodore Roosevelt."

In response to the deaths of Slocum and Carroll, Anderson stressed that the ship has added additional resources -- seven extra professionals -- for sailors on top of the already assigned counselor, psychologist, enlisted behavioral health specialist and three chaplains.

"We remain fully engaged with our sailors and their families to ensure their health and well-being, and to ensure a climate of trust and transparency that encourages sailors to ask for help, " Anderson said.

Myers told Military.com that "embedded chaplains, mental health providers, and leaders are engaged with the crew and are available to provide appropriate support and counseling" aboard the George Washington carrier.

"Several one-on-one engagements occurred following the announcement, and information with support resources was also distributed to the sailors in the department," he added.

The Navy's top leaders have recently begun to speak more openly and urgently about the service's struggle with suicide prevention.

Adm. Michael Gilday, the Navy's top officer, recently said that the issue keeps him up at night and that mental health is a "vexing problem" for the Navy.

"We have mental health facilities available," he said. "We have resiliency teams on our [amphibious readiness groups] and our carrier strike groups, and yet it's still not enough."

In a conversation with reporters, Gilday said Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro "is very interested in the final investigation on [George Washington] that lays out in more detail what investments we should make to improve."

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

Jim Jordan's Fearmongering Question Prompts Withering 1-Word Reply From Stephen King

Lee Moran

Sat, January 28, 2023

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is doubling down on his recent fearmongering about which freedoms are supposedly on the chopping block in the U.S.

“First, they came for your guns. Then, your gas stoves. Then, your gas cars. What’s next?” he tweeted Friday.

Horror author Stephen King had a scathing single-word answer for the Ohio Republican.

“You,” the writer tweeted in the replies.

King was one of many critics to post a caustic response on Twitter.

Related...

Biden moves to protect the Tongass, North America's largest rainforest, from logging and road building

Beverly Law, Professor Emeritus of Global Change Biology and Terrestrial Systems Science, 

Oregon State University

THE CONVERSATION
Fri, January 27, 2023

A bald eagle on Baranof Island in Alaska's Tongass National Forest. 

Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images

Ask people to find the world’s rainforests on a globe, and most will probably point to South America. But North America has rainforests too – and like their tropical counterparts, these temperate rainforests are ecological treasures.

The Biden administration recently announced new policies to protect the Tongass National Forest, the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world and the biggest U.S. national forest. It spreads over more than 26,000 square miles (67,340 square kilometers) – roughly the size of West Virginia – and covers most of southeast Alaska. The Tongass has thousands of watersheds and fjords, and more than a thousand forested islands.

For over 20 years the Tongass has been at the center of political battles over two key conservation issues: old-growth logging and designating large forest zones as roadless areas to prevent development. As a scientist specializing in forest ecosystems, I see protecting the Tongass as the kind of bold action that’s needed to address climate change and biodiversity loss.
An ecological gem

The Tongass as we know it today began forming at the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-1700s, which left much of what is now southern Alaska as barren land. Gradually, the area repopulated with plants and animals to become a swath of diverse, rich old-growth forests. President Theodore Roosevelt designated the Tongass as a forest reserve in 1902, and then as a national forest in 1907.

The Tongass is the traditional homeland of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people. It is named for the Tongass group of the Tlingit people, who have continuously occupied the area for over 10,000 years. Alaska Natives relied on the forest’s rich diversity of plants and animals for their survival and traditions. Today the Tongass has abundant populations of animals that have become uncommon in other parts of the U.S., such as brown bears and wolves.

Most of the 900 watersheds within the Tongass are in near-natural condition. This ensures that they can provide habitat for many wild species and recover from or adapt to stresses, such as warmer temperatures due to climate change. They support salmon that spawn in the forest’s creeks and rivers, providing food for bears, eagles and other predators. Such ecosystems are incredibly rare around the world today.

How roads threaten forests

Intact old-growth forests, with trees hundreds of years old, are essential for carbon storage, biodiversity and climate resilience. They have fully developed root systems that can reach water in deep soils, and are more resistant than young forests to drought, fire, insects and strong winds – effects that are all likely to increase with climate change.

Because old-growth forests have accumulated massive amounts of carbon in their trees and soils over centuries, protecting them is an important strategy for curbing climate change. Today, however, scientists estimate that logging, agriculture and urban development have left only 6% to 14% of the forest area in the U.S. intact. And only 7% of total U.S. forest area is more than a century old.

Old-growth logging is controversial because intact forests are so rare. And forest losses often start when roads are cut through them to access timber. The roads are effectively long clear-cuts across the landscape.

Building roads through moist temperate forests can make it easier for warm air, wind and sunlight to penetrate from the edges to the interior, drying soil, mosses and ferns. It also provides entry points for invasive plants carried in by vehicles.

And roads’ negative effects extend beyond the actual driving surface. A road 30 feet (9 meters) wide may influence an additional 80 to 100 feet (25 to 30 meters) of adjacent land because of land disturbance during construction and wide buffer zones created for vehicle safety.

Road building can harm animals like brown bears through collisions with vehicles and increased poaching and trapping. In the Tongass, a strip a quarter-mile (0.4 kilometer) wide on each side of the highway system is closed to big game hunting, but this can mitigate only some of roads’ pervasive effects.

Upgrading a logging road into State Highway 43 on Prince of Wales Island in the Tongass National Forest. Jack Olen, USFS Alaska Region/Flickr, CC BY

Decades of controversy

In its final days in January 2001, the Clinton administration adopted the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which barred logging, timber sales, mining and road construction within inventoried roadless areas in most national forests across the U.S. About 9.2 million acres (37,231 square kilometers) of the Tongass – more than half of its area – were designated and managed as inventoried roadless areas.

This step launched 20 years of debate and litigation. The Bush and Trump administrations, supported by conservative Western state officials, sought to limit the roadless rule and exempt the Tongass from it. The Obama administration generally supported the rule and defended it in court.

In 2020, the Trump administration opened the Tongass to extensive new logging, mining and road construction activities. Critics, including environmental advocates and tribal governments, argued that Alaska’s economy was better served by outdoor recreation and commercial fishing than by clear-cutting its remaining old-growth forests.

Now the Biden administration has restored protection for roadless areas of the Tongass. It also has pledged to end large-scale old-growth timber sales and focus on restoration, recreation and other noncommercial activities. It will permit old-growth logging only for cultural uses, such as totem poles and canoes, and for small sales that serve community needs. It also proposes a US million investment in sustainable economic opportunities, with particular focus on investments that are responsive to Indigenous needs.

Forest advocates have welcomed this action and the administration’s plan to publish a new version of the roadless rule. But it remains to be seen how permanent this shift will be.

A strategic climate reserve

New hope for protecting the Tongass comes amid growing alarm over two converging environmental crises: climate change and accelerated extinctions of plant and animal species. In my view, protecting ecological treasures like the Tongass is a critical way to address both issues at once, as scientists have recommended.

The southeastern and south-central regions of Alaska, which contain the Tongass and Chugach national forests, store about 1 billion metric tons of carbon in live and dead tree biomass. This amount could increase by 27% by 2100 if the forest is allowed to continue to grow and accumulate carbon.

I believe the Tongass’ vast intactness, rich biodiversity and significant carbon storage make it an excellent choice as the first of a series of strategic climate reserves – areas that scientists have proposed setting aside to protect large carbon sinks and biodiversity of plant and animal species. U.S. old-growth forests are disappearing rapidly, but with smart management they can deliver ecological benefits for decades to come.


This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation is trustworthy news from experts. 

It was written by: Beverly Law, Oregon State University.

Read more:


To solve climate change and biodiversity loss, we need a Global Deal for Nature


Why Russia gave up Alaska, America’s gateway to the Arctic


Global timber trafficking harms forests and costs billions of dollars – here’s how to curb it

A COUPLE OF CRYPTO MEGLOMANIACS

Anthony Scaramucci says he bought Sam Bankman-Fried a suit for their Middle East fundraising tour and that the trip sparked FTX's downfall

Pete Syme
Fri, January 27, 2023 

Sam Bankman-Fried and Anthony Scaramucci.

Sam Bankman-Fried and Anthony Scaramucci went on a Middle East fundraising tour in October.

Scaramucci told Insider he bought SBF a suit so the FTX CEO wouldn't wear a T-shirt with investors.

He said SBF ended up saying "nasty things" about a crypto rival that helped spark FTX's downfall.

Weeks before FTX's downfall, Anthony Scaramucci was worried that Sam Bankman-Fried's famously casual dress sense could backfire on a fundraising trip to the Middle East. Scaramucci told Insider he bought the then-FTX CEO a suit from Bloomingdale's to help impress investors.

Insider talked to Scaramucci over Zoom about his relationship with Bankman-Fried, ahead of the launch of Scaramucci's new podcast, "Open Book."

The SkyBridge Capital founder, who sold 30% of his business to FTX, decided that Bankman-Fried needed to scrub up for their tour to Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and the FII Institute in Saudi Arabia. "I didn't certainly like elements of the way he was dressed," he said.

"I bought him a suit, frankly, to take him to the Middle East with me and told him he can't dress with a T-shirt in the Middle East," Scaramucci told Insider. "When you're in Rome, do as the Romans do."

On a panel last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Scaramucci said he had thought Bankman-Fried "was the Mark Zuckerberg of crypto — I did not think he was the Bernie Madoff of crypto." He told Insider he made the Zuckerberg comparison because the Meta CEO walked around Davos in a hoodie and T-shirt "and I probably was slightly offended by him, but he went on to create a trillion-dollar company."

Scaramucci said he was trying to help Bankman-Fried raise capital for FTX in the Middle East.

An FTX lawyer recently said Bankman-Fried's hedge fund, Alameda, had access to a $65 billion credit line from FTX. Bankman-Fried directed staff to code a "backdoor," which let Alameda draw from customer funds on the crypto exchange, the lawyer said.

The FTX cofounder has denied stealing customer funds and pled not guilty to eight criminal charges. Referring to the allegations, Scaramucci said: "I didn't realize, unfortunately, that he had an accounting backdoor. And the numbers that he was showing me and other venture capitalists and potential capital allocators were inaccurate."

"Somebody was like: 'Well, look at the way he was dressed and the way he handled himself, didn't you think he was a bozo?' And I'm like, OK, the hindsight test? Yes, of course, he's a bozo."

While videos from the FII Institute show Bankman-Fried dressed in a long-sleeve shirt and suit trousers, there were no images of him in a suit jacket. It's not clear whether the suit he's worn during recent court hearings is the same one Scaramucci said he bought for him, though it is a different style from the one he was last photographed in during a Congressional hearing last May.

Bankman-Fried and Scaramucci at Crypto Bahamas.

Vicky Ge Huang/Insider

Bankman-Fried's tour came just weeks before FTX's bankruptcy, and the SkyBridge Capital CEO directly linked the two, saying, "Our trip to the Middle East led to his immediate downfall."

As evidence, he said Bankman-Fried had bad-mouthed his rival crypto CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao of Binance. The New York Times reported in November that Bankman-Fried had also criticized Zhao in private meetings in Washington.

Scaramucci told Insider that Bankman-Fried "was saying some nasty things about CZ" in Saudi Arabia and that it had prompted the Binance CEO to sell much of his FTT cryptocurrency, which had helped back up Bankman-Fried's business.

"So in some ways, I'm happy that we took that trip because we could still be living in a world of FTX," Scaramucci said. "He could have continued to cover it up, and I could have erroneously helped him do that by helping them raise money and building other corporate relationships."

"I had a relationship with Sam — I liked and I trusted him," he added. "And so when somebody betrays your trust like that, it's upsetting. Hopefully, he'll serve some time in jail for what he did, and the industry can move on and grow and hopefully heal from it."

Representatives for Bankman-Fried declined to comment.

S.Africa not ditching coal 'just like that', Ramaphosa cautions


Sun, January 29, 2023


Coal-rich but energy-starved South Africa will not immediately abandon its fossil-fuelled electricity generating plants as it transitions to cleaner forms of power, President Cyril Ramaphosa said Sunday.

South Africa, one of the world's largest polluters which generates about 80 percent of its electricity through coal, is in the grip of an energy crisis.

It has been blamed on ageing power stations, sabotage and theft of coal and spare parts by organised gangs.

Since 2021, the country has secured several billions of dollars in international loans and grants to support a green transition.

But Ramaphosa cautioned against "the perception that we are called upon to make a trade-off between energy security and a just transition to a low-carbon economy".


Addressing his African National Congress (ANC) party's senior officials, he said it was not the case "that we must make a choice between coal and renewable energy".

"Our energy architecture is 80-percent coal-powered, there is just no way we are going to close those power stations... just like that," he said.

Two recently built plants, ranked among some of the biggest coal-powered stations in the world, are beset by design problems.

But they will remain operational until the end of their 40-year lifespan, he vowed.

"We have invested a lot of money into those power stations," he told the ANC meeting.

Plants nearing the end of their shelf lives will be re-purposed for clean energy, he said.

South Africa's energy crisis has forced scheduled outages, ranging from two-and-half hours to 12 hours in total in a day.

Never again: How a 'lesson of 2011' shaped Biden's no-negotiation stance on debt limit


Sahil Kapur
Sun, January 29, 2023

WASHINGTON — In 2011, after faltering debt limit negotiations with House Republicans brought the U.S. to the brink of economic calamity, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden sat by the fireplace in the Oval Office, with their top aides on the couch. While relieved at having narrowly averted disaster, they were stunned by what had transpired.

Obama and Biden made a vow: Never again.

They agreed that going forward, “Nobody can use the threat of default or not increasing the debt limit as a negotiating tool,” said a former Obama official involved in the fiscal discussions, who recounted the Oval Office meeting and the “lesson of 2011” they all discussed. “It made you hold your stomach. You couldn’t believe you were at this situation," the official said.

The U.S. had just suffered its first credit downgrade. Markets were rattled. Consumer and business confidence was shaken. Stocks took a hit. And the recovery from the Great Recession was in question. Democrats averted the cliff — by acceding to $2 trillion in spending cuts the GOP had demanded after negotiations on a “grand bargain” broke down — but Obama and Biden agreed that the mere threat of default had taken a serious toll.

“They said: This is the sad lesson we’ve learned,” the Obama official said, describing the mood in the room. “It was an unimaginable self-inflicted wound in 2011.”

Twelve years later, Biden is executing on that lesson as he faces down a new Republican-controlled House that is similarly demanding spending cuts as a concession for extending the debt ceiling. He says there won’t be any negotiations, and Congress must allow the government to pay its bills. “I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip,” Biden said Thursday in Virginia.

His stance has drawn a rebuke from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said he’s “disappointed” but has remained steadfast in his call for spending cuts. As in 2011, the GOP speaker runs a House majority full of ideologically-driven conservatives who want to use the debt limit as leverage to force budget changes on a Democratic-led Senate and White House.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy speaks during a news conference at the Capitol 

(Drew Angerer / Getty Images file)

“Here’s the leader of the free world pounding on the table, being irresponsible, saying ‘no, no, no, just raise the limit, make us spend more.’ No. That’s not how adults act,” McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol last week. “Let’s find common ground, and let’s eliminate the wasteful spending to protect the hard-working taxpayers.

“So the longer he waits the more he puts the fiscal jeopardy of America up for grabs.”

The standoff raises the stakes for Biden and Republicans ahead of what Treasury says is a June 5 deadline to act or risk default. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are backing Biden and demanding that McCarthy present his plan and pass it through the House before any discussions occur. It sets the debate on a different trajectory than in 2011, when Obama tried to negotiate a budget deal with Republicans in exchange for raising the debt limit, which faltered several times and brought the U.S. to within days of default. It’s unclear how this one ends.

David Schnittger, who worked as deputy chief of staff to then-Speaker John Boehner, recalled that in 2011, House Republicans could compel the White House to come to the table by securing enough votes behind their opening bid: attaching a debt ceiling increase to a balanced budget amendment.

“It is possible we will eventually see House Republicans put forth a plan for dealing with both the debt limit and the spending problem. That’s what the House GOP majority did in 2011 with the ‘cut, cap and balance’ proposal,” Schnittger said in an email. He argued that the law requiring Congress to raise the debt ceiling, rather than increasing it automatically, exists to “compel a discussion — or negotiation” on budget policy when debts pile up.

It’s unclear whether McCarthy can find 218 Republican votes for a bill of his own in his narrow House majority. And, so far, Republicans have no unified plan as to what spending they want to cut.

After 2011, the Obama White House drew a hard line when the debt limit deadline came up again in early 2013. Then-White House spokesman Jay Carney said in January of that year: “Congress can pay its bills or it can fail to act and put the nation into default.”

House Republicans relented, attaching a debt limit extension to a symbolic measure calling for passing a budget.

Under that posture, Congress, under a GOP-led House, extended the debt limit three more times — in October 2013, February 2014 and November 2015 — either with a symbolic add-on or a bipartisan budget that both parties had agreed to. The threat of default was off the table. Over that period, spending went back up, with Democrats seeking more domestic money and Republicans backing more military funding.

Joe Biden (Andrew Harnik / AP)

Asked about Biden's position and the GOP criticisms, the White House said the president “takes a backseat to no one” on pursuing bipartisanship, but said that the no-negotiations stance from 2013 onward on the debt limit succeeded.

“Asking why it’s been 12 years since Democrats stopped paying ransom in exchange for Republicans not triggering an economic crisis is a self-defeating question,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told NBC News. “In 2011, the Obama-Biden administration negotiated in good faith but congressional Republicans’ recklessness caused an historic blow to our economy. That’s why the administration didn’t negotiate in 2013 or after.”

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior Obama White House aide from 2009 to 2015, said Biden is “absolutely” making the right call in refusing to “let an extremist minority use a potential default” to impose bad policy.

“Everyone seems to have forgotten that there was a debt limit standoff in 2013 where Obama adopted the no-negotiation approach and prevailed with a clean debt limit,” he said.

Biden’s landscape includes similarities and differences to Obama's. Boehner had a large House majority in 2011 and could afford plenty of defections; today McCarthy can spare only four votes. The GOP is more divided now about whether to cut Social Security and Medicare spending. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who played an instrumental role in 2011 talks, now puts the onus on McCarthy to find a way forward.

“John Boehner was a weak leader, but he genuinely wanted to avoid default. It’s not clear McCarthy knows what’s really at stake or has the savvy to avoid default,” Pfeiffer said in an email.

“On the positive side," he said, Democrats could try to force a debt ceiling vote if just a few Republicans get nervous about the possibility of default. "The narrow majority means that if a clean bill ever comes to the floor, you will only need a small handful of Republican votes to avoid default.”

Editorial: California electric car sales are zooming. Too bad they're mostly Teslas

The Times Editorial Board
Sun, January 29, 2023

Aerial view of Tesla autos at a charging station in Santa Monica. Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y were the bestselling vehicles in California, electric or otherwise, in 2022. (Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

If you’re looking for a sign that California’s transition to zero-emission transportation is well underway, you’ll be encouraged by the state’s latest sales numbers for electric cars.

They show that 18.8% of new vehicle sales — nearly 1 in 5 — were zero-emission in 2022. That’s a big jump from 12.4% the year before, and a more than a doubling of sales in just two years. Excluding plug-in hybrid vehicles, which run on a gas engine and a battery, about 16% of new sales in California are now fully electric, far exceeding the nationwide rate of 5.8%.

That sales are picking up after years of puttering along in the single digits is unquestionably good news for California’s fight against climate change and air pollution. They show a promising trajectory for the state's first-in-the-nation rules, adopted last year, to phase out sales of new gas-fueled automobiles by 2035.

But look under the hood and you’ll see the stubborn, underlying reality: The majority of new electric vehicles sold were higher-end models that remain unaffordable to most Californians. More than 70% of fully electric vehicles sold in California last year were Teslas, as has been the case each year since 2018.

The fact that California's electric vehicle market remains dominated by Teslas and other vehicles dealers classify as luxury and near-luxury is evidence of a socioeconomic divide that remains a barrier to California’s push to replace polluting, fossil-fueled vehicles with electric models powered by clean, renewable energy.

The 2022 sales figures indicate the most popular electric models remain significantly more expensive than the bestselling gas-powered ones. Tesla's Model 3 and Model Y are California's top two bestselling EVs. Even with recent price cuts, you can expect to pay at least $45,000 for a Model 3, while the Model Y goes for about $54,000 and up.

Compare that to the Toyota Camry, one of California’s top-selling gas-powered cars, with a price tag starting at around $27,000. That's in line with nationwide figures showing electric vehicles sell, on average, for about $17,000 more than gas-powered ones.

There are lower-priced electric vehicles, such as the Chevrolet Bolt and Nissan Leaf, which can be purchased for less than $30,000. But those models sold fewer than 17,000 vehicles combined in California last year, though not because buyers weren't interested. Supply chain constraints and limited production of these models reduced inventories, drove up prices and discouraged would-be buyers.

"There is a demand for less expensive models, but automakers are being cautious because it’s a new technology," said Edmunds analyst Jessica Caldwell. But those supply chain issues are easing and dealer markups above sticker price are starting to come back down, she said.

Officials with the California Energy Commission, which released the sales data, said the 2022 numbers also show Ford, Chevrolet, Hyundai and Kia are making inroads against Tesla, and that they are planning a wider selection of affordable models in the coming years, which will be good for competition. The new electric cars being sold today will be available at lower cost on the used market in the coming years, and will eventually get into the hands of lower-income people, they said.

But Californians in the low-income communities hit hardest by dirty air need the benefits of electric vehicles the most and shouldn’t have to wait years for them to trickle down. Zero-emission cars don’t only provide cleaner air, but also economic advantages, including lower fuel and maintenance costs compared with gas-fueled cars. But for now, their distribution remains highly uneven. A Sacramento Bee analysis last year found that electric cars were more than 15 times as prevalent in the state’s wealthiest ZIP Codes than in the poorest.

To be fair, California has recognized this environmental injustice and offers incentives of up to $9,500 toward the purchase of an electric car, such as the Clean Vehicle Rebate Program and Clean Cars 4 All, that include income limits to help disadvantaged residents. But these programs have been plagued by insufficient and uneven funding and long waiting lists, and are far too difficult for most Californians to navigate. Furthermore, California's zero-emission vehicle incentive programs are facing a $1.1-billion reduction next fiscal year due to a projected $22.5-billion budget deficit.

New federal tax credits for EVs in the Inflation Reduction Act may help increase sales among middle- and lower-income Californians, but state regulators should not count on that. They must act more aggressively to ensure that electric vehicles are available to motorists of all income levels through car-sharing programs, easier-to-use subsidies and building charging stations accessible to apartment renters and others who don’t have a way to charge at home.

Transportation accounts for about half of California’s greenhouse gas pollution, and we need to switch to electric vehicles as quickly as possible to meet our climate targets. But that transition will be unjust and unattainable as long as they remain an out-of-reach luxury for most people.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

FDA advisory committee votes unanimously in favor of a one-shot COVID-19 vaccine approach – 5 questions answered

Matthew Woodruff, Instructor of Human Immunology, Emory University

THE CONVERSATION
Fri, January 27, 2023 

The FDA advisory committee discussed vaccine safety, effectiveness of the current shots, potential seasonality of COVID-19 and more. wildpixel/iStock via Getty Images Plus

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s key science advisory panel, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, met on Jan. 26, 2023, to chart a path forward for COVID-19 vaccine policy. During the all-day meeting, the 21-member committee discussed an array of weighty issues including the efficacy of existing vaccines, the composition of future vaccine strains and the need to match them to the circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2, the possibility of moving to an annual-shot model, the potential seasonality of the virus and much more.

But the key question at hand, and the only formal question that was voted on, following a proposal from the FDA earlier in the week, had to do with how to simplify the path to getting people vaccinated.

The Conversation asked immunologist Matthew Woodruff, who has been on the front lines of studying immune responses to COVID-19 since the early days of the pandemic, to walk us through the big questions of the day and what they mean for future COVID-19 vaccine strategies.

What exactly did the advisory committee vote on?

The question put before the committee for a vote was whether to move to one COVID-19 vaccine consisting of a single composition for all people – whether currently vaccinated or not – and away from the current model that includes one formulation given as a primary series and a separate formulation administered as a booster. Importantly, approved formulations could come from any number of vaccine manufacturers, not just those that have currently authorized vaccines.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently requires that the primary series of shots, or the first two doses of the vaccine that a patient receives, consist of the first generation of vaccine against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, known as the “Wuhan” strain of the virus. These shots are given weeks apart, followed months later by a booster shot that was updated in August 2022 to contain a bivalent formulation of vaccine that targets both the original viral strain and newer subvariants of omicron.

The committee’s endorsement simplifies those recommendations. In a 21-to-0 vote, the advisory board recommended fully replacing, or “harmonizing,” the original formulation of the vaccine with a single shot that would consist of – at least for now – the current bivalent vaccine.

In doing so, it has signaled its belief that these new second-generation vaccines are an upgrade over their predecessors in protecting from infection and severe illness at this point in the pandemic.

Will the single shot remain a mixed-strain, or bivalent, vaccine?

For now, the single shot will be bivalent. But this may not always be the case.

There was a general agreement that the current bivalent shot is preferable to the original vaccine targeted at the Wuhan strain of the virus by itself. But committee members debated whether that original Wuhan vaccine strain should continue to be a part of updated vaccine formulations.

There is no current data comparing a monovalent, or single-strain, vaccine that targets omicron and its subvariants against the current bivalent shot. As a result, it’s unclear how a monovalent shot against recent omicron subvariants would perform in comparison to the bivalent version.

What is immune imprinting, and how does it apply here?

A main reason for the debate over monovalent versus bivalent – or, for that matter, trivalent or tetravalent – vaccines is a lack of understanding around how best to sharpen an immune response to a slightly altered threat. This has long been a debate surrounding annual influenza vaccination strategies, where studies have shown that the immune “memory” that forms in response to a prior vaccine can actively repress a robust immune response to the next.

This phenomenon of immune imprinting, originally coined in 1960 as “original antigenic sin,” has been a topic of debate both within the advisory committee and within the broader immunological community.

Although innovative strategies are being developed to overcome potential problems with routinely updated vaccines, they are not yet ready to be tested in humans. In the meantime, it is unclear how bivalent versus monovalent vaccine choices might alter this phenomenon, and it is very clear that more study is needed.

Is the committee considering only mRNA vaccines?

While a significant portion of the discussion focused on the mRNA vaccine platform used by both Pfizer and Moderna, several committee members emphasized the need for new technologies that could provide broader immunological protection. Dr. Pamela McInnes, a now-retired longtime deputy director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, highlighted this point, saying, “I would make a plea for ongoing research on broader protection, maybe different platforms, maybe a different approach.”

A good deal of attention was also directed toward Novavax, a protein-based formulation that relies on a more traditional approach to vaccination than the mRNA-based vaccines. Although the Novavax vaccine has been authorized by the FDA for use since July 2022, it has received much less national attention – largely because of its latecomer status. Nonetheless, Novavax has boasted efficacy rates on par with its mRNA cousins, with good safety profiles and less demanding long-term storage requirements than the mRNA shots.

By simplifying the vaccine schedule to include only a single vaccine formulation, the committee reasoned, it might be easier for competing vaccination platforms to break into the market. In other words, newer vaccine contenders would not have to rely on patients’ having already received their primary series before using their products. Companies seemed ready to take advantage of that future flexibility, with researchers from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax all revealing their companies’ exploration of a hybrid COVID-19 and flu shot at various stages of clinical trials and testing.
Would the single shot resemble flu vaccine development?

Not necessarily. Currently, the influenza vaccine is decided by committee through the World Health Organization. Because of its seasonal nature, the strains to be included in each season’s flu vaccine for the Southern and Northern hemispheres, with their opposing winters, are selected independently. The Northern Hemisphere’s selection is made in February for the following winter based on a vast network of flu monitoring stations around the globe.

Although there was broad consensus among panelists that the shots against SARS-CoV-2 should be updated regularly to more closely match the most current circulating viral strain, there was less agreement on how frequent that would be.

For instance, rapidly mutating strains of the virus in both summer and winter surges might necessitate two updated shots a year instead of just one. As Dr. Eric Rubin, an infectious disease expert from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, noted, “It’s hard to say that it’s going to be annual at this point.”

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation is trustworthy news from experts, from an independent nonprofit. 

It was written by: Matthew Woodruff, Emory University.

Read more:

Even bivalent updated COVID-19 boosters struggle to prevent omicron subvariant transmission – an immunologist discusses why new approaches are necessary


Genomic sequencing: Here’s how researchers identify omicron and other COVID-19 variants

Matthew Woodruff receives funding from the National Institute of Health and the US Department of Defense to support his academic research.