MDMA 'outperforms' expectations in trial as medicine for PTSD

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY

Rob Waugh
·Contributor
Mon, 29 January 2024 

MDMA could soon be used as a medicine, researchers say (Getty)

MDMA is better known as the dancefloor hallucinogen Ecstasy, but it may have important uses as a medicine, a new study has shown.

The research found that - when paired with therapy - MDMA significantly outperformed therapy alone when it came to dealing with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).

The difference was particularly stark when it came to people dealing with traumas from early childhood, which are especially hard to deal with through therapy.


The researchers said: "MDMA may be particularly effective for enhancing treatment efficacy by improving a range of problems with self-experience that are associated with treatment resistance."

In particular, the drug may be able to help patients who have been traumatised during childhood confront their issues and deal with problems such as alexithymia - an inability to recognise emotions.

The study found people who took MDMA responded better to therapy. (Getty)

The researchers added: "Even though the MDMA-assisted therapy experimental sessions often occurred in relative silence as participants focus largely on their inner experience, MDMA-assisted therapy was associated with a significant improvement in emotional self-awareness and loss of alexithymia.

"This suggests that MDMA-assisted therapy can facilitate accessing painful memories and experiences that under ordinary conditions are too overwhelming and terrifying to confront, even in the presence of trained therapists."
Recommended reading

Scientists may have found how LSD treats mental illness (Daily Beast)


LSD might be good for us (Esquire)


Here's what LSD does inside your brain (Yahoo News)

How did the study work?

Speaking to Vox, researcher Bessel Van derk Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, Brain Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma, said he was initially reluctant to include people with childhood trauma in the study.

In the end, the study, which aims to legitimise the use of MDMA-assisted therapy, included 84% people with early childhood trauma.

The subjects were split into two groups, one of which had therapy, and one which had 36 hours of MDMA-assisted therapy.

Van der Kolk said: "We had the best outcome data here with MDMA that I’ve ever seen for any study."
Can psychedelic drugs really treat illnesses?

Research has shown that certain psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin (the ingredient in magic mushrooms) and MDMA can have an impact on problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

On LSD, the picture is less clear.

A small trial in 2018, funded by the Beckley Foundation and led by the 'first lady of LSD', Amanda Feilding, the Countess of Wemyss and March, saw 20 volunteers take the drug and fill in psychological questionnaires.

Feilding said: "I took it in the 1960s when it was legal and it improved my wellbeing."

A systematic review of studies into LSD in Frontiers in Psychiatry in 2020 found that the drug was a "potential therapeutic agent", with the strongest evidence around using LSD to treat alcoholism.
Will MDMA really be legal a medicine?

In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration awarded the drug 'breakthrough status', so it could be fast-tracked as a potential treatment.

MDMA is often illegally sold on the street. (Getty)

Studies have shown that patients with PTSD – where it's difficult to deal with painful memories – can overcome their traumas, long-term, with the aid of MDMA.

Several successful trials have shown the drug's potential with PTSD, and some believe approval could come this year.

Anglican leader calls UK Rwanda migrants plan 'damaging'

Peter HUTCHISON
Mon, 29 January 2024 

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the government's Rwanda bill leads Britain down "a damaging path" (JUSTIN TALLIS)

The leader of the world's Anglicans on Monday warned that the UK government's plan to send migrants to Rwanda was leading the nation down a "damaging path", as he waded into the highly charged political issue.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said the controversial plan of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative government would "outsource our legal and moral responsibilities for refugees and asylum seekers".

He made the comments during a debate in parliament's unelected upper chamber the House of Lords, which is scrutinising the government's Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.


"With this bill, the government is continuing to seek good objectives in the wrong way, leading the nation down a damaging path," said Welby, who is the highest-ranking cleric in the Church of England, the mother church of global Anglicanism.

The legislation aims to combat irregular immigration by deporting asylum seekers to the east African country.

Sunak has put the plan at the centre of his pledge to "stop the boats" of migrants crossing the Channel from northern France in flimsy and ill-suited vessels.

The bill is his answer to a UK Supreme Court ruling late last year that deporting asylum seekers to Kigali is illegal under international law.

If passed, the legislation would compel judges to treat Rwanda as a safe third country.

It would also give UK ministers powers to disregard sections of international and British human rights legislation.

Welby, one of 26 senior Church of England bishops and archbishops who sit as the Lords Spiritual in the House of Lords, said the bill was damaging for asylum seekers in need of protection and safe legal routes.

He added that it was also damaging for Britain's "reputation" in relation to international law.

"Worst of all, it is damaging for our nation's unity in a time when the greatest issues of war, peace, defence and security need us to be united," the archbishop said.

- Selective -

Welby said the legislation offers "only ad hoc one-off approaches" and that Britain "can as a nation do better than this bill".

He warned that Britain might face 10 times the number of migrants in the coming decades and called for a "wider strategy" for refugee policy, involving international co-operation.

"This bill continues, wherever it does it, to outsource our legal and moral responsibilities for refugees and asylum seekers, with other countries far poorer already supporting multitudes more than we are now and to cut back on our aid," Welby added.

Sunak, who faces a general election later this year that he is widely predicted to lose, has urged the House of Lords to pass the plan.

He claimed it was the "will of the people" after the legislation cleared the elected House of Commons earlier this month.

But peers, which include former senior judges, have expressed deep unease, particularly about the scheme's calls to ignore international human rights and refugee law.

Welby said that "pick-and-choose approach" to international law "undermines" the UK's standing in the world.

The legislation is expected to pass the second reading stage on Monday but peers may vote for amendments at the crucial third reading later.

Last week, the Lords voted to delay ratification of a related treaty with Rwanda.

pdh/phz/rox

New anti-Ukraine disinfo campaign aims to bog down Western media


Théo MARIE-COURTOIS
Mon, 29 January 2024 

This online disinformation campaign blamed on Russia involves not just the spreading of anti-Ukrainian fake news but also challenges Western media outlets to verify it (SEBASTIEN BOZON)

A message on X asked a major French channel to verify what seemed to be a Deutsche Welle report about a Ukrainian artist who "sawed down the Eiffel Tower."

"I see these kind of stories every day. Official media don't talk about them, what should I believe?" "Kathe" asked BFMTV on December 4.

But this was no innocent question, this was part of an online disinformation campaign blamed on Russia that involves not just the spreading of anti-Ukrainian false news, but also challenges Western media outlets to verify it.


It first appeared in September, and is a "vast enterprise of diversion" targeting journalists, experts say.

It is seemingly part of Russia's war on Ukraine, almost two years on since Moscow launched an invasion that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

The "Antibot4Navalny" collective that tracks inauthentic Russian-language accounts on X, formerly Twitter, has christened this new disinformation campaign, operation "Matryoshka", after the Russian stacking dolls that are placed one inside another.

In the space of a few hours, "Kathe" had also contacted dozens of other major French media such as Paris Match, FranceInfo, Le Figaro and Le Parisien.

The X account then remained inactive for two weeks before publishing a picture of graffiti, purportedly from Los Angeles and depicting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky as a homeless person begging.

Subsequently, another X user asked various media to verify it.

The "Antibot4Navalny" collective trackers provided information that allowed AFP to identify scores of accounts that were also asking media to verify false stories.

The accounts AFP identified mostly appeared to have been dormant and then pirated.

These accounts posted frequently, sometimes as often as once per minute, in a tell-tale sign of false behaviour.

AFP analysis found that accounts requesting media to verify false news subsequently re-published them soon afterwards.

- 'Diversion for fact-checkers' -

Posts that are part of this campaign always target Ukrainians and attempt to foster the idea that Europe and the United States are weary of Kyiv.

Examples include thefts from the Paris catacombs by a Ukrainian, military aid misappropriated by Ukraine, doctored or fake graffiti of Zelensky, false adverts on New York's Times Square.

Most of these images were first posted by Russian users, generally on the Telegram social media platform and news blogs, according to AFP research.

This campaign followed in the wake of another in recent months called "Doppelganger", which consisted of posting anti-Ukraine fake images that impersonated Western media.

French Intelligence services attributed that to Russia, experts told AFP.

David Chavalarias, director of the French scientific research centre CNRS, said this campaign is about "diversion for fact-checkers" in order to keep them "occupied on crude subjects (that are) difficult to verify".

This campaign can also give visibility to false information, said Chavalarias.

"The goal seems to be to capture the attention of fact-checkers in order to interfere with their work," said researcher Julien Nocetti, who specialises in cyber issues.

He added that the objective also seemed to be to generate more long-term effects on the narrative of the war by testing the ability of certain content to go viral.

The Russians are learning "and there is a type of agility in testing different methods," he added.

A French security source told AFP that Russia is "looking for visibility, they want us to talk about them, for better or for worse".

- 'Battle of narratives' -

The same bots that took part in the "Doppleganger" campaign also shared anti-Ukrainian posts as part of the "Matryoshka" operation.

A December 2023 report by Insikt Group, the threat research division of US cybersecurity company Recorded Future, indicated that the "Doppleganger" campaign was still highly active on social media, using at least 800 bots dedicated to promoting fake news impersonating Ukrainian media.

According to German press last week, Germany has uncovered a vast "pro-Russian disinformation campaign" using thousands of fake X accounts to publish anti-Ukraine content alongside the visuals of German media.

"Ukraine continues to be the country most often targeted by information manipulation -- not by accident," European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said last week during a press conference about disinformation and foreign interference.

"We are engaging on a 'battle of narratives'," he added. "Security is no longer just a matter of weaponry... It is a matter of information.:

jma-tmc/jc/lpt/dth/bc/jm

Spanish Catholics denounce ‘offensive’ Jesus poster

Our Foreign Staff
Mon, 29 January 2024 

The image was scorned on social media for being 'effeminate'

 - ALVARO LEFLET/AFP

A poster of Jesus to promote Easter week in Seville has drawn a backlash from Spanish ultra-conservatives, who denounced it as “effeminate” and “offensive” to Roman Catholics.

Designed by Seville artist Salustiano Garcia, the image shows Jesus after his resurrection, standing semi-naked in front of a blood-red background, with the lower part of his body covered by a white cloth.

It shows “the radiant side of Holy Week” in the “purest style of this prestigious painter”, said the Council of Brotherhoods and Guilds, which organises the main Easter week events in the Andalusian city.


In a social media backlash, however, many denounced the poster as “sexualised”.

“It’s absolutely shameful and an aberration,” wrote the ultra-conservative Catholic IPSE, which fosters “respect for Christian symbols” and is active in opposing abortion.
‘Not in the spirit of Holy Week’

The image portrayed Jesus as “effeminate” and “camp”, it said, demanding a public apology from the artist for a poster that was not in the spirit of Holy Week.

Javier Navarro of the far-Right Vox party, joined the chorus of disapproval, saying the poster “sought to provoke” and did not advance the aim of “encouraging the faithful to participate in Holy Week in Seville” in remarks on X, formerly Twitter.

Garcia told the Right-wing ABC newspaper that his portrayal of Jesus, which was based on an image of his son, was “gentle, elegant and beautiful” and created with “deep respect”.

Spanish artist Salustiano Garcia poses for a photograph next to his painting - CRISTINA QUICLER

“To see sexuality in my image of Christ, you must be mad,” he said, insisting there was “nothing” in his painting that “has not already been represented in artworks dating back hundreds of years”.

‘Homophobia and hatred’

Juan Espadas, leader of Spain’s ruling Socialist party in the Andalusia region, came to the defence of the artwork, denouncing the “expressions of homophobia and hatred” that it had caused, and saying it combined the region’s “tradition and modernity”.

Holy Week celebrations, which recall the death and resurrection of Christ, are important in Catholic Spain, notably in Seville, which is seen as the centre of such festivities.

Spain legalised homosexuality in 1976, three years after Franco’s dictatorship ended, and is one of the world’s most open countries with respect to LGBTQ rights, permitting same-sex marriage and allowing gay couples to adopt since 2005.

James Webb Space Telescope images show 19 nearby spiral galaxies in detail

Nina Massey, PA Science Correspondent
Mon, 29 January 2024

A treasure trove of images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) showcases 19 spiral galaxies in never-before-seen detail.

The new set of pictures show stars, gas, and dust on the smallest scales observed.

Researchers are studying the images to uncover the origins and evolution of the intricate structures.

Following each of the galaxy’s clearly defined arms – which are brimming with stars – to their centres may reveal old star clusters and maybe even active supermassive black holes.

Webb’s image of NGC 1087(Nasa/Esa/CSA/STScI/J Lee [STScI]/T Williams[Oxford]/R Chandar [UToledo]/PHANGS Team/PA)


The newly released images are part of a large, long-standing project, the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) programme, which is supported by more than 150 astronomers worldwide.

Webb’s near-infrared camera (NirCam) captured millions of stars which sparkle in blue tones in the images.Some are spread throughout the spiral arms but others are clumped tightly together in star clusters.

The telescope’s mid-infrared instrument (Miri) data highlights glowing dust and also spotlights stars that have not yet fully formed; they are still encased in the gas and dust that feed their growth, like bright red seeds at the tips of dusty peaks.

Astronomers were amazed to discover the images also show large, spherical shells in the gas and dust which may have been created by exploded stars.

Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope launched into space and is an international partnership between Nasa, the European Space Agency (Esa) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Murder, drugs, violent loyalty – inside Japan’s feared yakuza

Jake Kerridge
Mon, 29 January 2024 

Yakuza members show off their tattoos at a Shinto festival in Tokyo - Jiangang Wang

The American journalist Jake Adelstein has spent decades in Japan exposing the secrets of organised crime gangs. Anybody who has read his 2009 book Tokyo Vice, or seen the 2022 HBO television series based on it, won’t be surprised to know that there are people after his blood.

Prior to Tokyo Vice coming out, Adelstein thought it would be prudent to hire a bodyguard, and he asked Makoto Saigo, a retired yakuza – the term for a member of one of the crime syndicates that used to dominate Japan – to take on the job. Saigo agreed, on one condition: that Adelstein write his biography. “I want my [baby] son to know who I was and what I did [and] I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see him grow up.”

The Last Yakuza is the resulting book, although some of the biographical details have been merged with those of other yakuza to protect the identity of the man Adelstein calls “Saigo”. Only Adelstein knows how much of a composite Saigo is: he certainly emerges from these pages as a bizarre mixture of erratic, honourable, tough and hapless.


Born around 1960, Saigo was a large youth who “towered over his classmates like a bear among deer” at school. He “became a yakuza… because he didn’t like strait-laced Japanese society”. There was also the matter of his taste for upmarket sex-workers, which left him with debts of 60 million yen (then around $60,000) when he was barely out of his teens. Only joining the Inagawa-kai, the third-most powerful yakuza group in Japan, protected him from the loan-sharks.

Saigo’s career was chequered. A spell as a methamphetamine addict saw him convicted of possession in the early 1980s, and landed him in one of Japan’s hellish prisons. “You lost your human rights the second you walked in here” was the greeting he received from the guards. It also nearly saw him expelled from the Inagawa-kai; but he redeemed himself sufficiently after his release from prison to become leader of an Inagawa-kai subset of 150 men.

Jake Adelstein, author of The Last Yakuza

Saigo’s dodgy schemes could be ingenious. When he wanted to secure a loan without collateral, he ordered his men to turn up at a local bank, each bringing a cat: they proceeded to tease the cats, the noise driving all the customers away, until the manager agreed to Saigo’s demands. At heart, though, Saigo was a softie, and when the bank manager lost his job as a result, Saigo gave him five million yen. (He had also insisted that any yakuza who hurt one of the cats would be docked a day’s pay.)

In Saigo’s heyday, the yakuza saw themselves as part of the community: they demanded protection payments from local businesses, but as they were effective in seeing off petty criminals, they were thought to be worth the money. Different Yakuza gangs fought each other, but their code forbade them from harming ordinary people, and they didn’t indulge in the vulgar American gangster habit of carrying guns. Saigo was content, if he was attacked, to see off his enemies with whatever came to hand, such as (in one instance) a “For Sale” sign. Anti-yakuza laws were passed, but the police didn’t see much point in enforcing them.

Adelstein shows how much these gangs depended on rituals and hierarchies as much as any other sector of Japanese society. Once, Saigo was obliged to cut off his own little finger to satisfy a debt owed by one of his men: Adelstein makes this solemn deed into one of the book’s excellent comic set-pieces, as he describes Saigo hopelessly hacking at his pinkie, rejecting his wife’s offer of a sticking plaster with a cartoon frog on it, and then visiting the creditor and chucking the mangled lump of gristle into his coffee.

The Last Yakuza is set in the Japanese underworld - Greg Nicod

As well as telling Saigo’s story, Adelstein gives us a potted history of the yakuza, and how they survived by keeping politicians in their pockets. He’s unimpressed with the latter: “I’ve come to feel that the only difference between Japan’s [ruling] Liberal Democratic Party and the yakuza [is that] some of the yakuza have a code of ethics”. He’s a serial info-dumper: when Saigo gets a tattoo, Adelstein launches into half a dozen pages’ worth of the history of Japanese tattooing. But what he tells us is always interesting, whether or not it’s pertinent, and he always keeps the human story of Saigo’s triumphs and travails in focus, however large his canvas becomes. His deadpan prose proves well-suited not just to the story’s comic aspects, but also its pathos.

Even when Saigo was young, he already seemed old-fashioned in his devotion to the old yakuza codes – apart from the bit that forbade drug use. The generations that came after him, from the early 1990s on, were greedier, more reckless, more trigger-happy. The police began to enforce the laws that forbade people from paying the yakuza protection: unable to bring in funds, Saigo was expelled from the Inagawa-kai. Yet the yakuza habit proved more difficult to shake off than the drug addiction, and the end of the book finds Saigo, to Adelstein’s dismay, seeking a way to return to his old life.

Adelstein makes the appropriate tut-tutting noises when he writes about the harm that the yakuza have caused over the years, and insists that he doesn’t want to romanticise them. Even so, the main effect of The Last Yakuza is to make one nostalgic for a time when criminals had standards of decency. One comes away from it finding Saigo not just sympathetic, but even lovable.

The Last Yakuza is published by Corsair at £25. To order your copy for £19.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Telegraph Books

African wildlife charity with Prince Harry as board member investigating rape and torture claims against eco-guards

Sky News
Mon, 29 January 2024 


A wildlife charity which has Prince Harry as a board member is investigating allegations of human rights abuses by its guards in the Republic of the Congo.

African Parks said it was "encouraging anyone with knowledge" of any abuse to come forward and said the investigation was its "highest priority".

In addition to sitting on the board, the Duke of Sussex is also a former president of the non-profit organisation, which manages 22 national parks and protected areas across 12 countries.

Guards managed and paid by the charity had been engaged in the beating, rape and torture of indigenous people in the rainforests of the Republic of the Congo, according to a report in the Mail On Sunday.

The charity said it had been made aware of the allegations last year after a letter from Survival International - but added the human rights organisation had "chosen not to co-operate, despite repeated requests" for more details.

African Parks was founded in 2000 and aims to protect Africa's national parks and advance wildlife conservation around the world.

It manages more than 20 million hectares (49.4 million acres) of protected zones - or an area nearly as big as England, Scotland and Wales combined.

'A zero-tolerance policy'

A statement from the African Parks board and chief executive said: "African Parks has a zero-tolerance policy for any form of abuse and is committed to upholding the rights of local and indigenous people.

"We are aware of the serious allegations regarding human rights abuses by eco-guards against local people living adjacent to Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo, which have recently received media attention.

"We became aware of these allegations last year via a board member who received a letter from Survival International.

"We immediately launched an investigation through an external law firm based on the information we had available, while also urging Survival International to provide any and all facts they had.

"It's unfortunate that they have chosen not to co-operate, despite repeated requests, and we continue to ask for their assistance.

"This is an active, ongoing investigation that is our highest priority as an organisation, and we encourage anyone with knowledge of any abuses to report them to us or to the Congolese law enforcement authorities which will assist with the investigation and ensure that the perpetrators of any abuses are brought to justice."

On claims Survival International has not been co-operating, the head of the organisation's conservation campaign, Fiore Longo, said: "It's not up to us to give them details.

"It's their responsibility when we raise a problem to go there and investigate."

Iranian, Canadians indicted in US in dissident murder plot

AFP
Mon, 29 January 2024 

An Iranian and two Canadians have been indicted for allegedly conspiring to assassinate Iranian dissidents on US soil (SCOTT OLSON)

An Iranian and two Canadians, including a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, have been indicted for allegedly conspiring to assassinate Iranian dissidents on US soil, officials said Monday.

Naji Sharifi Zindashti, 49, Damion Patrick John Ryan, 43, and Adam Richard Pearson, 29, plotted to murder two residents of the state of Maryland, Justice and Treasury department officials said.

Zindashti, who is based in Iran, is a narcotics trafficker who runs a network that has carried out numerous "assassinations and kidnappings across multiple jurisdictions in an attempt to silence the Iranian regime's perceived critics," the Treasury Department said in a statement.

Zindashti was indicted by a grand jury in Minnesota along with Ryan and Pearson for allegedly plotting the murder-for-hire of two unidentified individuals who had fled to the United States from Iran.

Ryan, identified in the indictment as a "full-patch member of the outlaw Hells Angels Motorcycle Club," and Pearson are currently incarcerated in Canada on unrelated charges, the Justice Department said.

According to the indictment, Zindashti recruited Ryan to carry out the murders, for which he was to be paid $350,000 with another $20,000 for expenses.

Ryan allegedly hired Pearson to put together a team to carry out the murders.

"Zindashti and his team of gunmen, including a Minnesota resident, used an encrypted messaging service to orchestrate an assassination plot against two individuals," said US Attorney Andrew Luger for the District of Minnesota.

"Thanks to the skilled work of federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents, this murder-for-hire conspiracy was disrupted and the defendants will face justice," Luger added.

Zindashti allegedly communicated with Ryan between December 2020 and March 2021 through the SkyECC encrypted messaging service, according to the indictment.

An unidentified co-conspirator allegedly sent Ryan information about the intended victims, including their photographs and a map with their address.

- 'Unacceptable threat' -

The same day, the United States and Britain announced sanctions against Zindashti's network, which they alleged is run "at the behest of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security."

"Zindashti's network has been linked to murders in several countries," including the United Arab Emirates, Canada and Turkey, the US Treasury Department said.

"The Iranian regime's continued efforts to target dissidents and activists demonstrate the regime's deep insecurity and attempt to expand Iran's domestic repression internationally," US Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism Brian Nelson said.

The United Kingdom said in a separate notice that it would "sanction seven individuals and one organization, including senior Iranian officials and members of organized criminal gangs who collaborate with the regime."

They include members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Unit 840, over reported "plots to assassinate two television presenters from news channel Iran International on UK soil," said the British announcement.

"The Iranian regime and the criminal gangs who operate on its behalf pose an unacceptable threat to the UK's security," British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in a statement. "The UK and US have sent a clear message -– we will not tolerate this threat."

Barcelona runs out of water for swimming pools amid ‘worst drought ever’


James Badcock
Thu, 1 February 2024 


Reservoirs across southern Spain are at extremely low levels thanks to a continued spell of warm, dry weather - Jon Nazca/Reuters

Tourists face swimming pool closures in Barcelona in the coming weeks as Catalonia confronts its “worst drought ever”.

The region’s government has imposed emergency measures over the crisis, caused by a lack of rainfall, which outlaw the refilling of pools or topping them up unless recycled water is used.

“It’s the worst drought ever recorded,” said Pere Aragonès, Catalonia’s president, on Thursday.

The emergency measures, set to take effect from Friday, will impact six million people in Barcelona and hundreds of other coastal communities in Catalonia.

The first phase of restrictions includes a ban on washing cars and watering public gardens unless using water sourced from an approved recycling system.

Private pools at hotels and elsewhere cannot be emptied and refilled, and are only permitted to be topped up if facilities have water regeneration systems.

The only exceptions will be made for swimming pools used for therapeutic purposes in hospitals, nursing homes and facilities for the disabled.

Catalonia’s campsite association has said it is exploring ways to use seawater in pools because of the restrictions.

Outdoor pools used by swimming clubs will be able to dodge the restrictions but cannot use their showers. Showers on beaches used by bathers to wash away sand must remain closed.

The measures aim to lower the daily amount of water permitted for residential and municipal purposes from 210 to 200 litres (55 to 52 gallons) per person.

Most households in Barcelona already fall well below that limit. Hotels, however, register a much higher average consumption, with a 2016 survey showing that five-star establishments with Jacuzzis and multiple pools exceed 540 litres per guest per day.
Irrigation systems next in line

Measures will be ramped up in two more phases if winter and spring do not bring abundant rains, with limits lowered to 180 litres, and then 160 litres, if required.

Across the board, agricultural irrigation must be reduced by 80 per cent, water use in livestock farming by half, and in the industry and leisure sector by 25 per cent.

If triggered, a second phase of restrictions would see showers at gyms switched off.

Businesses in the sector have criticised that proposal and instead plan to introduce time-limited showers of just three minutes instead.

Tourism sector representatives are also in discussions with the regional government on how to reduce their water use without pulling the plug on attractions.

The measures come after several heatwaves were recorded in Spain and wider Europe last summer, lowering reservoir levels as water evaporation and consumption increased.


The Cuencas Internas water board, which supplies more than 90 per cent of Catalonia’s population with water, says the region has regularly received less than half of its anticipated rainfall since the autumn of 2020.

As a result, its reservoirs are currently at just 16 per cent of their capacity.

Teresa Ribera, Spain’s ecological transition minister, said “the government of Spain will not leave the Barcelona metropolitan area without support.”

Last summer’s unusually warm weather has continued into 2024, with the mercury rising to nearly 30C (86F) in some regions in January – temperatures usually seen in June.

The region of Andalusia, whose reservoirs are at just 22 per cent of capacity, is also expected to impose emergency measures. Juan Manuel Moreno, Andalusia’s president, has said that the region’s major cities and resorts should expect restrictions this spring and summer, adding that the region lost 2.1 per cent of GDP in 2023 because of the drought.

Experts say climate change driven by human activity is boosting the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts and wildfires.

Ukrainian nuclear staff barred from Russia-held plant: IAEA


AFP
Thu, 1 February 2024 

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control, has banned Ukrainian staff from entering, according to the IAEA (Anatolii Stepanov)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Thursday that workers from Ukraine's atomic energy operator Energoatom have been barred from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was taken over by Russian forces in March 2022, one month after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, and its six reactors have been shut down.

As the plant is now manned by staff who have taken Russian nationality, it was not clear how many people are affected by the new order.


But fierce fighting in the area and power cuts have raised international concerns as the plant still needs electricity and water to cool its systems.

IAEA head Rafael Grossi is to visit the site next week after holding high-level talks on Tuesday in Kyiv, the agency said in a statement.

During his visit, Grossi will "raise the crucial issue of staffing" at the plant to seek "further information" on the latest announcement.

"It is of crucial importance that the plant has the qualified and skilled staff that it needs for nuclear safety and security," Grossi said in the statement.

"The number of staff has already been reduced significantly since the war began," he added.

A source in Energoatom told AFP that Russia had been "imposing" citizenship on the plant's employees and forcing them to sign contracts with Russian-installed operator Rosatom.

"The Russians have set several deadlines. If someone does not take a Russian passport and sign contracts, they will no longer come to work," the source said.

The latest deadline was 1 January 2024, it said.

Before the war, there were 11,500 staff at the plant. At present 4,500 people are employed by the Russian operator at the plant and 940 applications were "under consideration".

Staff working at the site consist of former Energoatom employees who have "adopted Russian citizenship and signed employment contracts with the Russian operating entity", the IAEA statement specified.

Besides that "staff who have been sent to the ZNPP from the Russian Federation" work there.

The IAEA has repeatedly warned of persistent nuclear safety and security risks at the site.

IAEA officials have been on the ground monitoring the plant since September 2022.

The six reactor units, which before the war produced around a fifth of Ukraine's electricity, have been shut down.

kym/cad/pvh

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

OxyContin marketer agrees to pay $350M rather than face lawsuits

Thu, February 1, 2024 


An advertising agency that helped develop marketing campaigns for OxyContin and other prescription painkillers has agreed to pay U.S. states $350 million rather than face the possibility of trials over its role in the opioid crisis, attorneys general said Thursday.

Publicis Health, part of the Paris-based media conglomerate Publicis Groupe, agreed to pay the entire settlement in the next two months, with most of the money to be used to fight the overdose epidemic.

It is the first advertising company to reach a major settlement over the toll of opioids in the U.S. It faced a lawsuit in at least Massachusetts but settled with most states before they made court claims against it.

The office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led negotiations with the company, said Publicis worked with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma from 2010-2019, helping campaigns for OxyContin and other prescription opioids, Butrans and Hysingla.

James' office said the materials played up the abuse-deterrent properties of OxyContin and promoted increasing patients' doses. While the formulation made it harder to break down the drug for users to get a faster high, it did not make the pills any less addictive.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said the company provided physicians with digital recorders so Publicis and Purdue could analyze conversations that the prescribers had with patients about taking opioids.

As part of the settlement, Publicis agreed to release internal documents detailing its work for Purdue and other companies that made opioids.

The company said in a statement that the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing and noted that most of the work subject to the settlement was done by Rosetta, a company owned by Publicis that closed 10 years ago.

“Rosetta’s role was limited to performing many of the standard advertising services that agencies provide to their clients, for products that are to this day prescribed to patients, covered by major private insurers, Medicare, and authorized by State Pharmacy Boards,” Publicis said.

The company also reaffirmed its policy of not taking new work on opioid-related products.

Publicis said that the company's insurers are reimbursing it for $130 million and that $7 million of the settlement amount will be used for states' legal fees.

Drugmakers, wholesalers, pharmacies, at least one consulting company and a health data have agreed to settlements over opioids with U.S. federal, state and local governments totaling more than $50 billion.

One of the largest individual proposed settlements is between state and local governments and Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma. As part of the deal, members of the Sackler family who own the company would contribute up to $6 billion, plus give up ownership. The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether it's appropriate to shield family members from civil lawsuits as part of the deal.

The opioid crisis has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in three waves.

The first began after OxyContin hit the market in 1996 and was linked mostly to prescription opioids, many of them generics. By about 2010, as there were crackdowns on overprescribing and black-market pills, heroin deaths increased dramatically. Most recently, opioids have been linked to more than 80,000 deaths a year, more than ever before. Most involve illicitly produced fentanyl and other potent lab-produced drugs.

Geoff Mulvihill, The Associated Press

The battle to change Native American logos weighs on, but some communities are reinstating them


Thu, February 1, 2024 



It was a passionate student letter in 2020 that caused the Southern York County school board to reconsider its logo: a Native American man, representing the “Warriors.”

Though the conversation had come up before in the suburban district located in southern Pennsylvania, 2020 was a turning point of racial reckoning after death of George Floyd. Less than a year later, the school board voted to retire the warrior logo after it considered research that depicted what impact the reductive imagery had on Native and non-Native students.

“I understand the attachment people have to that at the school,” said said Deborah Kalina, who served on the school board at the time. “But it’s more than that. And I think we did the right thing.”

Three years later, however, the logo — a Native American man with feathers, a tomahawk and pipe — is back after a newly-elected conservative bloc acted on their campaign promise and reinstated it earlier this month. It’s shaken the Native communities across the country who work to challenge such logos, said Donna Fann-Boyle, co-founder of the Coalition of Natives and Allies. When one school district does it, they worry others will try, too.

“Everything could just go backward,” said Fann-Boyle, who says she has Choctaw and Cherokee heritage.

It’s a marked departure from the larger tide of communities deciding to change their mascots, a trajectory that has been underway for decades, but ramped up in 2020.

The battle to change the use of Native Americans in logos, team names and fan-driven behavior has often been in the bright spotlight due to major sports teams. The NFL’s Washington Commanders changed their decades-old name in 2019, while Cleveland’s baseball team became the Guardians in 2021. Protests are being planned at the Super Bowl once more in response to the Kansas City Chiefs.

But beyond the high-profile fights to change names, mascots and team identities, there are battles going on in local communities. It’s a rare move for the Pennsylvania district to reverse course, but it’s not the first time. At least two other school districts in Massachusetts and Connecticut reverted to logos that many Native Americans have called offensive.

A number of states have passed legislation to prohibit the mascots in the years since. Nationally, the largest nonprofit dedicated to representing Native nations, the National Congress of American Indians, has worked to challenge the use of Native imagery in logos and mascots. The organization maintains a database tracking Native mascots, and has found that nearly 2,000 schools still use them. At least 16 dropped their use of Native imagery or names between March 2022 and April 2023.

Numerous studies have found that mascots are harmful to the mental health of Native students, and increase negative stereotyping of Native people in non-Native students, said Laurel Davis-Delano, a professor of sociology at Springfield College.

The mascots are all historic — and often inaccurate — depictions, erasing the fact Native people exist today, she said. And though to some the mascots can seem like positive representation on the surface, they’re adapted from a “bloodthirsty warrior” stereotype, which was historically used in a genocidal way, Davis-Delano said.

“It’s hostile when the mascot exists, it’s hostile during the change and hostile afterwards because even when they eliminate Native mascots successfully, there’s still a backlash,” she said. “There’s still people holding on to it and purposefully displaying it. And that lasts for some years. Most of the time, people shift over and are good to go, but there are people who hang on.”

Maulian Bryant, Penobscot Nation tribal ambassador, remembers having a visceral reaction to seeing the mascots as she was growing up. Mentors in her life helped her speak out about it, and her work resulted in a 2019 law in Maine to prohibit them in public schools and colleges.

School has its pressure of homework, socializing and sports, Bryant said. Seeing non-Native peers act out stereotypes, dressed up with feathers and warpaint, adds another layer for Native students: “an assault on something core to who they are,” she said.

“Adults put their pride and their resistance to progress above what students really need,” she said. “The students and teams and towns are just as proud of the new mascots.”

Some schools — like the University of Utah and Florida State University — have agreements with local tribes to use their names and imagery. The Seneca Nation approved the use of Native imagery in the Salamanca School District, due to its location on the nation’s Allegany Territory, and large percentages of Native American students and staff.

One group, Native American Guardians Association, which has Native American membership, has pushed for the continued use of the mascots across the country. Speaking at Southern York County’s school board meeting on Jan. 18, members argued removing the logo would be erasure.

Supporters agreed, and said use of the warrior head image denoted positive features and didn't erase history. They sent droves of emails pushing for reinstatement, board member Jen Henkel said during the meeting.

But opponents — who vastly outnumbered supporters speaking at the board meeting — criticized reopening an issue that was decided years ago.

“Every single board member has voted to retire the logo, but one, has either lost their election or chose not to run for reelection,” said Jen Henkel. “Every single candidate not previously on the board who ran opposing the warriorhead logo’s return has lost. The majority community has spoken on this issue loud and clear. You might not like the results, but here we are.”

After a lengthy presentation, debate and public comment, the school board ultimately voted to reinstate it, 7-2. Board President Nathan Henkel did not return a message seeking comment.

The board's decision and Native American Guardians Association's push, though, is in direct contrast to the Native family in the community in southern Pennsylvania, and descendants of the local Conestoga-Susquehannock tribe who sent a letter decrying the decision. Today, their tribe — which is not federally or state recognized — has about 50 members.

“We give more energy to an inanimate object than we do to actual human beings,” said Chesterfield Hall, a member of the tribe.

Andrea Ligon, a tribal elder, said the mascot is a misrepresentation of their identity.

“This is fundamentally disrespectful and offensive. We are undermined by images of the mascot that disrespects historical and personal experiences of our tribe with a one-dimensional representation,” she said. “We are opposed to this mascot because they are playing an Indian with no understanding of the deeper meaning of feathers, face paint, chants and dancing, which are all part of our culture.”

Katy Isennock, who is a Sicangu Lakota citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, grew up in the district, going to school with the warhead mascot. As a teenager, she never felt she had the power to speak out about it, or the support of the community. Then she watched her children go through the renewed discussion of the mascot.

Her son — who is a Sicangu Lakota, Oglala Lakota and Seneca citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe — wears his long hair in a braid and has been made fun of for his hair. He has started to hide it, she said. It’s something that is so normal when they’re among other Native people, but has been scrutinized in a predominantly white community, making him feel embarrassed rather than proud, she said.

“He goes through so much, having hair like that, and he shouldn’t have to and it’s like — you guys have a Native mascot and you don’t know that?” she said.

Speaking to the board, she asked them to drop the politics.

“To put the mascot away is respect,” she told them. “Retiring it is respect — for the past, for the present and for the future. It is respect for my Native kids in the district and Native kids that may pass through here in the future.”

Brooke Schultz, The Associated Press

Opinion: Why I’m going to keep teaching the truth about racism in America


Opinion by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Thu, February 1, 2024 

Editor’s Note: Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard University, an organizer of the Freedom to Learn movement and co-host of the Some of My Best Friends Are podcast. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

Black History Month, which gets underway this week, is a chance to give Americans the timely reminder that you can’t teach our history honestly without understanding Black struggle and triumph.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad - Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project at Harvard Kennedy School

Take race and racism out of the American story and very little about the country is comprehensible. The way we elect our presidents. The civil rights enshrined in the 14th Amendment that gives birthright citizenship to formerly excluded Asian immigrants and grants marriage equality to same-sex couples. The nation’s intergenerational wealth accumulated during 350 years of slavery and segregation. And the outsize cultural visibility of African American creative talent on the world stage.

Because Black patriots have carried the flame of American democracy for everyone, and for centuries, Black people continue to be overrepresented in pro-democracy movements in the United States — the very movements that some people, particularly some top Republicans and leading figures on the right — seek so desperately to destroy in their zeal to pass voter suppression laws and their efforts to diminish freedom of speech and assembly rights.

Nowhere are these attacks more evident right now than on college campuses. Many academics who teach about the history of race and racism in America, as I do, are being unjustifiably blamed for the rise in antisemitism on campus and falsely accused of creating racial divisions in the country. This has had the undesirable effect of putting us in the crosshairs of some of the most powerful people in the country, including Republican politicians, conservative activists and billionaire donors.

Last week, at my alma mater the University of Pennsylvania, about 100 faculty rallied against what they decried as “anti-democratic” attacks on diversity, academic freedom and free speech. Faculty and staff at private universities across the country now face a similar plight, as do many teachers, librarians and academics at public colleges and universities who have been censored, harassed, physically threatened and fired for doing their jobs over the past year.

As these dangerous assaults move to private universities, many academics are preparing for the worst. I count myself among them. Last year, for the first time in my 25-year career as an academic historian, my teaching was singled out by a powerful politician for causing hate.

When GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx opened the December 5 congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus, she targeted a class taught by me as a “prime example” of a “race-based ideology” that has caused Harvard University to be “ground zero for antisemitism following October 7.” Foxx also cited two additional campus examples of “institutional antisemitism and hate” — a Global Health seminar on “Scientific Racism and Anti-Racism” and an initiative at the Harvard Divinity School on “Social and Racial Justice.”

Then, on January 2, just hours after Claudine Gay announced her resignation under pressure Foxx promised to keep her congressional investigation into Harvard going because “postsecondary education,” the lawmaker wrote in a statement, has been hijacked by “political activists, woke faculty and partisan administrators.”

If by “woke” Foxx means teaching the truth about American history, then I’m guilty as charged. There are few aspects of America’s past that haven’t been impacted by conscientious Black people and their resistance to systemic racism and illiberal democracy.

The charge against me of promulgating a “race-based ideology” that fosters antisemitic views is especially preposterous since the coursework I teach on the history of anti-Jewish hatred and discrimination shows how Blacks and Jews have common enemies in neo-Nazis, replacement theorists and white domestic terrorists in the US. Members of these same groups frequently voice support for the current leader of the Republican Party, former President Donald Trump, who has employed language that resembles the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler.

Right-wing office holders targeting academics is the latest battlefront in a three-year-old political war on education that started with Trump’s ban on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training in federal agencies, and then metastasized to numerous states criminalizing books and curricula on racism, gender discrimination and sexuality in public primary and secondary schools. Florida recently banned sociology from the core curriculum of the nation’s largest public university system, which serves 430,000 students, because “it has been hijacked by left-wing activists,” according to the state commissioner of education.

Foxx and her political ilk want people to believe that what happens in my classroom and the classrooms of many other academics across the country is a part of a woke conspiracy meant to indoctrinate White Americans to hate themselves and their country. They want the public to believe that those of us who teach the truth about the history of race and racism are the real racists and antisemites in America, as these enemies of racial progress and democracy attempt to stand reality on its head.

The situation at Harvard has been made more dire by the university’s failure to push back sufficiently against broader political attacks. In his first university statement as interim president, Alan Garber issued a broad affirmation of the university’s commitment to “free inquiry and expression, in a climate of inclusion and mutual respect.” But as the new semester got underway in January, there was no written statement by senior university officials assuring faculty who teach about racism or staff who hold various functions in the area of DEI that we are safe to do our jobs.

Boilerplate assurances of academic freedom were commonplace before Gay became president and certainly were issued frequently before October 7, when antisemitism became weaponized against anyone teaching about racism or colonialism or who dared to speak about the history of Israel’s occupation of Gaza. And to be clear, I mean anyone — not just Black faculty. Just last week, on the first day of the spring semester, President Garber came under fire for appointing Derek J. Penslar, a prolific and well-respected scholar of Jewish history, to be the co-chair of Harvard’s reconstituted presidential task force combating antisemitism.

Penslar is accused of being soft on antisemitism by Bill Ackman, the billionaire donor who says DEI is the “root cause” of Harvard’s alleged antisemitism and is a prominent supporter of Foxx’s congressional investigation. Another vocal critic of Penslar is the former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who was also an outspoken opponent of Gay’s. He wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) that Penslar’s views are disqualifying because he has invoked “the concept of settler colonialism in analyzing Israel” and has labeled it “an apartheid state.”

The tragedy is that the academics most committed to learning from the past — who have dedicated their entire careers to staring into the abyss of oppression, in an effort to teach the concept of “Never Again” and how it applies to all people — are the ones least protected in this moment. Black faculty and staff feel especially vulnerable. As my friend who is a Black staffer at a Florida community college told me recently: “I am on the opposite end of the educational spectrum than Harvard, but our realities are the same in many respects.”

Some Black colleagues on my campus have told me they are concerned about the risk to their careers and reputations from “teaching while Black” in this climate. Even some Black alumni are weighing whether it is safe to speak up about Gay’s swift demise as Harvard’s first Black woman president, especially in light of what was believed by many of us to be a political hit job for her commitment to DEI. “People are afraid,” one alum told me. “If it can happen to her, it can happen to any of us.”

If the oldest, richest and most powerful American university won’t defend its own people and resist political efforts to interfere with unvarnished truth-telling and academic freedom, then shame on Harvard. As an academic institution, we should be leading the resistance to these assaults on higher education, not bowing to them.

Silence is a failure of leadership in times like these. Harvard, with its motto “Veritas” — truth — owes it to all of us on the frontlines of these false attacks to defend us for teaching and practicing the very values it claims to uphold.

And for those of us who believe that a rigorous, equitable, inclusive and above all else honest education is the only kind worth having in a multi-racial democracy, we must be courageous, stand together and continue teaching the truth.

Vibrations in cooling system mean new Georgia nuclear reactor will again be delayed


Thu, February 1, 2024 at 6:21 p.m. MST·2 min read

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Power Co. said Thursday that vibrations found in a cooling system of its second new nuclear reactor will delay when the unit begins generating power.

Plant Vogtle's Unit 4 now will not start commercial operation until sometime in the second quarter of 2024, or between April 1 and June 30, the largest subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co. announced.

The utility said in a filing to investors that the vibrations “were similar in nature” to those experienced during startup testing for Unit 3, which began commercial operations last summer, joining two older reactors that have stood on the site near Augusta for decades

In that case, the utility found that a pipe vibrated during testing because construction workers hadn't installed enough bracing. Georgia Power said the Unit 4 problem has already been fixed but too much testing remains to be done to make the March 30 deadline.

Georgia Power said it's likely to lose $30 million in profit for each month beyond March that Unit 4 isn't running because of an earlier order by state utility regulators. The five members of the Georgia Public Service Commission ordered that the company can't earn an additional return on equity through a construction surcharge levied on Georgia Power's 2.7 million customers after March 30.

The typical residential customer has paid about $1,000 in surcharges over time to pay for financing costs.

The company said its construction budget won't be affected if Unit 4 starts by June 30 but it would have to pay $15 million a month in extra construction costs if the project extends into July.

Regulators in December approved an additional 6% rate increase to pay for $7.56 billion in remaining costs at Vogtle, expected to cost the typical residential customer $8.95 a month. That's on top of the $5.42 increase that took effect when Unit 3 began operating.

The new Vogtle reactors are currently projected to cost Georgia Power and three other owners $31 billion, according to calulations by The Associated Press. Add in $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid Vogtle owners to walk away from construction, and the total nears $35 billion.

The reactors were originally projected to cost $14 billion and be completed by 2017.

Units 3 and 4 are the first new American reactors built from scratch in decades. Each can power 500,000 homes and businesses without releasing any carbon. But even as government officials and some utilities are again looking to nuclear power to alleviate climate change, the cost of Vogtle could discourage utilities from pursuing nuclear power.

Georgia Power owns 45.7% of the reactors, with smaller shares owned by Oglethorpe Power Corp., which provides electricity to member-owned cooperatives; the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia; and the city of Dalton.

Some Florida and Alabama utilities have also contracted to buy Vogtle’s power.

Jeff Amy, The Associated Press

House Republicans are moving forward with a bill that would overhaul student-loan repayment and make it harder for Biden to get relief to borrowers

Ayelet Sheffey
Updated Wed, January 31, 2024 

Rep. Virginia Foxx.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

House Republicans are reviewing a bill that would overhaul the student-loan system.


It proposes limits on the education secretary for getting new forms of relief to borrowers.


Democrats introduced their own package to address student debt, but it's unlikely to advance.

House Republicans are moving forward with a bill that could make it harder for student-loan borrowers to get new forms of relief.

On Wednesday, the House education committee is set to move forward with a review and debate over the College Cost Reduction Act, introduced in early January by the GOP chair of the committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx.

The legislation outlines various priorities, including strengthened guidelines for college accreditation, caps on certain forms of financial aid, and limits to the education secretary's authority to implement new repayment and relief programs for borrowers.

While Foxx said in a statement that there's bipartisan agreement that student debt in the country is spiraling, there's likely to be some Democratic pushback when it comes to her proposals to put an end to President Joe Biden's efforts to shorten student-loan repayment for many borrowers.

"Student-loan debt is skyrocketing, and completion rates are plummeting. There's bipartisan agreement that lasting reforms are needed to correct course," Foxx told Business Insider.

However, she said her plan was "a responsible alternative to the Biden administration's free-college agenda, which is placing an enormous burden on students and taxpayers." She added: "This bill offers reforms to the Higher Education Act that will lower college costs, rein in executive overreach, and prevent colleges from endlessly raising the cost of tuition."

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have offered solutions to combat the student-debt crisis, but there's disagreement on the best way to do so. The Education Department is in the process of implementing student-debt relief for borrowers after the Supreme Court struck down Biden's first attempt. Along with that, the department has carried out targeted batches of forgiveness through account adjustments and has set up upcoming relief through its SAVE income-driven repayment plan.

However, many Republicans have opposed the department's efforts to make new repayment plans and implement streamlined processes for relief, saying the burden of debt forgiveness falls on taxpayers. Here's how Foxx's legislation would change things for borrowers.

What the GOP bill means for student-loan borrowers

Caps student borrowing. According to the bill's fact sheet, the bill would cap student-loan borrowing at $50,000 for undergraduate students, $100,000 for graduate students, and $150,000 for students in graduate professional programs.

The legislation would also sunset the grad and parent PLUS loan programs, which offer sums graduate students and parents can borrow in their own names to cover up to the full cost of attendance.

BI has previously spoken with parents who have struggled to repay their PLUS loans because of the high interest rates that can leave them with balances far larger than what they originally borrowed.

Streamlines repayment plans. When it comes to student-loan repayment in particular, the legislation aims to put constraints on the Education Department's ability to implement new programs. Specifically, the bill would establish two types of repayment plans: a 10-year "mortgage-style" plan and an income-driven repayment plan.

Limits debt relief. The fact sheet said the bill would prohibit "the Secretary from creating new repayment plans and from modifying an existing repayment plan in a manner that increases costs to the government."

The legislation would also repeal the Education Department's efforts to streamline the process for borrowers who say they were defrauded by their schools to get relief, along with rules that would ensure debt forgiveness for borrowers whose schools abruptly shut down.

The education secretary would also be required to confirm that any new rules related to student-loan programs would not increase costs to the government — if they did, the rules couldn't be implemented.

What Democrats are proposing

A day before the markup on the GOP bill, House Democrats on the education committee introduced their plan to address college affordability: the Roadmap to College Student Success.

It consists of a package of Democratic-led legislation that addresses strengthening the Pell Grant, improving the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, and making student loans more affordable.

Other bills in the package touch on pricing transparency when students are applying for financial-aid packages, along with partnerships with states to bolster tuition-free community-college programs.

"This campaign has three main objectives: first, bring down the cost of college; second, help students access a quality degree; and third — once students are in school — provide them with the support they need to graduate," the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Bobby Scott, said in a video about the package.

"A college degree is the best investment students can make for their future," he said. "And with our help, future generations may have the opportunity to enjoy the lifelong benefits that come with a college degree."

While Scott's proposal is unlikely to make headway in a GOP-controlled House, it's a reflection of where Democrats stand on college affordability — and where they differ with Republicans — ahead of the presidential election.

DESANTISLAND
Florida House votes to loosen child labor laws a year after tougher immigrant employment law

Thu, February 1, 2024



TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A year after Florida enacted a new law making it more difficult for employers to hire immigrants in the country illegally, the House passed a bill Thursday to let 16- and 17-year-olds work longer and later hours.

Supporters said teenagers and their parents know how to best manage their time and activities and lifting employment restrictions will help them build careers and earn money, especially with the current labor shortage. Opponents said the changes would make it easier for employers to exploit children and longer hours could negatively affect schoolwork.

“Nearly 1 million searches have been performed for ‘How can I get a job as a teen.’ They want to work. This bill gets government out of their way to choose a path that’s best for them,” said Republican Rep. Linda Chaney, who sponsored the bill.

The bill would remove restrictions prohibiting 16- and 17-year-olds from working more than eight hours when they have classes the next day and from working more than 30 hours a week when school is in session. The House passed it on an 80-35 vote.

Democrats opposing the bill argued that current law allows students plenty of time to work and attend school. Rep. Anna Eskamani questioned whether the measure was being proposed because the state's immigrant employment restrictions are making it more difficult to fill some jobs.

“The elephant in the room is that we see a labor shortage in different parts of the economy and part of that is tied to decisions this Legislature has made when it comes to immigration,” she said.

She also said employers should pay adults more for less desirable jobs rather than relying on children.

“I have concerns with saturating the workplace with cheap labor, which will make it harder for every person to be paid a wage they can live on,” Eskamani said.

The Senate has a similar bill that doesn't go as far as the House. Republican Senate President Kathleen Passidomo said she's heard too many concerns from parents about “young people working all hours of the day and night and not sleeping and not getting an education.”

The Senate bill needs approval from two more committees before reaching the full chamber.

"We want to allow students or kids that want to work to do that, but our number one priority is to make sure that they don’t sacrifice their education,” Passidomo said.

Brendan Farrington, The Associated Press

Florida Guard looks like DeSantis’ own militia —with no Legislature to keep him in check 

THE NEW KINGFISHER

Opinion
the Miami Herald Editorial Board
Thu, February 1, 2024 



After pulling the plug on his struggling presidential campaign, Gov. Ron DeSantis is again flexing his muscles in his home state with an announcement that he would send the Florida State Guard — custom created for him — to the Texas border.

The U.S. southern border crisis — and inaction by Congress and the White House to address the record numbers of people crossing it — have given DeSantis the perfect excuse to concentrate more power in his own hands via what looks more and more like his own taxpayer-funded militia.

The Legislature already revived the Florida State Guard and then expanded it at his request. Now lawmakers are working to give him even more power to deploy the unit while making it harder to hold its members accountable for on-duty acts.

DeSantis said Thursday State Guard members would be deployed to Texas alongside members of the Florida National Guard and Florida Highway Patrol troopers. Texas and the federal government are at a standoff over the state’s efforts to block migrants from crossing the border by setting up a concertina-wire barrier. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Biden administration could take down the barriers but Texas has vowed to continue erecting them — now with the help of Florida.

“The goal is to help Texas fortify this border, help them strengthen the barricades, help them add barriers, help them add the wire that they need so that we can stop this invasion once and for all,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Jacksonville.

In 2022, DeSantis pushed the Legislature to revive the State Guard, which had been inactive since 1947. The civilian volunteer force was originally planned as a non-military mission meant to provide relief after disasters like hurricanes but it has quickly evolved. Lawmakers expanded from 400 to 1,500 members and allowed DeSantis to deploy them out of state, while also allocating $100 million for planes and boats.

Following a surge of migrants arriving by boat in the Keys last year, a special unit took part in combat training in the Panhandle where trainees learned to use rifles, practice “aerial gunnery” and treat “massive hemorrhages.” Some military veterans who volunteered to be part of the State Guard quit over its militia-style training.

This is a far cry from handing out water bottles and hurricane relief supplies and closer to something resembling DeSantis’ own militia. That’s a realistic danger considering his authoritarian tendencies and how his rhetoric on immigration has grown more extreme with calls to shoot suspected drug smugglers “stone cold dead” at the Southern Border.

By granting DeSantis so much authority, the Legislature doesn’t seem to be considering what a future governor could do with the same powers.

And yet the Republican-led Legislature is now advancing a bill that would give the governor — whether that’s DeSantis or someone else — even more flexibility to activate the Guard. Under House Bill 1551, the governor could use the force during ”a declared state of emergency, period of civil unrest, or any other time deemed necessary and appropriate.” The legislation also would make it harder for people to sue members of the Guard for actions they committed while on duty by making plaintiffs pay for everyone’s attorney fees if they don’t prevail. Guard members would also be entitled to an attorney paid for by the taxpayers in criminal or civil court.

“Any other time deemed necessary” appears to be in the eye of the beholder. Let’s go back to the summer of 2020, when DeSantis proposed an “anti-riot” law following Black Lives Matter protests — despite the fact that, unlike in other parts of the country, the Florida protests were largely peaceful. What could the governor have done with a military-style State Guard that answers to him only?

DeSantis has used fear — of BLM protesters, “woke” culture and, now, an out-of-control Southern border — to justify spending millions of taxpayer dollars to make him more powerful. The Florida Legislature, so far, has shown no desire to keep him in check.

Click here to send the letter.