Epstein donations force resignation at international peace organization

By Richard Roth, CNN 

The president of an international think tank has resigned following revelations that he accepted a loan from accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and secured $650,000 in donations from foundations linked to Epstein for the peace organization.

© Matt Dunham/AP Terje Rød-Larsen, a Norwegian diplomat, has resigned as CEO of the International Peace Institute.

The International Peace Institute, based across the street from the United Nations, announced that diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen had apologized to the institute's board and resigned as president and CEO on Thursday.

The IPI said it was unaware of the Epstein transactions.

Larsen was a key broker of the 1990s Oslo Middle East peace accords and represented the UN on several peace assignments around the globe.

The United Nations announced Friday it has withdrawn from its role as honorary chair of the IPI, following the resignation of Rød-Larsen.

Citing the office's independence and status, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the UN secretary-general, after a review, has decided not to serve in any capacity in the governance of any outside entity.

The institute is an independent organization that promotes UN causes. It was founded 50 years ago with the assistance of former UN Secretary-General U Thant.

IPI board Chairman Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, denied IPI was aware of the Epstein-related donations or the personal loan to Larsen until media reports in the veteran diplomat's home country of Norway.

Rudd said in a statement he was "blindsided."

"Mr. Rød-Larsen has apologized to the Board for what he has described as his grave error of judgment, Rudd said. "I am deeply disappointed that the Board has had to learn about so much of this through the media."

In a separate statement, the IPI board said, ''Epstein's crimes were hideous. The notion that IPI would be in any way engaged with such an odious character is repugnant to the institution's core values."

Earlier this month, the Norwegian Business Daily (DN) published a letter from Larsen to its board and supporters, a letter since confirmed to CNN, in which he writes, "Please accept my sincere apologies for any distress or embarrassment this may have caused you. DN has reported that I took out a personal loan of $130,000 from Mr. Epstein in 2013. This loan had no connection to the activities or finances of IPI, and it was repaid in full as promised within the allotted time from my own personal accounts."

Rudd said the media reports in November 2019 were the first notice of Epstein involvement with the Institute.

Rudd said "subsequent searches by IPI staff, made at the request of the Board, have identified donations totaling $650,000 that were received between October 2011 and May 2019. This represented approximately 0.9% of IPI's total revenue over those years. The source of these donations had not previously been disclosed to the Board, nor to me as Chair."

There has been no link established between Larsen and any of Epstein's criminal activities. However the institute is asking for an investigation.

In his letter, Larsen writes that "IPI never paid any money or compensation of any kind to Jeffrey Epstein. This was a completely separate and personal matter. I recognize that it was a grave error of judgment on my part to engage in a personal financial relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and I regret it whole heartedly."

The institute said an amount equivalent to Epstein's donations will be given to programs that help victims of human trafficking and sexual assault. The board has named Adam Lupel, the IPI's current vice president and chief operating officer, as the institute's acting president and CEO.

Rudd said he attended an international event including UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon and other dignitaries in September 2013 where it was later determined Epstein was on the guest list, though it's not certain he attended.

Rudd said he does not remember meeting him nor does he recall Epstein joining an advisory panel conference call in January 2014 designed to provide mining advice to Mongolia.

The IPI said it will commission a global accounting firm to audit its finances to make sure that all Epstein foundation donations have been identified.

Epstein was indicted on sex trafficking charges in New York in 2019 and found dead in his jail cell in Manhattan weeks later.

Larsen is married to Mona Juul, Norway's ambassador to the United Nations.

Initial efforts to contact Larsen have been unsuccessful.

ICE agents told to ‘be ready’ to protect federal property and quell protests on Election Day

© Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

According to NBC News sources, ICE agents are being told to standby on and after Election Day along with other federal law enforcement agencies

If mobilized, it would mark the first time ICE provides security detail at federal buildings on Election Day. Previously ICE agents have been mobilized only on inauguration days.

Under President Trump's June Executive Order targeted toward protesters, ICE, CBP and DHS could use expanded powers to send staff to federal properties.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have reportedly been told by the Department of Homeland security to remain on standby to protect federal property in Washington, DC, on or after Election Day, according to NBC News.

ICE has never been reported to provide security on Election Day, although the agency has provided extra security on inauguration days in the past. According to NBC News's reporting, anonymous DHS and ICE officials said that the extra agents would be deployed due to the nationwide protests throughout 2020 and "attacks seen on federal property."

In June, President Trump issued an executive order expanding powers for ICE, CBP, and Federal Protective Service, sending federal agents into Portland and other American cities. President Trump alleged the order was in response to "anarchists and left-wing extremists" damaging monuments and federal property.

The Oregon Attorney General claimed that the arrests by federal agents were abductions and protesters' rights were violated in a July lawsuit, referring partly to arrest scenes of federal agents throwing protesters in unmarked vans. The lawsuit for federal agents to identify themselves was rejected by a US District Judge. Ted Wheeler, Portland's Mayor, called the federal agents "Trump's personal army."

The standoff in Portland lasted for two months, namely in front of the federal courthouse.

In NBC News's reporting, a CBP spokesperson added that "under the DHS Protecting American Communities Task Force (PACT), CBP will continue to provide support, as requested, to the Federal Protective Service to protect Federal facilities and property if needed and to local law enforcement partners if requested."

Additionally, DHS spokesperson Chase Jennings said that the agency is "fully prepared" but that DHS's jurisdiction covers only federal property.

Representatives for ICE did not immediately respond to comment for this story.

Crop industry wants EPA to boost lab inspections for pesticide research
BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 10/31/2020

© istock

A dwindling number of Environmental Protection Agency lab inspectors for studies supporting pesticide re-approval is prompting industry calls for more government oversight.

The EPA has just five inspectors tasked with evaluating the laboratory practices of hundreds of labs that conduct studies surrounding pesticide regulations, marking a steady decline over the past 25 years for the officials in charge of inspecting compliance with the agency’s Good Laboratory Practice Standards.

Those standards were adopted decades ago after major issues in private lab testing were uncovered by investigators. Now, inspectors review reports deemed suspicious and carry out spot inspections that function much like an IRS audit and are seen as a way to prevent fraudulent research.

CropLife America, a major industry group whose members include companies like Bayer CropScience, John Deere and PepsiCo., is among those pushing the EPA for more lab inspections.

Proponents argue the lend legitimacy to industry lab results in the eyes of worldwide regulators. A lack of inspections, in turn, is seen as hurting the integrity of U.S. industry in a global marketplace.

Under the Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) program, the EPA inspects the quality and integrity of data submitted in support of approving a pesticide. But some industry groups say the agency should augment its program.

In a 2018 email to the EPA that was obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity and shared with The Hill, CropLife America’s senior director for regulatory policy expressed concern about the low staffing number for the program.

“The GLP inspection and audit program is being starved of resources and personnel,” Ray McAllister wrote.

“There are some 1400 laboratories, facilities, and field sites in the US participating in GLP research on pesticides,” he added in the email. “With current staffing of the audit and inspection program, keeping up with that number of facilities seems like an impossible task.”

The EPA said the number of facilities in the U.S. is closer to 1,200.

Bill Jordan, who ran the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs during the Obama administration said that during his tenure, there were “not more than a dozen” people and "probably considerably fewer" working on Good Laboratory Practice Inspections.

“As budget resources shrank, the size of that group in particular also got smaller and they were able... to keep up with the referrals of suspicious reports but I don’t know how well they did the kind of routine inspections of laboratories that were doing large numbers of studies,” he said.

Jordan explained how companies that submitted studies to the agency would need to verify whether they followed the standards.

“EPA would then review the study and go over it with a fine-toothed comb or microscope...to look for any indication that there might be something fake, unreliable, about the way the study was conducted,” he said.

The EPA said it has five inspectors and two in training. From 2016 through 2019, the agency had four inspectors.

CropLife’s McAllister told The Hill that staffing has been in “a gradual decline over the past 26 years.” His email to the EPA noted that there were 19 inspectors and six support staffers in 1994.

He argued in the 2018 email that in other countries, the ratio of labs to inspectors is more “balanced.”

The EPA says its staffing level is sufficient to provide adequate oversight, citing a 2018 law that set aside more money that the agency can use for the GLP program.

The agency’s website also has a list of nearly 1,000 inspections taken by the agency since 2006. The list shows an average of about 59 inspections annually for the first three years of the Trump administration, about 71 each year under former President Obama and 77 inspections for the three years during the George W. Bush administration.

McAllister said in his EPA email that if the U.S. doesn’t do enough inspections, companies might be more inclined to take their research to foreign organizations.

“A robust GLP program...demonstrates to all stakeholders the integrity of industry-supported and generated data that underpin pesticide regulations,” he wrote.

Environmentalists agree that the laboratory standards inspections help prevent fraud, although they argue the industry needs more oversight beyond what they see as a very basic measurement of scientific integrity.

Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity said that while he believes GLP inspections play an important role, he’d like to see even more scrutiny on the science behind the industry’s findings.

“While it’s very important to make sure these inspections are occurring, this is also not an industry that has much oversight,” Donley said. “Although they have to meet some bookkeeping requirements, this is not the best scientific evidence.”

Stop ignoring China's other killer export: fentanyl
BY JAMES RAUH, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 10/31/20 
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

© Getty Images

As coronavirus infections continue to rise, the pandemic has remained a key focus of the 2020 presidential campaign. At the same time, another health threat has taken hundreds of thousands of American lives and has hardly been mentioned: the opioid crisis, which is being driven by China's other killer export, fentanyl.

Too many families like mine have been devastated because of fentanyl, and important swing states like Ohio have paid too high a price from the opioid crisis for the presidential campaigns to remain silent. The federal government needs to admit that illicitly manufactured fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction, and our presidential candidates need to tell us what they are going to do about it.

Illicitly manufactured fentanyl emerged as a street drug in recent years because it’s inexpensive to buy, profitable to sell, and relatively easy to smuggle in from China, where most of it is made. This has had catastrophic consequences. Nationally, accidental overdose deaths — roughly two-thirds of which are caused by fentanyl or other synthetic opioids — are now the leading cause of death for people under 50 and the leading cause of injury-related death regardless of age.

One of fentanyl’s many victims was my son, Tom, a young man with many wonderful attributes. Tom’s struggle began with a prescription for OxyContin to treat pain from tendonitis. He eventually became addicted to narcotics. Many subsequent treatments gave us hope for his lasting recovery, but that hope turned to sorrow when Tom died of fentanyl poisoning in 2015.

During the pandemic, America’s fentanyl problem has worsened. So far this year, more than 40 states have reported increases in opioid-related deaths. In May, more Ohioans died of overdoses than in any month since at least 2006. According to the Associated Press, compared with data from the same period last year, preliminary overdose death counts through the end of August were up 28 percent in Colorado and 30 percent in Kentucky. Through the end of July, they were up 19 percent in Connecticut.

The threat from fentanyl isn’t just to drug users and their families. Illicitly manufactured fentanyl and fentanyl analogs endanger every American. Just 2 milligrams of fentanyl is enough to kill an average person.

To put this capacity to kill into context, just one pound of fentanyl could kill as many people as have died to date in the U.S. from the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019 alone, Customs and Border Patrol and Mexican authorities seized more than 5,000 pounds of illicitly manufactured fentanyl that had been destined for the U.S.

Carfentanyl, one of fentanyl’s chemical analogs, is 100 times more powerful — and more deadly — than fentanyl itself. A lethal dose of carfentanyl is just 0.02 milligrams. Just one kilogram of carfentanyl has the potential to kill 50 million people, which led to Former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell once describing it as “the perfect terrorist weapon.”

The chemical weapon Sarin gas is recognized as a weapon of mass destruction by the United States. Carfentanyl, which is 25 times more deadly than Sarin, is not.

Democrats on edge as Biden-Trump fight nears end
Obama shooting three pointer while campaigning for Biden goes viral

Illicitly manufactured carfentanyl, fentanyl, and other fentanyl analogs should be designated immediately as WMDs. Doing so would give federal agencies new ways to find and eliminate these chemicals and keep any more from coming into the country. It is hard to understand why the U.S. has not already taken this step. If we can go to the wall with China over TikTok, why can’t we do the same over chemicals that can kill millions?

At the very least, we should talk about this active threat to our country at least once before this presidential campaign ends.

James Rauh is the founder of Families Against Fentanyl, which is fighting against illegally manufactured fentanyl. After his son, Tom, died of a fentanyl overdose, Rauh, of Akron, Ohio, founded Families Against Fentanyl to reduce access to the synthetic opioid that continues to take American lives.

Harris more often the target of online misinformation than Pence: analysis
BY KAELAN DEESE AND REBECCA KLAR - 10/29/2020

© Greg Nash

Vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has been the target of misinformation propagated online more often than Vice President Pence, according to a report by a media intelligence firm.

A report from Zignal Labs, shared with The Hill on Friday, found that Harris has been targeted four times as often as Pence. She has also been the target of misinformation at four times the rate Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) was in 2016 when he accompanied former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket.

The report was first obtained by The Associated Press.

More than 4 percent of the conversation on Twitter about Harris was negative or circulated misinformation, while misinformation about Pence and Kaine made up for about 1 percent of talk on Twitter during the 2016 and 2020 elections, according to Zignal Labs.

There’s also been an uptick in the overall online conversation about vice presidential candidates in 2020 compared to four years ago, with a subsequent increase in misinformation or negative storylines spreading this year, based on the report.

Various bits of misinformation have been spread about the California senator even before she was chosen to be former Vice President Joe Biden's running mate, including allegations that she is not legally eligible to run for office.

The report found more than 280,000 mentions between July 1 and Oct. 9, making up around 1.2 percent of all mentions of Harris during that time period, regarding “birtherism” or that she was “not eligible” to serve as vice president.

The misinformation surrounding baseless claims that Harris, who was born in California, was not eligible to serve as vice president did not remain in the fringe Twitter sphere. This summer, a Newsweek column by John Eastman, a conservative attorney, called into question the citizen status of Harris's parents at the time of her birth. The article was then retweeted by Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign adviser.

"I just heard that. I heard it today, that she doesn’t meet the requirements," the president said at a press conference in August. "And by the way, the lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, talented lawyer."

Trump drew swift backlash from Democrats in office after he refused to disavow the racist conspiracy theory.

Harris was born Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland. She is eligible to hold the office of vice president and would be the first woman of color to hold the position of vice president if Democrats oust Trump on Election Day.

Zignal Labs identified more than 1 million Twitter mentions since June featuring hashtags or misinformation regarding Harris. Some of the mentions were fact checks seeking to correct misinformation spread about Harris, though a majority were found to include false information about her.

“The narratives related to Kamala Harris zeroed in much more on her personal identity, especially as a woman of color,” Jennifer Granston, head of insights at Zignal Labs, told the AP.

Granston said much of the misinformation surrounding Harris's origin of birth "eclipsed" after media fact-checking organizations debunked the claims.
The nearly 300,000 mentions of Harris regarding birtherism made up just a portion of the more than 1 million tweets with misinformation, rumor or negative storylines in the July 1 to Oct. 9 timeframe, based on the report.

During the same time period, the report identified a total of 136,884 mentions of Pence with misinformation, rumors or negative storylines.

Updated on Oct. 30 at 11:31 a.m.

Music to calm election jitters — remembering jazz man Dexter Gordon
BY ROGER HOUSE, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 10/31/20 
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL


© Getty Images

As election day nears, many people are looking for ways to relieve the stress of political uncertainty. Some may find the recordings of the late jazz master Dexter Gordon — who excelled in turning chaos into beauty — helpful in coping with the anxiety of the final stretch.

Thirty years after his passing — as the country grapples the challenges of pandemic and politics — it may be time to revisit the recording legacy of this jazz giant. I first learned about Gordon in the 1970s when the country was torn by war, racial strife, urban decay, and the aftermath of Richard Nixon politics.

Like many Black teenagers growing up in Queens, N.Y., we had to navigate a city and school system under bankruptcy — and a police force that seemed to target people like me for sport. To get away, I applied to a New York state college as far from the city as possible, sight unseen.

I ended up at the State University College in Oswego. For a city kid, the small campus on Lake Ontario was an experience in isolation and adaptation. Discovering the bebop recordings of Dexter Gordon is what helped me and a buddy — a white kid from Buffalo — to keep it together.

The memories of those difficult days returned as I revisited Gordon’s music in these unsettled times. The 6-CD box set, “Dexter Gordon: 12 Classic Albums, 1947-1962,” is a repository of over 400 minutes of formative West Coast bebop.

Born in 1923, Gordon was raised in Los Angeles and became a student of the jazz tradition. His father, reportedly the only Black doctor around, was friends with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. In the early 1940s, Gordon joined Hampton’s band and recorded with Nat Cole and Harry “Sweets” Edison.

He was schooled in the bands of Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, and Billy Eckstine. He developed a big, spacious tenor sound under the influence of Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and other bebop innovators. His sound, which introduced honking statements, reflected an optimism common among those Blacks who had migrated to the western territories. In turn, his clear, strong tones influenced younger musicians like John Coltrane.

The collection has a meditative track of “Autumn in New York,” a 1934 jazz standard by Vernon Duke. The ballad was featured in the 1986 jazz film “Round Midnight” by Bertrand Tavernier. The 6’6” Gordon was cast as the leader of a group of expatriate jazz musicians in Paris. The story reflected aspects of his experiences during a 15-year exile in Paris and Copenhagen. It delved into struggles with heroin addiction, prison, and racism, as well as a vision to create a song as beautiful as an impressionistic painting. The performance earned Gordon an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

The rediscovery of Gordon’s recordings brought me a sense of calm in these unsettling days. The songs eased worries over the divisive election politics that consumes the news cycle. One particular song that lifted my spirits was “Three O’Clock in the Morning.”

There is much to love in this rendition of a 1919 waltz by Argentinian composer Julián Robledo. The imagined setting is a dance party in the jazz age. The song begins with Westminster chimes indicating that it is three o'clock and the party’s over.

Gordon interpreted the ballad in the jazz tradition of hard swing and blue notes. It was featured on the 1962 Blue Note album "Go" — selected by the Library of Congress for preservation as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Gordon returned to the U.S. in December 1976, an event noteworthy for the “Homecoming” concert at the Village Vanguard in New York City. Back in Oswego, I made plans with my buddy to attend a performance, but we only had enough cash for tickets, not bus fare. So… we hitch-hiked the 310 miles from Oswego, starting in the morning and arriving in time for the midnight set.

The concert was unforgettable as Gordon blew the night away. Then, in a type of pagan jazz rite, he raised the golden sax high and horizontal for the audience to honor.


Dexter Gordon passed away in April 1990. His wife, Maxine, wrote a biography based on memories, his records, and his writings toward the end of life, “Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon.”

Roger House, Ph.D., is an associate professor of American studies at Emerson College in Boston, and the author of “Blue Smoke: The Recorded Journey of Big Bill Broonzy.” Since 2014, he has published VictoryStride.com, a curated website on African American history and culture.

Raytheon laying off 20,000 amid commercial aviation slide
By: Joe Gould   


A sign is posted at a Raytheon campus on June 10, 2019, in El Segundo, Calif. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)


WASHINGTON ― Raytheon Technologies is cutting 15,000 staff and 4,000 contractor positions, largely at the company’s Pratt & Whitney and Collins Aerospace divisions, due to decreased commercial aerospace sales from COVID-19 pandemic, CEO Greg Hayes said Tuesday on the company’s earnings call.

The Waltham, Mass., aerospace giant is the latest company to announce losses since the pandemic has sent commercial aerospace companies reeling, costing them tens of thousands of jobs and millions in lost profits. Hayes projected the market segment wouldn’t get a sharp rebound, but instead see “a long, slow recovery,” over several years.

“We don’t expect commercial air traffic to return to 2019 levels, until at least 2023. And that’s of course depending upon the timing of a widely distributed vaccine. In the near term, we expect a gradual recovery of commercial air traffic particularly given the recent spike in global cases [of coronavirus],” Hayes said.

“As you know, we set aggressive targets in the first quarter to reduce costs by about $2 billion and to take actions to conserve about $4 billion in cash, making difficult but necessary actions to reduce headcount,” Hayes said.



Boeing begins involuntary layoffs, but defense biz to remain mostly untouched
Only about 100 of the more than 6,000 Boeing workers to be laid off this week will come from its defense division.
By: Valerie Insinna


The ongoing personnel actions will reflect a 20 percent cut at both divisions, and include both temporary furloughs and a hiring freeze. In its merger with United Technologies in April, the company already planned to cut 1,000 jobs, mostly on its corporate side, Hayes said.

The company is also reducing its infrastructure, which takes up 31 million square feet, by more than 20 percent ― beyond an earlier 10 percent goal for the merger. Hayes said that even after the pandemic subsides, it would continue to employ increased remote-work arrangements as part of a multiyear strategy to slash overhead.

An announced aerospace-parts facility in western North Carolina is still in the works, as Hayes said the company would need the capacity when demand returns. “I think by the time this comes online in late 2023, we should see a kind of return to normalcy in commercial aerospace, and Pratt will be well positioned with a much lower cost, much more automated production facility,” he said.

According to third-quarter numbers posted by Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney posted a $615 million loss in operating profit for the quarter versus a $520 million profit for the same period in 2019. Pratt’s military sales rose 11 percent, driven in part by production of the F-35 joint strike fighter.

Collins managed to post an operating profit of $526 million for the quarter, but the number marked a 58 percent drop over the prior year.

Raytheon’s commercial aftermarket business fell 51 percent at Pratt & Whitney and 52 percent at Collins Aerospace, while the company’s military side was up.

Both Raytheon’s intelligence and space and missiles and defense segments offset some of the losses, as the company reported sales of $14.7 billion and an operating profit of $434 million for the quarter.

Raytheon executives were upbeat on the defense business’s backlog of more than $70 billion, and for the quarter, the segment posted $928 million in classified bookings.


Correction: An earlier version of the story misstated the timing of the job cuts. They are ongoing, and most took place prior to Tuesday’s call.

Boeing plans thousands of additional job cuts in next year amid pandemic losses
BY JUSTINE COLEMAN - 10/28/20 


© Bloomberg/Getty Images

Boeing on Wednesday announced plans for thousands of additional job cuts in the next year amid the pandemic’s impact on the travel industry.

Boeing CEO David Calhoun told staff in a memo that the company plans to have 130,000 employees at the end of 2021, down from 160,000 at the beginning of 2020.

The company had already announced that more than 19,000 employees would be leaving this year, The Associated Press reported.

“As we align to market realities, our business units and functions are carefully making staffing decisions to prioritize natural attrition and stability in order to limit the impact on our people and our company,” Calhoun said in the memo. “We anticipate a workforce of about 130,000 employees by the end of 2021. Throughout this process, we will communicate with you every step of the way.”

The company recorded a net loss of $466 million in the third quarter after earning a profit of $1.2 billion in 2019. Revenue fell 29 percent to $14.1 billion, but slightly higher than predictions of $13.9 billion. Its shares experienced a $1.39 loss per share, better than Refinitive’s consensus estimates expecting a $2.52 loss per share.

Boeing’s financial trouble started before the pandemic, when it had to ground its 737 Max planes in March 2019 after two crashes left hundreds of people dead.

The company, based in Chicago, decreased its prediction of demand for new planes in the next 10 years by 11 percent due to the pandemic. Boeing has experienced canceled deals and slower production, leading the company to deliver only 98 planes this year, compared to 301 during the same period last year, according to the third quarter report.

Boeing, which has assembly plants near Seattle and in South Carolina, is preparing to reduce its workforce by not replacing people who retire and curtailing 7,000 jobs with buyouts and layoffs through next year, according to the AP.

This week, Raytheon, an aerospace and defense manufacturer, also announced cuts to 15,000 staff and 4,000 contractor positions because of decreased sales during the pandemic, according to Defense News.

Nuclear weapons banned — illegal at last

BY ROBERT DODGE AND IRA HELFAND, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS — 10/31/2020 
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

© Getty Images

Saturday, Oct. 24 marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, 75 years following the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This Oct 24 will go down in history as the day nuclear weapons were declared illegal with the ratification of the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

The United Nations was founded to promote world peace and security. There is no greater existential threat to our peace and security than the existence of nuclear weapons — and now they are banned.

With Honduras delivering the 50th ratification of the treaty last Saturday, the world has spoken and the global community has banned these most dangerous of weapons, as it has previously banned other weapons of mass destruction: chemical, biologic, landmines and cluster munitions.

This treaty came about following years of stalemate and incremental movement toward disarmament by the nuclear nations despite being treaty-bound for 50 years by Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to work in “good faith” to abolish their nuclear arsenals. With this current treaty, nuclear weapons are now illegal and those nations who have them, store them, develop them, fund them or threaten their use will now be in breach of international law.

The movement that resulted in this treaty has literally been 75 years in the making.

As a result of the intransigence of the nuclear nations to meet their obligations, a series of three international conferences were convened. These conferences addressed the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, demonstrating the potential for global nuclear famine from even a limited regional nuclear war and the reality that — like climate change — the effects of nuclear weapons did not recognize national boundaries but rather had potential global catastrophic effects.

The conferences were held in Oslo, Norway, in 2013, followed in February 2014 by a second conference in Nayarit, Mexico, with a final gathering in Vienna, Austria, in December 2014, which for the first time included representatives of the U.S. and the United Kingdom. All three were attended by delegations from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and representatives of Pope Francis and were organized in cooperation with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a coalition of civil society groups which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for this work.

At the final conference, the Austrian government launched the “Humanitarian Pledge,” promising to develop a nuclear weapons ban treaty. This was followed in 2017 when the U.N. held meetings to negotiate a treaty which would for the first time take into account the legacy of the nuclear era, including the health effects on the Hibakusha, the victims of the nuclear bombings, and on those impacted by the mining, testing, and development of these weapons. Consideration was given to the disproportionate impact on girls, women and the elderly and indigenous communities living near nuclear testing sites. The treaty, which came to be known as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, was adopted on July 7, 2017 by 122 nations with the Netherlands voting no and Singapore abstaining. The treaty opened for ratification on Sept. 20, 2017.

With last Saturday’s 50th ratification, the treaty will enter into force in 90 days — on January 22. At that point, nuclear weapons will still exist, but the global community will have a powerful new tool to stigmatize those nations that continue to have them, and the financial institutions and corporations that fund and develop these weapons. Each of us has a role to play in the abolition of these weapons. Our individual role is not necessarily a large role or a small role, it is our role and it is vital.

In the U.S., there is a grassroots movement sweeping across the country endorsed by the medical, scientific, religious and NGO communities similar to the international ICAN campaign. This “Back from the Brink” grassroots campaign has been endorsed by 47 cities including Los Angeles, six state legislative bodies including California’s Assembly and Senate and 344 organizations. This call to prevent nuclear war supports the ban treaty and calls on the United States to lead a global effort by:

1) Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first

2) Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any president to launch a nuclear attack

3) Taking the U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert


4) Cancelling the plan to replace its entire arsenal with enhanced weapons

5) Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons delivers a clear message from nations across the globe that nuclear weapons threaten the survival of all of humanity and must be eliminated before they eliminate us.

The U.S. needs to embrace this treaty and follow the clear path to nuclear abolition laid out by the “Back from the Brink” campaign. Most importantly it must state unequivocally that it truly seeks the security of the world, free of nuclear weapons — and it must actively pursue negotiations with the other nuclear armed states for an enforceable, verifiable, time bound agreement to dismantle the 14,000 nuclear warheads that remain in the world today. Such an effort must be America’s highest national security priority.



Robert Dodge, M.D., is a family physician practicing in Ventura, Calif. He is the President of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles (www.psr-la.org), and sits on the National Board serving as the Co-Chair of the Committee to Abolish Nuclear Weapons of National Physicians for Social Responsibility (www.psr.org). Physicians for Social Responsibility received the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize and is a partner organization of ICAN, recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Price.

Ira Helfand, M.D., is a member of the International Steering Group for ICAN, the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, and co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, recipient of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.

Twitter users react to bald eagles circling over Biden campaign event in Iowa

 

https://thehill.com/?jwsource=cl

BY ALICIA COHNTWEET 

A rare and fair feathered sight concluded a Joe Biden campaign event in Iowa on Friday when a pair of bald eagles circled over the Democratic presidential candidate's head, according to a pool report.

Biden's campaign appeared to take the appearance of the national bird of the U.S. as a good omen.

"Nature knows," tweeted Biden's policy director Stef Feldman.

"We're gonna win Iowa," tweeted Christina Freundlich, Biden's Iowa deputy state director for communications.

Christina Freundlich

@christinafreund

We’re gonna win Iowa

Lauren Dillon

@llcdillon

There are two bald eagles flying over @JoeBiden in Iowa right now!

#America #BidenHarris2020

Reporters were a little more cynical about the meaning of the cameo.

Wall Street Journal reporter Julie Bykowicz joked, "This is what a nearly $1 billion presidential campaign can get you."

"great advance work," added CNN political analyst and former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart.

Washington Post reporter Matt Viser noted that at least one vulture has been spotted at a previous Biden event.

"The Biden campaign no doubt likes this omen a bit better," he tweeted.

It's not the first time Biden's been followed by a bald eagle. As vice president in 2015, one of the birds soared overhead during a Washington, D.C., appearance. He called it "a really good omen," according to The Washingtonian.

Last September, also in Iowa, an alleged bald eagle flew over a Biden event that prompted the candidate to talk about his late son, Beau. He said he hadn't seen a bald eagle since Beau died in 2015, according to New York Magazine. He reportedly said of the bird, "Maybe that's my Beau."

Biden will face President Trump in the presidential election with polls closing on Tuesday. The two are nearly tied in Iowa, where Biden was leading within the margin of error in a New York Times-Siena College poll last week.