GM flags concern over renewable energy in Mexico, sees investment risk


FILE PHOTO: General Motors plant is seen in Silao, Mexico

Sharay Angulo
Fri, November 19, 2021

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A senior executive of carmaker General Motors (GM) raised concern about the future of renewable energy usage in Mexico, saying that without a solid legal basis for it, automotive investment in Latin America's no. 2 economy would suffer.

Francisco Garza, chief executive of GM Mexico, spoke as debate rages over a Mexican government proposal to give priority to the state-run power utility in the electricity market at the expense of private investors, particularly in renewable energy.

Participating in a panel in Mexico City, Garza said it was important for Mexico to forge conditions enabling investment in renewables, to which the company was itself committed.

"Unfortunately, if the conditions aren't there, Mexico won't be a destination for investment, because the conditions won't be given that permit us to meet our objective of having zero emissions in the long term," Garza said.

"We're evaluating that if there aren't the conditions, that dollar that was going to be invested in Mexico will go to the United States, Brazil, China or Europe, and Mexico will no longer be a key destination," he added.

Garza did not make explicit reference to the government's electricity initiative, although others on the panel did.

GM, which has been one of the top investors in Mexico since the start of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, earlier this year said it planned to invest $1 billion https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/general-motors-make-1-bln-electric-auto-investment-mexico-2021-04-29 to build electric vehicles in the northern state of Coahuila.

After Garza spoke, GM Mexico spokesperson Teresa Cid told Reuters that GM was "at no time threatening" not to make the investments it had pledged for Mexico.

"GM must meet its (zero emissions) vision and we must follow that path," she said. "So that's where the risk would be."

(Reporting by Sharay Angulo; Editing by Sandra Maler)

FBI searches for Jimmy Hoffa’s body in New Jersey landfill after deathbed tip


Edward Helmore
Sat, November 20, 2021

Photograph: Corey Sipkin/AP

A half-century American fixation on the whereabouts of the remains of International Brotherhood of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa has finally led investigators to a landfill in New Jersey.

The area of suspicion is on a Little League diamond on the landfill beneath the General Pulaski Skyway, a three-mile bridge that arches over a cinematically criminal evocative expanse of industrial wasteland and marshes west of Manhattan – one that once featured in marketing for the Sopranos TV show.

The FBI confirmed that its search for the Teamster boss, who disappeared in July 1975 after he showed up for a meeting with two mob bosses in Michigan, had begun anew after a March 2020 deathbed tip from landfill worker Frank Cappola, who had told a friend that his father confessed he’ had been ordered by unidentified men to bury Hoffa’s body in a steel drum.

A spokesperson for the FBI told the New York Times that agents from the bureau’s Detroit and Newark offices had carried out a site visit on the Jersey City side of the bridge late last month.

The location of the search is freighted with cinematic references: the opening sequences of The Sopranos depicts a car ride through the area, including shots of the Pulaski; in 2019, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, offered a fictionalized account of Hoffa’s disappearance from the perspective of Mafia hitman Frank Sheeran.

While the FBI did not explicitly name Hoffa in its statement, saying only that it was “unable to provide any additional information”, sources at the bureau confirmed to NBC that the effort at the site was tied to Hoffa’s disappearance.

The search comes as the authorities attempt to address some of the nation’s most enduring crime mysteries and miscarriages of justice.

Last week, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, said that decisions made by the FBI and its long-serving director J Edgar Hoover had led to the false convictions of two men for the assassination of civil rights leader Malcolm X.

The search for Hoffa’s remains has been long and circuitous. The FBI interrogated union leaders and Mob bosses and henchmen and began receiving tips that his body was buried in New Jersey landfill hundreds of miles from where he was abducted, found nothing, and filed the tips.

Years later, agents searched various locations in Michigan, including a farm, a driveway and beneath a swimming pool. Back in New Jersey, where by reputation Italian-American Mafiosi still hold sway over carting and trucking, criminal folklore has focused on the nearby Giants Stadium, which was under construction at the time of Hoffa’s disappearance.

But the theory advanced by The Irishman – that Hoffa had been murdered and incinerated – has largely been rejected by Hoffa experts. Dan Moldea, author of several books on Hoffa’s disappearance, told the Times that the New Jersey site is “100%” credible.

In July, Moldea published an article in Detroit Deadline placing Hoffa’s unmarked grave at a 53-acre landfill in Jersey City, New Jersey. He pointed to an FBI report four months after Hoffa disappeared that cited a visit Teamster boss, convicted murderer and FBI informant Ralph Picardo had received from Steve Andretta, an alleged Hoffa murder co-conspirator. The tip described Hoffa being stuffed into a 55-gallon drum, loaded onto a truck and shipped to New Jersey.

Op-Ed: California needs to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant open to meet its climate goals


Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz
Sun, November 21, 2021

Even assuming rapid buildout of renewable energy, the continued operation of Diablo Canyon would significantly reduce California's use of natural gas for electricity production from 2025 to 2035.

 (Joe Johnston / San Luis Obispo Tribune)

The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is scheduled to close when its federal 40-year license expires in 2025 — marking the end of nuclear power generation in California. This schedule was set in a complex multi-stakeholder process approved by state regulators in 2018, and modifying it would be at least as complex.

However, much has changed in the last few years, underscoring the need to revisit this decision — including rolling blackouts in California in 2020, global awareness of the need for greater ambition in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and a better understanding of the limitations of existing technology within a reliable and resilient system. Reconsidering the future of Diablo Canyon is now urgently needed in advancing the public good.

At the global climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, the nearly 200 nations attending acknowledged the need for deep reductions in carbon emissions by mid-century. California deserves credit for leading the way in transitioning to a zero-carbon economy. Groundbreaking legislation requires all sources of electricity in the state to be emission-free by 2045. Former Gov. Jerry Brown directed the state to achieve economy-wide climate neutrality by the same date. And Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order last year requiring all new cars sold in the state to be zero-emission, starting in 2035.

The effects of climate change are unmistakable and severe around the world and in California, with record temperatures, drought and wildfires of unprecedented ferocity and destruction. Moving toward deep decarbonization is of paramount importance.

Timing matters. Most of the carbon we emit today stays in the atmosphere and warms the planet for centuries. To avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to avoid carbon dioxide emissions even as we aim to reach zero emissions by mid-century.

Today, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant accounts for 15% of California’s carbon-free electricity production, and 8% of overall electricity output. Natural gas accounts for almost half of California’s generation. Without nuclear power, even as deployment of renewable power expands, California will have to increase reliance on gas-fired peaker plants (power plants that run when energy demand peaks) at a time when we need all the clean power we can produce. Congress and the administration recognized the importance of existing nuclear power by providing incentives to keep nuclear plants running in the bipartisan infrastructure law.

Researchers at MIT and Stanford University have completed an independently funded joint study to reassess Diablo Canyon’s potential value for helping California meet the challenges of climate change by providing clean, safe and reliable electricity. The study also assessed Diablo Canyon’s potential for powering water desalination and hydrogen fuel production.

The researchers found that an inclusive strategy that preserves the clean electricity from Diablo Canyon will augment new energy generation from renewables and other sources of clean power. We need to increase renewables at a massive scale, but that will take decades, so any zero-carbon source we retire today will set us back years on the zero-carbon journey.

Carbon-free power is also essential for system reliability and resilience because, beyond the short-term variability, there are weeks and months when wind and solar power are low and storage technologies are of inadequate duration. This is not an either/or situation: California needs both Diablo Canyon and renewables to significantly reduce emissions over the next two decades.

Keeping Diablo Canyon running through 2035 would cut carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 11% annually compared with 2017 levels and save ratepayers billions of dollars — an estimated $2.6 billion through 2035 and up to $21 billion by 2045. It also would alleviate the need to develop 90,000 acres of land for renewable energy production just to replace the facility’s capacity.

But the potential benefits of preserving Diablo Canyon go beyond generation of more clean electric power.

The MIT-Stanford study found that Diablo Canyon could be repurposed to become a power source for water desalination and for clean hydrogen production, operating as a polygeneration facility. Diablo Canyon’s continued operation would thus help address three of the state’s largest challenges: energy reliability, persistent drought, and the transition to emission-free transportation and industry — two sectors that are challenging to decarbonize.

A desalination facility at Diablo Canyon could produce up to 80 times the output of the state’s largest desalination plant at about half the cost. The researchers also found that, as demand for hydrogen increases, Diablo Canyon could produce it at about half the cost of hydrogen produced by other clean energy sources.

The challenges here in California and globally are bigger than ever and the window of opportunity to mitigate climate change is closing fast. Extending the license of Diablo Canyon buys critical time for the innovation needed to reach net-zero emissions. An important example would be developing cost-effective long-duration electricity storage, an enabler for variable renewables at very large scale.

Revisiting the decision to close Diablo Canyon will involve many stakeholders, including federal regulators needed to permit restart of the license extension process. But that dialogue needs to happen because the stakes are so high.

Reimagining Diablo Canyon’s role in California’s energy future is an opportunity we cannot afford to ignore.

Steven Chu is a former U.S. secretary of Energy, Nobel laureate in physics and professor of physics and molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford University.

Ernest Moniz is a former U.S. secretary of Energy, CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative and professor of physics and engineering systems emeritus at MIT.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

US Federal Weed Legalization Comes Closer to Reality & Could Open The Market for Interstate Commerce

Yaёl Bizouati-Kennedy
Sat, November 20, 2021

nattrass / Getty Images/iStockphoto

Federal legalization of marijuana is inching closer to reality, following Rep. Nancy Mace’s introduction of a bill that would decriminalize it and regulate it like alcohol. However, some marijuana operators are still focusing on certain states to help advance reforms.

See: 7 Best Marijuana Stocks of 2021
Find: How Much States Make From Marijuana Tax Revenue

“Today, only 3 states lack some form of legal cannabis. My home state of South Carolina permits CBD, Florida allows medical marijuana, California and others have full recreational use, for example,” Mace said in a statement on Nov. 15. “Every state is different. Cannabis reform at the federal level must take all of this into account. And it’s past time federal law codifies this reality.”

Mace said that the bill supports veterans, law enforcement, farmers, businesses, those with serious illnesses, and it is good for criminal justice reform.

“The States Reform Act takes special care to keep Americans and their children safe while ending federal interference with state cannabis laws. Washington needs to provide a framework which allows states to make their own decisions on cannabis moving forward. This bill does that.”

According to polling from Gallup, Pew, and Quinnipiac, nearly 70% of Americans want cannabis fully decriminalized and more than 90% want medical cannabis products available to patients and veterans, according to a statement on her website. Only three states lack some form of legal cannabis: Idaho, Kansas and Nebraska.

Companies are waiting for recreational sales to start in New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and Connecticut after voters approved measures in those populous states, according to Barron’s, but the big votes on recreational weed will probably be in Florida and Pennsylvania.

“We’ve been focusing our operations around three primary hubs, in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Arizona,” Kim Rivers, the CEO of the world’s largest licensed marijuana seller, Trulieve Cannabis with 155 retail locations across 11 states, told Barron’s. In Pennsylvania, legalization of adult-use sales has support from the governor and legislators in both parties, she says, while a signature campaign will soon start in Florida to get a recreation-sales proposal on the ballot in the next state election, according to Barron’s.

The bill would decriminalize the product and pave the way towards interstate and international commerce. Similar to alcohol, individual states would be able to regulate use. Mace’s own state currently only allows the use of CBD, a non-intoxicating cannabis product.

See: House Approves Marijuana Banking Reform Bill — What It Means for the State of Legal Cannabis

As GOBankingRates previously reported, legalizing marijuana would reduce the regulatory obligations of marijuana companies while also allowing them to hold bank accounts, take out loans, get tax deductions and even be listed on the stock exchange.

What to know about New Mexico's coming paid sick leave mandate


Stephen Hamway, Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
Fri, November 19, 2021, 10:01 PM·5 min rea

Nov. 20—Have questions about New Mexico's new Healthy Workplaces Act?

Good news. You aren't alone, and a New Mexico nonprofit pulled together a team of experts to help answer some of those questions.

The law, which requires paid sick leave for nearly all New Mexico employees, takes effect next July, and plenty of employers are working to figure out if they comply with the mandates or need to change their policies. To help address that confusion, nonprofit Family Friendly New Mexico held a webinar with business leaders, human resource consultants and employment lawyers, to offer a crash course on the new law.

"It's better to be prepared, which is why we're doing this now, so that everyone can get ready and hit the ground running next summer," said Giovanna Rossi, founder and CEO of Family Friendly New Mexico.

The basics

The Healthy Workplaces Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in April, requires private employers in New Mexico with at least one employee to pay for sick leave, totaling at least one hour for every 30 hours worked, up to 64 hours in a year.

Rossi said the law applies to a wide variety of employees, including part-time, seasonal and temporary workers, along with a broad mix of mental and physical ailments for employees and their family members. She noted that the law defines "family members" as including domestic partners and their family members.

While there is no paid sick leave law at the federal level, Rossi said New Mexico joins 15 other states with paid sick leave regulations in place.

"This is something that has been gaining momentum over the past few years," she said.

Break out the employee handbook

Family Friendly New Mexico, which focuses on policies that support employees and their families, brought in Amy Lahti, an Albuquerque-based human resources consultant and organizational development coach, to discuss best practices for businesses looking to achieve compliance in the next seven months. Lahti suggested that employers read through the bill — on their own or with a trained professional — and cross reference provisions with their own employee handbooks.

According to Lahti, things to look for include:

—Making sure policies allow employees to accrue at least 64 hours of sick leave in a year

—Making sure policies do not exclude employee classes covered in the bill

—Making sure policies begin immediately. Employers with policies that don't take effect for a month or two after an employee starts working should be aware that the law requires sick leave to start accruing immediately.

"It's very common for there to be a situation where ... you don't start accruing leave for 60 or 90 days," Lahti said.

Get the right tools

If you're still handling payroll using a pen and paper, Lahti said this could be a good time to consider an upgrade.

Microsoft Excel could do in a pinch, but Lahti advised using a payroll management software system that streamlines the process.

"Make it as easy and automated as possible," Lahti said.

Spread the word

Another key is making sure employees are familiar with the changes. Lahti added that the law has specific posting requirements, and employers need to be proactive about getting the information to workers.

"One meeting on Zoom is probably not going to be sufficient to reach everyone," Lahti said.

One key point: Lahti said all employers need to be careful not to include any messages that could be construed as discouraging employees from taking their paid leave, as the law has specific punishments for that.

No employee payouts required

Benjamin Thomas, president and CEO of Albuquerque law firm Sutin, Thayer & Browne, said the act doesn't require employers to pay out employees' sick leave when one leaves, and it may behoove some businesses to place a cap on the amount of sick leave that can be paid out, so they don't get burned when an employee moves on to another job.

While Thomas acknowledged there are details in the law that need to be ironed out, he said the odds are "slim to none" that it will be revised before it goes into effect.

Embracing the change

Del Esparza, CEO of Esparza Digital + Advertising, and Blair Boyer, director of human resources for Dion's, said making sick leave an "us versus them" issue hurts both employees and employers.

Boyer acknowledged that, when it comes to recruiting in today's tight labor market, paid sick leave makes it harder for employers to differentiate based on benefits, but said a positive culture will be key to attracting talent. Positive language when talking to employees will help implementation go smoothly, Boyer said.

"If we're standing at the water cooler complaining about what the government is doing to us and our language is negative and we're promoting that, then our employees are going to see right through that," Boyer said.

As with many new laws, Thomas and Lahti agreed that some aspects of the Healthy Workplaces Act will likely evolve or be clarified once the law goes into effect. Family Friendly New Mexico plans to continue following the law and offering resources at www.nmfamilyfriendlybusiness.org. Lahti suggested reaching out to a trained professional for specific questions or legal advice.

"They never write legislation to account for every conceivable scenario," Lahti said.

Stephen Hamway covers economic development, health care and tourism for the Journal. He can be reached at shamway@abqjournal.com.

First look at St. Paul's $15 minimum wage: Some restaurants were shedding jobs before it took effect

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Sun, November 21, 2021

Nov. 21—Even before the city of St. Paul increased the citywide minimum wage last year, some restaurants and retailers began dropping jobs and shedding hours.

Full-service restaurants — those with wait-staff and sit-down service — saw jobs decline by 16 percent. Limited-service restaurants, such as fast-food eateries, saw a 27 percent decline.

Minneapolis, which began hiking its minimum wage two years earlier, lost nearly 3,000 restaurant jobs during the same time, according to two new analyses from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota.


But some St. Paul retailers and food service employers actually raised wages in 2018 and 2019, apparently in anticipation of the mandate, or in competition for workers with higher-paying jobs across the river. And a tight labor market in the months since has raised wages further.

IMPACT OF $15 MINIMUM WAGE

With the goal of gradually moving toward a $15-an-hour citywide minimum wage over the next few years, St. Paul rolled out a wage schedule that requires most low-wage employers to institute annual increases, which began at $9.25 to $11.50 an hour as of July 1, 2020, depending upon business size.

Officials in both St. Paul and Minneapolis promised they would contract economists to analyze the impact on jobs, earnings and employment hours. It's a task complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the recession, rioting and arson following the death of George Floyd, federal relief checks, a labor shortage, inflation and other curveballs of the past several years.

"This needs to be interpreted with caution," said Anusha Nath, a research economist who worked on the analyses for the Minneapolis Fed.

Nevertheless, the researchers were able to glean some "baseline" data from pre-COVID employment numbers, and they spotted some sizable "anticipation effects" in St. Paul. In short, restaurants, retail and food services apparently braced for the minimum wage hike by cutting jobs or reducing hours in 2018 and 2019, even before the new law rolled out, though the overall low-wage sector showed little net effect.

DROPS IN JOBS, HOURS, EARNINGS

St. Paul restaurants in particular saw large drops in jobs, hours and total earnings.

"The estimates of job loss in the restaurant industries of both St. Paul and Minneapolis are particularly large compared with other studies of minimum wages, implying that at least some businesses in the Twin Cities were quite sensitive to the actual or imminent increases in labor costs," reads a study summary by Lisa Camner McKay, a writer-analyst with the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute at the Minneapolis Fed.

Most other low-wage sectors studied in St. Paul, such as social assistance and administrative support, showed no deep changes in the studies. A hodge-podge of jobs falling into the "other" category — such as repair shops, barber shops and personal care services — actually increased in number, for reasons that aren't entirely clear.

"In that sector, we saw an increase in total jobs," Nath said. "This could partly be driven by if there's a loss in restaurant jobs, these workers could be getting jobs elsewhere. ... These are the types of channels we want to study in future reports."

How much did St. Paul's initial minimum wage increase impact St. Paul businesses after July 1, 2020?

Given that the increase took effect in the early months of the pandemic, shortly after riots rocked St. Paul's Midway, it's probably too soon to tell.

"Isolating the impact of the minimum wage during ... unprecedented times poses a significant challenge and raises questions about how to interpret data from 2020," reads the study summary from the Minneapolis Fed.

Given the scramble to attract workers during a labor shortage, some call it unlikely that boosting the minimum wage has had deep impact.

Andy Remke, co-owner of the Black Dog Cafe in St. Paul's Lowertown, said the restaurant industry used to attract many casual workers who wanted to pick up a shift here or there for extra spending cash.

"The pandemic pushed a lot of those people out of the industry," said Remke. "We're paying probably easily 20 percent more than we were for cooks, and probably more."

He added: "Minimum wage is certainly not a factor. The only people we have working here making the minimum wage are servers, and that's before tips, after which they make substantially more. Everybody else — food runners, kitchen staff — they're all making more, because that's the labor environment we're in."

MINNEAPOLIS IMPACTS

The Minneapolis wage law began in 2018, offering more pre-pandemic data to work with.

The researchers found that through early 2020, the total number of jobs declined by 12 percent more than they otherwise might have at full-service Minneapolis restaurants, and 18 percent more at limited-service restaurants. That's roughly 2,900 Minneapolis restaurant jobs lost over the 27 months analyzed.

At the same time, wages increased about 4 percent more for Minneapolis full-service restaurant workers, and 9 percent more for limited-service restaurant workers, than they otherwise might have.

The analyses are the first in a series of annual reports planned from the Minneapolis Fed through 2028, and they've already garnered pushback from advocates for the $15 minimum wage. A written critique published by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C., calls the Minneapolis changes in employment "implausibly large" and likely attributable to other factors, given that the Minneapolis minimum wage last year increased by only 75 cents at small employers and $1 at large employers.

"The data and methodology used in the study are simply not sufficient to distinguish between the effects of the minimum wage increases and other changes in employment happening around the same time," it states.

FULL EFFECT MIGHT NOT BE KNOWN FOR YEARS

It will be a few more years before the full effect of a $15 minimum wage in the Twin Cities can be studied in retrospect.

That's because the mandated increases roll out on different schedules for large or small employers in Minneapolis, and micro, small, large, and macro businesses of more than 10,000 employees in St. Paul. It won't go into effect for all city businesses until 2024 in Minneapolis and 2028 in St. Paul.

For their findings, researchers with the Minneapolis Fed and the University of Minnesota used administrative data from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, which provides quarterly earnings and hours worked for each employee of businesses that file unemployment insurance reports with the state.

The DEED data was combined with information from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, allowing researchers to identify the specific establishment, industry, ZIP code and city where each individual works.

Afghanistan: Taliban unveil new rules banning women in TV dramas

Sun, November 21, 2021

New guidelines set out by the Taliban prohibit female presenters from appearing on TV without headscarves

Women have been banned from appearing in television dramas in Afghanistan under new rules imposed by the Taliban government.

Female journalists and presenters have also been ordered to wear headscarves on screen, although the guidelines do not say which type of covering to use.

Reporters say some of the rules are vague and subject to interpretation.


The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in mid-August and many fear they are gradually imposing harsh restrictions.

The militant Islamist group, which took control following the departure of US and allied forces, almost immediately instructed girls and young women to stay home from school.

During their previous rule in the 1990s, women were barred from education and the workplace.

The latest set of Taliban guidelines, which have been issued to Afghan television channels, features eight new rules.

They include the banning of films considered against the principles of Sharia - or Islamic - law and Afghan values, while footage of men exposing intimate parts of the body is prohibited.

Comedy and entertainment shows that insult religion or may be considered offensive to Afghans are also forbidden.

The Taliban have insisted that foreign films promoting foreign cultural values should not be broadcast.

Afghan television channels show mostly foreign dramas with lead female characters.

A member of an organisation that represents journalists in Afghanistan, Hujjatullah Mujaddedi, said the announcement of new restrictions was unexpected.

He told the BBC that some of the rules were not practical and that if implemented, broadcasters may be forced to close.

The Taliban's earlier decision to order girls and young women to stay home from school made Afghanistan the only country in the world to bar half its population from getting an education.

The mayor of the capital, Kabul, also told female municipal employees to stay home unless their jobs could not be filled by a man.

The Taliban claim that their restrictions on women working and girls studying are "temporary" and only in place to ensure all workplaces and learning environments are "safe" for them.

Coast Guard targets second vessel tied to Orange County oil spill


Richard Winton
Fri, November 19, 2021

Dozens of fish swim under oil slicks at the Talbert Marsh in Huntington Beach on Oct. 3. (Raul Roa / Times Community News)

Federal authorities Thursday boarded the container vessel Beijing in Long Beach, identifying it as a second ship under investigation in the Orange County oil spill.

Authorities from the U.S. Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board believe a ship's anchor hit an oil pipeline off Huntington Beach and eventually led to the Oct. 2 spill.

Braden Rostad, chief of investigations for Los Angeles-Long Beach, determined that the Beijing was involved in a Jan. 25 anchor-dragging incident during heavy weather at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Coast Guard said in a statement. As a result of the Coast Guard findings, it has designated the ship's owners, Capetanissa of Liberia and the operator V-Ships Greece Ltd. as parties of interest in the investigation.

Rostad had previously identified the MSC Danit, another large cargo vessel that was being investigated for anchor dragging.

Coast Guard Capt. Jason Neubauer, who is leading the investigation, told The Times, "both vessels could be involved" in dragging the pipeline off Huntington Beach with their anchors earlier this year.

The anchor-dragging occurred near a pipeline that runs from an oil platform to the Port of Long Beach. That pipeline was discovered to be the source of the Orange County oil spill Oct. 2 An oil sheen was first spotted that evening by a vessel 4½ miles off Huntington Beach, then detected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The pipeline was intact in October 2020 when the company that operates it last did an inspection, and the marine growth visible around the displaced section of the pipeline indicates the anchor drag probably was not recent, said Neubauer.

Investigators suspect an initial anchor strike displaced part of the pipeline many months before the spill, stripping away its concrete casing and causing it to be more vulnerable to other potential anchor strikes or environmental stressors.

As they attempt to determine when that first strike occurred, the investigating team is focusing on a storm that brought strong winds to the area over two days in late January.

Data of vessel movements reviewed by The Times show MSC Danit moving over the pipeline while in high winds Jan. 25, before eventually moving out to the channel near Santa Catalina Island.

The Coast Guard has designated Mediterranean Shipping Co., the operator of the vessel, and Dordellas Finance Corp., its owner, as parties of interest in the ongoing investigation.

Those designations provide the owner and operator of the MSC Danit the opportunity to be represented by counsel, to examine and cross-examine witnesses, and to call witnesses who are relevant to the investigation.

Coast Guard officials have said several ships are under investigation.

Coast Guard investigators plan to bring in experts to determine how long ago the pipe was damaged and when it began leaking.

The service also sent its own team of divers to gather evidence.

Multiple state and federal investigative agencies are already examining whether any criminal violations occurred with the pipeline leak.

The FBI is now assisting with the criminal investigation, which among other things is examining whether there was a negligent discharge of oil into navigable waters.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

‘No ground for cockiness’: Tough love for U.S. at pro-democracy conference



Andrew Desiderio, Alexander Ward and Paul McLeary
Sun, November 21, 2021, 

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — If "America is back,” someone forgot to tell America’s allies.

At a major national security conference this weekend designed to rally the world’s democracies against autocratic forces, critics fired away at China, Russia and other backsliding nations. Yet some of the harshest words were reserved for the U.S., in what turned into a therapy session of sorts for high-ranking diplomats and officials, both current and former.

From Afghanistan to the Jan. 6 insurrection to congressional paralysis, attendees expressed their fears and doubts about the health of American democracy and questioned Washington’s commitments to countering Beijing or Moscow. It turned the 2021 Halifax International Security Forum into less of a celebration of President Joe Biden’s agenda and more of a global intervention for a nation in crisis.

Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s prime minister from 2015 to 2018, replied, "We are," when asked in an interview if allies are worried about the United States.

“The U.S. is by far the most important of the Western democracies. … We all have a vested interest in the health of American democracy. So, yeah, I think it is a real concern,” he said.

A bipartisan group of six senators in attendance — three Republicans and three Democrats — will now carry the message they heard loud and clear back to Washington, where hyperpartisanship is already putting key national security priorities at risk as the threats emanating from great powers have crystallized.

“I do feel like there’s no ground for cockiness. Sometimes a little bit of humility actually enables you to make better connections with other nations because we’re not really in a position to lecture,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees, said in an interview. “We are in a position to dialogue, share experiences, share best practices, acknowledge areas where we have to work together.”

“We can’t really go and lecture” other countries about political unrest and corruption, Kaine added. “But that actually sometimes means the conversations are more candid and a little more authentic and a little more productive.”

This year was the conference’s first gathering since Donald Trump left office and Biden took over with a renewed pledge to build the strategic alliances that his predecessor often shunned. It was supposed to be a coming-out party for the U.S. after four years of anti-democratic moves by Trump that shook allies. But in the 10 months since Biden took office, the U.S. has confronted cascading crises at home and abroad that have caused Western allies to question America’s promises.

A major focus of the three-day conference was the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which many foreign officials here saw as a betrayal of Washington’s commitment to the country’s struggling democracy. Sabrina Saqeb, a former member of the Afghan parliament, told an audience, “We have been sold out to terrorists.”

“There is an acknowledgment by the members of our delegation that the United States has let partners down in a number of aspects,” including in Afghanistan, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), an Armed Services Committee member and a combat veteran, said in an interview. She added that the U.S. has to work on “upholding our commitments.”

Some of those crises were brought up organically by the lawmakers themselves. During panel events, Kaine and Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) talked about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and its impact on American democracy. Specifically, Kaine said the U.S. has a problem with its “immune system,” which he characterized as America’s ability — or lack thereof — to respond to strains on its democracy.

Coons, meanwhile, said the best way for the U.S. to counter China’s worsening predatory behavior — a major focus of the conference — is to “take decisive actions to heal our own democracy.” He said the Jan. 6 attack “emboldened Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, autocrats around the world, those who wish us ill.”

“Other nations’ heads of states or ministers of foreign relations often bring up their concerns about the state of our democracy and the impact for them of Jan. 6,” Coons said in an interview. “So I think it’s completely appropriate to bring it up, and I frankly think there’s a lot more specific work that we need to be doing to strengthen our civic culture.”

Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister, is in full agreement. Misinformation and extremism on the American right “led to the attack on the Capitol. That led to an attempted coup,” he said. “The rest of the world looked at January the sixth and was shattered.”

“When you see the absolute essential foundations of the democracy being challenged from within, and where you see a political party, the Republican Party — not all of them, but many of them — actually challenging the constitutional institutions on which this great democracy of well over two centuries depends, that’s what really undermines public international faith in American democracy,” Turnbull continued.

Some also expressed doubt that the U.S. would act to stop aggressive actions by autocrats, namely the massing of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border.

Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president from 2014 to 2019, said in an interview that the West — led by the U.S. — needs to send more “lethal defensive weapons” to his country, push for Ukraine to become a member of NATO, reverse its stance on the Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany pipeline, and target Moscow with tougher sanctions. If the U.S. and its allies fail to make these moves, it would “increase the probability” of Putin launching a second major incursion of Russia's neighbor.

Europeans are also increasingly concerned that the American turn toward the Indo-Pacific, and competing with China in the region, will pull Washington’s gaze away from Europe.

The idea of an emerging “strategic autonomy,” even if still ill-defined, has taken hold in NATO deliberations about how to deter and contain Russia.

“I think strategic autonomy is about the fact that in Europe, there needs to be more military capabilities available that are now only available in the U.S.,” Adm. Rob Bauer of the Netherlands, head of NATO’s Military Committee and the alliance’s highest-ranking military officer, told a small group of reporters on the sidelines of the event.

“If the European nations and Canada are able to take on some of the roles that now only the U.S. can take on because of its capabilities, then the U.S. would be able to prioritize and do more in the Indo-Pacific,” Bauer said.

The senators will now return to Washington after the Thanksgiving recess staring down several time-sensitive agenda items.

Congress is already at risk of failing to pass a defense authorization bill for the first time in six decades — a concern that foreign counterparts expressed directly to the lawmakers here. And Senate leaders are hoping to confirm Biden’s diplomatic nominees who have been the subject of a GOP-led blockade that is preventing swift confirmation of more than 50 nominations.

Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, was asked about the blockade here and said he was working to break it, adding: “I was a governor. I understand you have to have a team in place in order to govern.”

Lawmakers were especially concerned about the impression that they are unable to work together to help solve pressing challenges. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who co-led the Senate delegation alongside Risch, said there are “legitimate questions based on what people are reading” about tensions between Republicans and Democrats back in Washington.

“We haven’t seen folks in almost two years,” Shaheen said in a brief interview. “And so I think it’s not unexpected.”

SUNDAY SERMON

OPINION: Tennessee's Bible-thumping Republican Party needs to read the book they're thumping


Pam Sohn, Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.
Sat, November 20, 2021

Nov. 20—Hate trafficking is alive and well in Tennessee — and particularly in the Tennessee General Assembly.

Last Monday, Tennessee state Rep. Chris Todd, R-Jackson, accused a Christian foster care organization — the well-known Bethany Christian Services which has an office in Chattanooga — of facilitating human trafficking by working with the federal government to place unaccompanied migrant children with vetted sponsors in this country.

"This whole thing reeks of impropriety, and I'm very concerned about these children that are being pushed into this trafficking situation," Todd said. "Our own federal government is trafficking. They're hauling them all over the country and dropping them in neighborhoods, flying them in in the middle of the night."


Sound familiar? Of course it does. It sounds just like the wild and false hate-trafficking rhetoric thrown around in Chattanooga last spring and summer after a television news report aired about unaccompanied children being flown into Chattanooga — sometimes at night — and housed in a shelter in Highland Park operated by the Baptiste Group.

In fact, Todd's comments came during the final meeting of the state's special committee to investigate issues surrounding refugees and immigrants — an effort that began with concerns about the now-closed Chattanooga shelter.

It began here, with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann and U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty all flogging the Biden administration, making similar, false "human trafficking" accusations.

The trouble with their message was that Lee and his Department of Children's Services had approved the Baptiste Group's shelter for the very purpose of temporarily housing unaccompanied minors until they could be placed with vetted sponsors. And they had approved it a year before — when Donald Trump was still president. Yet suddenly all these Trumpian Republicans were aghast and wondering why these children were being snuck in here.

Raise your hand if you think they would have grabbed for their pearls and accused a Trump administration of human trafficking to a shelter they themselves approved.

But the resulting kerfuffle in Chattanooga was just as ugly as the initial slurs. Not long after the Republican politicians put up a racket, an allegation of abuse was filed with the state.

The Tennessee Department of Children's Services punted on the first allegation of an adult kissing a child, then punted again on a second allegation, saying "kissing" is not listed as an act of sexual abuse. On June 3, the state made an unannounced visit to the Baptiste Group shelter and interviewed six children, one of whom told a DCS worker he saw a shelter employee kissing a child there. State inspectors wrote in their summary on June 3 that the "physical inspection had yielded no findings or need for corrective action."

But the news coverage sparked both an internal investigation and a probe by local and federal law enforcement, eventually leading to three arrests. The state also suspended the residential child care license of the Baptiste Group.

Baptiste has sued the state, charging discrimination and claiming that despite similar allegations against other shelters, the Tennessee Department of Children's Services suspended only one residential child care license in the past five years — that of the Baptiste Group.

But judging from Chris Todd's screed last week, that's not enough to appease the rabid, anti-immigration, anti-Biden members of the GOP in Nashville.

Bethany, a national organization following longstanding federal immigration policy, has supported unaccompanied children since the 1960s and helped settle 40 unaccompanied children in Tennessee last year through a transitional foster care program, said Amy Scott, state director for the group.

The organization has received around 100 children since March 2019 (yes, even when Trump was president), with about 15-20 staying in Tennessee after locating a sponsor, she said. The program is federally funded and does not receive any money from the state.

"Children are children. An unaccompanied child wants what every child wants — to be with their family and to be safe," Scott told the panel in her opening testimony. "We help unaccompanied children as a faith-based organization because Jesus calls Christians to welcome the stranger, love their neighbor and serve the overlooked and ignored. We believe that all children, no matter where they are from or what they have been through, deserve to be treated with dignity and care."

Someone needs to preach that sermon to our GOP leaders and lawmakers. They missed it.

Todd said he wouldn't trust the documentation of the children's immigrant relatives in the U.S., and he asked why organizations like Bethany were not placing unaccompanied children with a family member in their home country.

Another lawmaker, Rep. Ryan Williams, R-Cookeville, said it is a commandment in the Christian tradition to provide for those in need. But he added: "We [the U.S.] can't go and solve all the world's problems unless we had all the world's resources and we still might not be able to do it."

Clearly those two missed many Bible lessons. They should brush up on the "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" sermon, along with the "miracle of five loaves and two fish" — the makings Christ used to feed a multitude of thousands.

Michael Flynn is wrong. Christians shouldn't mandate one religion for everyone in America.

Ed Stetzer
Sun, November 21, 2021, 2:39 PM·6 min read

Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn caused a firestorm with his recent comments on Nov. 13 at the "ReAwaken America Tour" in San Antonio.

"If we are going to have one nation under God – which we must – we have to have one religion," said Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and was pardoned by then-President Donald Trump last November.

The tour, organized by Clay Clark, whom The Guardian calls a "media figure and Christian entrepreneur" from Tulsa, Oklahoma, has included stops in Florida, Michigan, California and Texas. Flynn followed the pattern of Christian nationalism by taking a biblical passage aimed at Christ's disciples and applying it to the United States.

"You have to believe this, that God Almighty is, like, involved in this country, because this is it. ...This is the shining city on the hill," Flynn said.

Hint: It’s not.

President Donald Trump and Michael Flynn, on Dec. 21, 2016, in Palm Beach, Florida.

'The Great Sort' demonstrated

That the response to Flynn has been both swift and polarized is indicative of what I see as the "Great Sort" in American Christianity. For the past decade, we have begun to see a transition in the rationale for how many self-identifying Christians make decisions about their local church membership, relationships and serving.

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While politics and culture have always played a significant role, in recent years we are beginning to see religious identity being primarily driven by broader political debates. Now, instead of Scripture, doctrine or worship providing a central role in church association and participation, political identity is squarely in the driver’s seat.

Michael Flynn on Dec. 12, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

As I explained in Outreach Magazine, Christians are increasingly sorting themselves into churches that reflect their ideology.

Politics has always played a major role in religious identification, but now Christians are more actively disassociating and associating with churches based upon their political affiliations. This is primarily why once-fringe voices like Flynn, Stella Immanuel, Mike Lindell, Charlie Kirk and Lin Wood have been able to find significant followings in churches around the country.

As opposing or moderate voices leave and new members are attracted by a political alignment, churches are becoming less politically diverse and more vocally partisan.

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Critically, this is not a sort between patriotism versus Christianity. Often maligned, patriotism can be good and noble. Rather, this sort pits Christianity against Christian nationalism, a perversion of the faith that subverts its mission.

The rhetoric of the ReAwaken tour reeks of such Christian nationalism. It utilizes Christian ideas, language and spaces but submits these to nationalistic ends. By identifying America as God's chosen nation and calling for a religious establishment, Flynn and others offer a gospel mission that is a distorted caricature of the one to which Christians are called.

The genius of religious liberty

As we look for ways to respond to the Great Sort, Christians and non-Christians alike should reflect on the genius of our political tradition of religious liberty. Beginning with the Founders and proven consistently throughout our history, providing people with freedom to believe and practice their faith strengthens our democracy, our communities and our institutions.

This is, in part, why the Baptist John Leland is a personal hero. Standing for religious liberty in America’s early years when few others would, Leland argued, “All should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”

Attorney Lin Wood speaks during a rally on Dec. 2, 2020 in Alpharetta, Ga.

What Leland understood – and what many Christians today must relearn – is that when one faith is enforced or even preferred by the government, society loses. When those of us who identify as Christians allow the government to pick whose freedoms are recognized, we undermine our own religious liberties. It is a misnomer to think that protecting the rights of people to believe whatever they choose is a tacit endorsement of other faiths. On the contrary, for Christians to stand for religious liberty is a statement of our confidence in the Gospel.

Beyond the importance of religious liberty to our democracy, any ideology that attempts to establish Christian political domination – in other words, a theocracy – reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of Christ and the Christian faith. At its core, the power of the Christian faith is in its ability to transform the heart, not coerce behavior. Jesus modeled this in his own ministry, refusing to set up a political theocracy on earth even as many in his day expected the Messiah would do just that.

At every turn, Christ confounded these expectations and modeled an understanding of a kingdom "not of this world." (John 18:36). Instead of power and domination, we find Christ modeling sacrifice and forgiveness.

When professing Christians are far more enthusiastic about the glory of America than proclaiming an ancient faith that transcends our nation, they reveal themselves to be at odds with this model.

The message of Jesus seems to be far less a priority for many who name the name of Jesus than "standing for truth" and conflating Christianity with a nationalistic bent. When speakers at events held in the name of Christ are also speakers who wonder aloud whether America needs a coup like we saw in Myanmar, the Great Commandment and the Great Commission have been replaced by exceptionalism and nationalism.

If we believe that the Christian faith transforms lives, we must resist the pull to coerce people into words and behaviors that we know are worthless before God. Instead, we must trust in the power of the Gospel – and only the Gospel – to save.

Christians should embrace freedom of religion because we believe that the Gospel is light in the darkness, hope for the lost, liberation for the captive and revival for the dead. We believe that it is, most fundamentally, good news for a burdened and beleaguered world that is crying out for it.

Seeking God in America

Flynn is right about one thing: God is at work in this country.

Yet his vision of a reestablished church so sadly misses the point. God’s involvement in this country, indeed his involvement in the whole world, will not come through coercion. Rather, He is already working to revive and renew through thousands of churches who chose sacrifice and forgiveness over power and domination.

Former Defense Secretary Michael Flynn served under President Donald Trump. He was charged with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigations in 2017. Flynn was pardoned by Trump in November 2020.

After one group chanted “Let’s go, Brandon” (a stand-in for insulting President Joe Biden) in San Antonio, I finished up a message at the Galveston Convention Center to 1,500 Texas Christians, also ready to say, “Let’s go.” But in this case, I called them to go in the way of Jesus.

One mission is the way of anger, conspiracies and more. The other involves showing and sharing the love of Jesus to a broken and hurting world.

Christians are going to have to choose which way is the way of Jesus.

Ed Stetzer is a dean and professor at Wheaton College, where he leads the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Michael Flynn, we don't need 'one religion'; we need Jesus