Biden Called Fox News 'Destructive' and Rupert Murdoch 'the Most Dangerous Man in the World,' Book Claims

Virginia Chamlee -
People

A new book claims that President Joe Biden has called Fox News "one of the most destructive forces in the United States" and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, "the most dangerous man in the world."

That detail comes from New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns in their forthcoming book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future, which will be published next month.

The Democratic president has occasionally swiped at Fox News — which takes pains to note that its conservative opinion hosts are separate from its news division — and Biden has repeatedly butted heads with the network's White House correspondent Peter Doocy, whom he was caught on mic calling a "stupid son of a b----" in January. He later apologized.

According to Martin and Burns' book, Biden has been critical behind closed doors, too. (The White House did not comment.)

A 2020 Pew poll found that 65% of Republicans said they trust Fox News for political coverage, with six in 10 Republicans saying they got their political and election news from the network.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 's bizarre behavior during Biden's State of the Union address last week distracted viewers from the President's comments and had some asking if she was 'on drugs' or 'drunk'. Pelosi was sitting directly behind the President and was in full view throughout the speech, which went on for an hour and two minutes.

While Fox News often highlights its journalism separate from its talking heads, even some of the networks own former staffers have publicly complained about its political coverage, particularly for how its opinion personalities have spoken about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots.

In December, Chris Wallace announced that he was opting not to return as host of Fox News Sunday, ending his run with the network after 18 years for a new deal with rival network CNN.

Speaking with The New York Times in an interview last month about his decision, Wallace said he felt things began to change at Fox after Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election and Trump attacked the results as fake. Trump's supporters went on to riot at the Capitol last year.

"I'm fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion," Wallace told the Times. "But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable."

He continued: "Before, I found it was an environment in which I could do my job and feel good about my involvement at Fox. And since November of 2020, that just became unsustainable, increasingly unsustainable as time went on."

Wallace also confirmed reports that he had complained to the network's management about Tucker Carlson's documentary Patriot Purge, which falsely claimed that the Jan. 6 attack was a "false flag" operation meant to demean conservatives.

Wallace is now hosting a new show, Who's Talking to Chris Wallace?, on CNN's new streaming service, CNN+.

Read the original article on People

CAPITALI$M WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS 

Another Chinese city has overtaken New York for number of billionaires

NBC News

HONG KONG — Three years ago, American entrepreneur Raj Oswal traveled to the Chinese city of Shenzhen on behalf of a client. He was so impressed that he stayed and started his own tech company.

“You can’t find too many other cities in China or around Asia that really embrace innovation as Shenzhen does,” Oswal said, comparing his move there from California to his father’s decision in the 1970s to leave India so he could pursue his studies and a career in the United States.

Oswal described Shenzhen, a city of 17.5 million on China’s southern border with Hong Kong, as a place filled with “youthful optimism.”

Increasingly, it’s also filled with money. The former fishing village, now a tech hub known as China’s Silicon Valley, has joined Beijing and Shanghai as the world’s top three cities for billionaires, edging out New York for the first time this year.

According to the Hurun Global Rich List, an annual ranking compiled by a private Shanghai-based company, Beijing is home to the world’s greatest number of billionaires at 144, followed by Shanghai with 121. There are 113 billionaires in Shenzhen, compared with 110 in New York, while London came in fifth with 101.

The growing concentration of wealth isn’t news to people in Shenzhen, which added eight billionaires since last year.

“It’s almost more of a wake-up call for the rest of the world,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of Hurun Report, the company behind the list.

While rankings can fluctuate, he said the rising number of billionaires in Shenzhen reflected a “megatrend” that will draw more young entrepreneurs to the city in coming years.

“It is a significant indicator of where Shenzhen has come from and where it is going,” he said.

Shenzhen’s rise began in 1980, when it was named China’s first special economic zone as part of the country’s “reform and opening up” under then-leader Deng Xiaoping. That allowed the city to experiment with market capitalism in an effort to attract foreign investment. From 1979 to 2021, Shenzhen’s gross domestic product grew from less than $28 million to almost $475 billion.

Today, the city is home to some of China’s biggest tech companies, including telecom giant Huawei and the internet conglomerate Tencent, inspiring others to follow. Last year, 2,500 new state-recognized high-tech companies were set up in Shenzhen, bringing the total number to 17,000, according to the local government.


It is also part of what China calls the Greater Bay Area, an integrated economic and business hub that aims to link Shenzhen with eight other cities in Guangdong province along with the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau.

The opportunities were apparent to Oswal even as he taxied from the Shenzhen airport after he first arrived in 2019.

“All the stereotypes that I had on Chinese cities were broken down one by one with the changing modern and green urban landscape along the road,” he said.

Heng Chen, an associate professor of economics at the University of Hong Kong, said Shenzhen’s momentum was aided by its welcoming environment for entrepreneurs.

“The structure of the population is still very young compared to other super cities or first-tier cities in China, so that’s one of the reasons why it’s a very attractive place,” he said.

In addition, government officials in Shenzhen “commit a lot of resources, financial resources to attract top talents from the rest of the world.”

But the city has also faced steep challenges during the coronavirus pandemic, especially in recent weeks as China battles its worst outbreak in two years. The government’s zero-tolerance strategy relies on border closures, mass testing and strict lockdowns, and the restrictions have caused delays at Shenzhen’s factories as well as its port, one of the largest in the world.

During a weeklong lockdown in Shenzhen last month, authorities gave Apple supplier Foxconn Technology Group permission to restart some manufacturing operations using a “closed-loop” system that required employees to stay on site.

Despite the financial pressures of the pandemic, China’s economy has continued to grow “partly because Chinese cities are very flexible,” said Shang-Jin Wei, an economics professor at Columbia Business School and a former chief economist at the Asian Development Bank. “They can adapt to new situations.”

Wei also said Shenzhen offers favorable policies to high-tech companies, such as tax breaks.

According to Hurun Report, as of Jan. 14 there were 3,381 billionaires in the world, a net increase of 153 since last year, and their total wealth rose 4 percent to $15.2 trillion. Of those, 1,133 are in China and 716 in the U.S. China surpassed the U.S. in terms of number of billionaires in 2016.

But China’s billionaires have also been “hit hard” in the past year, the report said, amid a regulatory crackdown on technology, education and other industries and the government’s “common prosperity” campaign promoting more even distribution of wealth.

China lost 160 billionaires in the past year, more than any other country. Colin Huang, founder of e-commerce platform Pinduoduo, experienced the greatest loss of wealth at $50 billion as shares of his Nasdaq-listed company plunged. Xu Jiayin, chairman of embattled property developer Evergrande Group, lost more than $23 billion as his company continues to miss bond payment deadlines.

Zhong Shanshan, the founder of bottled water and beverage company Nongfu Spring, remains China’s richest person with $72 billion in wealth. ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, whose company owns the video app TikTok, is second with $54 billion. Just behind him is Zeng Yuqun, founder of electric-vehicle battery maker CATL, who is worth $53 billion.


© Visual China GroupChina (Shenzhen) IT Summit (Visual China Group / via Getty Images file)

Pony Ma of Tencent and Jack Ma of technology giant Alibaba, two of China’s biggest names in business, both dropped out of China’s top three wealthiest people for the first time since 2015. Pony Ma fell to fourth on the list as his wealth shrank to $52 billion, followed by Jack Ma with $37 billion.

There are no Chinese billionaires in the global top 10, which is led by Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk with a net worth of more than $200 billion. Hoogewerf said that is partly because Chinese billionaires tend to run businesses with a domestic, rather than global, focus.

Indian telecommunications tycoon Mukesh Ambani was the only Asian on a top 10 list otherwise dominated by the U.S. and France. But he has been alternating the title of Asia’s richest person with Indian infrastructure magnate Gautam Adani. The two men, who according to Hurun Report each have a net worth of about $100 billion, were also neck and neck on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires that was released this week, coming in at No. 10 and 11.

US College students file legal complaints against university fossil fuel investment
By Pooja Salhotra, CNN - 
© Nic Antaya/Boston Globe/Getty Images


College campuses have for years been at the center of climate change activism. But now, frustrated and anxious by what they see as slow action alongside growing climate damages, students are engaging a new tactic: legal action.

A coalition of students from Yale, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Vanderbilt working with the nonprofit Climate Defense Project filed legal complaints in February to compel their universities to end their financial relationships with the fossil fuel industry.

In the complaints, students alleged their schools are violating the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Acts, a state law which states a nonprofit's investments must align with its "charitable purpose."

The complaints, all filed with their state attorneys general on the same day, contend fossil fuel companies, by polluting the environment and engaging in public relations campaigns to undermine climate science, stand in conflict to the missions of their universities.

Students also argued fossil fuel investments are inherently risky, violating their institutions' legal duty to invest prudently. Climate scientists reported Monday new fossil fuel projects risk becoming "stranded assets," or being abandoned. The estimated losses from stranded fossil fuel infrastructure between 2015 and 2050 is anywhere from $1 trillion and $4 trillion, assuming the world takes action to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.


© Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald/Getty ImagesMECA students Amanda Bizarro, center, and Sydney Berkeley, left, participate in a climate justice rally on November 5 in conjunction with Greta Thunberg's Fridays for Future.

The students' filings are part of a global surge in legal action to address the climate crisis. A recent report from Grantham Research Institute of the London School of Economics showed worldwide, the number of climate-change related legal cases more than doubled between 2015 and 2021. Around 800 such cases were filed between 1986 and 2014, while more than 1,000 were brought over the following six years, the report found.

"We're witnessing this unprecedented wave of litigation, where individuals are going to court to hold certain actors to account for the damages they are suffering and the damages they will suffer," said Karen Sokol, distinguished professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans.

Sokol attributed the rise in climate cases to the increasing harms of global warming -- including severe weather disasters and the resulting destruction -- along with the public's growing awareness of the problem.

"Whenever harms and damages mount simultaneously with an increase in public awareness, people tend to seek redress in the courts," Sokol told CNN. "That's what we're seeing."

The endowments of the five universities total more than $150 billion, according to the legal filings. CNN was unable to independently confirm the amount, or how much each university is investing in fossil fuels.

CNN reached out to the respective attorneys general offices, two of which -- Massachusetts' and Connecticut's -- confirmed they received and are reviewing the student complaints. New Jersey's Attorney General's office declined to comment, and the offices of Tennessee and California did not respond.

None of the universities have directly responded to the complaints, the students told CNN. In emails to CNN, representatives from Stanford, Princeton, Yale and MIT pointed to their universities' recent efforts to mitigate climate change. Vanderbilt did not respond to CNN's request for comment.

Each of the universities has also released detailed plans to achieve net-zero carbon emissions on their campuses by a target date, by 2050. Some are also seeking net-zero emissions in their investment portfolios, or have ethical investment principles rendering certain fossil fuel companies ineligible for investment.

Stanford is seeking to reach net-zero emissions in both operations and investments by 2050, according to university communications executive Dee Mostofi, who also told CNN the university's investments "fully comply with all applicable laws regulating charities in California." Mostofi also highlighted the university's investments in clean energy and transportation.

For the Stanford students, the promises and policies are not enough.

"'Net-zero' means Stanford could still be invested in fossil fuels and just be offsetting it in ways that aren't really sufficient," said Miriam Wallstrom, a junior at Stanford and an organizer with Fossil Free Stanford. "As a member of the generation that both has to do the most to fight the climate crisis and will also suffer the most in terms of severe weather events, it's terrifying and frustrating that the institution I go to hasn't divested, especially when so many peer institutions have."

Carbon offsetting is the practice of using renewable energy, planting trees, or supporting other forms of conservation in an attempt to offset fossil fuel emissions. But many experts have cast doubts on the efficacy of the schemes, which could allow people, countries, companies or organizations to continue to emit carbon dioxide unabated.

Other institutions of higher education that have moved away from fossil fuels, or have announced plans to do so, include Brown University, Boston University, Georgetown University and Middlebury College. Harvard University and Cornell University also committed to divesting soon after their students filed legal complaints with the help of attorneys at Climate Defense Project, the same organization assisting the current coalition of students.

Students also emphasized their universities may have conflicts of interest preventing them from fairly responding to student climate demands.

Vanderbilt students allege university Chancellor Daniel Diermeier's ties to the fossil fuel industry are a conflict of interest. Diermeier has previously advised companies including Shell, ExxonMobil and BP, among others, according to his CV, which is hosted by a Vanderbilt web address. Students filed a complaint with the University, and the committee responsible for investigating conflicts of interest found it to be "without merit," according to a university news release. The Chancellor did not respond to CNN's request for comment.

Yale students similarly note four trustees of Yale Corporation -- the charitable corporate entity managing the school's roughly $42 billion endowment -- have ties to the fossil fuel industry. Three current or former trustees serve, or have recently served, as board members for oil and gas companies, while one was the CEO of a prominent energy company.

Neither the Yale Corporation nor Yale's Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility responded to CNN's requests for comment.

"The core part of our campaign has been saying that investing in fossil fuels is immoral," said Molly Weiner, a Yale freshman and an organizer with Yale's Endowment Justice Coalition. "But the moral argument is only going to get us so far given that the people who make these investment decisions personally benefit."

Weiner also pointed to a discrepancy between where Yale spends research funds and how it allocates part of its endowment.

"Yale is putting a lot of money into climate research," said Weiner, an environmental studies major. "But that is rendered moot by the fact that the university has $800 million in the fossil fuel industry. They basically cancel each other out."

Ted Hamilton, co-founder of Climate Defense Project, is hopeful Yale and the other universities will decide to divest on their own volition. Alternatively, he said, the state attorneys general could issue enforcement orders mandating universities to stop investing in the fossil fuel industry. Such action would be unprecedented.

Globally, climate litigation largely remains unsettled, as many cases continue to move through the court system. Nearly two dozen lawsuits in the US, all pending in the courts, seek monetary damages from fossil fuel companies, claiming the companies have lied to the public by misrepresenting or denying the harmful effects of fossil fuels, according to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

Some cases have been successful.

One lawsuit resulted in a German court issuing a ruling requiring the government to create more ambitious greenhouse gas emission reductions.

A case in the Netherlands created a new "duty of care" for the government to protect the public from climate change. And more recently, a Netherlands court reached a groundbreaking decision mandating Shell to reduce its global worldwide emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels.

"There's this momentum," said Sokol, speaking of the successful international cases. "Courts are carving out their role in our new climate reality."

DeLorean DMC-12 will be reborn as an EV on August 18th

MobileSyrup - 

Back in February, the DeLorean Motor Company gave the world a sneak peek of its upcoming gull-wing door EV DeLorean. At the time, the company said it will reveal the EV sometime in 2022.

Now, via Twitter, the company announced that it will show off its EV at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance on August 18th.

“Excitement is rising like the doors of our iconic sports car, and we are revealing the next generation prototype three days earlier than planned on the most prestigious stage at Pebble beach,” said Troy Beetz, CMO of DeLorean Motor Company.

The company says it will reveal the name of its new EV at the Monterey Car Week, along with what the future holds for the brand. For reference, the original DeLorean was called the DMC-12.

“The long-awaited concept car is the culmination of a 40+ year history with the prestigious design company Italdesign and DeLorean’s new interpretation of a modern icon,” reads the company’s news release.

Before the DeLorean Motor Company went out of business in 1982, it released the original $25,000 USD (approximately $31,000 CAD) DMC-12 which was well recognized for being an extremely underpowered vehicle with iconic gull-wing doors — as of now, the vehicle’s value translates to about $71,000 USD (roughly $90,000 CAD).

We are not sure whether the new release will be a common EV. From the looks of it, it seems like the upcoming vehicle will just be a concept car that not many would be able to get their hands on.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Source: DeLorean Motor Company

Surprise W boson measurement could rewrite particle physics

Tereza Pultarova - Yesterday 
Space


A tiny subatomic particle called the W boson may be heavier than scientists have previously thought and it could shake up physics' grand theory of everything.

Scientists at the U.S. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory spent 10 years analyzing mass measurements of the W boson, a lesser-known "sister particle" of the Higgs Boson that plays a role in radioactive decay. They found the particle is somewhat heavier than physics theories expected. And that, the scientists said in a statement, is quite a big deal, as it is at odds with the so-called Standard Model, a fundamental physics theory describing how the world on the microscale fits together.

"It's now up to the theoretical physics community and other experiments to follow up on this and shed light on this mystery," David Toback, a physicist at Texas A&M University, who is a member of the project, said in a statement. "If the difference between the experimental and expected value is due to some kind of new particle or subatomic interaction, which is one of the possibilities, there's a good chance it's something that could be discovered in future experiments."

Related: 10 mind-boggling things you should know about quantum physics

Some critics caution that it would take further experiments to verify those results as questioning the particle physics "bible" is a daring prospect.

The scientists behind the newest measurements are, however, quite confident in their results.

"The number of improvements and extra checking that went into our result is enormous," Ashutosh V. Kotwal of Duke University, who led the work, said in the statement. "We took into account our improved understanding of our particle detector as well as advances in the theoretical and experimental understanding of the W boson's interactions with other particles."

The scientists based their calculations on measurements from Fermilab's Tevatron collider conducted between 1985 and 2011. They then spent the following decade analyzing the data. Overall 4.2 million observations of W boson candidate particles were included in the analysis, which is about four times the number used in the earlier estimates the team published in 2012.

The new estimate is accurate to 0.01%, the scientists said in the statement.

The results were published in a paper in the journal Science on Thursday (April 7).

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. 

Oddly heavy particle may have just broken the reigning model of particle physics

Paul Sutter - Yesterday
Live Science


An ultraprecise measurement of the mass of a subatomic particle called the W boson may diverge from the Standard Model, a long-reigning framework that governs the strange world of quantum physics.

After 10 years of collaboration using an atom smasher at Fermilab in Illinois, scientists announced this new measurement, which is so precise that they likened it to finding the weight of an 800-pound (363 kilograms) gorilla to a precision of 1.5 ounces (42.5 grams). Their result puts the W boson, a carrier of the weak nuclear force, at a mass seven standard deviations higher than the Standard Model predicts. That's a very high level of certainty, representing only an incredibly small probability that this result occurred by pure chance.

"While this is an intriguing result, the measurement needs to be confirmed by another experiment before it can be interpreted fully," Joe Lykken, Fermilab's deputy director of research, said in a statement.

The new result also disagrees with older experimental measurements of the W boson's mass. It remains to be seen if this measurement is an experimental fluke or the first opening of a crack in the Standard Model. If the result does stand up to scrutiny and can be replicated, it could mean that we need to revise or extend the Standard Model with possibly new particles and forces.

Related: Physicists get closer than ever to measuring the elusive neutrino

The strength of the weak nuclear force

The weak nuclear force is perhaps the strangest of the four fundamental forces of nature. It's propagated by three force carriers, known as bosons. There is the single Z boson, which has a neutral electric charge, and the W+ and W- bosons, which have positive and negative electric charges, respectively.

Because those three bosons have mass, they travel more slowly than the speed of light and eventually decay into other particles, giving the weak nuclear force a relatively limited range. Despite those limitations, the weak force is responsible for radioactive decay, and it is the only force (besides gravity) to interact directly with neutrinos, the mysterious, ghost-like particles that flood the universe.

Pinning down the masses of the weak force carriers is a crucial test of the Standard Model, the theory of physics that combines quantum mechanics, special relativity and symmetries of nature to explain and predict the behavior of the electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear forces. (Yes, gravity is the "elephant in the room" that the model cannot explain.) The Standard Model is the most accurate theory ever developed in physics, and one of its crowning achievements was the successful prediction of the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle whose quantum mechanical field gives rise to mass in many other particles, including the W boson.

According to the Standard Model, at high energies the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces combine into a single, unified force called the electroweak interaction. But at low energies (or the typical energies of everyday life), the Higgs boson butts in, driving a wedge between the two forces. Through that same process, the Higgs also gives mass to the weak force carriers.

If you know the mass of the Higgs boson, then you can calculate the mass of the W boson, and vice versa. For the Standard Model to be a coherent theory of subatomic physics, it must be consistent with itself. If you measure the Higgs boson and use that measurement to predict the W boson's mass, it should agree with an independent, direct measurement of the W boson's mass.

A flood of data

Using the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), which is inside the giant Tevatron particle accelerator, a collaboration of more than 400 scientists examined years of data from over 4 million independent collisions of protons with antiprotons to study the mass of the W boson. During those super-energetic collisions, the W boson decays into either a muon or an electron (along with a neutrino). The energies of those emitted particles are directly connected to the underlying mass of the W boson.

"The number of improvements and extra checking that went into our result is enormous," said Ashutosh V. Kotwal, a particle physicist at Duke University who led the analysis. "We took into account our improved understanding of our particle detector as well as advances in the theoretical and experimental understanding of the W boson's interactions with other particles. When we finally unveiled the result, we found that it differed from the Standard Model prediction."

The CDF collaboration measured the value of the W boson to be 80,433 ± 9 MeV/c2, which is about 80 times heavier than the proton and about 0.1% heavier than expected. The uncertainty in the measurement comes from both statistical uncertainty (just like the uncertainty you get from taking a poll in an election) and systematic uncertainty (which is produced when your experimental apparatus doesn't always behave in the way you designed it to act). Achieving that level of precision — of an astounding 0.01% — is itself an enormous task, like knowing your own weight down to less than a quarter of an ounce.

"Many collider experiments have produced measurements of the W boson mass over the last 40 years," CDF co-spokesperson Giorgio Chiarelli, a research director at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, said in the statement. "These are challenging, complicated measurements, and they have achieved ever more precision. It took us many years to go through all the details and the needed checks."

Big result, small difference

The result differed from the Standard Model prediction of the W boson's mass, which is 80,357 ± 6 MeV/c2. The uncertainties in that calculation (the "±") come from uncertainties in the measurement of the Higgs boson and other particles, which must be inserted into the calculation, and from the calculation itself, which relies on several approximation techniques.

The differences between the results aren't very large in an absolute sense. Because of the high precision, however, they are separated by seven standard deviations, indicating the presence of a major discrepancy.

The new result also disagrees with previous measurements from other collider experiments, which have been largely consistent with the Standard Model prediction. It's not clear yet if this result is caused by some unknown bias within the experiment or if it's the first sign of new physics.

If the CDF result holds up and other experiments can verify it, it could be a sign that there's more to the W boson mass than its interaction with the Higgs. Perhaps a previously unknown particle or field, or maybe even dark matter, is interacting with the W boson in a way the Standard Model currently doesn't predict.

Nonetheless, the result is an important step in testing the accuracy of the Standard Model, said CDF co-spokesperson David Toback, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University. "It's now up to the theoretical physics community and other experiments to follow up on this and shed light on this mystery," he said.

The researchers described their results April 7 in the journal Science.

Originally published on Live Science.

In 'project of the century', Swiss seek to bury radioactive waste

AFP - Yesterday 
© Fabrice COFFRINI


Storing radioactive waste above ground is a risky business, but the Swiss think they have found the solution: burying spent nuclear fuel deep underground in clay.

The Mont Terri international laboratory was built to study the effects of burying radioactive waste in clay which sits 300 metres (985 feet) below the surface near Saint-Ursanne in the northwestern Jura region.

The underground laboratory stretches across 1.2 kilometres (0.7 miles) of tunnels. Niches along the way, each around five metres high, are filled with various storage simulations, containing small quantities of radioactive material monitored by thousands of sensors.


The access tunnel to the Mont-Terri Laboratory

More than 170 experiments have been carried out to simulate the different phases of the process -- positioning the waste, sealing off the tunnels, surveillance -- and to reproduce every imaginable physical and chemical effect.


A radioactive waste storage model in the underground laboratory

According to experts, it takes 200,000 years for the radioactivity in the most toxic waste to return to natural levels.

Geologist Christophe Nussbaum, who heads the laboratory, said researchers wanted to determine what the possible effects could be "on storage that needs to last for nearly one million years."

That "is the duration that we need to ensure safe confinement," he said, adding that so far, "the results are positive."

- Potential sites identified -

Three prospective sites in the northeast, near the German border, have been identified to receive such radioactive waste.

Switzerland's nuclear plant operators are expected to choose their preferred option in September.

The Swiss government is not due to make the final decision until 2029, but that is unlikely to be the last word as the issue would probably go to a referendum under Switzerland's famous direct democracy system.

Despite the drawn-out process, environmental campaigners Greenpeace say Switzerland is moving too fast.

"There are a myriad of technical questions that have not been resolved," Florian Kasser, in charge of nuclear issues for the environmental activist group, told AFP.

For starters, he said, it remains to be seen if the systems in place can "guarantee there will be no radioactive leakage in 100, 1,000 or 100,000 years."

"We are putting the cart before the horse, because with numerous questions still unresolved, we are already looking for sites" to host the storage facilities, he said.

Kasser said Switzerland also needed to consider how it will signal where there sites are to ensure they are not forgotten, and that people many centuries from now remain aware of the dangers.

Swiss nuclear power plants have been pumping out radioactive waste for more than half a century.

Until now, it has been handled by the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste, or NAGRA, founded in 1972 by the plant operators in conjunction with the state.

For now, the waste is being stored in an "intermediary depot" in Wurenlingen, some 15 kilometres from the German border.

- Horizon 2060 -

Switzerland hopes to join an elite club of countries closing in on deep geological storage.

So far, only Finland has built a site, in granite, and Sweden gave the green light in January to build its own site for burying spent nuclear fuel in granite.

Next up is France, whose Cigeo project, led by the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (ANDRA), plans to store radioactive waste underground in clay.

"We are awaiting the declaration of public utility but in the meantime we will submit a request for a construction permit," said ANDRA spokeswoman Emilie Grandidier during a visit to Mont Terri.

Following the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima power station in Japan, Switzerland decided to phase out nuclear power gradually: its reactors can continue for as long as they remain safe.

A projected 83,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste, including some high activity waste, will have to be buried.

This volume corresponds to a 60-year operating life of the Beznau, Gosgen and Leibstadt nuclear power plants, and the 47 years that Muhleberg was in operation before closing in 2019.

Filling in the underground nuclear waste tombs should begin by 2060.

"It's the project of the century: we have carried out the scientific research for 50 years, and we now have 50 years for the authorisation and the realisation of the project," said Nagra spokesman Felix Glauser.

The monitoring period will span several decades before the site is sealed some time in the 22nd century.

apo/nl-rjm/pvh/ach

US taxpayers unknowingly paid millions to get Starlink terminals to Ukraine

Kris Holt - Yesterday 
Engadget

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk pledged to send Starlink internet terminals to the country. His company donated thousands of units and is covering the cost of the service for a few months. However, the US government reportedly paid millions for some of the terminals and to get them all to Ukraine, in spite of statements to the contrary from the company's president.

The United States Agency for International Development bought around 1,500 terminals at a cost of $1,500 each, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. It also covered transportation costs for all the terminals to the tune of $800,000, resulting in the agency shelling out over $3 million. In all, the agency and SpaceX sent more than 5,000 terminals to Ukraine, with a third-party contractor handling transportation and delivery.


ODESA, UKRAINE - MARCH 15, 2022 - SpaceX Starlink internet terminal installed in Odesa, southern Ukraine (Photo credit should read Nina Lyashonok/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

It's unclear whether USAID paid over the odds for the terminals. SpaceX recently increased the price of a Starlink terminal from $499 to $549 for deposit holders and to $599 for fresh orders. As of April 22nd, the monthly price of the satellite-powered internet service is increasing from $99 to $110. The company announced a higher tier service earlier this year that costs $2,500 for a terminal and $500 per month for service.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said last month that France and possibly Poland helped get the terminals to Ukraine. “I don’t think the US has given us any money to give terminals to the Ukraine,” Shotwell said. SpaceX is said to have donated $10 million worth of terminals and Starlink service to the country, which is laudable enough, though the company wasn't exactly clear about where funding for other parts of the operation came from.

On top of that, Musk had to issue a warning over the use of Starlink, given that Russia may be able to triangulate the location of a terminal uplink. Musk urged people to use Starlink only when needed and stay away from other people while doing so.

This isn't the first time that Musk has offered help during a crisis where his input hasn't gone without a hitch. In 2018, he took a mini-submarine to Thailand to assist with the rescue of 12 boys and their coach who were trapped in a cave. Not only were those people safely retrieved by the time he got there, the mini-sub was deemed impractical for the mission anyway.

Alberta sees unemployment dip as jobless rate hits new low across the country

Alberta saw a slight decline in its unemployment rate last month as Canada’s rate hit a record low.


© David BloomA pedestrian makes their way past a help wanted sign at a Jiffy Lube location, 9927 82 Ave. in Edmonton on March 15, 2022.

Lisa Johnson - Yesterday
EDMONTON JOURNAL

Across the country, the unemployment rate fell to 5.3 per cent, a low not seen since Statistics Canada started tracking comparable data in 1976 as about 73,000 jobs were gained, the agency reported Friday.

In Alberta, the jobless rate went to 6.5 per cent from 6.8 per cent in February, while the province counted 15,700 new full-time jobs but 8,400 fewer part-time gigs.

Jobs, Economy and Innovation Minister Doug Schweitzer said at an unrelated news conference Friday the numbers show the provincial economy is turning a corner, and the unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been since December 2018.

“You’re truly starting to see the economic momentum of Alberta hit its stride,” said Schweitzer, adding Alberta’s employment rate of 64.7 per cent is the highest among provinces, just one point above that of Saskatchewan.

The data reflect labour market conditions from March 13 to 19 after Alberta lifted venue capacity limits and COVID-19 restrictions on large gatherings.

In Edmonton, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 7.1 per cent from 6.9 per cent in February. In Calgary, that number dropped to 7.7 per cent from 8.0 per cent the month before — still one of the highest unemployment rates among major cities in Canada.

Schweitzer acknowledged labour shortages are hitting sectors across Alberta. To help address it, the government has earmarked $600 million over three years for its Alberta at Work program, aiming to expand student enrolment in areas with identified skills shortages — including technology, agriculture, financial services and aviation — by creating 7,000 spaces.

The latest numbers show the Canadian labour market has rarely been tighter, which threatens to add to inflationary pressures by causing wages to spiral higher. Average hourly wages rose 3.4 per cent from March 2021, compared with a year-over-year increase of 3.1 per cent in February.

Statistics Canada reported that wages are increasing at a slower pace than in the second half of 2019, when the jobless rate was hovering around 5.5 per cent and wages were increasing at an annual rate of around four per cent.

In Alberta, wage growth was the lowest, at 1.4 per cent, with gains in some industries including natural resources and retail trade partially offset by declines in others, like educational services.

Speaking at a news conference Friday in Calgary, NDP Leader Rachel Notley said she hopes the province is seeing a rebound but noted Alberta still lags behind much of the country with a worse-than-average unemployment rate.

Unemployment rates in neighbouring Saskatchewan and British Columbia hovered around five per cent in March, while in Newfoundland and Labrador, the rate was 12.9 per cent.

Notley said neither the federal nor provincial governments have focused enough on job retraining efforts and supports for workers as the economy experiences a restructuring with new technology and industries, including oil and gas, aiming to meet climate change goals.

“It’s really critically important to help us attract diversified investment, and it’s important to help deal with an equitable wage increase that will not happen in its absence ,” said Notley.

— With files from Kevin Carmichael

UCP BEATING A DEAD HORSE

Opinion: Misleading to suggest Canadian charities rely on foreign funding

Bob Wyatt

 - Yesterday 
Edmonton Journal

Steve Allan, who conducted the public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns, produced a series of recommendations to address related economic, social and governance challenges. Those recommendations include investing in and supporting the collaborative development of a methodology to establish world-class best practices, standards and processes for the measurement, accumulation and reporting of GHG emissions data.

Re. “Time to put words into action,” Steve Allan, March 26

In his op-ed essay published on March 26, Steve Allan once again raised concerns about foreign funding of Canadian charities and, once again, we fear he has left people with misleading information about the issue.

Mr. Allan cites 2018 figures in saying that Canadian charities received $2.4 billion from outside Canada. That amounted to about 0.9 per cent of the total revenue of charities in that year, according to the publicly available data from the Canada Revenue Agency.

Since Mr. Allan’s inquiry focused on environmental charities, some readers may have been left with the impression that all of this foreign funding went to such charities. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mr. Allan does not mention, for example, that 30 per cent of all foreign funding received by Canadian charities in 2018 went to one charity — the University of Toronto. Nor does he mention that the listing of charities receiving the top 80 per cent of funding from outside Canada is primarily made up of universities, health organizations, and international-development agencies. Only two charities that could remotely be considered environmental appear in that list — Ducks Unlimited and the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

It might also have been useful to note that Alberta-based environmental charities received only $211,000 from foreign sources in 2018.

Canadian charities have received funding from outside the country since long before Canada had a formal system of registering charities. It is not new, and it is not news.

Mr. Allan’s piece also reiterated his suggestion that charities need to be more transparent about their funding. It is not clear how much more transparent he thinks they can be. The annual reporting form of every charity is published online by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), and financial statements can be obtained from the charity or CRA. Those returns detail how charities spend their funding in significantly more detail than do corporate financial statements, even of publicly traded companies.

The former commissioner of the public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns did not mention that his report recommended that all Canadian charities, and all non-profits in Alberta, be required to disclose the identity of every person who donates $5,000 or more — a move that has not been adopted by any other jurisdiction in the world, and rightly so, since it would represent a gross violation of donor privacy.

Nor does Mr. Allan’s op-ed mention that his report found no wrongdoing by any charity.

Much of the inquiry report focused on providing advice to the energy industry on how it might be more effective in telling its story. That wasn’t part of his mandate, but it might be useful to some people. Seeking to upset the public by partial disclosure and non-disclosure of the facts about charities is not useful and, in fact, is harmful to all of the 86,000 charities that serve Canadians and those in need throughout the world.

The op-ed says that his report has faded from the public eye. Rightfully so.

Bob Wyatt is executive director of the Muttart Foundation.

Vietnam’s biggest carmaker files for $2 billion in the US as it aims to start delivering cars this year

sonnguyen

 

VinFast, a unit of Vietnam’s conglomerate Vingroup JSC has lodged its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bloomberg reported.

The company said it hasn’t decided on the size of the offering.

According to Bloomberg, the biggest carmaker in Vietnam has been working with advisers on the U.S. listing in the second half of this year, it said in a statement in December. The share sale could raise about $2 billion, Bloomberg citied the company’s statement on the its website.

Related: The US highly appreciates Vinfast’s electric car factory construction project

According to data compiled by Bloomberg, at $2 billion, VinFast’s IPO would be the biggest ever by a Vietnamese company after Vinhomes JSC’s $1.4 billion first-time share sale in 2018. If successful, the carmaker would also become one of the few Vietnamese companies to list in the U.S.

A listing comes as VinFast plans to open an EV factory in North Carolina, which could become operational in 2024. The plant is the first phase of a planned complex in the U.S. that would have a total investment of as much as $6 billion.

U.S. President Joe Biden tweeted a White House statement about VinFast’s North Carolina plans, which it called a $4 billion investment that would create more than 7,000 jobs.

VinFast aims to start delivering cars in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands in late 2022. Prices for its VF8 and VF9 electric SUVs will range from $41,000 to $61,000. VinFast began domestic deliveries of its first electric cars in December.

Separately, VinFast is exploring a funding round to raise $500 million to $1 billion ahead of its U.S. IPO, Bloomberg News reported last month.