Israel Is in All-Out Crisis Mode After Terrible Handling of Reporter’s Death

Noga Tarnopolsky
Wed, May 18, 2022, 
The Daily Beast.

Hazem Bader/AFP via Getty

The death of Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera’s celebrated Palestine correspondent—who was shot in the head while covering a gun battle between Israeli army forces and Palestinian fighters in the West Bank city of Jenin last Wednesday—has spiraled from tragedy into a full-blown diplomatic crisis for Israel.

A series of clumsy reactions to the journalist’s death, and the police’s catastrophic handling of her funeral on Friday, where officers beat pallbearers with batons and dispersed the crowds with stun grenades, have left Israel exposed to a diplomatic maelstrom, with criticism coming from even the country’s strongest allies.

Israeli police has not responded to queries about its deployment of anti-terror police at the funeral, or its methods of riot control.

Videos of Abu Akleh’s coffin tipping over, slipping from the pallbearers’ hands and almost hitting the ground drew a rare rebuke from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who personally called Abu Akleh’s family to express condolences over the death of the renowned Palestinian American journalist.

The United States was “deeply troubled to see the images of Israeli police intruding into her funeral procession,” Blinken said, in a statement. “We remain in close contact with our Israeli and Palestinian counterparts and call on all to maintain calm and avoid any actions that could further escalate tensions.”

Family and friends carry the coffin of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed during an Israeli raid in Jenin in the West Bank, as clashes erupted with Israeli security forces during her funeral in Jerusalem on May 13.
Ammar Awad/Reuters

More forcefully, the European Union said it was “appalled” by the scenes unfolding during Abu Akleh’s funeral and condemned “the disproportionate use of force and the disrespectful behavior by the Israeli police against the participants of the mourning procession.”

Cops and Mourners Clash at Reporter’s Funeral

An Israel police statement released at midnight on Friday, the day of the funeral, claimed that a “mob” had threatened the driver of the hearse carrying Abu Akleh’s coffin, disrupting plans “coordinated in advance by the Israel Police together with the Abu Akleh family.”

“Israeli police intervened to disperse the mob and prevent them from taking the coffin, so that the funeral could proceed as planned in accordance with the wishes of the family,” police said, in a statement that was ripped to shreds by the journalist’s brother, Tony Abu Akleh, who told CNN that the police’s actions amounted to an “intentional and brutal” attack.

Towards the end of one video, a commander appears to be reprimanding some of the officers.

On Monday, east Jerusalem’s Saint Joseph’s Hospital, where Abu Akleh’s body was prepared for burial, released a video of about a dozen Israeli police officers raiding its wards for no apparent reason.

Israel police have announced an investigation into the incident, which saw officers ripping Palestinian flags from the hands of mourners and, in one case, preventing a mourner from approaching the procession because her headdress was in the colors of the flag, which is legal to display in Israel.

Palestinian artists paint a mural in honor of slain veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Gaza City on May 12.
Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty

Over the weekend, it emerged that Jerusalem District Commander Doron Turgeman had ordered his officers to confiscate Palestinian flags from Germany, where he was a member of a police delegation.

Turgeman has gained notoriety in recent years for the rough policing of his officers, which included attacks on foreign journalists covering protests against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Monday, Israeli media reported that the police were investigating whether officers assigned to secure the funeral had even been authorized to use batons.

The police’s definition of mourners as a “mob,” which drew worldwide attention, appeared to be a mistranslation of the words “lawbreakers and agitators,” which appeared in the Hebrew version of the police statement.

In a radio interview, former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Jonathan Conricus slammed the police for not employing any English-speaking communications professionals before describing the incident as “a Palestinian ambush” which should have been foreseen, and included the willing cooperation of the foreign media stationed in Israel.

Conricus declined to explain his terminology when approached by The Daily Beast.

A unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an independent investigation into how the trailblazing reporter was killed, on the job, and a growing chorus of calls from the White House for an “immediate and thorough” examination do not appear to be bearing fruit.

Almost a week after Abu Akleh’s death, the investigation into its cause appears to be stagnant. A Palestinian coroner who performed an autopsy and examined the bullet that passed through her helmet said results were “inconclusive.”

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that the Israeli army’s was firm in its decision “to have a full-scale investigation of this process,” but admitted not having arrived at any results.

“We are in the middle of the investigation, and I do not want to rule out any scenario at the moment,” he said, underscoring the importance he attributes to “safeguarding human life and freedom of the press,” and requesting forensic data from the Palestinian government.

But a rapid analysis of open source data undertaken by Bellingcat, the independent investigations organization, supports witness testimony that the shots that hit Abu Akleh were fired by the Israeli army.

A report entitled “Unraveling the Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh” concludes that it is most likely that Abu Akleh was shot by an Israeli soldier.

Israel has not made a good name for itself in probing the deaths of reporters killed in action. The Israeli army claims that the death of 30-year-old photojournalist Yasser Murtaja remains under investigation four years after he succumbed to his wounds on April 6, 2018. Murtaja was shot in broad daylight while covering protests on the border between Gaza and Israel. Like Abu Akleh, he was wearing a flak jacket emblazoned with the word “PRESS”.

Diaspora Minister Nachman Shai, also a former IDF spokesperson, admitted as much, telling an Israeli radio station that based on past experience, “Israel’s credibility is not very high in such events.”

Courage seeking truth: Shireen’s lesson for younger journalists

Fatima AbdulKarim
Wed, May 18, 2022

I can never forget Shireen Abu Akleh’s lesson in courage.

It is a lesson I was reminded of when I learned that my mentor and friend had been shot and killed last week, reportedly by Israeli forces, while covering an Israeli military raid in the northern West Bank for Al Jazeera.

There was no point in putting ourselves in danger, Shireen constantly told us younger journalists. Courage in journalism came only through asking for the truth, not in anything else.

She was shot and killed seeking the truth, wearing her press vest and helmet.

According to the journalists who were at her side – as well as Palestinian officials, Al Jazeera, and independent researchers using material from Palestinian and Israeli military sources – she was killed by Israeli military fire during a shootout with Palestinian militants in Jenin, in a raid that followed a string of deadly attacks in Israel.

As I, other journalists, and Palestinians across the political spectrum mourn her killing, I am reminded of the bloody days of the second intifada that began more than two decades of insecurity and turmoil for the Palestinian people that continue to this day. It was an era that catapulted Shireen’s career, making her a trusted voice for Palestinians and Arabs around the world.

Shireen was a pioneer, part of a new generation of female field reporters in the Arab world at the turn of the 21st century. While women were commonly seen as anchors behind a desk, to see a woman reporting from the middle of the action broke stereotypes and led the way for dozens more Arab women to follow.

These past two decades were nevertheless also years in which my friend and colleague guided me and others through the uncertain and dangerous times with warmth.
Her voice was my chaperone

In the early days of the second intifada, which began in late 2000, I attended Birzeit University near Ramallah, studying English literature but harboring dreams of becoming a journalist. The violence between Israelis and Palestinians and the growing number of Israeli military checkpoints made my 5-mile commute dangerous.

Our main live news sources at the time were satellite channels, like Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera. Specifically, we all relied on the tenacious work of Al Jazeera’s Palestinian American correspondent, Jerusalem’s own Shireen Abu Akleh.

Shireen’s hour-by-hour updates allowed me and tens of thousands of others to know how to navigate Israeli military checkpoints, which areas were witnessing violence, and what roads were unsafe that day.

With her voice, Shireen was my chaperone to university.

Shireen’s calm presence, persistence, confidence, and professionalism brought her close to viewers, who trusted her accurate reporting. For many, their lives depended on it.

Her iconic signoff – “Shireen Abu Akleh, Al Jazeera, Ramallah” – became so well known, I would hear Israeli forces occasionally repeat it when announcing a curfew through loudspeakers on Ramallah’s streets.

It may have been meant to mock her, but it solidified her as a pillar of Palestinians’ daily lives.

I knew that if I pursued journalism, I would seek to follow in her footsteps.
Emphasis on safety

Years later, when I finally did become a journalist, I would see her in the field for every event, every incident, every crisis. She took me and many other younger journalists under her wing, and shared her stories of survival and constant lessons on safety and vigilance.

She told us how she utilized fear as an instinct to keep her safe. She drilled into all of us the importance of being alert and in the right place at the right time, of avoiding violence and being safe.

It was a mentorship that continued to her very last moments on earth; when she was shot she was working alongside journalists Shatha Hanaysha and Mujahid Al-Saadi, both in their 20s.

Off-air and away from the cameras, Shireen was a kind and generous soul. Her voice had a Zen-like quality that calmed people around her, and her account of the news was factual and direct. She was always there to lean on.

Shireen also preached the importance of the press holding those in power to account.

Over Shireen’s career, Palestinians saw violence sprawling from within and without. Rounds of peace talks started, sputtered, and collapsed, opportunities missed. Israeli settlements spread across the West Bank. Fatah-Hamas infighting divided the West Bank and Gaza. Elections were postponed, and an undemocratic leadership dug in.

Frustration grew for an entire generation that has grown up in instability, unable to choose their own leaders or their futures.

Shireen was there through it all, reporting it, helping us make sense of it. Until she was not.

Outpouring of gratitude

Her three-day funeral procession from Jenin to Nablus, then Ramallah and Jerusalem, brought people to the streets in a message of gratitude for a woman welcomed into every household like a daily meal.

As if in a state funeral, masses of mourners accompanied her body. People who had never met her stood in the streets and wept, expressing both their anger and sorrow.

In her birthplace and hometown of Jerusalem, a city of the three Abrahamic faiths, thousands of people across all backgrounds, political factions, and religions united behind her on Friday. It was an enormous emotional outpouring, but it was marred by an Israeli police crackdown and the clubbing of mourners carrying her coffin, an event caught on the lenses of the world media.

I followed the ugly scene, emotionally torn, from Jenin, where I was trying to reconstruct the story of her killing. I hadn’t slept in days, but dealing with Shireen’s death as a news story may have given me the distance I needed to focus on my job.

Even in death, Shireen cast light onto the harsh realities of Palestinians’ lives under occupation. The bullet that struck her and the turmoil of her funeral renewed Palestinians’ awareness of their urgent need: to tell their narrative, our narrative.

We shall tell it the way Shireen did, factually and unapologetically.

Vatican slams Israel for attacking funeral of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

Peter Weber, Senior editor
Tue, May 17, 2022

The top Catholic officials in Jerusalem strongly criticized Israel on Monday for Friday's attack on the funeral procession of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Israeli riot police stormed the courtyard of St. Joseph Hospital, where Abu Akleh's funeral procession was starting, and kicked and beat the pallbearers, causing them to nearly drop the coffin.

"The Israel Police's invasion and disproportionate use of force — attacking mourners, striking them with batons, using smoke grenades, shooting rubber bullets, frightening the hospital patients — is a severe violation of international norms and regulations, including the fundamental human right of freedom of religion," Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of the Holy Land, said at Monday's press conference.

Monsignor Tomasz Grysa, the Vatican's representative in Jerusalem, said Israel's "violent intrusion" into Abu Akleh's funeral "brutally violated" a 1993 agreement between the Roman Catholic Church and Israel that "upholds and observes the human right of freedom of religion." Jamil Koussa, St. Joseph Hospital's director, said the target of the raid was Abu Akleh's coffin itself and declared it an attempt to "horrify people in the building."

Israel's police force defended its conduct on Friday, saying it had "intervened to disperse the mob and prevent them from taking the coffin," instead of putting it in a hearse, as Abu Akleh's family had planned. Abu Akleh's brother Anton disputed that rationale, saying he "never gave any promises to the Israeli police."

Abu Akleh, who was Catholic, was shot dead Wednesday while covering an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp. Witnesses said Israeli forces shot Abu Akleh, who was wearing a blue protective vest clearly marked "Press." Israel, after first suggesting a Palestinian gunman had fired the fatal shot, said it will investigate whether she was hit by Israeli fire.

Dutch open-source research consortium Bellingcat said that based on evidence from Palestinian and Israeli military sources, Israeli soldiers "were in the closest position and had the clearest line of sight to Abu Akleh," suggesting she was killed by Israeli fire.

Israel's ruling coalition becomes minority after lawmaker quits


Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett attends a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem

Thu, May 19, 2022

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel's ruling coalition on Thursday became a minority in parliament when an Arab lawmaker from a left-wing party quit, leaving Prime Minister Naftali Bennett with a more precarious grip on power.

The defection by Ghaida Rinawie Zoabi, who in a letter circulated in Israeli media said she was pulling her support for the government on ideological grounds, leaves Bennett controlling 59 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.

Bennett heads a collection of left-wing, centrist, right-wing and Arab parties that was sworn in a year ago, ending Benjamin Netanyahu's record 12-year run as prime minister.

It lost its slight majority last month when a lawmaker from Bennett's own right-wing party quit the coaltion.

The government is now more vulnerable and would need to find external support should the opposition bring a no-confidence vote in parliament.

In her letter to Bennett informing him she was quitting, Zoabi, a legislator from the Meretz party, referenced an escalation in violence at a Jerusalem holy site as well as hard-handed tactics by Israeli police at the funeral last week of a Palestinian journalist.

"I cannot keep supporting the existence of a coaltion that shamefully harrasses the society I came from," she said.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; editing by John Stonestreet and Angus MacSwan)

Portuguese angered at influx of Californians who import their problems with them: report


Andrew Miller

FOX NEWS
Wed, May 18, 2022

California residents are fleeing to the country of Portugal and in many cases bringing problems that have made life more difficult for natives, according to the Los Angeles Times report.

A story titled "Welcome to Portugal, the new expat haven. Californians, please go home," reports that the number of Americans living in Portugal has risen by 45% in the past year with many of those Americans moving from California in order to escape high housing costs, pandemic lockdowns, and "Trumpian politics" in the United States.

The article explains that "resentment of newcomers is growing" in Portugal as California expats have become the "root of questions over gentrification, income disparities and immigration."

Portuguese activists have reportedly taken to the streets to protest the gentrification caused by Americans, many of them Californians, who have moved into the neighborhood and caused skyrocketing rent and evictions.

"You cannot deny that places like Lisbon have become much more appealing for young, creative people with money to spend. The effect on the economy and the way the buildings look — no longer empty — is astronomical," Luis Mendes, a geographer at the University of Lisbon, told the Los Angeles Times. "But the average Portuguese person can no longer afford to live in the center of Lisbon. Rents have gone up five times over a few years. Even the basic things, such as buying groceries, take longer trips outside the city center than they used to."

The Portuguese government has responded to the housing crisis by suspending its "golden visa" program in large cities that offered residency to foreigners who purchased homes that cost more than $500,000 euros which was a program "dominated" by Americans.

In Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal, evictions have doubled over the last few years with many blaming the influx of foreigners willing to pay more than locals with bank accounts backed by dollars and pounds.

California’s population decreased in both 2020 and 2021 which cost the state a seat in Congress for the first time after the U.S. Census found California's population growth fell behind other states.

"Things were just becoming too much back home, but I didn’t want to leave everything about L.A. behind," California expat Jamie Dixon explained. "With Portugal," Dixon added, "we could keep the parts we liked and leave the rest."

The Door to Fusion Energy Might Have Just Been Unlocked

Tony Ho Tran
Wed, May 18, 2022

dani3315

In the world of renewable energy, there’s perhaps no more ambitious goal than fusion power. This involves fusing hydrogen atoms to create helium—a process that generates an incredible amount of energy. It’s a reaction that occurs every single moment in the sun, but replicating it on Earth is a much more arduous process. If we succeed, however, we’ll have a clean source of renewable electricity that meets our ever-growing energy needs.

To that end, researchers are chasing after a phenomenon called “ignition,” which is when a fusion reactor generates more energy than was needed to create the initial reaction. A few major attempts are underway to achieve this goal, including the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in France. That effort utilizes powerful magnets in a machine called a tokamak to create superheated plasma created using hydrogen fuel.

But therein lies an issue: There’s only so much hydrogen fuel you can put into a tokamak before everything starts going horribly wrong.

“One of the limitations in making plasma inside a tokamak is the amount of hydrogen fuel you can inject into it,” Paolo Ricci, a researcher at the Swiss Plasma Center, said in a press release. “Since the early days of fusion, we've known that if you try to increase the fuel density, at some point there would be what we call a ‘disruption’—basically you totally lose the confinement, and plasma goes wherever.”

The Holy Grail of Energy Generation Might Finally Be Within Our Grasp

To solve this issue, scientists began to research different equations to measure the maximum amount of hydrogen you can put inside of a tokamak before disruption. One law that eventually caught hold and became a mainstay in the fusion research world is known as the “Greenwald limit,” which says that the amount of fuel that can be used in a tokamak is directly correlated to the radius of the machine. The researchers behind ITER have even built their machine based on this law.

But even the Greenwald limit wasn’t perfect.

“The Greenwald limit is what we call an ‘empirical’ limit or law, which basically means that it’s like a rule-of-thumb based on observations made on past experiments,” Alex Zylstra, an experimental physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, told The Daily Beast in an email. “These are very useful, but we always need to be cautious when applying them outside conditions where we have data from experiments.”

That’s why Ricci and his team have challenged this long-held belief in a new paper published on May 6 in the journal Physical Review Letters. In it, they posit that Greenwald’s limit can actually be raised—nearly doubling the amount of hydrogen fuel that can go into a tokamak in order to produce plasma. Their findings could lay the groundwork for future fusion reactors such as DEMO—a successor to ITER that’s currently in development—to finally reach ignition.

This Fusion Technology Could Make Clean Energy Drastically Cheaper

“This is important because it shows that the density that you can achieve in a tokamak increases with the power you need to run it,” Ricci said. “Actually, DEMO will operate at a much higher power than present tokamaks and ITER, which means that you can add more fuel density without limiting the output, in contrast to the Greenwald law. And that is very good news.”

Zylstra believes that the team’s finding is significant because it sheds light on why exactly fusion reactors have such a limit as well. It also shows that the designs for tokamaks like ITER or DEMO could be “less constrained than previously thought.” With the fuel density being increased two-fold, it could result in a vast improvement in their power output by tokamaks—and finally get us to ignition.

“Fusion is an extremely challenging problem—both scientifically and technologically, and making fusion power a reality requires many advances made one step at a time,” Zylstra added. “If this study is further validated, especially on machines like ITER, it will certainly help the magnetic fusion community credibly design and optimize future designs for experimental and power-generating facilities.”

Sri Lanka Falls Into Default, Sending Warning Across Emerging World

Wed, May 18, 2022
By Geoffrey Smith

Investing.com -- Sri Lanka formally defaulted on its foreign debt on Thursday, as a succession of external shocks and economic mismanagement left it without the money to pay even for fuel imports.

The South Asian island nation is the first country in two years to formally default on its debt and threatens to set a precedent for the rest of the world grappling with an increasingly severe inflation problem.

Severe shocks to food and energy prices are causing economic distress in more and more countries, aggravating already existing problems caused by the pandemic and the world's policy response to it.

Central Bank Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe told a briefing that the country hadn't been able to find the money to pay $78 million in interest on a dollar bond and $105 million in interest on a loan from Chinese state-backed entities within the 30-day grace period allowed under the terms of those debts.

While Sri Lanka's foreign debt, at $12.6 billion, is small in relative terms, the economic crisis unfolding there has similarities with various other parts of the emerging world. Revenue from tourism, its biggest generator of foreign currency, fell by over 80% in the first year of the pandemic, according to World Bank data, under the impact of travel bans.

Without that revenue, and almost entirely dependent on imports for fossil fuels, it has been brutally exposed to the near-doubling of oil prices over the last year.

The country's ability to feed its population of 22 million has, meanwhile, been undermined by a ban on the import of fertilizers and pesticides, which have led to an estimated 30% drop in agricultural yields this year.

The government has since watered down that ban, but too late to stop widespread shortages this year, which have boiled over into violent protests against the ruling Rajapaksa clan.

The collapse of tourism revenue has forced the central bank this year to abandon its initial attempts to defend the value of the Sri Lankan rupee. It has now lost over 50% of its value against the dollar since the start of 2020, although - like the country's stock market - it has stabilized at a low level since the central bank admitted last week that default would be hard to avoid.

The dollar rose a relatively modest 1.4% against the rupee in response to the news on Thursday, while the MSCI Sri Lanka stock index edged up 0.8%.

The country has begun talks with the International Monetary Fund on a restructuring process, which Weerasinghe suggested on Thursday could take around six months to complete. That will depend largely on the attitude of its biggest foreign creditor, China, which has lent lavishly to a succession of Rajapaksa governments to finance projects of questionable economic value in the last two decades. That has made Sri Lanka a central figure in arguments over what critics call China's 'debt trap diplomacy', a process by which Beijing leverages the economic distress of its debtors to gain strategic assets across the world. The accusations are routinely rejected by China and disputed by many economists.

Sri Lanka Default Hints at Trouble Ahead for Developing Nations







Sri Lanka Default Hints at Trouble Ahead for Developing Nations

Sydney Maki and Amelia Pollard
Wed, May 18, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Sri Lanka’s impending default on $12.6 billion of overseas bonds is flashing a warning sign to investors in other developing nations that surging inflation is set to take a painful toll.

The South Asian nation is set to blow through the grace period on $78 million of payments Wednesday, marking its first sovereign debt default since it gained independence from Britain in 1948. Its bonds already trade deep in distressed territory, with holders bracing for losses approaching 60 cents on the dollar. The government said last month it would halt payments on foreign debt.

Sri Lanka’s situation is unique in the way all debt crises are -- the particulars here involve an unpopular government run by an all-powerful family, the unresolved aftermath of a 30-year civil war and violent street protests. But the island’s saga is starting to be seen as a bellwether for emerging markets where shortages exacerbated by inflation, including record-high food costs globally, have the potential to roil national economies.

“The Sri Lanka default is an ominous sign for emerging markets,” said Guido Chamorro, the co-head of emerging-market hard-currency debt at Pictet Asset Management, which holds Sri Lankan bonds. “We expect the good times to stop. Slowing growth and more difficult funding conditions will increase default risk particularly for frontier countries.”

Sri Lanka, an $81 billion economy located off India’s southern coast, has been mired in turmoil for weeks amid annual inflation running at 30%, a plummeting currency and an economic crisis that has left the country short of the hard currency it needs to import food and fuel. Anger over the situation -- brought about by years of excessive borrowing to fund bloated state companies and generous social benefits -- has boiled over into violent protests.

Widespread arson and clashes were reported from several parts of the country while homes and properties of several government lawmakers were set on fire. At least nine people, including one member of parliament, were killed in the violence. And the country has also struggled with petrol shortages in recent days, with the government asking citizens to not line up for gasoline.

Sri Lanka is currently without a finance minister, which could complicate efforts to get through the crisis as the government struggles to restore security and get a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. At the same time, it needs to negotiate a restructuring with creditors including BlackRock Inc. and Ashmore Group.

The nation’s dollar bonds are among the worst performers in the world this year, with only Ukraine, Belarus and El Salvador’s Bitcoin-busted notes faring worse. The government on April 18 failed to transfer about $78 million in coupons to holders of debt maturing in 2023 and 2028, leading S&P Global Ratings to declare a selective default. Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service have yet to declare official defaults, despite issuing their own warnings.

After the grace period on those payments ends Wednesday, negotiations with creditors can begin in earnest, a process that will be key to winning aid from the IMF. The country has previously said it needs between $3 billion and $4 billion this year to pull itself out of crisis.

The nation’s $1 billion dollar debt due this July was indicated 0.24 cents higher at 42.73 cents on Wednesday, near the record low of 42.5 cents reached last week, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

But getting such a deal done quickly won’t be easy. While President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has already called on one of his political opponents to take over as prime minister after the resignation of his brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, instability lingers. Divides remain deep after a 30-year civil war that ended in 2009, and the central bank governor has threatened to quit if political stability doesn’t return soon.

“We are in a fluid situation that is very perilous for Sri Lanka,” said Matthew Vogel, London-based portfolio manager and head of sovereign research at FIM Partners.

Risk of Replication

As Sri Lanka struggles with the turmoil, its problems provide a warning for other emerging markets where heavy debt loads are converging with economic issues and social unease. The challenge is made more difficult as the Federal Reserve and other major central banks raise interest rates in a bid to quell inflation, leading to higher borrowing costs.

“They are now forced to face their debt burdens amid tightening financial conditions,” said Trang Nguyen, executive director of emerging markets strategy at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

At least 14 developing economies tracked in a Bloomberg gauge have debt yields at an excess of 1,000 basis points over US Treasuries, a threshold for bonds to be considered distressed.

The added pressures of rising food and energy prices has already started to bubble up in other countries, including Egypt, Tunisia and Peru. It risks turning into a broader debt debacle and yet another threat to the world economy’s fragile recovery from the pandemic. Pakistan, Ethiopia and Ghana are also in danger of following suit, Bloomberg Economics said last month.

“Sri Lanka could be the start of a trend across the frontier and emerging markets where governments experience debt crises -- and possibly default on their obligations,” said Brendan McKenna, a strategist at Wells Fargo in New York who says Pakistan and Egypt look particularly vulnerable. “As rates move higher, a lot of the fundamentally weaker countries with dollar-denominated debt may struggle to repay bonds.”

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

A leaked Homeland Security memo warns business leaders their companies could be targeted if they ‘facilitate travel for those seeking abortions’

Colin Lodewick
Wed, May 18, 2022, 12:24 PM·2 min read

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is anticipating a surge of violence if the Supreme Court ultimately overturns Roe v. Wade, according to a leaked memo sent last week, first obtained by Axios.

The May 13 unclassified memo cites social media threats to Supreme Court justices, other public officials, and health care providers. It says such threats “are likely to persist and may increase leading up to and following the issuing of the court’s official ruling.” The court is expected to make its official decision in May or June.

The memo also warned that violent extremists might target companies that manufacture or sell abortion-related medications and “organizations that fund and facilitate travel for those seeking abortions."

On May 2, Politico reported that the Supreme Court had voted to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling after obtaining a leaked draft of the decision. When it first passed, it enshrined the constitutional right for women to choose to have an abortion.

Following the leak, several companies updated their benefits policies to expand abortion access, or made public statements that they would help employees in states where the right to abortion might eventually disappear.

On Monday, Starbucks announced that it would pay for employees who needed to travel 100 miles or more to attain an abortion. With its announcement, it joined the ranks of companies including Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple that have pledged to offer similar support. Other companies like Citigroup and Salesforce had already made similar announcements prior to the leak, in response to a wave of state-level restrictive abortion legislation in states including Texas, Idaho, Missouri, Ohio, and Oklahoma. Many of America’s largest companies, however, have remained silent.

There are 26 states “certain or likely” to put laws in place that would ban or severely limit abortion if Roe is overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a global pro-choice research organization. Currently, 13 states have “trigger laws” in place that would make abortions illegal as soon as Roe is overturned.

The Department of Justice’s memo specifically warns of violence carried out by anti-abortion enthusiasts who might feel empowered to act out following the official decision. “Some racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ embrace of pro-life narratives may be linked to the perception of wanting to ‘save white children’ and ‘fight white genocide,’” reads the memo, per Axios. The memo also warns that violence might come from abortion-rights activisits as well.

The memo emphasizes that the advocacy of political positions, strong rhetoric, and the “generalized philosophic embrace of violent tactics” do not constitute domestic violent extremism and are all protected by the Constitution.

“DHS is committed to protecting Americans' freedom of speech and other civil rights and civil liberties, including the right to peacefully protest,” said the Department of Homeland Security in a statement to Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

US warns abortion ruling could increase extremist violence


FILE - The sun rises behind the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, on Nov. 10, 2020. The federal government is warning law enforcement agencies around the nation of the increased potential for extremist violence following the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion striking down the constitutional right to abortion. 

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) 

BEN FOX
Wed, May 18, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — The leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion striking down the constitutional right to abortion has unleashed a wave of threats against officials and others and increased the likelihood of extremist violence, an internal government report says.

Violence could come from either side of the abortion issue or from other types of extremists seeking to exploit tensions, according to a memo directed to local government agencies from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

It's an added element to what is already a volatile environment in the U.S., where authorities have warned repeatedly over the past two years that the threat posed by domestic extremists, such as the gunman who committed the racist attack over the weekend in Buffalo, has surpassed the danger from abroad.

The memo, dated May 13 and obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, seeks to differentiate between illegal activity and the intense but legal outpouring of protests that are all but guaranteed when the Supreme Court issues its ruling at the end of its term this summer, regardless of the outcome.

“DHS is committed to protecting Americans’ freedom of speech and other civil rights and civil liberties, including the right to peacefully protest," the agency said in a written response to questions about the memo.

Those protests could turn violent. The memo warns that people “across a broad range of various ... ideologies are attempting to justify and inspire attacks against abortion-related targets and ideological opponents at lawful protests.”

Violence associated with the abortion debate would not be unprecedented nor would it necessarily be confined to one side or the other, the memo says.

Opponents of abortion have carried out at least 10 killings as well as dozens of arson and bomb attacks against medical facilities in their long campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade.

DHS said there is also a potential for violence from the other side, citing recent damage to buildings used by abortion opponents in Wisconsin and Oregon.

"Historically, violent acts related to this issue were primarily committed by abortion-related violent extremists that opposed abortion rights," it said. “Going forward, grievances related to restricting abortion access could fuel violence by pro-choice abortion-related violent extremists and other" (domestic violent extremists).

In the Wisconsin incident, it noted, the building was set on fire and the perpetrators left graffiti that said “If abortions aren’t safe (then) you aren’t either.”

The leak of the opinion this month, authorities prompted a “significant increase” in threats through social media of Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and other public officials as well as clergy and health care providers, the memo said.

At least 25 of those threats were forwarded to law enforcement agencies for further investigation.

The Justice Department announced Wednesday that the U.S. Marshals Service has the justices under 24-hour security.

Tesla cut from S&P 500 ESG Index, and Elon Musk tweets his fury

Wed, May 18, 2022
By Ross Kerber and Hyunjoo Jin

(Reuters) -An S&P Dow Jones Indices executive told Reuters on Wednesday it has removed electric carmaker Tesla Inc from the widely followed S&P 500 ESG Index because of issues including claims of racial discrimination and crashes linked to its autopilot vehicles, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded with harsh tweets including that "ESG is a scam".

In it changes, effective May 2, the sustainability index also added soon-to-be-Musk-controlled Twitter Inc and oil refiner Phillips 66 while dropping Delta Air Lines and Chevron Corp, according to an announcement.

The back-and-forth over the index changes reflects a wider debate about the metrics used to judge corporate performance on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, a growing area of investing.

Tesla has become the most valuable auto industry company by pioneering EVs and expanding into battery storage for electric grids and solar-power systems.

Factors contributing to its departure from the index included Tesla's lack of published details related to its low carbon strategy or business conduct codes, said Margaret Dorn, S&P Dow Jones Indices' head of ESG indices for North America, in an interview.

Even though Tesla's products help cut planet-warming emissions, Dorn said, its other issues and lack of disclosures relative to industry peers should raise concerns for investors looking to judge the company across environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria.

"You can't just take a company's mission statement at face value, you have to look at their practices across all those key dimensions," she said.

Tesla representatives did not immediately respond to questions. The company has previously called ESG methodologies "fundamentally flawed."

Musk tweeted https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1526958110023245829 that "Exxon is rated top ten best in world for environment, social & governance (ESG) by S&P 500, while Tesla didn’t make the list! ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors."

Asked about the tweet, a representative for the index provider said Musk may have been referring to a list on a company blog post https://www.indexologyblog.com/2022/05/17/the-rebalancing-act-of-the-sp-500-esg-index of the largest 10 constituents by market cap of the S&P 500 ESG Index after the removal of Tesla and others. The list is "not a ranking of best companies by ESG score," the representative said.

Exxon now accounts for 1.443% of the weight of the index. Apple Inc was the largest at 9.657%.

GROWING CONCERNS

Investors concerned about issues like diversity and climate change have poured billions of dollars into funds using ESG criteria to pick stocks, prompting debate about how effectively the funds promote change or whether they push companies too much on issues that should be settled by government policy.

S&P Dow Jones Indices is majority-owned by S&P Global Inc. Musk and others have complained the firm and its rivals conflate too many issues by bundling ESG concerns into one total score.

For instance a fund based on the S&P 500 ESG Index, the SPDR S&P 500 ESG ETF, received the low rating "D" by climate activist research group As You Sow, which noted despite its title and sustainability mandate, fossil fuel stocks make up 6.5% of fund assets.

In the company blog post reviewing changes from April 22, S&P's Dorn said the index aims to keep industries weighted the same as they are in the regular S&P 500 index "while enhancing the overall sustainability profile of the index." In practice that means it can keep oil companies while leaving out big players like Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Wells Fargo & Co.

Dorn said Tesla's ESG score had declined slightly from the "22" it received last year. At the same time the average score among other automakers improved, pushing Tesla out of the ESG index because of a rule against including lowest-quartile performers.

Dorn and others did not immediately describe other details such as the reasons Twitter or Phillips 66 were added or other companies dropped.

Among other big ESG ratings agencies, MSCI Inc gives Tesla an "average" ESG rating, while the Sustainalytics unit of Morningstar Inc gives Tesla a "medium risk" rating, according to the firms' websites.

On Wednesday a U.S. safety regulator opened a special crash investigation into a Tesla crash this month in California, among more than 30 crashes under investigation involving advanced driver assistance systems. [nL2N2XA2CY]

In February, a California state agency sued Tesla over allegations by Black workers that the company tolerated racial discrimination at an assembly plant, adding to claims made in several other lawsuits.

(Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Pete Henderson, Aurora Ellis and David Gregorio)

Tesla’s Removal From S&P Index Sparks Debate About ESG Ratings

Tim Quinson
Thu, May 19, 2022



(Bloomberg) -- A benchmark ESG stock index has removed Tesla Inc., sparking a debate about which companies do — and don’t — pass muster with socially aware investors.

Tesla has grown into a $735 billion company on the back of its breakthrough electric-vehicle engineering. Its own carbon footprint is a small fraction of its peers, and its success in the market has pushed the industry overall away from gas-powered vehicles.

But the other components of ESG — the social and governance risks — give investors pause. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk is an unconventional manager, prone to impulsive tweeting, and the company discloses very little information about its workforce or labor conditions.

That split became material Wednesday after it emerged that Tesla was expelled from the ESG version of the S&P 500 Index. Musk responded by saying ESG is “a scam.” It added to an already bad day for the company, whose stock fell 6.8% amid a broad selloff in tech shares.

“This all speaks to the big inconvenient fact about ESG: You can’t keep the baby and throw out the bathwater,” said Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “You have to accept or reject both.”

Read more: ESG Investing Is Mostly About Sustaining Corporations

In a report, analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence wrote that Tesla’s ESG status remains among the most debated for any company, with many ESG-labeled funds still holding the stock. In fact, the world’s largest ESG-focused exchange-traded fund has about 1.8% of its assets invested in Tesla, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The fund, BlackRock Inc.’s $21.9 billion iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA ETF (ticker ESGU), tracks the MSCI USA Extended ESG Focus Index, which still includes Tesla as a member.

Balchunas and BI’s Shaheen Contractor wrote Wednesday that eight of the 15 largest US funds that include ESG in their portfolio filters have significant positions in Tesla.

“Though Tesla might fit an environmental focus or impact theme, the company’s social and governance issues make its inclusion in ESG funds debatable and Tesla’s removal from the S&P 500 ESG Index perhaps overdue,” the analysts said in their posting entitled “Is Tesla ESG?”

S&P Dow Jones Indices, which removed Tesla from its S&P 500 ESG Index, said the company’s score on environmental, social and governance standards has remained “fairly stable” over the past year, but it has slipped down the ranks against improving global peers.

The index provider cited concerns related to working conditions and Tesla’s handling of an investigation into deaths and injuries linked to its driver-assistance systems. A lack of low-carbon strategy and codes of business conduct also counted against Musk’s company, it said.

“While Tesla may be playing its part in taking fuel-powered cars off the road, it has fallen behind its peers when examined through a wider ESG lens,” Margaret Dorn, senior director and head of ESG indexes for S&P Dow Jones in North America, said in a Tuesday blog post.

Read more: Tesla Loses S&P ESG Index Spot on Crashes, Work Conditions

For months now, Tesla has been critical of ESG. The company said in its annual report that ESG ratings are “fundamentally flawed,” and in an April tweet, Musk said “corporate ESG is the devil incarnate.”

From a market standpoint, Tesla’s removal from the S&P index probably will be minimal as there was only about $11.7 billion that tracked S&P ESG gauges as recently as the end of 2020. By contrast, trillions of dollars track the main S&P 500 gauge.

Investors are split on S&P’s decision. Kristin Hull, founder of Nia Impact Capital, a sustainability fund in Oakland, California, that has been pressing Tesla to address worker issues, said she was relieved that there was “finally accountability.”

Zach Stein, chief investment officer of Carbon Collective, a climate-change focused online investment adviser based in Berkeley, California, said the opposite. The biggest issue in ESG is climate change, so kicking out the leading maker of electric vehicles makes no sense, especially since companies like Exxon Mobil Corp. remain in the S&P index, he said.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Why S&P booted Tesla from its 

ESG index

Alexandra Semenova

·Reporter

Wed, May 18, 2022

Tesla is no longer up to par with environmental, social and government standards — at least not those set forth by the S&P 500 ESG Index.

S&P Dow Jones Indices has removed electric-vehicle giant Tesla (TSLA) from its sustainability benchmark as part of the index’s fourth annual rebalance after the Elon Musk-led company’s ESG rank slipped against its global peers, the index provider revealed in a Tuesday statement.

“While Tesla may be playing its part in taking fuel-powered cars off the road, it has fallen behind its peers when examined through a wider ESG lens,” Margaret Dorn, Head of ESG Indices at S&P Dow Jones said in a blog post.

Tesla’s overall ESG score has remained “fairly stable” year-over-year, according to S&P DJI. However, an increase in score for the broader industry group in which Tesla is categorized – Automobiles & Components – resulted Tesla's slide.

A Tesla car sits at a charging station in Yermo, California, on May 14, 2022. (Photo by Chris Delmas / AFP) (Photo by CHRIS DELMAS/AFP via Getty Images)

Musk, for his part, stated his disagreement with S&P's decision in a tweet on Wednesday, calling ESG “an outrageous scam.”

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request from Yahoo Finance for comment.

S&P Dow Jones Indices cited claims of racial discrimination and poor working conditions at Tesla’s flagship factory and its handling of a federal investigation into deaths linked to its autopilot vehicles in its decision to remove Tesla from the index.

Tesla has faced scrutiny in recent years over claims of poor working conditions at its Fremont, California factory, and Musk has voiced criticisms of efforts by some Tesla employees to unionize.

“There are a lot of folks who do not like the actions that Elon Musk takes, and there are a lot of problems with Tesla, including the way that they treat their employees on the factory floors,” Zach Stein, co-Founder of the sustainable investing platform Carbon Collective, told Yahoo Finance in an interview.

Stein added, however, that it does not make sense to remove them from the index entirely. "We wouldn't see the transition to electric vehicles at nearly the pace that we are seeing now without the work of Tesla," Stein said, also noting that ESG in general is a fundamentally opaque process.

“One way that we like to put it is, your friends are never going to be perfect, but you still have to work with them.”

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), and Meta Platforms (FB) were among other big-name companies that did not make the cut in S&P's latest reshuffle, while Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon (AMZN) are among the largest constituents of the index.

—

Alexandra Semenova is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @alexandraandnyc

Musk Mad Tesla Removed from S&P 500 ESG Index

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is unhappy that the EV company was deleted from the S&P 500 ESG Index.

ELLEN CHANG

TheStreet
MAY 18, 2022 

Tesla ( (TSLA) - Get Tesla Inc Report) CEO Elon Musk is extremely unhappy that the EV company was eliminated from the S&P 500 ESG Index on Wednesday, voicing his concerns on Twitter.

The electric automaker was taken off the ESG index by S&P Dow Jones Indices due to Tesla's ongoing issues of racial discrimination claims from employees and how it has dealt with a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a government investigation after several crashes were connected to its autopilot vehicles.

The changes are retroactive: they are effective May 2 and a May 17 S&P Dow Jones Indices blog post described the rationale. This is the fourth annual rebalance by the index company.

"Tesla was ineligible for index inclusion due to its low S&P DJI ESG Score,3 which fell in the bottom 25% of its global GICS® industry group peers," wrote Margaret Dorn, senior director, head of ESG Indices, North America S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Other companies, including Berkshire Hathaway ( (BRK.A) - Get Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Class A Report), Johnson & Johnson ( (JNJ) - Get Johnson & Johnson Report) and Meta ( (FB) - Get Meta Platforms Inc. Class A Report) also were eliminated and "have once again met the index methodology’s chopping block," she wrote.

Even though Tesla has a "self-declared mission" to "accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” the company was eliminated because its ESG score fell in comparison to other auto companies, Dorn wrote.

Tesla Failed Two Major Criteria

Several factors contributed to Tesla's lower ESG score, including a "decline in criteria level scores related to Tesla’s (lack of) low carbon strategy and codes of business conduct," she wrote.

Additional analysis also showed that there were "two separate events centered around claims of racial discrimination and poor working conditions at Tesla’s Fremont factory, as well as its handling of the NHTSA investigation after multiple deaths and injuries were linked to its autopilot vehicles," Dorn wrote.

These two events resulted in a negative impact on the company’s S&P DJI ESG Score at the criteria level and also its overall score.

"While Tesla may be playing its part in taking fuel-powered cars off the road, it has fallen behind its peers when examined through a wider ESG lens," she wrote.

Musk retorted on Twitter that Tesla is doing the opposite and helping the environment.



He compared Tesla to oil producer Exxon (XOM) and said he believes that ESG is a "scam" due to "phony social justice warriors."

Musk also blamed S&P Global Ratings and said that ESG is a "scam" even though the investment industry adopted ESG metrics several years ago as investors seek improvements in lower carbon goals, greater diversity in the workforce and more corporate governance.

The billionaire has regularly voiced his displeasures out on Twitter (TWTR) - Get Twitter, Inc. Report, a company he sought to acquire with a $44 billion offer to privatize the social media company in April. He has recently challenged Twitter's board of directors and management and said on May 17 that he wants the microblogging website to verify its data on the number of spam accounts and challenged them by stating the takeover deal is no longer on the table.

"My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does," Musk said.

Twitter's board stood up to his challenge and said they would "close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement."

BY ELLEN CHANG

Where are Ontario’s crime guns coming from? New data shows top U.S. source states

Andrew Russell and Tracy Tong 

© Shallima Maharaj / Global News

A shell casing is seen next to police tape.

On Sept. 22, 2018, Canadian Border Service agents seized a vehicle attempting to cross from New York.

Inside the vehicle, a so-called “trap” compartment secreted 20 firearms, including several .40 calibre Smith & Wesson handguns, 9mm Taurus pistols and a silencer. Court documents show the individual driving the vehicle was a Canadian citizen.

The firearms were traced to Southern Florida where more than two dozen handguns were purchased from gun shows and stores between 2018 and 2019, the U.S. Justice Department said. Mackenzie Delmas, 27, was sentenced to almost 20 years in federal prison for smuggling firearms, U.S. justice officials said.

Video: Homicides of 2 Ontario teens linked by one handgun

The details from that seizure, and many others across the U.S., are vital to understanding how violence on Canadian streets unfolds.

Yet, there is no national database on the origins of Canada’s so-called crime guns, meaning there is still no broad view of where these firearms might be coming from.

New data, obtained by Global News, offers a rare glimpse of the flow into Ontario: Between 2018 and 2021, five states were the top sources for crime guns in the province.

The data, based on successful firearms tracing from the Criminal Intelligence Service of Ontario, shows Ohio is the top U.S. source of its crime guns, with 170 traced back to the Buckeye State in 2021.

Texas has become a leading source with 160, and Florida was third with 159. Georgia accounted for 129 and Michigan with 59.

The limited data does not contain numbers related to traces on domestic crime guns or the total number of guns traced.

Amid a rise in shootings in major Canadian cities, a Global News investigation traced the path of a single firearm used in two killings, to show how factors like U.S. gun shows, straw purchasing, and soaring black market prices for guns continue to contribute to violence across the border.

In a recent Ohio case, a criminal network was procuring handguns from private sales and gun shows — at least 200 of them — which were destined for the Greater Toronto Area, according to U.S. court documents.

The guns, which were bought between 2018 and 2019, were smuggled across the border in Toyota Camry sedans, a popular car among criminals as its empty space near the centre console is favoured for hiding guns or money, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Some of the handguns were purchased for $500 and could be resold in Canada for up to $5,000, authorities said at the time.

Read more:
One illegal U.S. handgun, two Ontario teens killed: Tracing the path of a Taurus PT-740

Both the Florida and Ohio cases — like many others in the U.S. and Canada — highlight the problem of straw purchasing: when someone is paid to buy guns in their name, but then turns them over to another party.

A dozen of the guns in the Ohio case were later seized by police in Toronto, Peterborough, Thunder Bay, Chatham Kent and Peel, according to a Toronto police source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

It’s an indication of how one trafficking case can affect multiple communities.
U.S. guns contributing to Canadian gun violence

The cases also reveals how U.S. gun shows are a key source for criminals looking to supply Canada’s black market. There is minimal paperwork between private sellers, and handguns can be bought at a fraction of their retail price, authorities on both sides of the border say.

It’s a different process from Canada, where handguns require both a possession and acquisition licence (PAL) and an additional restricted firearm licence. The whole process can take two to three months.

However, there have also been instances of Canadian citizens buying handguns domestically to resell on the black market — especially in western provinces, police say.

Police have charged 1 man for 2 separate random fatal shootings in downtown Toronto

Chris Taylor is an agent with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and is the attaché for Canada. He works closely with Canadian police agencies in Ottawa and across the country to tackle gun smuggling at the border.

While he says that the ATF has “no opinion” on gun shows, firearms tracing can help lead investigators to the source of where multiple guns are being purchased at one time, with Canadian streets as a final destination.

“It allows us to identify the source and the retail purchases of these firearms, and whether they come through a gun show or any other source,” Taylor said.

“It closes the loop between the first purchaser and how it wound up at a crime scene in Canada.”

It’s unclear why Ohio leads all other states in boosting Ontario’s supply of crime guns. Experts say it could be the lack of specific laws regulating private sales of firearms and proximity to Canada.

But whether it’s Michigan, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, one connection between these five states is a major highway: the I-75, which runs from the tip of Florida up to the Great Lakes. Investigators said they are still investigating why Texas has become a top source state.

“There's obviously a possibility that guns are coming up from those states through the I-75 corridor and right into the underbelly of Ontario,” ATF agent Taylor said.

Global News went to Michigan to get a look at how firearms are both purchased from stores and inside gun shows.

Just over a 20-minute drive north of Detroit, Action Impact Firearms & Training Center sits on 8 Mile Rd. in Eastpointe, Mich., surrounded by auto repair shops, payday loan stores and fast food chains.

Inside the store, rows of Glocks, Sig Sauers, and Taurus handguns are neatly shown in glass display cases. AR-15 rifles and shotguns are lined up behind the counter.

The pop of rounds being fired at a range can be heard echoing in a separate part of the building.

Action Impact’s Bill Kucyk, a firearms instructor and former police officer, is no stranger to handguns.

He regularly shoots and encourages people to enroll in one of his firearms training course.

Otherwise he won’t sell you a gun.

“It’s not required by law, it’s my business practice. I'm not sending you out into your community with this gun in front of your family, if you have no clue what you're doing,” he told Global News.

Buying a long gun in Michigan comes with basic requirements: minimum age of 18, a state resident, U.S. citizen and no prior felony convictions, for starters, according to state laws. Handguns are slightly different. The minimum age is 21, and the owner needs to register it with the state of Michigan.

After filling out some paperwork and a call to the FBI for a background check, a firearm transaction can be completed fairly quickly, he said.

“The quickest I could probably do a firearm transfer is 20 minutes,” he said. “Assuming you know what you're doing and you can read and write.”

Read more:
Colt carbine, Ruger Mini-14 among illegally obtained firearms used by Nova Scotia shooter, docs show

Gun shows are a different story, said Kucyk.

“If a citizen is selling to citizen, none of the requirements that I have to meet are there," he said, noting with handgun sales, pistol records are still supposed to be completed. "They can just go, ‘Here's a gun, give me the money.’

“They don't even know who they're selling to.”

Held at a convention centre or at venues as small as American legion hall, gun shows are held regularly across the U.S. where handguns and long guns are plentiful and significantly cheaper than in a store.

An AR-15 at a gun store could run between USD$1200 - $2,000. At a Michigan gun show Global News attended, a used AR-15 could be bought for $500-600.

Handguns, which can range in price from $500 to over $1,000 in stores, were being sold for $200-400.

“All you need is a Michigan driver’s licence and be 18,” a vendor could be heard saying at a gun show in Lansing.

Michigan ATF Special Agent in Charge Paul Vanderplow said a buyer is required to fill out an ATF Firearm Transaction Record asking if they are a U.S. citizen, if you’re the actual buyer of the firearm, and if you’re a convicted felon, among other criteria.

But some people will simply lie.

“It’s called lying and buying. Where persons will purchase firearms, knowing that they will turn it over to somebody who shouldn't have it,” he said, noting it can come with a 10-year sentence. “Maybe for a fee, maybe to pay off a debt or a host of reasons."

The Toronto Police Service have said that 85 per cent of the city’s crime guns are arriving from the U.S., but there is no national data, despite years of calls for better statistics. In Western Canada, police services in Alberta or B.C. have pointed the finger at domestic sources.

“If we increased tracing in Alberta and British Columbia and Saskatchewan, you may see additional routes discovered to maybe Idaho, California, Nevada,” said ATF agent Taylor.

“Canada has a domestic trafficking problem too... but without tracing, we are unable to identify the source of the crime guns turning up in Canada, whether they're domestically sourced or internationally.”

Researchers and experts have for years pointed to a dearth of data on the source of where Canada’s illegal guns are coming from.

In 2020, Statistics Canada announced that it was launching a project with police services to increase the amount of information collected on guns used in crime, but it is unclear when the data might be released.

A spokesperson for StatCan said the project is now complete and that its Uniform Crime Reporting Survey — designed to measure the incidence of crime in Canada — is now able to better capture “information on the number of firearms recovered, seized or stolen in a criminal incident.”

“It should be noted that it may take a few years for all of these changes to be fully implemented by police services in a way that allows the reporting of this information to the UCR Survey,” said Kathleen Marriner in an email.

The Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics is also working on a feasibility study focusing on “expanding crime gun tracing efforts by Canadian law enforcement and collecting more comprehensive data.”

“It is anticipated that the final feasibility report will be completed by October 2022,” Marriner said.

For agents at the ATF or other experts studying illegal firearms trafficking, better tracing and improved publicly available data on the sources of illegal guns are crucial tools to stopping violence.

“Follow the path and follow the firearm, and maybe it'll lead to the person or persons who were at that crime scene,” ATF special agent Vanderplow said.

 For 30 Days I Wore Every Piece of Trash I Created

Rob Greenfield

The average American creates 4.5 pounds of trash per day but most people never think twice about the trash they make. Once it’s in the garbage can, it’s out of sight, out of mind. Rob Greenfield wanted to create a visual that would help people understand just how much trash they create and inspire them to make positive changes. So for 30 days, he lived just like the average American and he wore every piece of trash he created. 4.5 pounds a day really adds up! This is what it looked like. 

Go to https://www.RobGreenfield.org/Trashme to learn more. Thanks to BBTV and Outspeak for helping fund this project! — Rob Greenfield is an activist and humanitarian dedicated to leading the way to a more sustainable and just world. He embarks on extreme projects to bring attention to important global issues and inspire positive change. 100% of his media income is donated to grassroots nonprofits. His YouTube channel is a source to educate, inspire and help others to live more sustainable, equal and just lives. Videos frequently cover sustainable living, simple living, growing your own food, gardening, self-sufficiency, minimalism, off the grid living, zero waste, living in a tiny house and permaculture.

 

California's electrical grid has an EV problem

Akiko Fujita
·Anchor/Reporter
Thu, May 19, 2022

California energy officials issued a sobering warning this month, telling residents to brace for potential blackouts as the state’s energy grid faces capacity constraints heading into the summer months.

And since the state has committed to phase out all new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 — well ahead of federal targets — the additional load from electric vehicle (EV) charging could add more strain to the electric grid.

“Let’s say we were to have a substantial number of [electric] vehicles charging at home as everybody dreams,” Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, who authored a recent study looking at the strain electric vehicle adoption is expected to place on the power grid, told Yahoo Finance. “Today’s grid may not be able to support it. It all boils down to: Are you charging during the time solar power is on?”

EV charging in the race to net-zero emissions

In Sacramento, officials said California’s grid could face a potential shortfall of roughly 1,700 megawatts, which would affect the power supply of between 1 million and 4 million people this summer. That number would likely be exacerbated by an additional shortfall of 5,000 megawatts in the case of extreme heat and further fire damage to existing power lines.

The alert in the nation’s most populous state highlighted the delicate dance utility companies face in managing warming temperatures with tightening energy supply as the country moves rapidly away from fossil fuel generation to meet ambitious targets aimed at drastically reducing emissions.

California has set out to become a leader in the green transition, aiming to rid its electrical grid of all carbon sources by 2045. The state is already the nation’s top producer of solar, geothermal, and biomass energy, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, with renewables accounting for more than 30% of the energy generated in the state.

A number of Tesla electric vehicles are lined up and charging their batteries in this outdoor public EV charging station just north of Santa Barbara on March 18, 2022, in Goleta, California. (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)

But as California creates a template for other states to follow, Rajagopal says it is also exposing some critical gaps that are likely to strain the power grid in the race to net-zero, especially in the transportation sector, where the acceleration of electric vehicle adoption is already underway.

“Business as usual will no longer be the case,” he said. “I really believe we need to balance our need for reliability and our desire for a clean grid.”
'Like adding one or two air conditioners'

Globally, the number of electric vehicles is expected to swell from 7 million to 400 million by 2040. The transition to zero-emission cars is estimated to add 2,000 TWh to annual energy demand by 2050 — a 40% increase — according to a study by global advisory group ICF.

Rajagopal’s team of researchers at Stanford developed a model framework to help utility companies around the world calculate charging patterns to better manage electricity demand. In California, it found that peak charging demand would more than double by 2030 if EV owners opted to charge in the evening at home.

“The use of an electric vehicle is like adding one or two air conditioners to your residence in terms of its energy increase,” Mike Jacobs, Senior Energy Analyst at Union of Concerned Scientists, told Yahoo Finance. “So when the local utility engineer looks at this, he thinks of that air conditioning in the afternoon and the electric vehicle coming home at the same time.”

Power transmission tower is silhouetted by the rising sun in Burlingame, California on October 26, 2019.

 (Photo by Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Jacobs said the transition will mark a dramatic adjustment in behavior. Utility companies and service operators, who have long grown accustomed to “a predictable shape” and schedule in energy usage, will be forced to more actively manage the grid to avoid surges. Likewise, drivers will be forced to adapt to new charging times, with some being asked to plug in at work during the day, while others commit to set hours at night to ensure even distribution of energy capacity.

In Concord, Massachusetts, where Jacobs lives, his local utility has already asked that he set a timer on his electric vehicle so he is not charging until after 10 pm at night in exchange for a discounted rate. Technology that allows the grid and cars to communicate directly is likely to follow, he said.

A study from Boston Consulting Group estimated utility companies with two to three million customers will need to invest between $1,700 and $5,800 in grid upgrades per EV through 2030 in order to reliably meet the surge in energy demand.

“If you can charge the vehicles in the middle of the day or in the middle of night, it is almost not a worry because our system is built to meet that evening demand, that peak,” he said. “So spreading it out a little bit more, especially shifting it to sunshine hours when the solar is strong, makes it less of a concern.

LADWPs Pine Tree Wind Farm and Solar Power Plant in the Tehachapi Mountains Tehachapi Mountains on Tuesday, March 23, 2021 in Kern County, CA.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

'A 4-D puzzle'

The transition to reduce emissions is complicated by the existing energy mix: More than 60% of U.S. power generation still comes from fossil fuels. Without a clean electricity source for EVs to plug into, greenhouse gas reduction would be limited to 67% for vehicles, compared to 2020 levels, according to ICF.

Battery energy storage is expected to play a critical role in bridging the divide and would allow the grid to tap into full capacity in the hours when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.

Tom Jensen, CEO of Norway-based Freyr Battery (FREY), which designs and manufactures lithium-ion batteries, said each battery it manufactures has the capacity to store four hours' worth of energy for 20 years.

“You can deploy large amounts of 4-hour storage using lithium-ion batteries coupled with solar and wind, and you can upgrade or overhaul the entire U.S. energy system either in three large regional grids or in nine smaller but still very large grids,” Jensen said. “That is technically feasible to do within the next couple of decades, but of course, it's an unprecedented level of investment into overhauling the energy system.”

Jensen cautioned that meaningful decarbonization is unlikely until roughly 80% of the battery supply chain is developed using renewable energy — a goal Freyr plans to reach by 2025.

“It's like a 4-D puzzle because you have policy, you have economics, and you have the engineering and you have people's acceptance,” Rajagopal said. “Engineering-wise, you can have 20 viable solutions, but maybe they don't satisfy the other three and then those are useless. Once you crack the code you will be able to help so many regions around the U.S. and across the world to transition, [but] you’re going to have to suffer through it to learn.”

Akiko Fujita is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter @AkikoFujita