UK

Fossil fuel-funded climate thinktank reported to Charity Commission

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic thinktank, has been reported to the Charity Commission by the Green MP Caroline Lucas and Extinction Rebellion.

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Helena Horton

 Environment reporter 

The move comes after the Guardian revealed that the group received funding from fossil fuel interests.

The thinktank has charitable status, but climate campaigners say the questions about its funding mean it should be stripped of this.

In a letter to the Charity Commission, the signatories including the writers Irvine Welsh and Zadie Smith say the GWPF is “not a charity, but a fossil fuel lobby group”.

The GWPF, set up in 2009 by the former Tory chancellor Lord Lawson, has enjoyed a recent revival in its influence in parliament. It has MP Steve Baker as a trustee and has its research promoted by the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of Conservative MPs.

The letter also claims that the thinktank flouts the rules that charities must be run for the public good. The commission states that “a purpose must be beneficial – this must be in a way that is identifiable and capable of being proved by evidence where necessary and which is not based on personal views”.

It also says “any detriment or harm that results from the purpose (to people, property or the environment) must not outweigh the benefit – this is also based on evidence and not on personal views.”

The signatories say that the GWPF does not abide by this as it “works against the public need to prepare, mitigate and adapt to the unfolding climate emergency” and therefore does not serve or benefit society.

They argue that the group’s funding could show a conflict of interest, and that it is not working for the public good.

Through its American arm, the group received $210,525 in 2018 and 2020 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation – set up by the billionaire libertarian heir to an oil and banking dynasty. The US-based foundation has $30m of shares in 22 energy companies including $9m in Exxon and $5.7m in Chevron, according to its financial filings.

Between 2016 and 2020, the American Friends of the GWPF received $620,259 from the Donors Trust, which is funded by the Koch brothers, who inherited their father’s oil empire and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding the climate denial movement.

The letter concludes: “We look to the Charity Commission’s own guidance that a charity must make sure ‘protecting people from harm is central to its culture.’ We contend that the ongoing global harm caused by climate change is exacerbated by the vested interests that use the GWPF’s undeserved charitable status as a front for their interests.”

A spokesperson for the GWPF declined to comment on the letter to the Charity Commission. The thinktank did respond to previous revelations about its funding, saying the companies it receives money from do not count as oil and gas interests, owing to the wealth created from fossil fuels being historic.

100 scientists and academics urge UN to drop sustainable development targets after ‘failure’

Ethan Freedman 

THE INDEPENDENT UK

It’s time for the United Nations to drop their current model for tackling the world’s crises, according to a letter from 100 scientists, teachers and experts, shared exclusively with The Independent.

The experts are calling for the United Nations to abandon the “Sustainable Development Goals” — a group of 17 targets adopted in 2015 to tackle global social and environmental issues from hunger to climate change to economic growth.

The letter, released as the UN begins a summit on disaster risks in Bali, Indonesia on Monday, argues that the world’s problems cannot be solved through the same ideology that created them.

“If the way modern societies operate cause the problems that the SDGs seek to address, can we be surprised that those same systems are incapable of fixing them?” the letter reads.

The letter has been signed by researchers from 27 countries, all in a personal capacity and not as representatives of any institution.

Among the notable experts who have put their names to the letter are Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at Nasa who was arrested last month in a climate protest; Yves Cochet, France’s former Minister of Environment and Regional Planning; and Britt Wray, author of the recent climate anxiety book, Generation Dread.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are based on an ideology that values material and technological progress and prioritizes corporate interests - where “humanity will balance social, economic and environmental issues to progress materially,” Jem Bendell, a sustainability researcher at the University of Cumbria, told The Independent via email, citing a recent non-peer reviewed paper that he authored on the subject.

Dr Bendell called the SDGs a “systemic greenwash” that undermines “challenges to structural power.”

“Before now, it may have been convenient for politicians, bureaucrats and people in the organisations they fund, to maintain an upbeat message that more technology, capital and management will solve both poverty and environmental destruction,” the letter reads.

“However, the evidence from the UN’s own reports show clearly that is merely a convenient myth, and that billions of people would be better served by more sober analysis of the worsening situation,” it adds.

According to the UN, the SDGs were developed to end “poverty and other deprivations” while improving health and education, reducing inequality, spurring economic growth, tackling climate change and protecting natural habitats.

The letter calls on the UN to “drop the redundant and unhelpful ideology of Sustainable Development,” and move towards plans of local resilience and “de-growth of wealthy economies”.

© Provided by The Independent A satire of the SDG logos, created by Dr Jem Bendell (Jem Bendell)

The world can’t separate resource use and pollution from economic growth enough to stave off catastrophic environmental disaster, Dr Bendell stated. He used the example of electrifying global infrastructure, a goal of many climate activists in order to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

Doing so would require a lot of natural resources — resources that we may not have, Dr Bendell stated. The implication, then, is that wealthy countries and individuals need to reduce their consumption, he added.

“Clearly that idea isn’t super appealing to the folks at Davos,” Dr Bendell added, referencing the annual meeting of high-powered business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum, which got underway on Sunday.

Other signatories to the letter shared similar sentiments.

"If governments keep heedlessly pursuing exponential economic growth at any cost - which empirically clearly requires growth in resources and pollution, including greenhouse gases - we will eventually collapse just like any other species,” said Dr Kalmus in a statement emailed to The Independent.
Lead signatories on the letter, all in a personal capacity:

Professor William Rees (University of British Columbia, Ecological Economics)

Dr Malika Virah-Sawhmy (IASS, Climate Adaptation)

Dr Peter Kalmus (NASA, Climate Science)

Dr Yves Cochet (Former Minister of the Environment, France)

Dr Stella Nyambura Mbau (LOABOWA, Climate Adaptation)

Dr Ye Tao (MEER Framework, Climate Adaptation)

Dr Sonja Kaiser (TUBAF, Earth System Modelling)

Professor Jem Bendell (University of Cumbria, climate adaptation)

Dr Clelia Sirami (INRAE, Ecology)

Dr Jeremy Jimenez (State University of New York, Education)

Dr Britt Wray (Stanford University, Psychology)

Dr Rupert Read (UEA, Philosophy)

The full list of signatories and text of the letter can be found here

California oil regulator confirms methane leak at idle oil wells in Bakersfield


Nathan Solis
Sun, May 22, 2022

The leak was discovered near a residential neighborhood in Bakersfield. 

(Lisa Mascaro / Associated Press)

State regulators have confirmed a methane gas leak at a pair of idle oil wells near a residential neighborhood in Bakersfield, raising the concerns of local environmental groups who fear the problem might be more widespread.

It's unclear how long the leaks described as "pinhole-sized" went undetected, but state regulators said they were sealed by Friday evening.

Earlier this month, researcher Clark Williams-Derry from Washington state walked onto the Kern Bluff oil field in northeast Bakersfield and discovered an audible hiss coming from two oil wells. The wells sit approximately 400 feet from a home in a suburban housing development and were previously managed by Sunray Petroleum Inc.

Williams-Derry said the oil wells look like spouts jutting from the ground and are covered by blue barrels, but are exposed to the open air. He said there are many more blue barrels in the oil field like the one he found.

"I was not out looking for things that were leaking when I walked into the oil field," said Williams-Derry, who works with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and was visiting Bakersfield last week. "I wonder what this means for people in the community, because if someone can just wander by there's no telling what this means."

Methane is a colorless, odorless, highly flammable gas. High levels of methane can reduce the amount of oxygen breathed from the air and can result in vision problems, memory loss, nausea, vomiting, facial flushing and headache.

Across much of California, fossil fuel companies are leaving thousands of oil and gas wells unplugged and idle, potentially threatening the health of people living nearby and in many cases handing taxpayers the bill for the environmental cleanup.

From Kern County to Los Angeles, companies haven’t set aside anywhere near enough money to ensure these drilling sites are cleaned up and made safe, according to a 2020 data analysis and investigation by the Los Angeles Times and the Center for Public Integrity.

Of particular concern are about 35,000 wells sitting idle, with production suspended, half of them for more than a decade. Though California recently toughened its regulations to ensure more cleanup funds are available, those measures don’t go far enough, according to a recent state report and the Times/Public Integrity analysis.

Last Tuesday, an inspector from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District confirmed the methane leak in Bakersfield and reported it to the California Geologic Energy Management Division, the state’s oil and gas regulator. CalGEM said the leaks were minor and not deemed an emergency by the air district and the Bakersfield Fire Department.

“CalGEM deployed inspectors [Thursday] to evaluate the methane emissions from two long-term idle wells operated by Sunray Petroleum,” CalGEM State Oil & Gas Supervisor Uduak-Joe Ntuk said in a statement. “We are coordinating with the operator to ensure the wells are repaired expeditiously. The pinhole-sized leaks have been determined to be minor in nature and do not pose an immediate threat to public health or safety.”

A group of environmental advocacy and social justice groups first called attention to the leaks last week. In a letter to CalGEM, the coalition said the readings recorded by the air district showed methane readings of at least 50,000 parts per million from one well and 20,000 parts per million from the second well.

“Methane leakage also indicates that the well may be emitting other harmful chemicals,” the group said. “Methane is a super-polluting greenhouse gas more than 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide. The methane spewing from these wells is contributing to the climate emergency and undercutting the state’s greenhouse gas reduction efforts.”

CalGEM spokesperson Jacob Roper said, "We have been coordinating with the operator and local first responders to determine the wells do not pose an immediate threat to public health or safety."

Democratic Assemblyman Rudy Salas Jr., who represents Bakersfield, said in a statement, "I am upset to learn that this dangerous leak is happening in our community. Let’s stop the leak and find out who is responsible to fix the problem."

The wells sit off Morningstar Street in northeast Bakersfield and according to state records were last used in the late 1980s and managed by Sunray Petroleum, Inc. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and have more idle wells throughout Kern County. There was no answer at a phone number listed for Sunray Petroleum in Las Vegas.

Earlier this month, CalGEM ordered Sunray Petroleum to plug the wells at the oil field. The court order also required the operator to decommission the production facilities and restore the well sites for 28 idle wells, including the two wells with the methane leaks.

CalGEM says the order was issued because the operator did not pay its idle well fees and have not submitted to a testing compliance plan along with numerous other oilfield-related violations. Sunray Petroleum has appealed the order.

State and local agencies' failure to declare the methane leak an emergency has frustrated local advocacy groups.

Coordinator Kobi Naseck with Voices in Solidarity Against Oil in Neighborhoods slammed the state agency’s response and the harm he feels the surrounding communities face from the methane leak.

"Any designation of this massive, toxic methane leak as minor or unthreatening to public health is a dangerous mischaracterization of what's going on, puts frontline families in Kern County at risk, and reveals that the current CalGEM administration is unable to follow its new mission” as promised by the agency in the last few years, Naseck said in a statement.

Local residents on Friday said they saw engineers and other workers arrive at the oil field and they're expected to remain at the site over the weekend.

Organizer Cesar Aguirre with Central California Environmental Justice Network has canvassed the surrounding neighborhood to inform residents about the methane leak and said several residents complained about feeling ill in the last few weeks.

“When I told them there is a gas leak in the area, their faces just went white, like they were in shock, because at one home there was four kids running around in the background playing and they had their windows open,” Aguirre told the Times.

CalGEM is currently reviewing new statewide policies that would stop new oil wells from being built within 3,500 feet of areas from schools, homes, hospitals, parks and other places where people congregate.

Naseck wants to know why CalGEM doesn't push for setbacks to apply to existing well sites, like the one in Bakersfield.

"This massive methane leak is happening in a community right next to homes in close proximity to a school and a daycare center," Naseck said.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Economists Warn Banning Abortion Would Have Big Impact on Education, Economy

Susan Tebben
Sun, May 22, 2022


Nearly two dozen Ohio economists agreed that prohibiting abortion in Ohio would negatively impact labor force participation and educational attainment, according to a new survey.

The Ohio Economic Experts Panel answered a survey conducted by Scioto Analysis. The survey asked whether the economists agreed that prohibition of abortion in Ohio would reduce “women’s educational attainment in the state,” would “reduce women’s labor force participation in the state,” and would reduce “women’s earnings in the state.”

The survey comes as Ohio awaits a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on an abortion ban case, after a draft opinion was leaked indicating the court is poised to strike down Roe v. Wade and with it, national abortion rights.

It also comes as legislation that would ban abortion if the 1973 abortion legalization court case is overturned sits in the General Assembly awaiting committee meetings and possible passage.

In the survey, 22 of 24 economists in the state agreed that abortion bans would cause decreases in education and economic abilities.

“Of the 22 who agreed abortion prohibition would decrease wages, economists commented on the tradeoff women have between working and parenting,” Scioto Analysis stated in their survey summary.

Of all the responses received, “strongly agree” overwhelmingly surpassed any other response.

Individual responses came mostly from those that agreed with the statements.

“The empirical evidence is very clear about the negative impact of unplanned pregnancies on women’s educational attainment, especially when support services are unavailable or unaffordable,” said Dr. Fadhel Kaboub, of Denison University.

Those that entered “strongly disagree” responses didn’t include elaboration through individual responses.

Dr. Jonathan Andreas, of Bluffton University, agreed that abortion prohibitions would reduce women’s earnings in the state, but he said abortion “will have a small effect on average income and education statistics” because those most affected by prohibition are “the poorest women who have the least opportunities.”

“Middle-class and wealthy women just pay more money and get out-of-state abortions or pay illegal providers in the state,” Andreas wrote.

Many of the comments focused on low-income communities and people of color as disparately impacted by an abortion ban in Ohio.

“Economic research overwhelmingly indicates that abortion rights greatly affect the educational level, career opportunities, earning and wealth enhancement potential for women,” said Dr. Diane Monaco, of Heidelberg University. “Abortion rights advantages are especially profound for historically marginalized women as well.”

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

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EMBASSY IS SOVERIGN TERRITORY
Indonesia summons Britain's envoy after furore over rainbow flag

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia summoned Britain's ambassador on Monday to explain the raising of a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) flag at its embassy, and urged foreign missions to respect local "sensitivities" following a backlash among conservatives.

A participant holds rainbow flags at the international Rainbow Memorial Run during the inauguration of the Gay Games village at the Hotel de Ville city hall in Paris

Barring the sharia-ruled province of Aceh, homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country, although it is generally considered taboo.

The rainbow LGBT flag was flown alongside the British flag at the country's embassy in Jakarta on May 17 to mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, according an Instagram by the embassy.

Alumni 212 Brotherhood, an influential conservative Islamic movement, in a statement said the flag sullied the "sacred values of Indonesia".

Teuku Faizasyah, foreign ministry spokesperson, confirmed British ambassador Owen Jenkins had been summoned.

"The foreign ministry reminds foreign representatives to be respectful of the sensitivities among Indonesians on matters relevant with their culture, religion and belief," he said.

A British embassy spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Faizasyah said that though an embassy is sovereign territory, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations stipulates only that nation's flag can be flown.

Indonesia is becoming less tolerant of its LGBT community as some politicians become more vocal about Islam playing a larger role in the state, according to activists and human rights groups.

A 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center also showed that 80% of Indonesians believe homosexuality "should not be accepted by society".

Last week, Indonesia's chief security minister said a revision of the criminal code being deliberated by parliament included some articles aimed at the LGBT community, a move backed by some conservative lawmakers.

His remarks followed a backlash over a popular podcast that was forced to scrap an episode this month in which a gay couple was interviewed.

(Reporting by Stanley Widianto; Editing by Martin Petty)

Priceless seeds, sprouts key to US West’s post-fire future

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN

1 of 10

This May 18, 2022 image shows nursery manager Tammy Parsons thinning aspen seedlings at a greenhouse in Santa Fe, N.M. Parsons and her colleagues evacuated an invaluable collection of seeds and tens of thousands of seedlings from the New Mexico State University's Forestry Research Center in Mora, New Mexico, as the largest fire burning in the U.S. approached the facility. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)

A New Mexico facility where researchers work to restore forests devastated by fires faced an almost cruelly ironic threat: The largest wildfire burning in the U.S. was fast approaching.

Owen Burney and his team knew they had to save what they could. Atop their list was a priceless bank of millions of ponderosa pine, spruce and other conifer seeds meant to help restore fire-ravaged landscapes across the American West.

Next were tens of thousands of tree sprouts, many of which were sown to make them more drought tolerant, that were loaded onto trailers and trucked to a greenhouse about 100 miles (161 kilometers) away.

New Mexico State University’s Forestry Research Center in the mountain community of Mora is one of only a few such nurseries in the country and stands at the forefront of a major undertaking to rebuild more resilient forests as wildfires burn hotter, faster and more often.

Firefighters have managed to keep the flames from reaching the center’s greenhouses and there’s a chance some of the seedlings left behind could be salvaged. But Burney, superintendent of the center, said the massive fire still churning through New Mexico highlights how far behind land managers are when it comes to preventing such fires through thinning and planned burns.


“The sad truth is we’re not going to be able to do that overnight, so we’re going to see these catastrophic fires for a decade, two decades, three decades — it depends on how quickly we make this turn,” he said, while stuck at home watching live updates of the fire’s progression as road blocks remained in place.

This year is the worst start to the wildfire season in the past decade. More than 3,737 square miles (9,679 square kilometers) have burned across the U.S., almost triple the 10-year average.

With no shortage of burn scars around the West, researchers and private groups such as The Nature Conservancy have been tapping New Mexico State University’s center for seedlings to learn how best to restore forests after the flames are extinguished.

The center has provided sprouts for projects in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Texas and California, but experts said its capacity for turning out as many as 300,000 seedlings annually isn’t enough now and certainly won’t be in the future as climate change and drought persist.

The newly formed New Mexico Reforestation Center, made up of a number of universities and the state’s Forestry Division, submitted a nearly $80 million proposal to the federal government just last month to jump start a reforestation pipeline that encompasses everything from seed collection to how seedlings are sown in nurseries and where they’re ultimately planted.

Matt Hurteau, a biology professor at the University of New Mexico, and his team have been building models to better predict the sweet spot where seedlings will have the best chance of survival as researchers and land managers try to reestablish pockets of forest around the West.

About 10,000 seedlings rescued from the forestry center in Mora will be used for a project focused on growing ponderosa pine at higher elevations. The trouble, Hurteau said, is that past fire footprints chosen for the research are in the line of fire again this year.

He also noted that modeling done last year on the upper Rio Grande watershed that spans Colorado and New Mexico suggested higher elevation forests would see the biggest impacts from wildfire and climate change through the end of the century.

“Here we have the Calf Canyon (Hermits Peak Fire) and it’s ripping through those high elevation forests like it’s no problem at all,” he said of the fire currently burning. “I think we’re consistently seeing actual conditions happening sooner than our models would suggest.”

Many areas are going to need some attention, said Anne Bradley, the forest program director for The Nature Conservancy in New Mexico. The group has worked with Santa Clara Pueblo to collect seeds and plant thousands of tiny trees sown at the research center over the last few years in hopes of boosting the emerging science of reforestation.

But at this pace, she acknowledges the work will take centuries. Part of the goal, she said, is to find ways to do it cost-effectively.

Researchers also are looking at how the forest naturally regenerates after fire. Experts say mimicking nature by focusing on tree islands rather than dense swaths of timber could act as a hedge against the next wave of wildfires.

“The genetics really matter; it matters how you raise them in the nursery; it matters where you put that hole in the ground, how you harden those trees as seedlings,” Bradley said. “Everything we do is an attempt to learn more and to see what our options might be.”

Similar work is happening in Colorado, with thousands of seedlings from the center in Mora earmarked for reforestation projects there.

Larissa Yocom, an assistant professor at Utah State University’s Wildland Resources Department, has plans for thousands of aspen seedlings that were rescued from the center. She and her team have worked in the footprint of a 2020 wildfire in southwest Utah. She’s holding out hope that the large New Mexico fire won’t dash plans for the latest experiment in an older burn scar just north of the fire line.

If the West wants to keep its forests, policymakers need to think about it in economic terms that would have significant benefits for water supplies, recreation and the rural and tribal communities that hold these mountain landscapes sacred, said Collin Haffey, forest and watershed health coordinator with the New Mexico Forestry Division.

Haffey said he can see, feel and smell the dryness that’s overtaking the mountains.

He has been part of big project to replant areas of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico, where several large blazes have burned over the last two decades, taking hundreds of homes with them. The latest fire still is creeping through some of the old burn scars.

“That’s part of why the reforestation component is important to me because it does allow us — us being our communities — to find ways to start the healing and the recovery process,” he said. “It will take generations after these fires. But planting trees is one small thing we can do to potentially have a large impact further down the road.”

USA

Court ruling extends uneven treatment for asylum-seekers

By ELLIOT SPAGAT

1 of 12

Migrants from Cuba rest after crossing the Rio Grande river in Eagle Pass, Texas, Sunday May 22, 2022. Little has changed in what has quickly become one of the busiest corridors for illegal border crossings since a federal judge blocked pandemic-related limits on seeking asylum from ending Monday. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)


EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) — As the sun set over the Rio Grande, about 120 Cubans, Colombians and Venezuelans who waded through waist-deep water stepped into Border Patrol vehicles, soon to be released in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.

Across the border in the Mexican town of Piedras Negras, Honduran families banded together in a section of downtown with cracked sidewalks, narrow streets and few people, unsure where to spend the night because city’s only shelter was full.

The opposite fortunes illustrate the dual nature of U.S. border enforcement under pandemic rules, known as Title 42 and named for a 1944 public health law. President Joe Biden wanted to end those rules Monday, but a federal judge in Louisiana issued a nationwide injunction that keeps them intact.

The U.S. government has expelled migrants more than 1.9 million times under Title 42, denying them a chance to seek asylum as permitted under U.S. law and international treaty for purposes of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

But Title 42 is not applied evenly across nationalities. For example, Mexico agrees to take back migrants from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico. For other nationalities, however, high costs, poor diplomatic relations and other considerations make it difficult for the U.S. to fly migrants to their home countries under Title 42. Instead, they are typically freed in the U.S. to seek asylum or other forms of legal status.

Hondurans in Piedras Negras ask Cubans arriving at the bus station for money, knowing Cubans will have no use for pesos because they will go directly across the border. While Mexico agreed in April to take some Cubans and Nicaraguans expelled under Title 42, the vast majority are released in the U.S.

“It was in an out,” Javier Fuentes, 20, said of his one-night stay in a rented house in Piedras Negras. On Sunday morning, he and two other Cuban men walked across the Rio Grande and on a paved road for about an hour until they found a Border Patrol vehicle in Eagle Pass, a Texas town of 25,000 people where migrants cross the river to the edge of a public golf course.


Overnight rains raised water to about neck-level for most adults, a possible explanation for the absence of groups numbering in the dozens, even over 100, that frequent the area many days.

“Slow start to the morning,” a Border Patrol agent said as he greeted Guard troops watching four Peruvians, including a 7-month-old boy who crossed with his parents after several days crammed into a rented room in Piedras Negras with 17 migrants.

As the water dropped again to waist-level, about three dozen migrants gathered at a riverfront public park that also drew local residents in Piedras Negras, which considers itself the birthplace of nachos. Infants and young children joined a largely Honduran crowd to cross. One Honduran woman was eight months’ pregnant in obvious pain.

Eagle Pass, a sprawling town of warehouses and decaying houses that many major retailers have overlooked, is one of the busiest spots in the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes about 250 miles (400 km) of sparsely populated riverfront. Last year, about 15,000 migrants, mostly Haitians, assembled in nearby Del Rio, which isn’t much larger than Eagle Pass. Grain fields are about all that separates either town from San Antonio, about a three-hour drive.

The relative ease of crossing — migrants walk across the river within a few minutes, often without paying a smuggler — and a perception that it is relatively safe on the Mexican side has made the remote region a major migration route.

Texas’ Rio Grande Valley has long been the busiest of nine Border Patrol sectors on the Mexican border, but Del Rio has surged to a close second this year. Yuma, Arizona, another spot known for relative safety and ease of crossing, has jumped to third-busiest.

Del Rio and Yuma rank sixth and seventh in the number of agents among the nine sectors, a reflection of how Border Patrol staffing has long lagged shifts migration flows.

Other parts of the border are less patrolled than Del Rio, a plus for migrants trying to elude capture, but are more rugged and remote, said Jon Anfinsen, president of the National Border Patrol Council’s Del Rio sector chapter.

Anfinsen calls the Del Rio sector “sort of a happy medium” for migrants seeking to balance the appeal of remote areas with safety.

Cristian Salgado, who sleeps on streets of Piedras Negras with his wife and 5-year-old son after fleeing Honduras, said the Mexican border town is “one of the few places where you can more or less live in peace.”

But his excitement about the Biden administration’s plans to lift Title 42 on Monday evaporated with the judge’s ruling. “Now there is no hope,” he said.

His pessimism may be a bit misplaced. Hondurans were stopped nearly 16,000 times on the border in April, with slightly more than resulting in expulsion under Title 42. The rest could seek asylum in the U.S. if they expressed fear of returning home.

But Cubans fared far better. They were stopped more than 35,000 times in April, and only 451, or barely 1%, were processed under Title 42.

“Cubans get in automatically,” said Joel Gonzalez, 34, of Honduras, who tried eluding agents for three days in Eagle Pass before getting caught and expelled. Agents told him asylum the U.S. was no longer available.

Isis Peña, 45, turned down an offer from a fellow Honduran woman to cross the river. The woman called from San Antonio, saying she was freed without even being asked if she wanted to claim asylum. The woman now lives in New York.

Peña tried crossing herself the next day, an experience she doesn’t want to repeat for fear of drowning. After about four hours in custody, an agent told her, “There is no asylum for Honduras.”

Vatican airs dirty laundry in trial over London property

By NICOLE WINFIELD

The sun sets behind St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019. The Vatican’s sprawling financial trial may not have produced any convictions yet or any new smoking guns. But recent testimony in May 2022 has provided plenty of insights into how the Vatican operates.

(AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)


VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican’s sprawling financial trial may not have produced any convictions yet or any new smoking guns as prosecutors work through a first round of questioning of the 10 suspects accused of fleecing the Holy See of tens of millions of euros.

But testimony so far has provided plenty of insights into how the Vatican operates, with a cast of characters worthy of a Dan Brown thriller or a Shakespearean tragicomedy. Recent hearings showed a church bureaucracy that used espionage, allowed outsiders with unverified qualifications to gain access to the Apostolic Palace and relied on a pervasive mantra of sparing the pope responsibility — until someone’s neck was on the line.

Here are some revelations so far in this unusual airing of the Vatican’s dirty laundry:

WHAT’S THE TRIAL ABOUT?

The investigation was borne of the secretariat of state’s 350 million-euro ($370 million) investment in a London property, which was such a debacle that the Vatican sold the building this year at a cumulative loss of more than 200 million euros ($210 million).

Prosecutors have accused Italian brokers, the Vatican’s longtime money manager and Vatican officials of swindling the Holy See out of tens of millions in fees and commissions and of extorting it of 15 million euros (nearly $16 million) to finally get control of the London building.

Pope Francis wanted a trial to show his willingness to crack down on alleged financial impropriety. Three years on, though, the investigation has cast an unwelcome spotlight on some of Francis’ own decisions and how Vatican monsignors managed a 600 million-euro ($630 million) asset portfolio with little external oversight or expertise.

WHAT ABOUT THE TANGENTS?

The original investigation has spawned tangents, including one in which a once-powerful cardinal, Angelo Becciu, is accused of embezzlement for having donated 125,000 euros ($130,000) in Vatican money to a Sardinian charity run by his brother.

Linked to him is another codefendant, Cecilia Marogna, a security analyst who is accused of embezzling 575,000 euros (over $600,000) that Becciu had intended as payment to liberate a Colombian nun held hostage by al-Qaida militants. They both deny wrongdoing, as do the other defendants.

SPIES, SPIES EVERYWHERE

Marogna’s story, detailed for the first time last week, is a remarkable tale which, if corroborated, would be a chapter of its own in the storied history of Vatican diplomacy.

She and Becciu say she gained entry in the Apostolic Palace on the basis of an email she wrote Becciu in 2015 about security concerns. Based on her grasp of geopolitics and apparent connections to Italian intelligence, she became an adviser to Becciu, then the No. 2 in the secretariat of state.

According to her statement, Marogna became a conduit to Becciu for everything from Russian emissaries seeking the return of holy relics to efforts by Catalonia’s separatist leader to establish a channel of communication with the Vatican.

Becciu testified that he turned to Marogna in 2017 after a Colombian nun was kidnapped in Mali, and Marogna suggested that a British intelligence firm could help liberate her. Becciu testified that Francis approved spending up to 1 million euros for the operation and insisted that it be kept secret even from the Vatican’s own intelligence chief.

The tale suggests Becciu, with the pope’s approval, created a parallel Vatican intelligence operation using an Italian freelancer.

It’s not the only instance of espionage that pose questions about the Vatican’s status as a sovereign state: Becciu testified last week that Francis himself ordered the ouster of the Vatican’s first auditor general because he had hired an external firm to spy on the Vatican hierarchy, whom he suspected of wrongdoing.

In previous testimony, a Vatican official told prosecutors that Becciu’s replacement, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, had brought members of the Italian secret service into the Holy See t o sweep his office for bugs, again bypassing the Vatican’s own gendarmes.

MONSIGNOR PERLASCA MAKES A CAMEO APPEARANCE

No figure in the trial is as intriguing as Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who was the chief internal money manager in the secretariat of state, responsible for the Vatican’s equivalent of a sovereign wealth fund with estimated assets of 600 million euros (around $630 million).

It was Perlasca who recommended certain investments or advised against them, and it was he who signed the contracts in late 2018 giving Italian broker Gianluigi Torzi operative control of the London property. The basis for the extortion charge against Torzi is prosecutors’ allegation that he pulled a fast one on the Vatican to gain that control and only relinquished it after getting paid 15 million euros (nearly $16 million).

Perlasca was at first a prime suspect in the case. But after his first round of questioning in April 2020, Perlasca fired his lawyer, changed his story and began cooperating with prosecutors.

Despite his involvement in all the deals under investigation, Perlasca escaped indictment. Last week, the tribunal let him join the trial as an injured party, enabling him to possibly recover civil damages.

Hours after tribunal president Giupseppe Pignatone admitted him as a civil party, Perlasca showed up at the tribunal unannounced, sat in the front row of the public gallery and declared “I’m not moving.”

Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi immediately objected and Pignatone ordered him to leave, which he did.

SPARE THE POPE AT ALL COSTS

Many of the defendants have testified that, at key junctions, Francis wasn’t only informed of the issues but approved them, including the crucial moment in which the Vatican had to decide whether to try to sue Torzi to get the London property or pay him off.

Several witnesses and defendants have said Francis wanted to “turn the page” and negotiate a deal. Prosecutors say Francis was essentially duped by his own underlings, and they subsequently obtained from Francis four, secret executive decrees giving them carte blanche to investigate in ways the defense says violated the suspects’ legal guarantees and basic human rights.

But blaming the pope marks an unusual development, since Vatican culture generally seeks to spare the pope responsibility for anything that goes wrong.

Becciu explained this tradition during his testimony by invoking its Latin phrase “In odiosis non faceat nomen pontificis,” roughly meaning that the pope shouldn’t be drawn into unpleasant matters.

Becciu responded to a question about why the pope only approved of financial decisions orally, not in writing.

“I’m from the old school … where you try to protect the pope, protect his moral authority without involving him too much in earthly matters. This doesn’t mean not informing him, but not giving him the responsibility for certain decisions,” he said.

Becciu kept to that until Francis released him from the pontifical secret so he could testify in his own defense. Becciu then revealed that Francis himself had authorized the Colombian nun liberation operation and had ordered the resignation of the auditor-general.

The week ended with the testimony of one of Perlasca’s deputies, Fabrizio Tirabassi, who explained how investment decisions were made and the origins of the London property deal. His lawyers said Tirabassi’s testimony proved that there was no crime in the deal.

“The only mystery of this story is why someone wanted to have a trial about an issue that the hierarchs of the Holy See wanted to conclude with a deal,” the lawyers said.

Report: Top Southern Baptists stonewalled sex abuse victims

UNLIKE CATHOLICS THEY WERE NOT PROTECTING CELIBACY

By DEEPA BHARATH, HOLLY MEYER and DAVID CRARY

This Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011 file photo shows the headquarters of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tenn. Leaders of the SBC, America's largest Protestant denomination, stonewalled and denigrated survivors of clergy sex abuse over almost two decades while seeking to protect their own reputations, according to a scathing 288-page investigative report issued Sunday, May 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)


Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Protestant denomination, stonewalled and denigrated survivors of clergy sex abuse over almost two decades while seeking to protect their own reputations, according to a scathing 288-page investigative report issued Sunday.

These survivors, and other concerned Southern Baptists, repeatedly shared allegations with the SBC’s Executive Committee, “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility from some within the EC,” said the report.

The seven-month investigation was conducted by Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the Executive Committee after delegates to last year’s national meeting pressed for a probe by outsiders.

“Our investigation revealed that, for many years, a few senior EC leaders, along with outside counsel, largely controlled the EC’s response to these reports of abuse ... and were singularly focused on avoiding liability for the SBC,” the report said.

“In service of this goal, survivors and others who reported abuse were ignored, disbelieved, or met with the constant refrain that the SBC could take no action due to its polity regarding church autonomy – even if it meant that convicted molesters continued in ministry with no notice or warning to their current church or congregation,” the report added.

The report asserts that an Executive Committee staffer maintained a list of Baptist ministers accused of abuse, but there is no indication anyone “took any action to ensure that the accused ministers were no longer in positions of power at SBC churches.”

The most recent list includes the names of hundreds of abusers thought to be affiliated at some point with the SBC. Survivors and advocates have long called for a public database of abusers.

SBC President Ed Litton, in a statement Sunday, said he is “grieved to my core” for the victims and thanked God for their work propelling the SBC to this moment. He called on Southern Baptists to lament and prepare to change the denomination’s culture and implement reforms.

“I pray Southern Baptists will begin preparing today to take deliberate action to address these failures and chart a new course when we meet together in Anaheim,” Litton said, referring to the California city that will host the SBC’s national meeting on June 14-15.

Among the report’s key recommendations:

— Form an independent commission and later establish a permanent administrative entity to oversee comprehensive long-term reforms concerning sexual abuse and related misconduct within the SBC.

—Create and maintain an Offender Information System to alert the community to known offenders.

— Provide a comprehensive Resource Toolbox including protocols, training, education, and practical information.

—Restrict the use of nondisclosure agreements and civil settlements which bind survivors to confidentiality in sexual abuse matters, unless requested by the survivor.

The interim leaders of the Executive Committee, Willie McLaurin and Rolland Slade, welcomed the recommendations, and pledged an all-out effort to eliminate sex abuse within the SBC.

“We recognize there are no shortcuts,” they said. “We must all meet this challenge through prudent and prayerful application, and we must do so with Christ-like compassion.”

The Executive Committee is set to hold a special meeting Tuesday to discuss the report.

The sex abuse scandal was thrust into the spotlight in 2019 by a landmark report from the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News documenting hundreds of cases in Southern Baptist churches, including several in which alleged perpetrators remained in ministry.

Last year, thousands of delegates at the national SBC gathering made clear they did not want the Executive Committee to oversee an investigation of its own actions. Instead they voted overwhelmingly to create the task force charged with overseeing the third-party review. Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Saraland, Alabama, appointed the panel.

The task force had a week to review the report before it was publicly released. The task force’s recommendations based on Guidepost’s findings will be presented at the SBC’s meeting in Anaheim.

The report offers shocking details on how Johnny Hunt, a Georgia-based pastor and past SBC president, sexually assaulted another pastor’s wife during a beach vacation in 2010. In an interview with investigators, Hunt denied any physical contact with the woman, but did admit he had interactions with her.

On May 13, Hunt, who was the senior vice president of evangelism and leadership at the North American Mission Board, the SBC’s domestic missions agency, resigned from that post, said Kevin Ezell, the organization’s president and CEO. Ezell said, before May 13, he was “not aware of any alleged misconduct” on Hunt’s part.

The report details a meeting Hunt arranged a few days after the alleged assault between the woman, her husband, Hunt and a counseling pastor. Hunt admitted to touching the victim inappropriately, but said “thank God I didn’t consummate the relationship.”

Among those reacting strongly to the Guidepost report was Russell Moore, who formerly headed the SBC’s public policy wing but left the denomination after accusing top Executive Committee leaders of stalling efforts to address the sex abuse crisis.

“Crisis is too small a word. It is an apocalypse,” Moore wrote for Christianity Today after reading the report. ”As dark a view as I had of the SBC Executive Committee, the investigation uncovers a reality far more evil and systemic than I imagined it could be.

According to the report, Guidepost’s investigators, who spoke with survivors of varying ages including children, said the survivors were equally traumatized by the way in which churches responded to their reports of sexual abuse.

Survivors “spoke of trauma from the initial abuse, but also told us of the debilitating effects that come from the response of the churches and institutions like the SBC that did not believe them, ignored them, mistreated them, and failed to help them,” the report said.

It cited the case of Dave Pittman, who from 2006 to 2011 made phone calls and sent letters and emails to the SBC and Georgia Baptist Convention Board reporting that he had been abused by Frankie Wiley, a youth pastor at Rehoboth Baptist Church when he was 12 to 15 years old.

Pittman and several others have come forward publicly to report that Wiley molested and raped them and Wiley has admitted to abusing “numerous victims” at several Georgia Southern Baptist churches.

According to the report, a Georgia Baptist Convention official told Pittman that the churches were autonomous and there was nothing he could do but pray.

The report also tells the story of Christa Brown, who says she was sexually abused as a teen by the youth and education minister at her SBC church.

When she disclosed the abuse to the music minister after months of abuse, she was told not to talk about it, according to the report, which said her abuser also went on to serve in Southern Baptist churches in multiple states.

Brown, who has been one of the most outspoken survivors, told investigators that during the past 15 years she has received “volumes of hate mail, awful blog comments, and vitriolic phone calls.”

After reading through the report, Brown told The Associated Press that it “fundamentally confirms what Southern Baptist clergy sex abuse survivors have been saying for decades.”

“I view this investigative report as a beginning, not an end. The work will continue,” Brown said. “But no one should ever forget the human cost of what it has taken to even get the SBC to approach this starting line of beginning to deal with clergy sex abuse.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

One tiny company is wrecking the American solar industry – why?

A small US solar panels manufacturer is pushing for high tariffs on imports. This threatens the Biden administration's climate goals and the industry as a whole.


The demand for rooftop solar panels has been rising across the United States

The American solar industry is on its knees, and the unlikely culprit is one tiny, struggling company you've probably never heard of.

Auxin Solar is a solar panel manufacturer based in San Jose, California. It supplies just 2% of America's solar modules.

Yet a petition filed by the company to the US Department of Commerce in February could be responsible for severe disruptions to future solar installations in the US — cutting them nearly in half this year and next, according to the biggest solar trade group in the country.

"The largest concern for the solar industry is uncertainty," Marcelo Ortega, renewables analyst at Rystad Energy, told DW.

Auxin Solar's petition prompted the department to launch a probe into whether US solar companies are skirting decade-old tariffs on Chinese solar imports. Solar installers, which compose much of the US industry, are threatened with tariffs up to 250%.

Critically, levies may be imposed retroactively on installers' purchases — a possibility that is grinding the American solar industry to a halt.
Auxin Solar — who?

The company at the center of the crisis for American solar was practically unknown until February when it filed its petition.

Founded in 2008, Auxin Solar claims an annual production capacity of 150 megawatts, though co-founder and CEO Mamun Rashid told the Wall Street Journal that the firm is currently operating at 30% capacity.

The company has been under financial stress for years. Rashid said he cashed out his investment and sold his beloved Porsche to keep the manufacturer going. Auxin Solar did not make Rashid available for comment despite several calls and emails.

"We have available capacity and with sufficient purchase orders, we can quickly scale up. But we need a fair price that allows us to cover our costs and pay our employees a fair wage," Rashid told the Financial Times.

First Solar has developed, constructed and currently operates many of the world’s largest grid-connected PV power plants

The probe shaking American solar

The Commerce Department launched the probe in April, investigating allegations by Auxin Solar and other US manufacturers that American solar installers are circumventing tariffs on Chinese solar products.

Firms are accused of using suppliers in Southeast Asia that are essentially fronts for Chinese manufacturers.

Back in 2012, the Obama administration imposed tariffs on Chinese solar imports in order to help domestic production. But instead, manufacturing moved to Southeast Asian nations like Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. The US now receives over 80% of its solar panels from these countries, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Industry killer or savior? Rashid told the Washington Post "it's an existential moment for us." Auxin Solar cannot compete with Chinese and Southeast Asian manufacturers, but the CEO claims the petition is not just for his own company.

"I'm here to try to create a foundation for reshaping the entire solar supply chain, because I believe very strongly that renewable energy will dominate our grid and solar will be the dominant renewable energy."

On the other side of the debate are solar industry leaders, renewable energy advocates and a bipartisan group of US lawmakers, who emphasize the damage these tariffs could impose on the industry. The research firm Rystad Energy dropped its 2022 solar capacity projections for the US from 27 gigawatts before the announcement of the probe to less than half that — 10 gigawatts. Meanwhile the SEIA warns the tariffs threaten 100,000 industry jobs.

SOLAR ENERGY AROUND THE WORLD: FROM MINI-GRIDS TO SOLAR CITIES
Drinking water from the sun
The village of Rema in Ethiopia operates a solar pump with a connected water tank. The well is far away from the village, and the water used to have to be piped to the village with a diesel pump. But this was often broken or there was not enough fuel. Since 2016, a solar pump has been supplying water to the 6,000 inhabitants, many of whom also need the water for their fields.
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Ortega of Rystad Energy said that "coal plants scheduled to retire in the next two years are already postponing their decommissioning dates over fears of solar capacity not coming online in time to meet the electricity generation these plants are supplying."

The pushback on Auxin Solar has been intense — to the point of harassment, according to Rashid. Some critics have questioned the motives of the company, as well as the prospects of its survival even with the tariffs imposed.

As for the legitimacy of Auxin Solar's claims, Mary E. Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C, told DW that we would have to wait and see what the Commerce Department probe finds.

However, she noted that the allegations "are entirely plausible," as Chinese companies have set up shop in Southeast Asia in response to other Trump-era tariffs.

Auxin Solar is not without its defenders in the industry. A policy vice president at First Solar, the largest solar panel manufacturer in the US, told the WSJ that clearly some companies "are afraid that the department will find that Chinese solar manufacturers are, in fact, engaged in circumvention and will hold them accountable for their unfair and unlawful trade practices."

Testing Biden's priorities

The chaos has revealed a serious tension in the Biden administration's agenda.

A carbon-free electricity sector by 2035 is a key pillar of Biden's climate plan, but confronting Chinese trade practices has also been a consistent desire of the administration, especially under the supply chain pressures of the pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine.

The question the Commerce Department must consider is whether or not solar panels and cells assembled in Southeast Asian countries are "substantially transformed" from inputs coming from China.

According to Lovely, if the department rules in Auxin Solar's favor there could be ramifications beyond the solar industry.

"There is a chance to set a precedent that could be dangerous," she said. It could lead to "tariff claims on a whole bunch of other goods made with Chinese inputs across Asia, and possibly even goods made in the United States."