Why the Eastern Kentucky flood was no natural disaster. Let's call it what it is



Charles Calhoun
Tue, August 16, 2022 

It’s been two weeks since the historic and deadly flooding event in central Appalachia left 39 people dead and countless homes, businesses and lives destroyed. Naturally, narratives around this disaster have run amuck with some going so far as to name the very people dealing with it as the harbingers of their own destruction. And while this contributor will address that narrative below, there is another narrative that needs clarifying: The flood of July 28, 2022 was not a natural disaster.To imply this flood, along with so many other weather-borne catastrophes plaguing our world, is a natural disaster is to say three things: We don’t know why it happened, we don’t know how it happened and we don’t know how to prevent the next one. But we do know the answers to these questions. We’ve known them for some time. A combination of unfettered capitalism, environmental degradation through extraction economies and government indifference or plain inaction have borne a land in these hills ripe for weather related disasters and left behind communities with little to no defenses against them.

More: These are the people we lost in the Eastern Kentucky flooding

This disaster was man made. Strip mining and mountaintop removal reengineered the land and left communities and towns towards the valley floor exposed to record levels of storm runoff. Then the coal companies left and government officials let them offload their bonds tied to abandoned strip mining operations and their promise to clean up their mess. Logging companies also helped, clear cutting hillsides of trees capable of absorbing large amounts of moisture and holding the ground in place and leaving behind fields of kudzu, an invasive plant ill-suited for the job of mountain integrity. Throw in increased greenhouse gas emissions from the global industrialization of the 20th century and you have all the ingredients needed for continued and more frequent catastrophes.

Not the community's fault

This disaster is not the fault of those experiencing it. I consider myself an acquaintance of liberals and progressives and strive to abide no hate in the communities I live and work in. But to see folks of the same bent implying the assumed votes of the affected region in 2016 and 2020 and earlier are the reason why this man-made disaster has left them devastated is childish, infuriating and embarrassing.

To these same critical thinkers, I would ask: Will you say the same when the next disaster affects your democratic bulwark (i.e. Chicago, LA, Austin)? Did we not decry Sodom and Gomorrah references from conservatives after Hurricane Katrina? This is dangerously dualistic, incredibly callous and easily exploitable. We can’t be voices addressing climate change and in the same breath fall prey to such unscientific claims.

The science is clear

Finally, the next disaster is coming. The science is clear on this. The warmer our world becomes due to greenhouse gas buildup and environmental degradation, the more moisture will be absorbed into storms and the more volatile they will be, bringing prolonged rains and stronger winds. But when our government let the capitalists destroy these lands for profit and then let them off the hook for repairing them before they left, all while refusing any considerable legislation on addressing climate change, they left these communities vulnerable.

Without serious investments into repairing the land, rebuilding and refortifying infrastructure and providing those affected with free sturdy homes to replace the ones they lost, these man-made disasters will compound one after the other and the most vulnerable amongst us will suffer the consequences.

Charles Calhoun is a member of the Appalachian diaspora living in Columbia, SC but working remotely for an NPO in SEKY. He was present on the day of the floods.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: The Eastern Kentucky flood is no natural disaster. Call it what it is

In northern Chile, miners ask government to curb crime, robberies


A view of a brine pools of a lithium mine on the Atacama salt flat in the Atacama desert

Tue, August 16, 2022 at 9:46 AM·2 min read
By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - The mining industry in Chile, the world's largest copper producer, on Tuesday called on the government to take action to stop an "escalation of crime" that has hit operations in the country's far north.

The call comes after the robbery last week of some 500 ounces of gold worth the equivalent of $1 million from the premises of a company, in addition to attempts to rob copper trucks and a train transporting copper cathodes, according to the National Mining Society (Sonami).

"We hope that the levels of crime, which have increased in the country recently, do not directly affect us and that the different operations can continue operating without putting their workers at risk," said Sonami's president, Diego Hernandez, in a press release.


"It is key that the authority adopts the necessary measures to ensure safety in mining operations and the transport of copper and other mineral shipments," he added.

Concerns have mounted in recent months over a rise in crime in the north of the country, which is also affected by an irregular migration crisis and has even led local authorities to ask the government to declare a state of emergency.

The government has launched a plan to increase police presence and surveillance in the northern region, which has vast unpopulated areas due to its location in the middle of the Atacama Desert, the driest desert in the world.

The local mining industry has for years reported the theft of goods such as copper by organized gangs, and police have reported various operations in which tons of copper ore have been recovered from robberies.

Photos and videos have circulated on social media of strangers throwing copper plates from trains transporting the reddish metal in the middle of the South American nation's arid northern region.

Neither the PDI nor Sonami immediately had figures available on the extent of the crimes.

Starbucks asks labor board to halt union votes temporarily

By DEE-ANN DURBIN

 yesterday

Pro-union pins sit on a table during a watch party for Starbucks' employees union election, Dec. 9, 2021, in Buffalo, N.Y. Starbucks is asking the National Labor Relations Board to temporarily suspend all union elections at its U.S. stores in response to allegations of improper coordination between regional NLRB officials and the union. (AP Photo/Joshua Bessex, File)

Starbucks on Monday asked the National Labor Relations Board to temporarily suspend all union elections at its U.S. stores, citing allegations from a board employee that regional NLRB officials improperly coordinated with union organizers.

In a letter to the board chairman and other officials, Starbucks said the unnamed career NLRB employee informed the company about the activity, which happened in the board’s St. Louis office in the spring while it was overseeing a union election at a Starbucks store in Overland Park, Kansas.

The store is one of 314 U.S. Starbucks locations where workers have petitioned the NLRB to hold union elections since late last year. More than 220 of those stores have voted to unionize. The company opposes the unionization effort.

The Seattle coffee giant alleges that St. Louis labor board officials made special arrangements for pro-union workers to vote in person at its office when they did not receive mail-in ballots, even though Starbucks and the union had agreed that store elections would be handled by mail-in ballot.

In its letter, Starbucks referred to memos the regional office sent confirming that workers were allowed to come to the office and vote in person after the union told the regional office that some workers had not received ballots in the mail. The memos, citing “board protocol,” said the workers voted alone in an empty office, according to Starbucks.

“Because observers were not present, no one can be sure who appeared to vote, whether NLRB personnel had inappropriate communications with the voters, told them how to vote, showed them how to vote or engaged in other undisclosed conduct,” Starbucks wrote in its letter.

Starbucks said regional board officials also disclosed confidential information to the union, including which workers’ ballots had arrived in the mail to be counted.

Starbucks Workers United, the group seeking to unionize U.S. Starbucks stores, accused the company of trying to “distract attention away from their unprecedented anti-union campaign, including firing over 75 union leaders across the country, while simultaneously trying to halt all union elections.”

“Ultimately, this is Starbucks’ latest attempt to manipulate the legal process for their own means and prevent workers from exercising their fundamental right to organize,” the group said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the NLRB said Monday the agency doesn’t comment on open cases.

Press secretary Kayla Blado said the NLRB will “carefully and objectively” consider any challenges that Starbucks raises through “established channels.” Starbucks can also seek expedited review in the case, Blado said.

Workers at the Overland Park store petitioned the NLRB to hold a vote in February. In April, workers voted 6-1 to unionize, but seven additional ballots were the subject of challenges from Starbucks or the union.

A hearing on those challenges was scheduled for Tuesday. Starbucks asked for that hearing to be delayed, but as of Monday afternoon, the board had not postponed it.

Risa L. Lieberwitz, a professor of labor law and academic director of the Worker Institute at Cornell University, said Starbucks’ push to delay the hearing was curious. Lieberwitz said the hearing is the ideal place for Starbucks to present evidence about the Overland Park election and ask the board to investigate.

“This certainly seems to be a tactic to shift attention away from Starbucks’ own conduct and try to put negative connotations or allegations against the board,” Lieberwitz said.

In its letter, Starbucks said the evidence in this case indicates misconduct in other regions as well. The company wants the NLRB to investigate other Starbucks union elections and make public a report on its findings. The company said the board should also implement safeguards to prevent regional officials from coordinating with one party or another.

Starbucks also asked the NLRB to issue an order requiring all elections to be conducted in person with observers from both sides.

Starbucks has long opposed unionization, dating back to CEO Howard Schultz’s acquisition of the company in the late 1980s. The current unionization effort has been riddled with accusations and lawsuits on both sides.

Starbucks Workers United has filed 284 unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB against Starbucks or one of its operators, according to the labor board. Starbucks has filed two charges against Workers United.

Earlier this month, the labor board dismissed one of the charges filed by Starbucks, saying the company failed to prove that pro-union workers blocked store entrances or intimidated customers during a spring rally.

In June, the NLRB asked a federal court in western New York to order Starbucks to stop interfering with unionization efforts at its U.S. stores.

The NLRB’s actions against Starbucks haven’t always been successful. In June, a federal judge in Phoenix ruled that Starbucks didn’t have to rehire three workers who claimed that the company had retaliated against them for organizing a union.

Unionization efforts at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s and elsewhere are gaining steam under President Joe Biden, who has vowed to be “the most pro-union president” in American history.

But Bill Gould, a former NLRB chairman who now teaches at Stanford Law School, said NLRB decisions issued under Biden have not been much different than those issued under Republican presidents.

“Starbucks doesn’t like the message that workers are giving them, pretty uniformly, across the country,” Gould said. “So they’re trying to eliminate the messenger.”

Starbucks isn’t the only large company facing a unionization effort that has attacked the voting process.

Amazon has also levied accusations of improper conduct against the NLRB’s regional office in Brooklyn in its attempt to re-do a historic labor win at a warehouse on Staten Island, New York. Among other allegations, Amazon said the agency tainted the voting process by seeking reinstatement of a fired Amazon worker in the weeks leading up to the March election.

Attorneys for the agency have pushed back. A regional director for an NLRB office in Phoenix is expected to issue a ruling on that case in the coming weeks.

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Associated Press Business Writer Haleluya Hadero in New York contributed to this report.

Safety concerns after deadly fire rips through Egypt church

By SAMY MAGDY

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A worker installs scaffolding at the Abu Sefein church, a day after a fire killed over 40 people and injured at least 14 others, in the densely populated neighborhood of Imbaba, in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Aug. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt was in mourning Monday over a blaze at a Coptic Orthodox church that killed 41 people, but many also raised questions about the emergency response, fire safety codes, and restrictions on building houses of worship for the country’s Christian minority.

Neighborhood residents expressed shock over the fire Sunday, one of Egypt’s deadliest in recent years, that killed 41 members of the congregation, including at least 15 children.

“The scene of dead children still haunts me,” said Salah el-Sayed, a 43-year-old civil servant who lives next to the Martyr Abu Sefein church in the working-class Imbaba neighborhood, and was one of the first to arrive at the scene as thick smoke poured from the building.

“Bodies of children littered everywhere,” he said.

The fire broke out during Sunday morning services, beginning on the second floor of the four-story building, which also housed a day care. Smoke quickly engulfed the upper floors.

Authorities blamed an electrical short-circuit in an air conditioner unit for the fire, but witnesses also pointed to a fault in a power generator which the church used during regular power outages. People also said ambulances were slow to arrive, which could have caused more deaths, although authorities said the first ambulance arrived within minutes after the fire was reported.

Witnesses speaking to The Associated Press recounted horrific scenes of people jumping out of windows, a stampede in the church’s main hall and stairs, and children lying motionless amid fire and burned furniture.

El-Sayed, who with others rushed to the church to rescue trapped worshippers and carried bodies to waiting ambulances, said electricity was down for about half an hour that Sunday morning. He saw smoke rising minutes after the current returned.

The thick smoke made it difficult for them to get inside, and some rescuers jumped from the roof of an adjacent building. Others stormed the church front gate and made their way upstairs where the children were trapped on the fourth floor.

Ahmed Ibrahim, who lived nearby, said he saw a man trying to jump from a second floor window. He and others tried to save the man’s life by holding out a blanket, but the man fell to the ground and died.

“Unfortunately he was heavy,” Ibrahim said. “It was frustrating.”

Mohammed Yahia was among those who ran to the church, heading immediately to the day care.

Of the 20 children inside the day care, he said all but five died, speaking to a local television station from a hospital bed. Yahia carried five bodies — one by one — to the ambulances, before he fell and broke his leg while helping an elderly person out of the building.

The dead children included siblings, twins aged 5 and a 3-year-old. Five-year-old triplets, their mother, grandmother and an aunt were also among those killed, according to Mousa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the Coptic Orthodox Church. Images of the dead children went viral on social media.

The church bishop, Abdul Masih Bakhit, was also among the dead.

The church is located on a narrow street in one of Cairo’s most densely populated neighborhoods. It was an apartment building before it was turned into a church like many others across the country, according to neighbors. It looks like other buildings in the area, recognizable only by a sign above its front door, and an iron cross on its roof.

Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II said Martyr Abu Sefein, like many others, is too small for the number of congregants it serves. In televised comments late Monday, he urged authorities to find solutions to build more churches.

Anba Angaelos, the archbishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in London, blamed restrictions on church construction that have forced Christians to convert residential buildings into places of worship.

The tragedy “is a direct result of a painful time when Christian communities could not build purpose-designed churches, and would have to covertly use other buildings, not fit for the purpose and lacking the necessary health and safety features and escapes,” he wrote Sunday on Twitter.

Church-building has for decades been one of the most sensitive sectarian issues in Egypt, where 10% of the population of 103 million are Christians, but where Muslim hard-liners sharply oppose anything they see as undermining what they call the country’s “Islamic character.”

In the past, local authorities had often refused to give building permits for new churches, fearing protests and riots by Muslim ultraconservatives. Amid such restrictions, Christians turned to building illegally or setting up churches in other buildings, such as the case of Martyr Abu Sefein.

Many similar churches lack licenses and are not up to safety code. In recent years, the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has sought to regulate church building. In 2016, the government issued the country’s first law spelling out the rules for building a church, though critics argued that the legislation is in line with previous restrictions.

On Monday, a senior government official said authorities, in coordination with the Coptic Orthodox Church, would review all safety measures in churches across the country especially those in Cairo slums. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Some relatives of victims and witnesses said ambulances and firefighters took too long to arrive, but Health Minister Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar said that the first ambulance arrived at the site two minutes after the fire was reported.

The street where Martyr Abu Sefein church is located remained cordoned off Monday as construction workers worked to clear away debris.

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/08/anger-flares-at-slow-response-to-deadly.html

New climate deal spurs hopes of more carbon storage projects

By MEAD GRUVER

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Fred McLaughlin, director of the Center for Economic Geology Research at the University of Wyoming, stands near one of two wells drilled near the Dry Fork Station coal-fired power plant outside Gillette, Wyo., on June 14, 2022. McLaughlin and other researchers are studying whether formations as deep as 10,000 feet can be used to store the power plant’s carbon dioxide emissions. (AP Photo/Mead Gruver)


GILLETTE, Wyo. (AP) — The rolling prairie lands of northeastern Wyoming have been a paradise of lush, knee-deep grass for sheep, cattle and pronghorn antelope this summer.

But it’s a different green — greener energy — that geologist Fred McLaughlin seeks as he drills nearly two miles (3.2 kilometers) into the ground, far deeper than the thick coal seams that make this the top coal-mining region in the United States. McLaughlin and his University of Wyoming colleagues are studying whether tiny spaces in rock deep underground can permanently store vast volumes of greenhouse gas emitted by a coal-fired power plant.

This is the concept known as carbon storage, long touted as an answer to global warming that preserves the energy industry’s burning of fossil fuels to generate electricity.

So far, removing carbon dioxide from power plant smokestacks and pumping it underground hasn’t been feasible without higher electricity bills to cover the technique’s huge costs. But with a $2.5 billion infusion from Congress last year and now bigger tax incentives through the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress on Friday, researchers and industry continue to try.

One goal of McLaughlin’s project is to preserve the lifespan of a relatively new coal-fired power plant, Dry Fork Station, run by Basin Electric Power Cooperative. State officials hope it will do the same for the whole beleaguered coal industry that still underpins Wyoming’s economy. The state produces about 40% of the nation’s coal but declining production and a series of layoffs and bankruptcies have beset the Gillette area’s vast, open-pit coal mines over the past decade.

While the economics of carbon storage remain uncertain at best, McLaughlin and others are confident in the technology.

“The geology exists,” McLaughlin said. “It is a resource we’re looking for — and the resource is pore space.”

HOW IT WORKS

By pore space, McLaughlin doesn’t mean skin care but microscopic spaces between grains of sandstone deep underground. Countless such spaces add up: Enough, he hopes, to hold 55 million tons (50 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide over 30 years.

McLaughlin and his team used the same drill rigs as the oil industry to bore their two wells almost 10,000 feet (3,000 meters), taking core samples from nine geological formations in the process. The researchers will study how injection at one well, using saltwater as a stand-in for liquid carbon dioxide, could affect fluid behavior at the other.

“It’s basically like a call and response, if you want to think of it that way,” McLaughlin said. “We can ground truth our simulations.”

McLaughlin’s team also does a lot of lab work on carbon sequestration back at the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources in Laramie, studying on a microscopic scale how much carbon dioxide different sandstone layers can hold. They model on computers how much carbon dioxide, well by well, could be pumped underground north of Gillette.

Eventually they want to advance to carbon dioxide captured from the smoke plume at nearby Dry Fork Station, using a technique developed by California-based Membrane Technology and Research, Inc.

WYOMING’S CARBON DREAMS

With an eye toward carbon storage, Wyoming in 2020 became one of just two states, along with North Dakota, to take over from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency primary authority to issue the kind of permit McLaughlin and his team will need to pump large volumes of carbon dioxide, pressurized into a high density “supercritical” state, underground.

Besides the permit, the geologists will also need more funding. The U.S. Department of Energy Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) program is funding 24 carbon capture and storage projects nationwide, and this is one of the furthest along.

Such projects were likely already eligible for some of the roughly $2.5 billion in last year’s infrastructure bill. Now the new Inflation Reduction Act will boost the “45Q” tax credit for electricity producers who sequester their carbon from $50 to $85 per ton.

Pumping carbon dioxide underground is nothing new. For decades, the oil and gas industry has used carbon dioxide, after it’s separated from the methane sold for fueling stoves and furnaces, to recharge aging oil fields.

UNTIL NOW, FAILED EXPERIMENTS

Critics, however, point out the process is expensive to use at power plants and provides a lifeline of sorts to the coal, oil and natural gas industries when the world, in their view, should stop using fossil fuels altogether.

To date, only one commercially-operational, large-scale project in the U.S. has pumped carbon dioxide from a power plant underground. But to defray costs, NRG Energy’s Petra Nova coal-fired power plant outside Houston sold its carbon dioxide to increase local oil production.

After three years in operation, Petra Nova closed in 2020, when low oil prices made using the gas to recharge a nearby oil field unprofitable.

In December, a U.S. Government Accountability Office review found that Petra Nova was the only one of eight carbon capture and storage projects at coal-fired plants to actually go into operation, after getting $684 million in Department of Energy funding since 2009.

Some communities that have dealt for years with industrial air pollution also worry that companies will use promises of carbon storage as a way to expand.

For Massachusetts Institute of Technology research engineer Howard Herzog, a carbon capture and storage pioneer, the question isn’t whether the technique is technically feasible at scale. He’s certain that it is. But whether it can be economically feasible is a different matter.

“People are starting to take it more seriously even though fundamentally changing our energy systems is not an easy task,” Herzog said. “It’s not something you do in the short term. You’ve got to really set the policy in place and we still haven’t really done that.”

It may be expensive, said Herzog. But doing nothing when it comes to climate, “may be much more expensive.”

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Follow Mead Gruver at https://twitter.com/meadgruver

ANOTHER TRUMP FALL GUY
Trump Org. CFO expected to plead guilty in NY tax case
By MICHAEL R. SISAK

Law enforcement personnel escort the Trump Organization's former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, center, as he departs court, Friday, Aug. 12, 2022, in New York. Former President Donald Trump’s longtime finance chief is expected to plead guilty as soon as Thursday, Aug. 18 in a tax evasion case that is the only criminal prosecution to arise from a long-running investigation into the former president’s company, three people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. 

(AP Photo/John Minchillo, 

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s longtime finance chief is expected to plead guilty as soon as Thursday in a tax evasion case that is the only criminal prosecution to arise from a long-running investigation into the former president’s company, three people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg was scheduled to be tried in October on allegations he took more than $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation from the company, including rent, car payments and school tuition.

Prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and Weisselberg’s lawyers met Monday with the judge overseeing the case, Juan Manuel Merchan, according to court records. The judge then scheduled a hearing in the matter for 9 a.m. Thursday but did not specify the reason.

The people who spoke to the AP did so on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case. They said the purpose of Thursday’s hearing was for Weisselberg to enter a guilty plea, but cautioned that plea deals sometimes fall apart before they are finalized in court.

Weisselberg’s lawyer, Nicholas Gravante Jr., told The New York Times on Monday that Weisselberg has been engaged in plea negotiations to resolve the case, but did not specify terms of a potential plea deal. Reached by the AP, Gravante declined to comment.

The Times, citing two people with knowledge of the matter, said Weisselberg was expected to receive a five-month jail sentence, which would make him eligible for release after about 100 days. The deal would not require Weisselberg to testify or cooperate in any way with an ongoing criminal investigation into Trump’s business practices.

Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, is also charged in the case but did not appear to be involved in the plea agreement talks. Weisselberg and the Trump Organization have pleaded not guilty.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined comment. A message seeking comment was left with a lawyer for the Trump Organization.

News of Weisselberg’s plea negotiations came days after the judge denied requests by his lawyers and the Trump Organization to throw out the case. The judge did drop one criminal tax fraud count against the company citing the statute of limitations, but more than a dozen other counts remain.

In seeking dismissal of the case, Weisselberg’s lawyers argued prosecutors in the Democrat-led district attorney’s office were punishing him because he wouldn’t offer up damaging information against the former president.

The judge rejected that argument, saying that evidence presented to the grand jury was legally sufficient to support the charges.

Weisselberg, who turned 75 on Monday, is the only Trump executive charged in the yearslong criminal investigation started by former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who went to the Supreme Court to secure Trump’s tax records. Vance’s successor, Alvin Bragg, is now overseeing the investigation. Several other Trump executives have been granted immunity to testify before a grand jury in the case.

Prosecutors alleged that Weisselberg and the Trump Organization schemed to give off-the-books compensation to senior executives, including Weisselberg, for 15 years. Weisselberg alone was accused of defrauding the federal government, state and city out of more than $900,000 in unpaid taxes and undeserved tax refunds.

The most serious charge against Weisselberg, grand larceny, carried a potential penalty of five to 15 years in prison. The tax fraud charges against the company are punishable by a fine of double the amount of unpaid taxes, or $250,000, whichever is larger.

Trump has not been charged in the criminal probe, but prosecutors have noted that he signed some of the checks at the center of the case. Trump, who has decried the New York investigations as a “political witch hunt,” has said his company’s actions were standard practice in the real estate business and in no way a crime.

Last week, Trump sat for a deposition in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ parallel civil investigation into allegations Trump’s company misled lenders and tax authorities about asset values. Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination more than 400 times.

In the months after Weisselberg’s arrest, the criminal probe appeared to be progressing toward a possible criminal indictment of Trump himself, but the investigation slowed, a grand jury was disbanded and a top prosecutor left after Bragg took office in January — although he insists it is continuing.

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Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak. Send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/.

Ukraine’s Black Sea deal also helps Russian farmers, economy

By AYA BATRAWY

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A security officer stands next to the ship Navi-Star which sits full of grain since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began five months ago as it waits to sail from the Odesa Sea Port, in Odesa, Ukraine, July 29, 2022. Ukraine is steadily exporting grains from its Black Sea ports under a wartime deal brokered last month, but the agreement has also proven helpful to Russian farmers and the country's cornerstone agriculture industry. (AP Photo/David Goldman)


With much fanfare, ship after ship loaded with grain has sailed from Ukraine after being stuck in the country’s Black Sea ports for nearly six months. More quietly, a parallel wartime deal met Moscow’s demands to clear the way for its wheat to get to the world, too, boosting an industry vital to Russia’s economy that had been ensnared in wider sanctions.

While the U.S. and its European allies work to crush Russia’s finances with a web of penalties for invading Ukraine, they have avoided sanctioning its grains and other goods that feed people worldwide.

Russian and Ukrainian wheat, barley, corn and sunflower oil are important to countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where millions rely on subsidized bread for survival. As the war spiked food and energy prices, millions of people have been pushed into poverty or closer to the brink of starvation.

Two deals that the U.N. and Turkey brokered last month to unblock food supplies depend on each other: one protects ships exporting Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea and the other assures Russia that its food and fertilizer won’t face sanctions, safeguarding one of the pillars of its economy and helping ease concerns from insurers and banks.

The agreement allowed a Western shipper to move two vessels of grain out of Russia in a matter of weeks. It used to take months because Western banks refused to transfer payments to Russia. Although U.S. and European Union sanctions don’t directly target Russian agriculture, Western banks have been wary of running afoul, hindering buyers’ and shippers’ access to Russian grain.

“You have to invest time with the banks to make them understand this whole thing because the authority says, ‘Go ahead there’s no sanction,’ but the banks self-sanction,” said Gaurav Srivastava, whose company Harvest Commodities buys, ships and sells grains from the Black Sea region.

He called the process with banks a “labor intensive exercise.”

What’s changed in recent weeks, Srivastava said, is “the appearance ... of this being sort of a truce between all parties.”

The deal mattered to Russia because it’s the world’s biggest exporter of wheat, accounting for almost a fifth of global shipments, and the country is expected to have one of its best-ever crop seasons this year. Agriculture accounts for around 4% of Russia’s gross domestic product, according to the World Ba

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“What is more important is employment,” said Russian economist Sergey Aleksashenko, referring to jobs created by agriculture. “It’s like 7 to 8% of employment.”

Farming provides 5-6 million Russian jobs, with some regions almost entirely dependent on it for their livelihood, he said.

Srivastava, whose company operates from Los Angeles and Geneva, hopes to be able to ship out 10-15 million tons of Russian grain over the coming year.

He also has been able to move out two chartered ships that were stuck at Ukrainian ports since the start of the war on Feb. 24. He said the company is aiming to pick up 1 million tons of grain from Ukraine under the four-month-long U.N. deal.

“We are a commercial business, but we are trying to help the plight of farmers in both Russia and Ukraine,” Srivastava said. “I’m very optimistic, especially in the last couple of weeks.”

Russia’s demands for the deal included public statements from the U.S. and EU that sanctions don’t target Russian food and fertilizer. It also raised issues around financial transactions to the Russian Agricultural Bank, access for Russian-flagged vessels at ports and ammonia exports needed for fertilizer production.

A week before Russia signed the agreement, the U.S. Treasury Department issued statements with such assurances. It made clear that Washington hadn’t imposed sanctions on the sale or transport of agricultural commodities or medicine from Russia.

Treasury also issued a broad license to authorize certain transactions related to agricultural commodities, saying the U.S. “strongly supports efforts by the United Nations to bring both Ukrainian and Russian grain to world markets and to reduce the impact of Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine on global food supplies and prices.”

The EU also reiterated that Russian agriculture hadn’t been sanctioned and blamed the global spike in food prices on the war and the Kremlin’s agricultural export caps meant to protect its domestic market. The 27-nation bloc said its sanctions provide exceptions, such as allowing EU countries to authorize access to ports for Russian-flagged vessels for trade in agricultural or food products.

Russia says it’s still facing challenges.

The country’s agriculture ministry says difficulty with the supply of imported farming equipment, which isn’t directly sanctioned, also threatens the grain harvest. It said domestic needs would be met, but that exports might be affected.

Even after the deal was signed, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov chided Western assurances that agriculture was exempt from sanctions. During a diplomatic tour of Africa focused on food exports, he said a “half-truth is worse than a lie” while pointing to the chilling effect of sanctions.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres “committed himself to press the Western countries to lift those restrictions,” Lavrov said. “We’ll see whether he can succeed.”

Meanwhile, Russian and Ukrainian grains are ever more critical to averting hunger in developing countries. S&P Global Commodity Insights said in a June report that 41 million tons of Russian wheat could be available for export this year.

But overall, the world is expected to produce 12.2 million tons less wheat and 19 million tons less corn for the 2022-2023 harvest compared with the previous year, International Grains Council Executive Director Arnaud Petit said. This is in part due to the war in Ukraine and drought in Europe, he said.

While a strong U.S. dollar and inflation may force some countries to ration food imports, Petit noted that some countries are imposing export controls that could impact the availability of grains in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

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Raf Casert contributed to this report from Brussels.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Far-right Italian leader Meloni rides popular wave in polls

By FRANCES D'EMILIO

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Giorgia Meloni holds an Italian flag as she addresses a rally in Rome, Saturday, Oct. 19, 2019. With God, homeland and "natural" family prominent in her political manifesto, Giorgia Meloni, whose Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) party with neo-fascist roots has been fast rising in popularity in view of the upcoming Sept. 25 elections for Parliament, is positioning herself to become Italy's first far-right premier and the first woman to hold that office. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

ROME (AP) — With a message that blends Christianity, motherhood and patriotism, Giorgia Meloni is riding a wave of popularity that next month could see her become Italy’s first female prime minister and its first far-right leader since World War II.

Even though her Brothers of Italy party has neo-fascist roots, Meloni has sought to dispel concerns about its legacy, saying voters have grown tired of such discussions.

Still, there are nagging signs that such a legacy can’t be shaken off so easily: Her party’s symbol includes an image of a tricolored flame, borrowed from a neo-fascist party formed shortly after the end of the war.

If Brothers of Italy prevails at the polls on Sept. 25 and the 45-year-old Meloni becomes premier, it will come almost 100 years to the month after Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator, came to power in October 1922.

In 2019, Meloni proudly introduced Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini, a great-grandson of the dictator, as one of her candidates for the European Parliament, although he eventually lost.

For most Italian voters, questions about anti-fascism and neo-fascism aren’t “a key driver of whom to vote for,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco, head of the YouTrend polling company. ”They don’t see that as part of the present. They see that as part of the past.”

Still, Meloni is sensitive to international scrutiny about her possible premiership and prefers the term conservative instead of far right to describe her party.

She recently recorded video messages in English, French and Spanish that said the Italian right “has handed fascism over to history for decades now, unambiguously condemning the suppression of democracy and the ignominious anti-Jewish laws.”

That was a reference to the 1938 laws banning Italy’s small Jewish community from participating in business, education and other facets of everyday life. The laws paved the way for the deportation of many Italian Jews to Nazi death camps during the German occupation of Rome in the waning years of World War II.

Yet by keeping the tri-colored flame in her party’s logo, “she is symbolically playing on that heritage,” said David Art, a Tufts University political science professor who studies Europe’s far right. “But then she wants to say, ‘We’re not racist.’”

Unlike Germany, which worked to come to terms with its devastating Nazi legacy, the fascist period is little scrutinized in Italian schools and universities, says Gastone Malaguti. Now 96, he fought as a teenager against Mussolini’s forces. In his decades of visiting classrooms to talk about Italy’s anti-fascist Resistance, he found many students “ignorant” of that history.

Only five years ago, Brothers of Italy — its name is inspired by the opening words of the national anthem — was viewed as a fringe force, winning 4.4% of the vote. Now, opinion polls indicate it could come in first place in September and capture as much as 24% support, just ahead of the center-left Democrat Party led by former Premier Enrico Letta.

Under Italy’s complex, partially proportional electoral system, campaign coalitions are what propels party leaders into the premiership, not just votes. Right-wing politicians have done a far better job this year than the Democrats of forging wide-ranging electoral partnership.

Meloni has allied with the right-wing League party led by Matteo Salvini, who, like her, favors crackdowns on illegal migration. Her other electoral ally is the center-right Forza Italia party of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Last year, her party was the only major one to refuse to join Italy’s national pandemic unity coalition led by Premier Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank chief. Draghi’s government collapsed last month, abruptly abandoned by Salvini, Berlusconi and 5-Star leader Giuseppe Conte, who are all preoccupied with their parties’ slipping fortunes in opinion polls and local elections.

In opinion surveys, Meloni is “credited with a consistent and coherent approach to politics. She didn’t compromise,” Pregliasco said, adding that she also is perceived as “a leader who has clear ideas — not everyone agrees with those ideas, of course.”

She has apologized for the “tone” but not the content of a blistering speech she delivered in June in Spain to drum up support for far-right party Vox.

“They will say we are dangerous, extremists, racists, fascists, deniers and homophobes,″ Meloni thundered, in an apparent reference to Holocaust deniers. She ended with a crescendo of shouted slogans: “Yes to natural families! No to LGBT lobbies! Yes to sexual identity! No to gender ideology!”

Meloni slammed ”bureaucrats in Brussels″ and “climate fundamentalism.” Meloni, who has a young daughter, claimed that “the most censured” phrase is “woman and motherhood.”

Abortion hasn’t emerged as a campaign issue in Italy, where it’s legal. But Meloni has decried Italy’s shrinking birth rate, which would be even lower without immigrant women having babies.

At a rally of right-wing supporters in Rome in 2019, Meloni drew roars of approval when she yelled in a staccato pace: “I am Giorgia! I am a woman. I am a mother. I am Italian, and I am Christian. And you cannot take that away from me!”

Within days, her proclamation became fodder for a rap song’s lyrics. While some saw that as a parody, Meloni loved it and even sang a few bars on a state radio program.

According to her 2021 memoir “I am Giorgia,” much of her identity was forged by growing up in Rome’s working-class Garbatella neighborhood. At 15, she joined a youth branch of the Italian Social Movement, the neo-fascist party with the flame symbol, and plastered political posters in the capital.

When she was 31, Berlusconi made her the minister of youth in his third and last government. But she soon blazed her own path, co-founding Brothers of Italy in 2012.

Both Salvini and Meloni say they are safeguarding what they call Europe’s Christian identity. Salvini kisses dangling rosaries and wears a large cross on his often-bared chest, while Meloni’s tiny cross sometimes peeks out from her loose-fitting blouses.

Her party staunchly backed Draghi’s moves to send weapons to Ukraine, even as Salvini and Berlusconi, open admirers of Russian President Vladimir Putin, issued only tepid support. Meloni also defends the NATO alliance anchored by the United States, a fellow Group of Seven country. But she often views European Union rules as an infringement on Italy’s sovereignty.

If Meloni’s far-right forces dominate Italy’s next government, there’s concern about the support Italy will give to right-wing governments in Hungary and Poland “for their deeply conservative agendas″ amid fears about a ”democratic backsliding” in the EU, Art said.

For her part, Meloni says she will “fiercely oppose any anti-democratic drift.”

History uncovered: Fossils older than dinosaurs, and a religious refuge



Erika Page
Mon, August 15, 2022 at 5:45 AM

Discoveries of an old human civilization and ancient animals and plants are enriching knowledge of life on Earth. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom is developing a new environmental curriculum to help safeguard the planet.

1. Brazil

Brazilian paleontologists rediscovered a mother lode of fossils that had been lost for decades. The incredible fossil site was initially discovered in 1951 in the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul. But without a description of the exact location, the fossils may have remained hidden if landowner Celestino Goulart hadn’t been curious about the fossil of a fish on his grandfather’s mantel that he’d heard came from his backyard.

A research team has since dug 6 feet into the ground, uncovering hundreds of fossils so far that range from pteridophyte vegetation to mollusks and ancient fish from the Permian period, a time that led to a mass extinction and paved the way for the dinosaurs. Scientists draw parallels between that period and today.

“While what we’re going through now is a result of human behavior, the mechanisms of extinction are very similar to those that happened during the Permian period,” says paleontologist Felipe Pinheiro. “We are interfering in the same biogeochemical cycles – the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle – that during the Permian period, because of natural factors, caused the death of almost 90 percent of species. So when we study this extinction, we’re studying the present day.”
Source: National Geographic

2. United States

The number of young people at Hawaii’s juvenile detention facility has fallen dramatically. Minors who end up at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility are some of the most vulnerable and high-risk youth. In 2014, there were over 100 youths at the facility. Thanks to extensive reforms, there were only 15 young people in incarceration in June – and no girls.

Many young people land in prison for low-level offenses and have histories of abuse or poverty. Hawaii’s success does not mean the state has fully solved the problems facing youth, but reflects a key shift toward trauma-informed care.

“What I’m trying to do is end the punitive model ... and we replace it with a therapeutic model,” said Mark Patterson, administrator of the correctional facility. “Do we really have to put a child in prison because she ran away? What kind of other environment is more conducive for her to heal and be successful in the community?” Nationally, incarceration rates for young people dropped by two-thirds between 2000 and 2018, according to the justice reform initiative Square One Project.
Sources: Hawaii News Now, The Washington Post

3. United Kingdom

Aspiring to be a world leader on climate change, the U.K.’s Department of Education is creating a new national curriculum for secondary school students to inspire environmental responsibility. The natural history course will focus on three main sustainability issues: local wildlife, environmental field studies, and the impact of human development on the natural world. The course will be ready for students by 2025.

Nearly 60% of young people across the U.K. and nine other countries reported feeling very worried or extremely worried about climate change, according to a 2021 survey. “We can make studying the natural world as much a part of school life as maths and English, establishing it as a foundational subject,” wrote environmentalist Mary Colwell, who first proposed the idea of a curriculum in 2011. Some educators say climate change should be taught across subjects, not siloed into its own course; other advocates are pushing for a more robust environmental curriculum earlier on in the school system.
Sources: The Guardian, BBC Wildlife Magazine, Schools Week

4. Turkey

Researchers are uncovering details about civilization in ancient Turkey, as they explore a sprawling city below modern-day Midyat. An underground tunnel leading to the town of at least 74 acres was discovered during a restoration project of local homes in 2020. The site is thought to be a former refuge for Christians and Jews, who were persecuted by the Roman Empire in the first century. Researchers have turned up coins, lamps, and silos for food, oil, and drinks among the homes carved out of limestone, where an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 people lived between the first and sixth centuries. One rock wall bears an engraved Star of David that may have been part of a synagogue. Archaeologists know of several dozen other underground cities across the country, but none as large as this discovery, being called Matiate. Only around 5% of the town has been excavated so far.
Source: The Wall Street Journal

5. Mozambique

A national park in Mozambique now offers a haven for rhinos, formerly extinct in the region. Zinave National Park became a protected area in 1972, but a civil war from 1977 to 1992 decimated the land. Following years of other rewilding and restoration efforts, conservationists recently succeeded in transporting 19 white rhinos from neighboring South Africa to Zinave. The rhinos traveled over 1,000 miles in the longest rhino road transfer yet completed.

An estimated 8,000 rhinos have been killed by poachers in southern Africa in the past decade. Reintroduction efforts give species a better chance at survival by providing a habitat for future generations – a healthy female rhino calf was born in June. The team intends to release 40 rhinos in Zinave over the next two years, to join over 2,400 animals from 14 species already introduced, including leopards, wildebeests, and hyenas. Zinave is part of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, linking national parks in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe – an important initiative for conservation, tourism, and local job creation.

Demand is so high for the legendary Bayraktar drones used to defend against Russia's Ukraine invasion that their Turkish maker has a 3-year waitlist

Beatrice Nolan

Mon, August 15, 2022 

A B model of Bayraktar AKINCI TİHA in Corlu, Turkey.Baykar Press Office/dia images via Getty Images

• Baykar, the Turkish company behind Bayraktar drones, has a three-year backlog, its boss said.

• The drones gained legendary status in Ukraine after being used early in the invasion to destroy Russian tanks.

• The firm agreed to build a new manufacturing base in Ukraine last year, prior to the invasion.

A Turkish drone manufacturer which has supplied unmanned aerial vehicles used by Ukraine during its defense against the Russia invasion says demand has soared to the point where it has a three-year-long waitlist.

Haluk Bayraktar, the CEO of Turkish defense firm Baykar, said in an interview with Ukraine's Come Back Alive foundation that the company currently has the manufacturing capacity to build twenty of its Bayraktar TB2 drones a month, but wants to up that with a new facility in Ukraine, which it agreed to build last year.

"We see Ukraine as our strategic partner," Bayraktar said, adding that the company had already embarked on building the Ukrainian factory.

"We as Baykar embarked on building a factory in Ukraine, a research center and manufacturing excellence center where we wanted to build all the systems," he said.

Bayraktar told the Come Back Alive foundation that a surge in demand for the company's UAVs meant it was "booked for about 3 years now."

"As these systems prove themselves on the field, more countries are interested in them," he said.

Representatives for Baykar did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on the plans.

Baykar's drones, especially its famed Bayraktar TB2 drones, have gained legendary status in Ukraine after they were used early in the campaign to destroy large numbers of Russian vehicles. Their popularity even inspired a viral folk song.

Bayraktar TB2s took on a prominent role in Ukraine's early efforts in defending against Russia and were credited with destroying invading Russian tanks and armored vehicles.

Baykar told the foundation that he wants the Ukraine plant to manufacture these drones along with its other models — the Bayraktar Akıncı and the Bayraktar Kizilelma.

In June, the company donated three Bayraktar TB2 drones to Ukraine after turning down $20 million in crowdfunded money. The company asked that the funds be redirected to the "struggling people of Ukraine" in a statement shared on Twitter.

Although a key part of Ukraine's early military response to Russia, experts told Insider that the Turkish drones were becoming less effective as Russian forces step up their air defenses and electronic warfare.