THE NEED FOR MEAT

Beyond Meat suspends COO after alleged nose biting incident

Alexandra Canal
·Senior Reporter
Tue, September 20, 2022 

Beyond Meat (BYND) has suspended its Chief Operating Officer (COO) Doug Ramsey after he was arrested this past weekend for allegedly biting a man’s nose.

The alleged incident took place inside an Arkansas parking garage following a University of Arkansas football game, according to a preliminary police report obtained by local television station KNWA/Fox 24. The report noted that Ramsey allegedly "punched through the back windshield" of another vehicle during a road rage altercation after the vehicle hit the front tire of the food executive's car.

Ramsey, who had just joined the company in December, was charged with terroristic threatening and third-degree battery, according to court records.

Beyond Meat COO Doug Ramsey arrested after alleged road rage altercation (Source: Washington County, Arkansas)

In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, the company said that Jonathan Nelson, senior vice president of manufacturing operations, will oversee operations activities on an interim basis in the meantime.

Ramsey's arrest is just the latest PR headache for Beyond Meat, which has also dealt with a sinking stock price amid various operational headwinds.

The plant-based meat maker slashed its global workforce by 4% and cut its full-year guidance after reporting a wider-than-expected loss in its latest quarter. The company also missed on revenue, blaming the impact of sales to liquidation channels in addition to foreign exchange headwinds and increased discounts.

"We recognize progress is taking longer than we expected," CEO Ethan Brown said in a statement at the time.

Beyond's leadership team noted that its operating environment continues to be affected by near-term uncertainty related to macroeconomic issues, including inflation and rising interest rates, in addition to COVID-19 and supply chain disruptions.

On the earnings call, the company revealed that it sees a delay in post-COVID resumption of growth, and that shopping patterns have shifted away from plant-based meat with consumers largely trading down.

Analysts expect Beyond Meat's sales and profits to remain volatile until the company makes greater strides in containing operating expenses.

"The pursuit of growth opportunities such as jerky is creating operational inefficiencies and higher costs, burning through cash," Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jennifer Bartashus said in a note, adding that "elevated supply-chain costs and production challenges may weigh on margins."

1,000-year-old stalagmites from a cave in India show the monsoon isn’t so reliable – their rings reveal a history of long, deadly droughts


Ashish Sinha, Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences, California State University, 

Dominguez Hills and Gayatri Kathayat,

 Associate Professors of Global Environmental Change,

Xi'an Jiaotong University

THE CONVERSATION
Mon, September 19, 2022 

Stalagmites grow from the cave floor up as water drips down. Gayatri Kathayat

In a remote cave in northeast India, rainwater has slowly dripped from the ceiling in the same spots for over 1,000 years. With each drop, minerals in the water accumulate on the floor below, slowly growing into calcium carbonate towers known as stalagmites.

These stalagmites are more than geological wonders – like tree rings, their layers record the region’s rainfall history. They also carry a warning about the potential for catastrophic multiyear droughts in the future.

By analyzing the geochemistry of these stalagmites in a new study published Sept. 19, 2022, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we were able to create the most precise chronology yet of the summer Indian monsoon over the past millennium. It documents how the Indian subcontinent frequently experienced long, severe droughts unlike any observed in the last 150 years of reliable monsoon rainfall measurements.

The drought periods we detected are in striking synchrony with historical accounts of droughts, famines, mass mortality events and geopolitical changes in the region.

They show how the decline of the Mughal Empire and India’s textile industries in the 1780s and 1790s coincided with the most severe 30-year period of drought over the millennium. The depth and duration of the drought would have caused widespread crop failures and the level of famine discussed in written documents at the time.

Another long drought encompasses the 1630-1632 Deccan famine, one of the most devastating droughts in India’s history. Millions of people died as crops failed. Around the same time, the elaborate Mughal capital of Fatehpur Sikri was abandoned and the Guge Kingdom collapsed in western Tibet.

Our findings have important implications today for water planning in a warming world, particularly for India, which, with its vast monsoon-reliant agriculture industry, is on pace to soon be the most populous country on the planet.

Why the monsoon’s history matters

Scientists began systematically measuring India’s monsoon rainfall with instruments around the 1870s. Since then, India has experienced about 27 regionally widespread droughts. Among them, only one – 1985 to 1987 – was a three-year consecutive drought or worse.

The apparent stability of the Indian monsoon in that data might lead one to surmise that neither protracted droughts lasting multiple years nor frequent droughts are intrinsic aspects of its variability. This seemingly reassuring view currently informs the region’s present-day water resource infrastructure.

However, the stalagmite evidence of prolonged, severe droughts over the past 1,000 years paints a different picture.

It indicates that the short instrumental period does not capture the full range of Indian monsoon variability. It also raises questions about the region’s current water resources, sustainability and mitigation policies that discount the possibility of protracted droughts in the future.

Timeline of major societal and geopolitical changes in India and the oxygen isotope record from Mawmluh cave. Gayatri Kathayat

How do stalagmites capture a region’s monsoon history?

To reconstruct past variations in rainfall, we analyzed stalagmites from Mawmluh cave, near the town of Cherrapunji in the state of Meghalaya – one of the wettest locations in the world.

Stalagmites are conelike structures that grow slowly from the ground up, typically at a rate of about one millimeter every 10 years. Trapped within their growth layers are minute amounts of uranium and other elements that were acquired as rainwater infiltrated the rocks and soil above the cave. Over time, uranium trapped in stalagmites decays into thorium at a predictable pace, so we can figure out the age of each stalagmite growth layer by measuring the ratio of uranium to thorium.

The oxygen in rainwater molecules comes in two primary types of isotopes – heavy and light. As stalagmites grow, they lock into their structure the oxygen isotope ratios of the percolating rainwater that seeps into the cave. Subtle variations in this ratio can arise from a range of climatic conditions at the time the rainwater originally fell.

Stalagmite formation are marked inside Mawmluh Cave, where the new study was based. 

Gayatri Kathayat

A cross-section of a stalagmite shows differences in its ring formation as climate conditions changed. 

Gayatri Kathayat

Our previous research in this area showed that variations in oxygen isotope ratios in rainwater, and consequently, in stalagmites, track changes in the relative abundance of different moisture sources that contribute to summer monsoon rainfall.

During years when monsoon circulation is weak, rainfall here is primarily derived from the moisture that evaporated from the nearby Arabian Sea. During strong monsoon years, however, atmospheric circulation brings copious amounts of moisture to this area all the way from the southern Indian Ocean.

The two moisture sources have quite different oxygen isotope signatures, and this ratio is faithfully preserved in the stalagmites. We can use this clue to learn about the overall strength of the monsoon intensity at the time the stalagmite formed. We pieced together the monsoon rainfall history by extracting minute amounts of calcium carbonate from its growth rings and then measuring the oxygen isotope ratios. To anchor our climate record to precise calendar years, we measured the uranium and thorium ratio.

Stalagmites grow from the ground, and stalactites grow from above. These are in Mawmluh Cave, where the authors conducted their research.

 Gayatri Kathayat

Next steps

The paleoclimate records can usually tell what, where and when something happened. But often, they alone cannot answer why or how something happened.

Our new study shows that protracted droughts frequently occurred during the past millennia, but we do not have a good understanding of why the monsoon failed in those years. Similar studies using Himalayan ice cores, tree rings and other caves have also detected protracted droughts but face the same challenge.

In the next phase of our study, we are teaming up with climate modelers to conduct coordinated proxy-modeling studies that we hope will offer more insight into the climate dynamics that triggered and sustained such extended periods of drought during the past millennium.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Gayatri Kathayat, Xi'an Jiaotong University and Ashish Sinha, California State University, Dominguez Hills. 

Read more:

Climate change fueled the rise and demise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, superpower of the ancient world


Sharks that hunted near Antarctica millions of years ago recorded Earth’s climate history in their teeth

Gayatri Kathayat receives funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China

Ashish Sinha receives funding from the US National Science Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences President's International Fellowship Initiative.

Philippines leader: Rich countries have put poorest at risk



President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos Jr. addresses the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

MATT SEDENSKY
Tue, September 20, 2022 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The world’s richest people have put its poorest at risk, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. charged Tuesday at the United Nations, pushing for action on inequality, nuclear weapons and climate change.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly for the first time since taking office in June, Marcos said “the time for talk about ‘if’ and ‘when’ has long since passed” on climate change, and he called on industrialized countries to fulfill obligations to cut greenhouse gases and aid developing countries.

“The effects of climate change are uneven and reflect a historical injustice: Those who are least responsible suffer the most,” Marcos said. “This injustice must be corrected and those who need to do more must act now.”

Marcos returned to the theme of the rich-poor divide at multiple points throughout his speech, noting ballooning debt burdens, lack of Internet access and lopsided impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.


“Richer nations immediately received vaccines at the expense of the have-nots,” he said. “Filipino health workers were at the front lines in many countries ... risking and oftentimes sacrificing their own lives to save those of others.”

Marcos hinted at inequality in the very complex he stood in, pressing for a seat on the Security Council. He said very foundations of the U.N. were being ignored, but offered no elaboration.

“Our very charter is being violated around the world as we speak,” he said.

Among other issues, Marcos called for a reduction in nuclear arms and the creation of regulations governing cyberspace and the weaponization of artificial intelligence.

Marcos was swept into office in a stunning election victory, 36 years after an army-backed “People Power” revolt booted his father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., from office and into global infamy. The elder Marcos was known for tyrannical rule, though his son has rejected labeling him a dictator.

___

AP National Writer Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://twitter.com/sedensky. For more AP coverage of the U.N. General Assembly, visit https://apnews.com/hub/united-nations-general-assembly

 DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS
Millions of Americans Will Die If Drug War Continues, Colombia President Warns


Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia

Oscar Medina
Tue, September 20, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro warned that millions of young Americans will die if the “failed” war on drugs continues for another four decades, in an impassioned plea to change the policy toward narcotics.

In his first address to the United Nations General Assembly, Petro said that nearly three million U.S. citizens will overdose on fentanyl if there’s no change of approach.

“We’ll see millions of Afro-North Americans locked up in private jails,” Petro told the world’s leaders on his speech. “And we’ll see another million Latin Americans murdered.”

Still, Colombia’s first leftist president, who took office last month, stopped short of laying out the details of his alternative to decades of repressive drug policies, beyond saying that creating a “better society” would cut demand.

World’s Biggest Cocaine Producer Rethinks the War on Drugs: Q&A

In his speech, Petro also warned that US-led war on drugs has contributed to the destruction of the Amazon. Colombia is the world’s biggest producer of cocaine.

Colombia's Petro calls on Latin America to unite against war on drugs


Colombian President Gustavo Petro 

Tue, September 20, 2022 

(Reuters) - Colombian President Gustavo Petro called on Latin American countries to join forces to end the war on drugs during a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.

Petro, Colombia's first leftist president, has long derided the global war on drugs as a failure, even using his inauguration speech in August to call for a new international strategy to fight drug trafficking.

"From my wounded Latin America, I demand you end the irrational war on drugs," Petro said, while calling on the wider Latin American community to unite to defeat that "which torments our body."

Drug trafficking and the war on drugs are major contributors to Colombia's armed conflict, according to a report from the country's truth commission, which was established as part of a 2016 peace deal with the now demobilized FARC guerrillas.

The South American country, considered the world's top producer of cocaine, comes under frequent pressure from prime ally the United States to reduce cocaine output.

In July, the U.S. White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) reported that Colombia's potential cocaine output fell to 972 tonnes in 2021 from 994 tonnes the previous year.

Colombia's area taken up by crops of coca, the chief ingredient in cocaine, also declined last year to 234,000 hectares (578,227 acres), down from 245,000 hectares in 2020, the ONDCP said.

Petro, who has also promised to ease Colombia away from its dependence on hydrocarbon exports, also criticized a global addiction to oil and coal, adding that efforts to stop global warming were not working.

"The fight against the climate crisis has failed," he said.

(Reporting by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

UPDATED

Mexico’s earthquake coincidence drives anxiety for many

By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ

yesterday

1 of 8

A resident walks through a street cordoned off amid debris from the previous day's earthquake in Coalcoman, Michoacan state, Mexico, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. The magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Mexico’s central Pacific coast on Monday, killing at least one person. (AP Photo/Armando Solis)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — As the parents of children killed when a school collapsed during Mexico’s 2017 earthquake celebrated a Mass in their memory, the ground began to shake again.

“No, not again! My God, not again!” they shouted when a magnitude 7.6 earthquake rattled the capital Monday, killing two people in the Pacific coast state of Colima.

Three powerful earthquakes have struck Mexico on Sept. 19 — in 1985, 2017 and now 2022. The unlucky coincidence has driven anxiety high for many. The last two quakes also came very shortly after the annual earthquake drill conducted every Sept. 19 to commemorate the devastating 1985 temblor.

Mexico’s national Civil Defense Coordinator Laura Velázquez said Tuesday that the two deaths in Colima were due to parts of buildings collapsing. Ten people were injured -- nine in Colima and one in neighboring Michoacan.

More than 200 buildings were damaged, including dozens of schools and health centers, she said. Most of the damage was in those Pacific states, close to the Michoacan epicenter. Some 20 Mexico City buildings were damaged, but it was minor, she said.

On the morning of Sept. 19, 1985, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake devastated the center, south and west of the country, leaving some 9,500 dead.

“It’s really strange, but a lot of people already don’t like that day,” said Jorge Ornelas, a call center coordinator. He said a lot of his acquaintances begin to worry about an earthquake come September.

“If we keep thinking that every Sept. 19 it’s going to shake, it’s going to continue happening every year, because what you think is always what happens,” the 35-year-old Ornelas said.

Xyoli Pérez-Campos, a researcher in the seismology department at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Geophysical Institute, said there was no physical reason for the coincidence of major earthquakes on a single day. Monday’s earthquake was the result of the “interaction of the Cocos plate with the North America plate,” which also generated the 1985 earthquake.

Five plates -- the North America, the Pacific, the Rivera, the Caribbean and the Cocos -- all run under Mexican territory.

“The plates break when it’s their time to break,” Pérez-Campos said. “What are they going to know about the calendar?”

At least one dead after magnitude 7.6 earthquake hits Mexico's pacific coast

At least one person died and residents reported damage to buildings after a major earthquake struck Mexico on Monday. Photo by Jose Mendez/EPA-EFE

Sept. 19 (UPI) -- At least one person is dead after a strong earthquake shook Mexico's central Pacific coast Monday, as the nation observed the anniversaries of two previous quakes.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake hit at 1:05 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geologic Survey. The quake was centered 23 miles southeast of Aquila.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Twitter that Admiral Jose Rafael Ojeda Duran, Secretary of the Navy, had informed him that a person died after a wall collapsed at a mall in the city of Manzanillo.

A mandatory evacuation order was issued in Mexico City and the U.S. Tsunami Warning System said there was risk of a tsunami near the coast of Michoacan.

Local residents said that buildings -- including a hospital -- were damaged near the epicenter in Coalcoman, Michoacan, but no injuries were immediately reported, according to The New York Times.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum tweeted that there were no reports of damage in the capital but said some parts of the city lost power following the quake.

Monday's earthquake occurred on the five year anniversary of a 7.1 earthquake that killed more than 200 people in Central Mexico and just an hour after an earthquake drill in Mexico City was held at 12:19 p.m. on Monday to honor the anniversary of the 2017 disaster.

That quake took place 32 years to the day after a 8.1 massive quake devastated the country, claiming thousands of lives.

Tsunami warning issued after 7.6 magnitude earthquake rocks central Mexico

Graig Graziosi - Yesterday 

A strong earthquake has hit central Mexico. The extent of the damage caused by the quake is still being determined. The earthquake is reported to be a 7.6 magnitude quake according to the US Geological Survey. The USGS initially reported the quake was a 7.5.


Screen Shot 2022-09-19 at 2.36.21 PM.png© US Geological Surve

At least one person has been confirmed dead, according to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. That individual was killed in the coastal city of Manzanilo, approximately 130km south of the epicentre.

According to the president, the individual died when a shopping centre collapsed in the port city.

According to the USGS, the earthquake’s centre was in the Pacific Ocean near La Placita de Morelos, about 300 miles northwest of Acapulco.

The US Tsunami Warning System has issued an alert warning that a tsunami is possible along the coast of Michoacan, Mexico.

A Twitter user in Puerto Vallarta captured the effects of the earthquake on video. In the clip, the room rumbles and a ceiling fan swings wildly as the earthquake rocks the area. Puerto Vallarta is approximately 400km north of the earthquake’s epicentre.

According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, possible tsunami waves could occur within 300km of the earthquake’s epicentre. It noted that waves between 1 and 3 meters above the tide level are possible along the Mexican coast. On Monday afternoon the agency said it had observed tsunami waves.

Waves of up to 0.3 meters above the tide level are possible for a number of nations, including Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Australia, Japan, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said there was no tsunami threat to Hawaii following the earthquake.

The effects of the earthquake were felt hundreds of miles away. Video from Mexico City showed street signs swaying during the quake and locals crowded in the streets as a warning siren blared in the background.

In Manzanillo, videos showed that the wall of a gym collapsed, leaving it and the roof in a pile of rubble. The sky could be seen through a gaping hole in the building’s exterior.

The quake occurred on the same day Mexico holds its national earthquake drill, which also commemorates the massive quake in 1985 that left thousands dead in Mexico City.

Another earthquake hit Mexico on the same day in Puebla in 2017, leaving 370 dead.

Monday’s quake occurred only a half an hour after the annual drill concluded.

On Sunday, a 6.6 magniture earthquake hit Taiwan, killing one and injuring 146.

From news to politics, travel to sport, culture to climate – The Independent has a host of free newsletters to suit your interests. To find the stories you want to read, and more, in your inbox, click here.

Strong earthquake shakes Mexico on 'cursed' anniversary of tremblors

NEWS WIRES -

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Mexico's central Pacific coast on Monday, killing at least one person and setting off a seismic alarm in the rattled capital on the anniversary of two earlier devastating quakes.


Strong earthquake shakes Mexico on 'cursed' anniversary of temblors

© Fernando Carranza, Reuters

There were at least some early reports of damage to buildings from the quake, which hit at 1:05 pm local time, according to the US Geologic Survey, which had initially put the magnitude at 7.5.

It said the quake was centered 37 kilometres (23 miles) southeast of Aquila near the boundary of Colima and Michoacan states and at a depth of 15.1 kilometres (9.4 miles).

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said via Twitter that the secretary of the navy told him one person was killed in the port city of Manzanillo, Colima when a wall at a mall collapsed.

In Coalcoman, Michoacan, near the quake's epicentre, buildings were damaged, but there were not immediate reports of injuries.

“It started slowly and then was really strong and continued and continued until it started to relent,” said 16-year-old Carla Cárdenas, a resident of Coalcoman. Cárdenas ran out of her family’s hotel and waited with neighbours.

She said the hotel and some homes along the street displayed cracks in walls and segments of facades and roofs had broken off.

“In the hotel, the roof of the parking area boomed and fell to the ground, and there are cracks in the walls on the second floor,” Cárdenas said.

She said the town’s hospital was seriously damaged, but she had so far not heard of anyone injured.

Related video: Major quake strikes Mexico on 'cursed' anniversary

Duration 2:19

View on Watch

Mexico's National Civil Defense agency said that based on historic data of tsunamis in Mexico, variations of as much as 32 inches (82 cm) were possible in coastal water levels near the epicentre.

The US Tsunami Warning Center said that hazardous tsunami waves were possible for coasts within 186 miles (300 kilometres) of the epicenter.

Irlanda Villa, of coastal Coahuayana, Michoacan near the border with Colima, said some walls had fallen, but the big fear was that a tsunami would follow. “We were afraid the sea would go out, but in the end everything is fine.”

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum tweeted that there were no reports of damage in the capital

Alarms for the new quake came less than an hour after a quake alarms warbled in a nationwide earthquake simulation marking major quakes that struck on the same date in 1985 and 2017. The magnitude 8.0 quake centered near the coast of Guerrero state in 1985 killed at least 9,500 people. More than 360 people died in the magnitude 7.1 quake that struck in 2017.

“This is a coincidence,” that this is the third Sept. 19 earthquake, said US Geological Survey seismologist Paul Earle. “There’s no physical reason or statistical bias toward earthquakes in any given month in Mexico.”

Nor is there a season or month for big earthquakes anywhere on the globe, Earle said. But there is a predictable thing: People seek and sometimes find coincidences that look like patterns.

“We knew we’d get this question as soon as it happened,” Earle said. “Sometimes there are just coincidences.”

The quake was not related to or caused by the drill an hour or so earlier, nor was it connected to a damaging temblor in Taiwan the day before, Earle said.

Humberto Garza stood outside a restaurant in Mexico City's Roma neighborhood holding his 3-year son. Like many milling about outside after the earthquake, Garza said the earthquake alarm sounded so soon after the annual simulation that he was not sure it was real.

“I heard the alarm, but it sounded really far away,” he said.

Outside the city's environmental ombudsman's office, dozens of employees waited. Some appeared visibly shaken.

Power was out in parts of the city, including stoplights, snarling the capital's already notorious traffic.

(AP)

VOTE 4 GUN CONTROL AT MIDTERMS

GOP AGs push Visa, Mastercard, AmEx not to track gun sales

By KEN SWEET

yesterday

FILE - American Express, Visa and Master card cards are on display in Richmond, Va., Thursday, July 1, 2021. A group of Republican attorneys general are pushing the major payment networks _ Visa, Mastercard and American Express _ to drop their plans to start tracking sales at gun stores, arguing the plans could infringe on consumer privacy and push legal gun sales out of the mainstream financial network. The letter comes more than a week after the payment networks said they would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for sales at gun stores. 

\(AP Photo/Steve Helber)

NEW YORK (AP) — A group of Republican attorneys general are pushing the major payment networks — Visa, Mastercard and American Express — to drop their plans to start tracking sales at gun stores, arguing the plans could infringe on consumer privacy and push legal gun sales out of the mainstream financial network.

The letter comes more than a week after the payment networks said they would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for sales at gun stores. The merchant code would categorize sales at gun stores not unlike how payment networks categorize sales at airlines, restaurants, and department stores.

In their letter, the AGs threaten to use all legal tools at their disposal to stop the payment networks from tracking gun sales.

“Categorizing the constitutionally protected right to purchase firearms unfairly singles out law-abiding merchants and consumers alike,” the letter said.

In recent weeks gun control advocates argued that separately categorizing gun store sales could potentially flag a surge of suspicious sales activity to public safety officials. They have used the example from the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, where the shooter purchased $26,000 worth of ammunition ahead of the massacre.

But the Second Amendment lobby and its advocates have argued that the merchant code would do a poor job of tracking potential red flags and could unfairly flag legal gun purchases. A sale of a gun safe worth thousands of dollars would be categorized as a gun store sale just as much as someone buying thousands of dollars worth of ammunition, for example.

The payment networks said when they adopted the policy that they are just following the guidance from ISO. It will be largely up to the banks who issue the credit and debit cards to decide whether they want to stop sales under certain merchant codes.

The CEOs of the major banks will appear in front of Congress on Wednesday and Thursday this week, and they are almost certainly to be asked questions on the gun store sales tracking controversy.

UPDATED

Putin's Russia triggers plan to formally annex occupied Ukrainian regions

Zee News - 9h ago

LONDON: Two Russian-controlled regions in eastern Ukraine announced plans to hold referendums on joining Russia later this week and an ally of President Vladimir Putin said the votes would alter the geopolitical landscape in Moscow's favour forever.


Putin's Russia triggers plan to formally annex occupied Ukrainian regions© Provided by Zee News

The move, which seriously escalates Moscow's standoff with the West, comes after Russia suffered a battlefield reversal in northeast Ukraine and as Putin ponders his next steps in a nearly seven-month-old conflict that has caused the most serious East-West rift since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Russian-backed, self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) and the neighbouring Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) said the planned referendums would be held from Sept. 23-27.

In a post on social media addressed to Putin, DPR head Denis Pushilin wrote: "I ask you, as soon as possible, in the event of a positive decision in the referendum - which we have no doubt about - to consider the DPR becoming a part of Russia."

Earlier on Tuesday, Russian-installed officials in the southern Kherson region, where Moscow's forces control around 95% of the territory, said they had also decided to hold a referendum. Pro-Russian authorities in part of Ukraine's Zaporizhia region were expected to follow suit.

Ukraine and the United States have said such referendums would be an illegal sham and have made clear that they and many other countries would not recognise the results.

Dmitry Medvedev, a former president who is currently deputy chairman of the Security Council, suggested before the announcements that the outcome of such votes would be irreversible and give Moscow - which has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world - carte blanche to defend what it would regard as legally its own territory.

"Encroachment onto Russian territory is a crime which allows you to use all the forces of self-defence," Medvedev said in a post on Telegram. "This is why these referendums are so feared in Kyiv and the West."

No future Russian leader would be able to constitutionally reverse their outcome, he added.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of Russia's State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said that his chamber would support the two regions joining Russia if they voted to do so.

Washington and the West have so far been careful not to supply Ukraine with weapons that could be used to shell Russian territory, and Medvedev's interpretation of what de facto annexation would legally mean from Moscow's point of view looked like a future warning to the West.

"They (the referendums) would completely change the vector of Russia's development for decades. And not just of our country. The geopolitical transformation of the world would be irreversible once the new territories were incorporated into Russia," he wrote.

It is unclear how the referendums would be held given that Russian and Russian-backed forces control only around 60% of the Donetsk region, while Ukrainian forces are trying to retake Luhansk.

Pro-Russian officials have previously said the referendums could be held electronically.

The move would come eight years after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

Explainer-Russia unfolds annexation plan for Ukraine


Pedestrians walk in Luhansk- TARAS SCHEVCHENKO STATUE

Tue, September 20, 2022 
By Guy Faulconbridge and Felix Light

LONDON (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday announced plans by separatists in Ukraine to hold referendums paving the way for the formal annexation of swathes of territory after nearly seven months of war with its neighbour, a former Soviet republic.

WHO WANTS A REFERENDUM?

The self-styled Donetsk (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republics (LPR), which President Vladimir Putin recognised as independent states just before the invasion on Feb. 24, have said they want referendums on joining Russia on Sept. 23-27 - that is this Friday to Tuesday.

The Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which have yet to be recognised as independent states by Russia, have also said they will hold votes of their own. Russia does not fully control any of the four regions, with only around 60% of Donetsk region in Russian hands.

HOW MUCH TERRITORY COULD UKRAINE LOSE?

The territory that Russia does control amounts to more than 90,000 square km, or about 15% of Ukraine's total area - equal to the size of Hungary or Portugal.

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. With Crimea and the territory in the four other regions, Russia would gain an area about the same size as the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.

WHAT'S THE SIGNIFICANCE?

If Russia goes ahead with the referendums and joins all four regions to Russia then Ukraine - and potentially its Western backers too - would, from a Russian perspective, be fighting against Russia itself.

That would raise the risk of a direct military confrontation between Russia and the NATO military alliance, a scenario that President Joe Biden has said could lead to World War Three, because NATO-members are supplying arms and giving intelligence to Ukraine.

As such, a rushed Russian move to formally annex another big chunk of Ukrainian territory would be a major escalation just days after potentially the most significant Russian battlefield defeat of the war in northeastern Ukraine.

Russia's nuclear doctrine allows the use of such weapons if it is attacked with nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, or if the Russian state faces an existential threat from conventional weapons.

While escalating the stakes of the confrontation, Putin could also announce additional steps. Russian stocks plunged to their lowest in a month on Tuesday as Moscow reignited martial law fears with new legislation that tightened penalties for military personnel.

Unless Ukraine agreed to stop fighting for its lost territory, then Russia would have to commit significant military forces to defend the newly annexed regions - which are still not fully under Russian control.

"Putin has made a bet on escalation," said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political analysis firm R.Politik.

"All this talk about immediate referendums is an absolutely unequivocal ultimatum from Russia to Ukraine and the West."

WHAT DOES UKRAINE SAY?

Ukraine said the threat of referendums was "naive blackmail" and a sign Russia was running scared.

"This is what the fear of defeat looks like. The enemy is afraid, and obfuscates primitively," said Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Ukraine says it will not rest until every Russian soldier is ejected from its territory. Kyiv says it will never accept Russian control over its territory and has called on the West to supply more and better arms to fight Russian forces.

WHAT HAPPENED IN CRIMEA?

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine's Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea.

After Russian forces on Feb. 27, 2014 took control of Crimea, which has an ethnic Russian majority and was transferred to Ukraine in Soviet times, a referendum on joining Russia was held on March 16.

Crimea’s leaders declared a 97% vote to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. Russia formally added Crimea on March 21, less than a month after invasion. Kyiv and the West said the referendum violated Ukraine’s constitution and international law.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

4 Ukrainian regions schedule votes this week to join Russia

By JON GAMBRELL

1 of 17

Local residents collect wood for heating from a destroyed school where Russian forces were based, in the recently retaken area of Izium, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. Residents of Izium, a city recaptured in a recent Ukrainian counteroffensive that swept through the Kharkiv region, are emerging from the confusion and trauma of six months of Russian occupation, the brutality of which gained worldwide attention last week after the discovery of one of the world's largest mass grave sites. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian-controlled regions of eastern and southern Ukraine announced plans Tuesday to start voting this week to become integral parts of Russia. The concerted and quickening Kremlin-backed efforts to swallow up four regions could set the stage for Moscow to escalate the war following Ukrainian successes on the battlefield.

The scheduling of referendums starting Friday in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions came after a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said the votes are needed and as Moscow is losing ground in the invasion it began nearly seven months ago, increasing pressure on the Kremlin for a stiff response.

Former President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by Putin, said referendums that fold regions into Russia itself would make redrawn frontiers “irreversible” and enable Moscow to use “any means” to defend them.

The votes, in territory Russia already controls, are all but certain to go Moscow’s way but are unlikely to be recognized by Western governments who are backing Ukraine with military and other support that has helped its forces seize momentum on battlefields in the east and south.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced them as a sham and tweeted that “Ukraine has every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say.”

There was also swift international condemnation. Speaking in New York, where he is attending the U.N. General Assembly, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “It is very, very clear that these sham referendums cannot be accepted.”

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics called for more sanctions against Russia and more weapons for Ukraine, tweeting: “We must say no to Russian blackmail.”

In Donetsk, part of Ukraine’s wider Donbas region that has been gripped by rebel fighting since 2014 and which Putin has set as a primary objective of the invasion, separatist leader Denis Pushilin said the vote will “restore historic justice” to the territory’s “long-suffering people.”

They “have earned the right to be part of the great country that they always considered their motherland,” he said.

In partly Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia, pro-Russia activist Vladimir Rogov said: “The faster we become part of Russia, the sooner peace will come.”

Pressure inside Russia for votes and from Moscow-backed leaders in Ukrainian regions that Moscow controls increased after a Ukrainian counteroffensive — bolstered by Western-supplied weaponry — that has recaptured large areas.

Former Kremlin speechwriter and Russian political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said on Facebook that Moscow-backed separatists appeared “scared that the Russians will abandon them” amid the Ukrainian offensive and forged ahead with referendum plans to force the Kremlin’s hand.

In another signal that Russia is digging in for a protracted and possibly ramped-up conflict, the Kremlin-controlled lower of house of parliament voted Tuesday to toughen laws against desertion, surrender and looting by Russian troops. Lawmakers also voted to introduce possible 10-year prison terms for soldiers refusing to fight. If approved, as expected, by the upper house and then signed by Putin, the legislation would strengthen commanders’ hands against failing morale reported among soldiers.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there are no prospects for a diplomatic settlement. Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008-2012, said on his messaging app channel that separatist region votes are important to protect their residents and would “completely change” Russia’s future trajectory.

“After they are held and the new territories are taken into Russia’s fold, a geopolitical transformation of the world will become irreversible,” Medvedev said.

“An encroachment on the territory of Russia is a crime that would warrant any means of self-defense,” he said, adding that Russia would enshrine the new territories in its constitution so no future Russian leader could hand them back.

“That is why they fear those referendums so much in Kyiv and in the West,” Medvedev said. “That is why they must be held.”

Ukrainian analyst Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the independent Penta Center think-tank based in Kyiv, said the Kremlin hopes the votes and the possibility of military escalation will raise the pressure from Western governments for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to start talks with Moscow.

The move “reflects the weakness, not the strength of the Kremlin, which is struggling to find levers to influence the situation that has increasingly spun out of its control,” he said.

The recapturing of territory, most notably in the northeastern Kharkiv region, has strengthened Ukraine’s arguments that its troops could deliver more stinging defeats to Russia with additional armament deliveries.

More heavy weaponry is on its way, with Slovenia promising 28 tanks and Germany pledging four additional self-propelled howitzers. More aid also is expected from Britain, already one of Ukraine’s biggest military backers after the U.S. British Prime Minister Liz Truss is expected to promise that in 2023, her government will “match or exceed” the 2.3 billion pounds ($2.7 billion) in military aid given to Ukraine this year.

The swiftness of the Ukrainian counteroffensive also saw Russian forces abandon armored vehicles and other weapons as they beat hasty retreats. Ukrainian forces are recycling the captured weaponry back into battle. A Washington-based think tank, The Institute for the Study of War, said abandoned Russian T-72 tanks are being used by Ukrainian forces seeking to push into Russian-occupied Luhansk.

In the counteroffensive’s wake, Ukrainian officials found hundreds of graves near the once-occupied city of Izium. Yevhenii Yenin, a deputy minister in Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Ministry, told a national telecast that officials found many bodies “with signs of violent death.”

“These are broken ribs and broken heads, men with bound hands, broken jaws and severed genitalia,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s southern military command said its troops sank a Russian barge carrying troops and weapons across the Dnieper River near the Russian-occupied city of Nova Kakhovka. It offered no other details on the attack in the Russian-occupied Kherson region, which has been a major target in the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

In other developments:

— Ukraine’s presidential office said fresh shelling killed three civilians and injured 19 more in a 24-hour span.

— Moscow has likely moved its Kilo-class submarines from their station on the Crimean Peninsula to southern Russia over fears about them being struck by long-range Ukrainian fire, the British military said.

— McDonald’s restaurants in Kyiv began serving again for the first time since the invasion, offering only delivery service initially but marking a step of sorts back toward the life Ukrainians knew before the war.

___

Follow AP war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

HOMOPHOBIA RUN AMOK
Virginia rolls back protections for transgender students


Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin introduced stricter rules for transgender

 students in the state's schools on Monday. 

File Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Students in Virginia will now have to file legal documents if they wish to be called by their preferred pronouns, and will no longer be allowed to use facilities based on the gender they identify with.

The Virginia Department of Education announced the guidelines, fulfilling a pledge by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to get tougher on transgender issues in schools. The new rules will affect the more than 1 million children in the state's public school system.

"The 2022 model policy posted delivers on the governor's commitment to preserving parental rights and upholding the dignity and respect of all public school students," Macaulay Porter, a spokesman for Youngkin, said according to the New York Times.

Yet some students will now be losing the right to use bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice. They also will only be allowed to participate on sports teams that correspond with their sex assigned at birth.

If a student wishes to change their name and gender, they will now need an official legal document or court order. The harsher rules apply to teachers and other school officials too. They will only be allowed to refer to students by the pronouns associated with their sex at birth.

The ACLU of Virginia said that the new policies would only make it more difficult for transgender students to function and it would worsen the high rates of suicide.

"We are appalled by the Youngkin administration's overhaul of key protections for transgender students in public schools," the group wrote on Twitter.

Virginia joins a growing chorus of conservative states who are seeking to restrict the rights of transgender students.

There have been more than 200 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced at the state level this year alone, according to the LGBTQ rights group, Freedom for All Americans.

"Trans kids deserve to learn and thrive in an environment free of bullying, intimidation, and fear," Mike Mullin, a Democratic member of the state House of Delegates, said on Twitter on Friday. "That means being addressed as who they are and supported for who they will be. Especially from their teachers and their administrators."

Disaster Capitalism in the Wake of COVID -19
February 2021
Authors:

Malini Balamayuran

University of Peradeniya


Download full-text PDF   Read full-text

References (47)

Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted and impacted people's lives profoundly all around the world. The United Nations has urged all governments to embrace a cooperative and human rights-based approach, when adapting measures to cure and curb the worldwide pandemic. A plethora of subsisting commentary presents the view that moments of crisis generally elongate a state of exception for capitalist corporations and businesses to grow and evolve widely. Particularly, the in-depth analysis of 'disaster capitalism' by Naomi Klein presents the view that any crisis situation is manipulated by the largest corporations and businesses to put in place a series of desired free-market policies that may otherwise have taken decades to take effect. This article primarily examines the ways in which the responses to the COVID-19 of the neo-liberal governments favor the capitalist corporations' agenda that were deferred or deprioritized in pre-pandemic times. Based on the primary and secondary sources, it has been found that neo-liberal governments have attempted to manipulate this current global health crisis to serve the way that automatically boosts higher profits for corporations and businesses. Therefore, this study concludes that the current global health pandemic has extended the agents of capitalism another perfect chance albeit at an immense human and environmental cost.

THE EFFECTS OF NATURAL DISASTER CAPITALISM ON INDUSTRY PROFIT 1 

How Could Home Improvement Corporations That Benefit From Natural Disasters Contribute More Sustainable Aid to Coastal Communities Most at Risk From Climate Change? 

Word Count: 4000

 Allende Miglietta 

THE EFFECTS OF NATURAL DISASTER CAPITALISM ON INDUSTRY PROFIT 2
May 2019

Project: How Could Home Improvement Corporations That Benefit From Natural Disasters Contribute More Sustainable Aid to Coastal Communities Most at Risk From Climate Change?

Authors:
Allende Miglietta

Kenwood Academy


Download full-text PDF   Read full-text

Abstract
With a newer theory of disaster capitalism on the rise, this research examines how home improvement corporations along the United States coast are taking advantage of major natural disasters with increased revenue from sales while raising prices on their goods in people's' greatest time of need. Communities along the coast would be less likely to accept the corporate intrusions under normal circumstances. Instead, this paper argues for home improvement corporations to contribute towards more sustainable aid to coastal communities most at risk from climate change. As greenhouse gases continue to be emitted into the atmosphere, more powerful natural disasters will continue to strike-especially with an increase in global warming. This raises the question: How could home improvement corporations that benefit from natural disasters contribute more sustainable aid to coastal communities most at risk from climate change? There is a gap in analyzing how to push home improvement corporations to contribute more sustainable aid, along with analyzing which communities might not survive rising ocean flooding. Within the topic of natural disaster capitalism, the most common methodology varies depending on the factors of the environment, the economy, and aid. The best approaches would be (1) for beneficiary corporations to minimize their carbon footprint; (2) for beneficiary corporations to come together and agree on ways to provide more sustainable aid to coastal communities most at risk after natural disasters; and (3) for local governments to pass legislation requiring benefiting corporations from disaster capitalism, or those contribute most to global warming, to increase sustainable aid. The aim of this research is to bring equitable and sustainable aid to coastal communities along the United States coast while examining how corporations must play a greater role in slowing or resolving global warming and climate change.

GOP Seizes on Biden's 'Pandemic Is Over' Remark to Demand Medicaid Cuts

On top of pushing for an end to pandemic-related Medicaid funding, Republican Sen. Richard Burr also asked the president whether he plans to "rescind" his student debt forgiveness plan.

A demonstrator holds a "Medicaid Cuts Kill" sign at a rally in New York 

on July 9, 2020. (Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)


JAKE JOHNSON

September 20, 2022

Congressional Republicans on Monday wasted no time seizing on President Joe Biden's widely criticized claim that the "pandemic is over" to demand a slew of policy changes with potentially disastrous public health implications, including Medicaid funding cuts that could result in millions losing coverage.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, wrote in a letter to Biden that he "watched with great interest" the "60 Minutes" interview in which the president said that while the United States still has "a problem with Covid," the pandemic has come to an end.

"Saying the pandemic is 'over' is likely to eliminate the possibility of any additional Covid response funding from Congress."

If that's the case, the North Carolina Republican asked Biden, "how do you justify spending tens of billions to keep people on Medicaid who would otherwise make too much money to qualify for the program and already have employer-sponsored insurance?"

Burr was referring to a provision of the 2020 CARES Act that gives states a 6.2-percentage-point boost in Medicaid funding for the duration of the federally declared public health emergency, which is currently set to end on October 13.

In exchange for the funding increase, states are barred from dropping people from Medicaid without their consent—a rule that has allowed millions of people across the U.S. to maintain continuous health coverage amid mass layoffs and other pandemic-induced turmoil.

Recent increases in Medicaid coverage helped drive an overall decline in the number of Americans without any health insurance last year.

If the Biden administration were to formally declare an end to the public health emergency—as Burr and other Republicans have made clear they want—the funding boost would end, the continuous coverage requirement would lapse, and around 15 million people could be kicked off Medicaid, including millions of children.

Biden's Health and Human Services Department (HHS) has estimated that nearly half of the 15 million set to lose coverage could be stripped of Medicaid benefits by states despite still being eligible for the program. According to HHS, that's because of "administrative churning... which can occur if enrollees have difficulty navigating the renewal process, states are unable to contact enrollees due to a change of address, or other administrative hurdles."

In addition to the pandemic-related Medicaid provisions, Burr also targeted a slew of other measures, including masking and vaccination guidance as well as "policies that prevent manufacturers of Covid-19 countermeasures from selling their products within the commercial market."

Burr also asked whether the Biden administration plans to "rescind [his] student loan forgiveness decision" given that the legal justification for the move rests on emergency powers.

The president's comments, which aired Sunday, reportedly caught top members of his administration off guard, particularly given that they came as the White House is pushing Congress to approve billions of dollars in additional funding for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.

Republicans who have long opposed the Biden administration's push for more coronavirus funding signaled after the president's remarks aired Sunday that they intend to block new pandemic money.

"Saying the pandemic is 'over' is likely to eliminate the possibility of any additional Covid response funding from Congress (granted, chances were already low)," tweeted Josh Michaud, associate director of global health at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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