Post-nuclear Moscow subway novels strike chord as Doomsday Clock nears midnight

Dmitry Glukhovsky poses in this undated handout picture

Tue, January 24, 2023 at 9:39 AM MST·3 min read

(Reuters) - Best-selling novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky says sales of his books depicting life in the Moscow Metro after a nuclear apocalypse have been booming since Russia put him on a "wanted" list for opposing the war in Ukraine and he was forced to flee abroad.

Glukhovsky, 43, is known mainly for his dystopian novel "Metro 2033" and its sequels, along with their spin-off video games, about how Muscovites survive in the city's famed metro system - "the world's biggest nuclear shelter" - after a war.

With President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian politicians regularly warning the West of nuclear war over its support for Ukraine, Glukhovsky said it was hardly surprising that Russians were trying to imagine life after such a disaster.

"It's getting us much closer (to midnight) because during Soviet times, during the times of the Cold War, nobody dared to really invoke that (possibility of Armageddon)...," he told Reuters in an interview from an undisclosed location.

"... Never a diplomat, let alone the head of state, would threaten another superpower with using nukes against his capital. So that definitely gets us way closer to that possibility," he said, speaking in English.

Atomic scientists on Tuesday reset the "Doomsday Clock" - a symbolic timepiece - based on their latest assessment of how close they believe humanity is to annihilation due to existential threats such as nuclear war. The "time" is now 90 seconds to midnight, they said, 10 seconds closer than it has been for the past three years.

Glukhovsky deplored what he called the "routinisation" of the nuclear threats by Russia's leaders but said the Ukraine war was unlikely to trigger a global nuclear catastrophe.

"... the Russian regime is not suicidal. You know, they're not religious or political fanatics. They are very pragmatic. I would say they're mainly motivated by such things as greed and self-esteem. And I don't see (how) greed and self-esteem can bring you to begin a nuclear holocaust," he said.

'FOREIGN AGENT'

Glukhovsky, who faces up to 15 years in jail if he returns home due to his anti-war stance, said his books must now be sold in Russia with a label bearing the disclaimer "This was written by a foreign agent". Under-18s are barred from buying them.

"But "Metro 2033" was the number one bestseller within my publisher. And my publisher was the biggest publisher in Russia. So there is some kind of schizophrenia where, on the one hand, they are persecuting me and, on the other, the books are still available in the bookstores and they are bestsellers," he said.

Glukhovsky, a former journalist who also wrote the screenplay for an award-winning film version of his novel "Text", said he got the inspiration for his subway novels travelling the Moscow Metro as a child during the Cold War and discovering it was built some 40 to 100 metres below ground.

"I really started to imagine what it was going to be like if we are hit by missiles and then we have to live in the subway as if it was a modern-day Noah's Ark, you know, and we would not be able to go outside of the metro, of the subway, ever," he said.

The nuclear war depicted in "Metro 2033" occurs in 2013, he noted, adding grimly: "So apparently I was wrong (by) a decade."

(Reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

'Doomsday Clock' moves to 90 seconds to midnight as nuclear threat rises




Tue, January 24, 2023
By Katharine Jackson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Atomic scientists set the "Doomsday Clock" closer to midnight than ever before on Tuesday, saying threats of nuclear war, disease, and climate volatility have been exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, putting humanity at greater risk of annihilation.

The "Doomsday Clock," created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to illustrate how close humanity has come to the end of the world, moved its "time" in 2023 to 90 seconds to midnight, 10 seconds closer than it has been for the past three years.

Midnight on this clock marks the theoretical point of annihilation. The clock's hands are moved closer to or further away from midnight based on scientists' reading of existential threats at a particular time.

The new time reflects a world in which Russia's invasion of Ukraine has revived fears of nuclear war.

"Russia's thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict by accident, intention or miscalculation is a terrible risk. The possibilities that the conflict could spin out of anyone's control remains high," Rachel Bronson, the bulletin's president and CEO told a news conference in Washington on Tuesday.

The bulletin's announcement will for the first time be translated from English into Ukrainian and Russian to garner relevant attention, Bronson said.

A Chicago-based non-profit organization, the bulletin updates the clock's time annually based on information regarding catastrophic risks to the planet and humanity.

The organization's board of scientists and other experts in nuclear technology and climate science, including 13 Nobel Laureates, discuss world events and determine where to place the hands of the clock each year.

Apocalyptic threats reflected by the clock include politics, weapons, technology, climate change and pandemics.

The clock had been set to 100 seconds to midnight since 2020, which was already the closest it had ever come to midnight.

The board said the war in Ukraine had also heightened the risk that biological weapons could be deployed if the conflict continued.

"The continuing stream of disinformation about bioweapons' laboratories in Ukraine raises concerns that Russia itself may be thinking of deploying such weapons," Bronson said.

Sivan Kartha, a bulletin board member and scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute, said natural gas prices pushed to new heights by the war had also spurred companies to develop sources of natural gas outside of Russia and turned power plants to coal as an alternative power source.

"Global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, after having rebounded from the COVID economic decline to an all-time-high in 2021, continue to rise in 2022 and hit another record high... With emissions still rising, weather extremes continue, and were even more clearly attributable to climate change," Kartha said, pointing to the devastating flooding in Pakistan in 2022 as an example.

The clock was created in 1947 by a group of atomic scientists, including Albert Einstein, who had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the world's first nuclear weapons during World War Two.

More than 75 years ago, it began ticking at seven minutes to midnight.

At 17 minutes to midnight, the clock was furthest from "doomsday" in 1991, as the Cold War ended and the United States and Soviet Union signed a treaty that substantially reduced both countries' nuclear weapons arsenals.

(Reporting by Katharine Jackson, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

Doomsday Clock to be updated against backdrop of Ukraine war

Mon, 23 January 2023 


The "Doomsday Clock," which represents the judgment of leading science and security experts about the perils to human existence, is to be updated on Tuesday against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and other crises.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will announce at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) whether the time of the symbolic clock will change.

The organization describes the clock as a "metaphor for how close humanity is to self-annihilation" and says the annual resetting should be seen as a "call-to-action to reverse the hands."

A decision to reset the hands of the clock is taken each year by the Bulletin's science and security board and its board of sponsors, which includes 11 Nobel laureates.

For 2023, the Bulletin said they will take into account the Russia-Ukraine war, bio-threats, proliferation of nuclear weapons, the continued climate crisis, state-sponsored disinformation campaigns and disruptive technologies.

The hands of the clock moved to 100 seconds to midnight in January 2021 -- the closest to midnight it has been in its history -- and remained there last year.

"The clock remains the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse because the world remains stuck in an extremely dangerous moment," the Bulletin said in a statement at last year's event.

The clock was originally set at seven minutes to midnight.

The furthest from midnight it has ever been is 17 minutes, following the end of the Cold War in 1991.

The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, J Robert Oppenheimer and other scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project which produced the first nuclear weapons.

The idea of the clock symbolizing global vulnerability to catastrophe followed in 1947.

cl/jh

Ford in talks with China's BYD to sell German plant - WSJ

Jan 24 (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co is in talks with Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD Co over the sale of a manufacturing plant in Germany, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The factory in discussion is the Saarlouis plant, where vehicle production is slated to eventually end in 2025, the WSJ report said, adding that the talks are still in a preliminary stage and may ultimately fall through.

Ford, which manufactures its Focus compact model at the plant, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Rising costs for electric vehicle battery materials and projected slowdown in the United States and European economies are putting pressure on automakers to cut expenses.


Separately, Ford said on Tuesday that it intends to decide by mid-February on how many jobs will be cut in Europe after announcing plans to cut up to 3,200 jobs at a factory in the German city of Cologne.

The report said Ford is also gauging interest from around 15 potential investors, but terms of the deal could not be learned.

 (Reporting by Kannaki Deka in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Philips)

Brazil’s female diplomats in new equality push after dark days of Bolsonaro

Constance Malleret in Rio de Janeiro
Mon, January 23, 2023 

Photograph: Sérgio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

More than a century after Maria José de Castro Rebello Mendes became, in 1918, the first woman to enter Brazil’s diplomatic service, the country’s female diplomats have launched a new push for equal rights and opportunity. Women make up less than 25% of Brazil’s diplomatic corps and just 12% of ambassadors.

“We are blossoming at this moment of democratic government,” said Irene Vida Gala, a senior diplomat who served as ambassador to Ghana and is now the president of the newly created Association of Female Brazilian Diplomats.

This institutional push to address the lack of diversity within Brazil’s foreign office, known as Itamaraty, after the 19th-century Rio palace where it was once housed, coincides with the return to power of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva after the four-year term of his openly misogynistic far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro. Lula, who has appointed Brazil’s most diverse cabinet ever, promised a fresh start after the trail of devastation left by Bolsonaro.

Related: Brazilian diplomats ‘disgusted’ as Bolsonaro pulverizes foreign policy

In the case of Itamaraty, this means “total reconstruction, because what we have today is scorched earth,” said Marília Closs of Plataforma Cipó, a thinktank focused on governance, peace and climate. “Bolsonaro’s foreign policy wasn’t used as a tool to guarantee Brazil’s national interest, but instead as a tool for bolsonarismo.”

When he took office in 2019, Bolsonaro appointed a Bible-bashing climate denialist to lead the foreign office and defend his nationalistic, ultra-conservative agenda abroad. Together, they took a hammer to Brazil’s decades-old tradition of foreign policy based on cooperation and multilateralism, cosying up to rightwing strongmen, torpedoing Brazil’s environmental leadership, and undermining the country’s past work defending human rights, with a particularly persistent campaign against expanding gender rights.

“Gender was emblematic of the transformation of Brazil’s foreign policy [under Bolsonaro],” said Jamil Chade, a Brazilian foreign correspondent in Geneva.

The country’s highly professional and once-respected foreign service was “hijacked” to serve this ultra-conservative agenda, Chade added. He describes watching embarrassed Brazilian diplomats forced to defend outlandish positions at the United Nations, while the international community looked on with befuddlement and concern.

“We were there having to back positions that were basically against our vocation, against our very nature,” said Vida Gala. Fearing retribution that would further harm their career progression, female diplomats who were once vocal about their demands retreated into the shadows.

Now, they are being given a role in recovering Brazil’s international credibility and soft power. There is some disappointment that Lula failed to name Brazil’s first female foreign minister – the post went to Mauro Vieira, who previously held the position in 2015 to 2016 under Lula’s hand-picked successor Dilma Rousseff – but Itamaraty nonetheless gained its first female secretary-general, the second highest position, in Maria Laura da Rocha.

Meanwhile, women are tipped to represent Brazil in Washington and Buenos Aires, two of the most prestigious diplomatic postings.

“We women have a really important contribution to make to [Lula’s] agenda,” said Vida Gala. “We can strengthen diplomatic action … to contribute to a diplomacy focused on reducing inequality, care of the most vulnerable, and even the construction of peace.”

The three-week-old government has already turned its back on the Bolsonaro era with regards to Brazil’s position on Israel, migration and reproductive rights, notably withdrawing from a coalition of ultra-conservative, anti-abortion nations known as the Geneva Consensus. Bolsonaro-appointed ambassadors in the US and Israel have been sacked.

Restoring Brazil’s battered reputation will not happen overnight, warned Chade, but these signals are welcome, “showing, look, we’re not only formulating a new policy, but also a new team that is going to take the lead on this new foreign policy”.

“Brazil no longer wants to be part of the problem, it wants to be part of the solutions,” he added. Ambassador Vida Gala and her colleagues will be striving for those solutions to be female.

Ex-FBI Official Involved in Trump-Russia Probe Indicted for Working on Behalf of Sanctioned Russian Oligarch

Ari Blaff
Mon, January 23, 2023

Charles McGonigal, a former FBI official involved in the investigation of Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, has been charged with violating sanctions and collaborating with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

According to federal prosecutors, McGonigal received “concealed payments” from a Russian intelligence officer in exchange for his help in having sanctions targeting Deripaska lifted. McGonigal is being charged by the Federal District in Manhattan with additional counts relating to money laundering and conspiracy.

“Charles McGonigal, a former high-level FBI official, and Sergey Shestakov, a Court interpreter, violated U.S. sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch. They both previously worked with Deripaska to attempt to have his sanctions removed, and, as public servants, they should have known better,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams wrote in a statement released Monday.


As chief of counterintelligence in the bureau’s New York City field office, McGonigal was among the first FBI officials to learn of the fateful conversation between a senior Trump campaign adviser and a foreign diplomat over the topic of Hillary Clinton’s emails, the Washington Free Beacon noted. Knowledge of that interaction proved crucial to the federal agency opening an investigation into the matter, which ultimately found there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Deripaska, a well-known aluminum magnate and close friend of President Vladimir Putin, was reportedly a client of Paul Manafort, an attorney and former Trump presidential campaign consultant.

Deripaska was recently the subject of a 60 Minutes segment alongside other prominent Russian oligarchs known for laundering illicit funds through the European Union member country of Cyprus. According to the investigation, Deripaska arranged for a child of his to be born in the United States in an attempt to bypass the sanctions imposed upon him.

The indictment, which also outlined charges against FBI interpreter Sergey Shestakov, prompted the federal agency to release a statement condemning the abuse of power.

“Russian oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska perform global malign influence on behalf of the Kremlin and are associated with acts of bribery, extortion, and violence,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael Driscoll noted in a statement. “There are no exceptions for anyone, including a former FBI official like Mr. McGonigal.”

McGonigal legal team, headed by Seth DuCharme, remained adamant about his client’s innocence.

“Charlie served the United States capably, effectively, for decades,” DuCharme told the New York Times. “We have closely reviewed the accusations made by the government and we look forward to receiving discovery so we can get a view on what the evidence is upon which the government intends to rely.”

DuCharme added that McGonigal plans to enter a plea of not guilty before a federal court appearance in Manhattan later Monday.

McGonigal was arrested at JFK Airport in New York City on Saturday upon returning from recent travels to Sri Lanka.


Ex-FBI official worked for sanctioned Russian oligarch, prosecutors say




Mon, January 23, 2023 
By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A former top FBI official was charged on Monday with working for sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, as U.S. prosecutors ramp up efforts to enforce sanctions on Russian officials and police their alleged enablers.

Charles McGonigal, who led the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York before retiring in 2018, pleaded not guilty to four criminal counts including sanctions violations and money laundering at a hearing in Manhattan federal court.

He was released on $500,000 bond, following his arrest over the weekend.

Prosecutors said McGonigal, 54, in 2021 received concealed payments from Deripaska, who was sanctioned in 2018, in exchange for investigating a rival oligarch.

McGonigal was also charged with unsuccessfully pushing in 2019 to lift sanctions against Deripaska.

Sanctions "must be enforced equally against all U.S. citizens in order to be successful," FBI Assistant Director in Charge Michael Driscoll said in a statement. "There are no exceptions for anyone, including a former FBI official."

Separately on Monday, federal prosecutors in Washington said McGonigal received $225,000 in cash from a former member of Albania's intelligence service, who had been a source in an investigation into foreign political lobbying that McGonigal was supervising.

McGonigal faces nine counts in that case, including making false statements to conceal from the FBI the nature of his relationship with the person.

"This is obviously a distressing day for Mr McGonigal and his family," the defendant's lawyer Seth DuCharme told reporters after the Manhattan hearing. "We'll review the evidence, we'll closely scrutinize it, and we have a lot of confidence in Mr McGonigal."

Deripaska, the founder of Russian aluminum company Rusal, was among two dozen Russian oligarchs and government officials blacklisted by Washington in 2018 in reaction to Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

He and the Kremlin have denied any election interference.

Also charged in the Manhattan case was Sergey Shestakov, a former Soviet diplomat who later became an American citizen and Russian language interpreter for U.S. courts and government agencies.

Prosecutors said Shestakov he worked with McGonigal to help Deripaska, and made false statements to investigators.

Shestakov pleaded not guilty on Monday and was released on $200,000 bond.

The enforcement of sanctions are part of U.S. efforts to pressure Moscow to stop its war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin calls a "special military operation."

Deripaska was charged last September with violating the sanctions against him by arranging to have his children born in the United States.

The following month, British businessman Graham Bonham-Carter was charged with conspiring to violate sanctions by trying to move Deripaska's artwork out of the United States.

Deripaska is at large, and Bonham-Carter is contesting extradition to the United States.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien, Bill Berkrot, Jonathan Oatis and Marguerita Choy)

US: Ex-FBI counterintelligence agent aided Russian oligarch

 Russian businessman and founder of RUSAL company Oleg Deripaska speaks on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, June 17, 2022. A former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence official has been indicted on charges he helped the Russian oligarch in violation of U.S. sanctions. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky, File)

MICHAEL R. SISAK and ERIC TUCKER
Mon, January 23, 2023 

NEW YORK (AP) — A former high-ranking FBI counterintelligence official who investigated Russian oligarchs has been indicted on charges he secretly worked for one, in violation of U.S. sanctions. The official was also charged, in a separate indictment, with taking cash from a former foreign security officer.

Charles McGonigal, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York from 2016 to 2018, is accused in an indictment unsealed Monday of working with a former Soviet diplomat-turned-Russian interpreter on behalf of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire they purportedly referred to in code as “the big guy” and “the client.”

McGonigal, who had supervised and participated in investigations of Russian oligarchs, including Deripaska, worked to have Deripaska’s sanctions lifted in 2019 and took money from him in 2021 to investigate a rival oligarch, the Justice Department said.

The FBI investigated McGonigal, showing a willingness to go after one of its own. Nonetheless, the indictment is an unwelcome headline for the FBI at a time when the bureau is entangled in separate, politically charged investigations — the handling of classified documents by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump — as newly ascendant Republicans in Congress pledge to investigate high-profile FBI and Justice Department decisions.

McGonigal and the interpreter, Sergey Shestakov were arrested Saturday — McGonigal after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport and Shestakov at his home in Morris, Connecticut — and held at a federal jail in Brooklyn. They both pleaded not guilty Monday and were released on bail.

McGonigal, 54, and Shestakov, 69, are charged with violating and conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, conspiring to commit money laundering and money laundering. Shestakov is also charged with making material misstatements to the FBI.

McGonigal "has had a long, distinguished career with the FBI,” his lawyer, Seth DuCharme, told reporters when he left court with McGonigal following his arraignment.

“This is obviously a distressing day for Mr. McGonigal and his family, but we’ll review the evidence, we’ll closely scrutinize it and we have a lot of confidence in Mr. McGonigal," said DuCharme, the former top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.

Messages seeking comment were left for lawyers for Shestakov and Deripaska.

McGonigal was separately charged in federal court in Washington, D.C. with concealing at least $225,000 in cash he allegedly received from a former Albanian intelligence official while working for the FBI.

The indictment does not charge or characterize the payment to McGonigal as a bribe, but federal prosecutors say that, while hiding the payment from the FBI, he took actions as an FBI supervisor that were aimed at the ex-intelligence official's financial benefit.

They included proposing that a pharmaceutical company pay the man’s company $500,000 in exchange for scheduling a business meeting involving a representative from the U.S. delegation to the United Nations.

In a bureau-wide email Monday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said McGonigal’s alleged conduct “is entirely inconsistent with what I see from the men and women of the FBI who demonstrate every day through their actions that they're worthy of the public’s trust.”

The U.S. Treasury Department added Deripaska to its sanctions list in 2018 for purported ties to the Russian government and Russia’s energy sector amid Russia’s ongoing threats to Ukraine.

In September, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Deripaska and three associates with conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by plotting to ensure his child was born in the United States.

Shestakov, who worked as an interpreter for federal courts and prosecutors in New York City after retiring as a diplomat in 1993, helped connect McGonigal to Deripaska, according to the indictment.

In 2018, while McGonigal was still working for the FBI, Shestakov introduced him to a former Soviet and Russian diplomat who functioned as an agent for Deripaska, the indictment said. That person is not named in court papers but the Justice Department says he was “rumored in public media reports to be a Russian intelligence officer.”

According to the indictment, Shestakov asked McGonigal for help getting the agent’s daughter an internship in the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism and intelligence units. McGonigal agreed, prosecutors say, and told a police department contact that, “I have an interest in her father for a number of reasons.”

According to the indictment, a police sergeant subsequently reported to the NYPD and FBI that the woman claimed to have an “unusually close relationship” with an FBI agent whom, she said, had given her access to confidential FBI files. The sergeant felt it was “unusual for a college student to receive such special treatment from the NYPD and FBI,” the indictment said.

After retiring from the FBI, according to the indictment, McGonigal went to work in 2019 as a consultant and investigator for an international law firm seeking to reverse Deripaska’s sanctions, a process known as “delisting.”

The law firm paid McGonigal $25,000 through a Shestakov-owned corporation, prosecutors say, though the work was ultimately interrupted by factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, according to the indictment, Deripaska’s agent enlisted McGonigal and Shestakov to dig up dirt on a rival oligarch, whom Deripaska was fighting for control of a large Russian corporation, in exchange for $51,280 up front and $41,790 per month paid via a Russian bank to a New Jersey company owned by McGonigal’s friend. McGonigal kept his friend in the dark about the true nature of the payments, prosecutors say.

McGonigal is also accused of hiding from the FBI key details of a 2017 trip he took to Albania with the former Albanian intelligence official who is alleged to have given him at least $225,000.

Once there, according to the Justice Department, McGonigal met with Albania’s prime minister and urged caution in awarding oil field drilling licenses in the country to Russian front companies. McGonigal’s Albanian contacts had a financial interest in those decisions.

In an example of how McGonigal allegedly blurred personal gain with professional responsibilities, prosecutors in Washington say he “caused” the FBI’s New York office to open a criminal lobbying investigation in which the former Albanian intelligence official was to serve as a confidential human source.

McGonigal did so, prosecutors allege, without revealing to the FBI or Justice Department his financial connections to the man.
__

Eric Tucker reported from Washington. Jim Mustian and Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report.

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

Idaho students protest ban on 'brown pride' sweatshirts deemed a sign of gang affiliation

Edwin Flores
Mon, January 23, 2023 

A video that has gone viral has exposed a clash between students and school officials in Idaho over whether the term “brown pride” is a symbol of cultural pride or a sign of gang affiliation.

A video viewed by more than 1.6 million people on TikTok and later shared on other platforms shows students at Caldwell High School in Idaho protesting for the right to wear culturally significant clothing items with features like the words “brown pride.”

In the video, Latina high school student Brenda Hernandez says school officials told her to remove her “brown pride” hoodie, as it can be deemed racist and akin to wearing a "white pride" shirt.

Hernandez, a senior, said in a phone interview that the Jan. 17 protest followed an incident in early December. She was sitting in her fifth-period economics class when she was called into the principal’s office and escorted there by a school staff member.

Hernandez said she had no reason to suspect she would be in trouble. She said the staff member informed her the visit was due to her hoodie.

“He was telling me: 'You can’t wear it, because it has ‘brown pride’ on it. It’s like wearing a white pride shirt. People can find it racist,'” she said.

Hernandez said the principal described the clothing item as gang-related and she received a dress code violation.

Brenda Hernandez waves a Mexican flag at the day of the protest on Jan. 17. (Courtesy Brenda Hernandez)

Caldwell High School’s dress code policy prohibits the “wearing, using, carrying, or displaying any other gang clothing or attire, or style, jewelry, emblem, badge, symbol, sign, codes, tattoos, or other things or items which evidence membership or affiliation in any gang is prohibited on any school premises or at any school sponsored activity at any time."

NBC News contacted Caldwell High School officials and was directed to the Caldwell School District’s director of communications, Jessica Watts, who responded in an email statement: “In making this decision our research shows the term ‘Brown Pride’ is associated with street gangs currently operating in the Northwest. Therefore, students are not allowed per District Policy to wear clothing affiliated with gangs. We understand that some students may be concerned with this Policy."

Char Jackson, the public information officer for the city of Caldwell, the Caldwell Police Department and the Caldwell Fire Department, said there are two primary gangs in the region they are dealing with — the Norteños and the Sureños.

Caldwell police found that the Brown Pride Sureños were a subset of the Sureños and that they became active in around the last two years, Jackson said.
A clothing brand subjected to 'stereotype'

Sonny Ligas, the director of the Idaho chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, is also the owner of Jefito Hats, the local community brand that made the "Brown Pride" hoodie and that first opened its doors in 1997.

The shop sells Chicano-style hats, apparel and accessories. The merchandise has become popular with young people and is frequently worn by students in several high schools.

“It really irritates me where they can stereotype, you know, saying that it’s gang-related," Ligas said. “I’m not gang-related — how are we going to allow these people to manchar [stain] a culture with their palabras [words] that they know nothing about whatsoever?”

Hernandez, who models for Jefito Hats, said she has worn the same hoodie to school previously and never received a dress code violation until last month.

A participant in the student-organized protest holding a

Hernandez said she believes wearing culturally significant clothes comes from a place of comfort, a way to show her pride. She said she organized the peaceful protest in accordance with her school’s principal.

She estimated a turnout of 100 students that morning before classes began. They wore rosaries, bandannas and clothing inspired by Latino heritage and brown pride, and some students brought Mexican flags, she said. Ligas also participated in solidarity.

But Hernandez said tensions grew after they weren’t allowed to protest by walking inside the building — which she and the principal had agree to previously, she said — because they might disturb other classrooms. The group was moved outside, and it wasn’t allowed to return inside unless members removed their brown pride-related clothes.

Ligas and several students said they saw the school policy as a form of censorship and discrimination.

“Brown pride” is not about racism; “it’s completely different,” Ligas said. The term is associated with decadeslong Chicano and Mexican American cultural and civil rights movements.

According to the Caldwell School District’s 2022 spring enrollment figures, 62.5% of K-12 students are Latino. More than 99% of all enrolled students come from low-income families.

A quarter of Canyon County’s population, which includes the city of Caldwell, is Hispanic. Latinos account for 24% of the state’s population growth in the last decade, according to a 2021 Idaho Commission on Hispanic Affairs report.

Lilly Meinen, a Latina freshman at Caldwell High School, said the term “brown pride” was something students should be proud of. Asked whether she thought the term could have negative implications, she said, “I knew that it could, but it wasn’t worn negatively from anyone that I’ve ever seen.”

Another student, Alexxis Childers, said she was suspended for having participated in the protests. The school district said it “cannot comment on student discipline.”

Childers, who is white, said students are being racially profiled.

“If they’re going to take away rosaries because they feel like it could be affiliated with a gang, then just as people think certain other religious groups are cults, then they need to take away the cross from every other student, as well,” she said.

“I believe it was extremely peaceful,” Childers said about the protest. “The school is trying to say that these kids are all just gang members. And when you have, just, this diverse group of kids, you cannot say every single one of these kids are gang members.”

NBC News asked an area charter school, Elevate Academy, about its dress code policies after several students said it had banned brown pride-related clothing and rosaries. The school hasn’t responded.

Two days after the protest, Caldwell High School was vandalized with a "white power" tagging and a white van was vandalized with "f--- brown pride" tagging. Local authorities initially said they were investigating a possible hate crime; they later announced they believed it was an "act of intimidation between two rival Hispanic criminal street gangs from Caldwell."

Caldwell school officials’ handling of the protest is also an issue, said students, who said that they were treated poorly and that their parents and the media didn’t get the facts from the school.

Ligas and other community members, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, were scheduled to address the issues at a LULAC meeting later Monday.

Ghislaine Maxwell says Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in US jail

Joe JACKSON
Mon, January 23, 2023


Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has claimed the disgraced late US financier Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in prison, in an interview with a British broadcaster that aired on Monday.

The Oxford-educated daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell is imprisoned in a Florida penitentiary after her conviction and 20-year sentence for helping Epstein sexually abuse girls.

Epstein, who was facing charges of trafficking underage girls for sex, escaped trial by killing himself in a New York jail in August 2019.

The autopsy concluded suicide by hanging, although the 66-year-old's sudden death fuelled widespread controversy and conspiracy theories.

"I believe that he was murdered," former socialite Maxwell said in the series of jailhouse interviews aired on Britain's TalkTV. "I was shocked. Then I wondered how it had happened."

A forensic pathologist hired by Epstein's brother said in 2019 that evidence suggested he had been murdered, arguing multiple fractures found in his neck were "very unusual for suicide".

The US Department of Justice has conducted a years-long investigation into how Epstein was able to hang himself inside New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center, but has not released any evidence of foul play.

Two prison guards on duty who admitted to falsifying records related to the night he died were charged later in 2019 over their alleged failure to monitor him.

But federal prosecutors dismissed the charges in late 2021 after the pair completed community service work as part of an earlier legal agreement.

- 'Closure' -

Maxwell, who is appealing her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking minors, also insisted she now regrets ever meeting Epstein.

She said she did not know "he was so awful" when they first met and began a relationship in the late 1990s.

US prosecutors successfully proved during Maxwell's high-profile trial in New York that she was "the key" to his scheme of enticing young girls to give him massages, during which he would sexually abuse them.

She expressed sympathy for the victims during a court statement, saying she was "sorry for the pain that you experienced" but blamed Epstein.

Maxwell opted against apologising to the victims during her TalkTV interviews when given the opportunity.

"Epstein has died and they should take their disappointment and upset out on the authorities that allowed that to happen," she replied.

"I hope that they have some closure via the judicial process that took place.

"And I wish them... to be able to have a productive and good life going forward."

- 'Fake' photograph -

In interview excerpts released Sunday, Maxwell also claimed that a decades-old photograph of Prince Andrew with his sexual abuse accuser Virginia Giuffre is "fake".

Giuffre has said she was trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to, among others, Andrew, King Charles III's younger brother.

The 39-year-old sued the discredited royal in a US court, claiming they had sex in London when she was 17 and a minor under US law.

He settled the sexual assault lawsuit at considerable cost last year, sparing him the public humiliation of a trial.

The prince, 62, has not been criminally charged and has continued to deny the accusations.

The photograph of Andrew with his arm around Giuffre's waist and Maxwell standing next to them -- said to have been taken in London in 2001 -- is seen as crucial to the claim against the prince.

Matthew Wright criticises Jeremy Kyle for his interview with Ghislaine Maxwell

‘Don’t give her a platform’

Sam Moore
Tue, January 24, 2023

Matthew Wright has hit out at Jeremy Kyle for interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell. (PA)

Matthew Wright has criticised Jeremy Kyle for interviewing convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell on his TalkTV show.

In her first interview from prison, Maxwell discussed her relationships with Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein.

Read more: Jeremy Kyle invites people to insult him online as he joins social media

Appearing on This Morning, Wright said: "You don’t give a platform to convicted sex traffickers or abusers, that is a disgraceful piece of journalism."

He added: "One of the things that we know about people that have been convicted of crimes is that normally what they say can’t be trusted, and yet you’re giving an uncritical platform to a sex abuser. I am sickened and disgusted."

Matthew Wright criticised Jeremy Kyle for giving Ghislaine Maxwell a platform. (TalkTV)

Wright continued to criticise Kyle for giving Maxwell a platform after she was convicted: "It’s like super rich people who have attempted to evade justice for as long as she did, are a special case and they’re allowed to pipe out their ridiculous excuses."

Kyle did discuss his interview with Maxwell before it aired, particularly how she never apologises to any of her victims: "There is no part of any of this where she apologises to her victims. For me, they are the first and most important thing we should think about, the people who were trafficked, the young girls who were taken advantage of."

Ghislaine Maxwell on Jeremy Kyle: Ghislaine Behind Bars. (TalkTV)

During the interview, Maxwell discussed how she didn't like prison food, talked about meeting former President Bill Clinton and her regrets about meeting Epstein.

Last year, the former socialite was found guilty of enticing minors and sex trafficking underrage girls for Epstein. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison and is awaiting trial for further offences relating to lying under oath about Epstein's abuse of children.

Maxwell is also known to have a long-lasting friendship with Prince Andrew and introduced the royal to the deceased billionaire.

WHITE HETEROSEXIST MALES
‘Most dangerous session we’ve seen.’ Missouri leads nation in anti-LGBTQ legislation



Kacen Bayless, Jonathan Shorman , Maia Bond
Mon, January 23, 2023 at 5:30 AM MST·11 min read

For State Sen. Greg Razer, the only openly gay member of the Missouri Senate, it’s been painful to watch his colleagues file an onslaught of bills that attack his community. He worries about LGBTQ kids in Missouri.

“It hurts because I was a 17-year-old suicidal gay kid. I know what that pain feels like and that hurts,” Razer, a Kansas City Democrat, told The Star. “What I have to do is make sure that those kids that are out there and their parents and the people that love them know that somebody in the Senate is standing up for them. I may not be able to stop everything, but there’s going to be a fight.”

Missouri lawmakers have filed the most anti-LGBTQ bills of any state, according to a database from the American Civil Liberties Union that tracks legislation nationwide. The legislation is a sign that conservatives targeting LGBTQ issues are emboldened as states have successfully passed legislation aimed at restricting gay and transgender rights.

As of Jan. 12, at least 27 anti-LGBTQ bills have already been introduced by Missouri Republicans, accounting for roughly 21% of legislation introduced nationwide in state legislatures that target the community, according to the ACLU. Texas is second with 15 bills, followed by South Carolina at 12. Only one bill has been filed in Kansas so far.

“This is the most dangerous session we’ve seen in Missouri in years,” said Shira Berkowitz, senior director of policy and advocacy for PROMO Missouri, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “It’s blatantly clear that this is leadership’s priority.”

Some of the bills target gender transition therapy. Several are entirely or nearly identical. One bill filed by state Sen. Mike Moon, an Ash Grove Republican, would prohibit all “gender transition procedures” for people under the age of 18 except for a few specific instances. Doctors who violate the restrictions could face professional discipline as well as lawsuits.

Moon, in an interview with The Star, said his legislation was not an attack on the LGBTQ community.

“If you’re considering this an anti-trans bill…whoever is saying that, I think they’re misguided,” he said. “It’s not anti. We should be able to be the people we choose to be, but there are consequences for all our actions whether we’re right or wrong.”

Other bills seek to block or control discussions of LGBTQ issues and sexuality in the classroom. Legislation filed by state Rep. Ann Kelley, a Lamar Republican, would create a set of rights for parents that includes “No classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties relating to sexual orientation or gender identity shall occur.”

Kelley’s bill appears to go further than Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that was enacted last year. The Florida law bans instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade classes, but Kelley’s provision doesn’t specify a grade level. Opponents say this type of legislation creates a chilling effect on teachers and LGBTQ students, barring kids from mentioning their LGBTQ family members and loved ones.

Republicans have also filed a bevy of bills that seek to ban transgender student athletes from competing on sports teams that match the gender they identify with. Democrats and LGBTQ activists who spoke with The Star fear that these bills have enough momentum to pass this year. They say it’s a wedge issue that vilifies the transgender community while only a handful of transgender kids compete in Missouri.

In the 2021-2022 school year, only one transgender student applied to the Missouri State High School Activities Association to compete based on their gender identity, Stacy Schroeder, MSHSAA’s associate executive director, previously told The Star.

Lacing fears about anti-LGBTQ legislation is the expectation that the GOP-dominated Missouri Senate has shifted its priorities further to the right this year, increasing the likelihood that some of the bills could pass both chambers and be signed into law by Republican Gov. Mike Parson.

Parson told reporters at the end of last year’s legislative session he was disappointed that lawmakers were unable to pass bills related to both bans on transgender student athletes and school curriculum. The governor’s comments signaled that the issues would be at the forefront this year.

“I think we should have definitely addressed the gender, transgender issue that’s out there,” he said at the time. “I think that should have been addressed in this state so we make a clear understanding which way we’re hitting that so people know.”

Even if the bills don’t pass, the fact that legislators are debating them at all is problematic, said Cathy Renna, the communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, a non-profit that advocates for the LGBTQ community.

“The damage is done when they’re introduced because what happens is a very, very dangerous and harmful conversation,” she said. “There’s so much misinformation, disinformation and lies particularly around trans youth that is directly impacting the lives of these young people.”
Gender-related procedures

At least six bills have been introduced that would restrict gender reassignment surgery, part of a wave of legislation nationally that targets procedures that assist minors in transitioning genders. Some of the bills go beyond surgery to include hormone treatment and other medications.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health updated its guidelines in 2022 to allow for hormone treatment beginning at age 14 and some surgeries as early as 15 or 17, according to an Associated Press report from June.

Identical bills offered by Moon and state Sen. Denny Hoskins, a Warrensburg Republican, would prohibit all “gender transition” procedures for individuals under 18, except in medical emergencies. Doctors also wouldn’t be allowed to refer patients to other providers.

Hoskins, in an interview with The Star, acknowledged the flurry of transgender-related bills and said he felt kids should have to wait until they are adults before undergoing the surgery.

“I just personally feel kids 18 years and under are not old enough to make these types of decisions for themselves,” he said.

State Rep. Ashley Bland Manlove, a Kansas City Democrat who identifies as lesbian, said the legislation targets both transgender kids and doctors.

“Queer people who have not been able to be themselves and safely and comfortably be themselves end up with a lot of mental health issues and a lot of them are unhappy and suicide rates among the LGBTQIA community are crazy high,” she said. “I feel like that legislation just compounds those types of issues.”

Another bill from state Sen. Jill Carter, a Neosho Republican, would impose the same restrictions but goes further in enforcement. Under her proposal, “coercing” a child into surgery or taking medication would be considered criminal child abuse. Doctors who violate the law would have their licenses revoked.

Legislation in the House offered by both state Rep. Brad Hudson, a Cape Fair Republican, and state Rep. Justin Sparks, a Wildwood Republican, would prohibit any public funds going to providers who perform gender-related procedures on minors, and health insurance premiums paid this kind of care wouldn’t be tax deductible. MO HealthNet, the state’s Medicaid program, would also be prohibited from covering the procedures under the legislation.
School sports and curriculum

A slew of bills in both the House and Senate would ban transgender athletes from women and girls’ sports.

The idea has gained traction among Republicans in recent years and has been proposed by state legislators across the country, even as the number of transgender athletes remains relatively small.

Republicans say the bans are an issue of fairness to ensure athletes who were assigned female at birth are not at a physical disadvantage. But Democrats and other opponents of the bills say they are transphobic and discriminatory and that local schools and sports authorities are best equipped to set guidelines and rules for competition.

Razer told The Star that Republicans were targeting LGBTQ kids instead of matters that impact Missourians such as child care and teacher pay. He said the gay community has historically been used for political attacks.

“They’ve run out of ways to attack me as a gay white man. Now they’re going after children. They let us die in the ‘80s and behind closed doors laughed,” Razer said, referring to government indifference during the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis. “Now they’re going after kids. It makes me sick to my stomach.”

The bills introduced in Missouri have some variations but their overall goal of keeping transgender athletes out of women and girls’ sports is the same.

Under Sikeston Republican Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder’s bill, athletes must compete based on their biological sex at birth. State Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican, would require parents to sign an affidavit before each school year providing the athlete’s sex at birth.

“This bill has nothing to do with transgender issues. It is 100% aimed to keep the playing field level, protect our girl’s scholarships, and to protect the ground that women have gained over the past 30 years in female sports,” Thompson Rehder said in a Facebook post about her bill last week.

According to a Gallup report last year, 0.7% of U.S. adults identify as transgender. Another 4% identify as bisexual, along with 1.5% as gay, 1% and 0.3% who identify as other.

The rate of self-identification for all of these groups is significantly higher among Generation Z compared to previous generations with 21 % of adults born between 1997 and 2003 identifying as LGBTQ, including 2.1 % transgender, according to Gallup.

One bill would ban transgender students from participating in female sports is scheduled for a Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee hearing Tuesday morning. The bill, filed by state Sen. Rick Brattin, a Harrisonville Republican, also would ban schools from teaching lessons on the role of systemic racism in the U.S.

Another subset of Republican-led bills, like Kelley’s, target lessons on LGBTQ issues and sexuality in the classroom. One, filed by state Rep. Ed Lewis, a Moberly Republican, would create a set of rights for teachers. One of the rights says teachers would be “free from any requirement to refer to a student by a name other than such student’s legal name and to use a reasonable pronoun when referring to a student without threat of reprisal.”

Republicans have touted curriculum-related legislation as giving parents more of a say over what their kids are taught in schools.

“What we saw in the last several years were essentially testing grounds in places like Texas and Florida,” said Renna, with the National LGBTQ Task Force. “They saw success and so now they’re expanding.”
Drag shows

Some Missouri lawmakers have also been quick to capitalize on, and denounce, reports of drag shows throughout the state. Republicans have used the shows to promote legislation that would ban children from viewing the performances.

While Republicans say the shows are too obscene to be viewed by kids, Democrats and LGBTQ rights advocates say the ongoing push to target the performances are part of a broader conservative attack on the LGBTQ community.

State Rep. Ben Baker, a Neosho Republican, filed a bill last month that would ban “adult cabaret performances” from public property or in any location that could be viewed by a child. Violators would be subject to a misdemeanor for a first offense. Subsequent offenders would be subject to a felony.

The debate over the performances has gained traction among some Republicans on social media. After reports of a drag show performed in Columbia last week, Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, a Columbia Republican, quickly criticized the event on Twitter and said he asked for a meeting with the Columbia Public School superintendent. He shared a link from a far-right website that said middle schoolers attended the show.

“I will use all the resources at my disposal to stand up for kids and their parents, especially in instances where they don’t feel like their voice is being heard,” he wrote.

Parson and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who was sworn into office earlier this month, quickly followed suit and publicly condemned the event. Bailey wrote letters to the superintendent and the mayor of Columbia.

But LGBTQ activists and Democrats say the push to target drag shows is ignoring more pressing issues in Missouri.

“This is a political mission that doesn’t actually protect youth, but further defends the fears and phobias of some adults,” Justice Horn, a Kansas City activist who lobbied city council to create the city’s first LGBTQ Commission, wrote on Twitter after Baker filed his drag show legislation.

“If Missouri really cared about our youth, our state wouldn’t fall short in all other areas that impact them.”

Renna said the need for LGBTQ activists to mobilize is at a level that she hasn’t seen in years.

“This is not unprecedented, but this is a level of attack that we’ve not seen for quite awhile,” she said.

The Star’s Daniel Desrochers contributed to this story.

JUST TRANSITION

Alberta renewable energy surge could power 4,500 jobs


Unique market is attracting billions of dollars from companies looking for cheap clean energy, or carbon offsets.

Drew Anderson, The NarwhalPrairies reporter
Published on Jan. 16, 2023, 3:00 AM

The Narwhal and The Weather Network are working together to find new audiences for environmental journalism. Combining The Narwhal's in-depth reporting with The Weather Network's trusted national reach, the two organizations aim to bring more people into the conversation about the climate crisis by highlighting the most important issues and the possible solutions.

Alberta has seen a massive increase in corporate investment in renewable energy since 2019, and capacity from those deals is set to increase output by two gigawatts — enough to power roughly 1.5 million homes.

“Our analysis shows $3.7 billion worth of renewables construction by 2023 and 4,500 jobs,” said Nagwan Al-Guneid, the director of Business Renewables Centre Canada.

The centre is an initiative of the environmental think tank Pembina Institute and provides education and guidance for companies looking to invest in renewable energy or energy offsets across Canada. Its membership is made up of renewable energy companies.

The addition of two gigawatts is over two times the amount of renewable energy added to the grid between 2010 and 2017, according to the Canadian Energy Regulator.

“This is driven directly by what we call power purchase agreements,” Al-Guneid says. “We have companies from across the country coming to Alberta.”

So far this year, 191 megawatts of renewable energy will be added through purchase agreements, according to the Business Renewables Centre.

Alberta’s electricity system is unique in Canada — an open market where companies can ink deals directly with private power producers to buy a set amount of electricity produced each year, either for use or for offset credits.

The financial security provided by those contracts helps producers build out more renewable projects without market risks.

In 2020, Alberta generated 52% of Canada's total GHG emissions from power generation. NOT FROM TARSANDS

 (Rachel Maclean/The Weather Network)

Purchasers get cheap renewable energy or credits to meet internal or external emissions goals.

It differs from other provinces where there is a monopoly, often government-owned, on power supply.

In those provinces, investment in renewables largely depends on whether the company with the monopoly is in a buying mood, says Blake Shaffer, an economics professor at the University of Calgary who studies electricity markets.

That’s not the case in Alberta, where the only real regulatory hurdle is applying to connect a project to the grid.

“Once that’s approved, you can just go ahead and build it, and you can sell it,” Shaffer says.

That sort of flexibility has attracted some big investments, including two deals with Amazon in 2021 to purchase 455 megawatts worth of solar energy from Calgary-based Greengate Power. There are also big investments from oil companies looking to offset emissions.

The investments are allowing Alberta to decarbonize its grid, largely with the backing of the private sector.

Shaffer says Alberta is the “renewables capital in Canada.”

“That just shocks people because of course their association with Alberta is nothing about renewables, but oil and gas,” Shaffer says. “But it really is the investment centre for renewables in the entire country right now.”

Alberta has ‘embarrassing’ riches in wind energy and solar power

It’s not just the market that is driving Alberta’s renewables boom. According to Shaffer there are three other key factors: an embarrassment of wind and solar riches, the need to transition away from a traditionally dirty, coal-reliant grid and the current high costs of energy.

Shaffer says the strong and seemingly non-stop winds coming off the foothills of the Rockies in the southwest of the province mean each turbine produces more energy compared to other areas. The same is true for solar, with an abundance of sunny days.

“Southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan have the best solar insolation,” he says. “You put a panel in Vancouver, or you put a panel in Medicine Hat, and you’re gonna get about 50 per cent more energy out of that panel in Medicine Hat, and they’re gonna cost you the same.”

The spark that set off the surge in investments wasn’t strictly an open-market mechanism. Under the previous NDP government, the province brought in a program that allowed private producers to compete for government contracts.

The government agreed to a certain price and the producers were then allowed to sell their electricity on the open market. If the price dropped below what was guaranteed, the province would pay the difference. If, however, the price was higher, the developers would pay the difference to the government.

The program was a success — Shaffer says the government made money off of it — and demonstrated just how cheap that electricity could be.

“This kicked off the surge of buyers seeking to purchase renewable energy because industry saw how good of a deal the government got for Albertans,” Al-Guneid says. “Once that was accomplished, the private sector picked up the ball and ran with it.”

Nagwan Al-Guneid, the director of Business Renewables Centre Canada, says corporate contracts with private energy developers are driving a surge in Alberta’s renewable energy capacity.

(Business Renewables Centre Canada)

The current United Conservative government ended the program in 2019, but Shaffer says the void has been completely filled by the private sector. Emissions targets and carbon pricing are also driving companies to invest in renewables.

But the current surge in renewable investments doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges ahead, or a role for government intervention.

Success and targets bring challenges for Alberta’s renewable energy

Dan Balaban is the CEO of Greengate Power, a renewable energy company based in Calgary, and one of the founding members of Business Renewables Centre Canada. His company developed the biggest wind farm in Canada and is building the biggest solar farm — helped by that big contract from Amazon.

Balaban says supply chain issues that have wracked almost every part of the economy throughout the COVID-19 pandemic are affecting the renewable energy sector, too. He also says there has to be more investment — from government and the private sector — in both energy storage and transmission lines if renewables are to reach ambitious goals set by the federal government, including the target of a net-zero grid by 2035.

“The need to build out new transmission infrastructure has traditionally been a very complex and slow process, but if we’re going to keep up with all the demand that we have for renewables, and our needs to decarbonize our electricity system, we have to invest in our infrastructure as well,” Balaban says.

He says Alberta has more work ahead than other provinces in decarbonizing its grid, due to a traditional reliance on fossil fuels, particularly coal.

“The 2035 goal in particular is very ambitious,” Balaban says. “So it’s great that we have a goal, but we need to back up that goal with tangible support to get us there.”

Balaban wants to see better tax breaks for net-zero technologies and the introduction of tax breaks for renewables, at least on par with the 50 per cent that was offered for carbon capture and storage in the last federal budget.

Construction at TransAlta’s 130 MW Garden Plain wind farm, located near Hanna, Alta., was nearing completion in October 2022. Once it's up and running, its five 102.5-metre high towers will provide power for long-term contracts with companies like Pembina Pipeline

. (Rachel Maclean/The Weather Network)

The Canadian Renewable Energy Association says achieving net-zero by 2050 will require Canada to build, on average, almost 5.5 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity every year.

“We’re nowhere near on track to do that,” Balaban says.

Government intervention will also be needed for big strategic decisions, including building those transmission lines and possibly some large-scale storage, according to Shaffer.

Some of that storage capacity will be needed to prevent a surge in renewables from destroying the financial incentive to build them. If solar generation increases dramatically, for example, and all those panels surge at the same time while the sun is at its brightest, that drives the price of the electricity down and makes it unprofitable. Storage would allow that energy to feed into the grid when needed, rather than all at once.

It’s part of a fine balance, where too much success can create its own bottlenecks. Al-Guneid, from Business Renewables Centre Canada, is concerned that too many projects coming in all at once could slow down regulatory approvals and impact the ability of companies to reach their targets on time.
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Her organization, which helps with that process, has reduced the time it takes to approve an application from about four years to as little as a year, she says.

“So it’ll kind of be that sort of push and pull going forward, but right now, we’re definitely in that phase of just building, building, building,” Shaffer said.

“We’ll probably start to see some of that congestion and price depression creep in here. But the thing that renewables have going for them is, even as their value kind of diminishes the more they get built, they’re just so cheap right now relative to anything else, especially when you include their carbon costs.”

This article, written by Drew Anderson, was originally published for The Narwhal.

Thumbnail image: The Travers Solar Farm in southern Alberta is the largest of its kind in Canada and has a massive contract with Amazon that allows it to avoid market volatility. (Greengate Power)

Generating solar power in space just took a major leap forward


Generating solar power in space just took a major leap forward

Isabella O'Malley, M.Env.Sc
Sun, January 22, 2023 

It might sound more fiction than science, but what if you could generate solar power 24/7 by launching solar panels into space and beaming the energy back to Earth? Well, the idea just got one step closer to reality.

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology have successfully launched the Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD) into orbit as part of the Caltech Space Solar Power Project (SSPP), which aims to test how the device could generate solar power while in orbit and wirelessly transmit the energy back to Earth.

The SSPD, which weighs just 50 kilograms, was fixed onto a Momentus Vigoride spacecraft that was then transported to space by a SpaceX rocket on January 3. After reaching the optimal altitude within ten minutes of launch, the Momentus spacecraft was then deployed.

Scientists posing with the Momentus Vigoride spacecraft.

When sunlight strikes the photovoltaic (PV) cells on the SSPD, the light is converted into microwaves that travel to antennas on Earth, which convert the microwaves into electricity. The research team states that microwave transmission is safe because it is a form of non-ionizing radiation, meaning that it cannot remove an electron from an atom or molecule and cannot damage DNA.

“Non-ionizing radiation at the [Earth’s] surface is significantly less harmful than standing in the sun,” Ali Hajimiri, Caltech professor and co-director of SSPP, said in an October press release.

One of the main research objectives of the SSPD is to study how a structure measuring approximately two metres in length and width could eventually be scaled into a kilometre-scale constellation that would form the main power system.

Two other main objectives include analyzing the performance of the microwave power transmitters and testing how 32 different types of PV cells perform in harsh space conditions over a six-month period.

Some of the key challenges the team is evaluating are the cost of launching solar panels that are bulky and relatively heavy, as well as the need for extensive wiring to transmit energy back to Earth. To work around these hurdles, ultrathin composite materials were designed from scratch to keep the SSPD light, cost-effective, and resilient enough to withstand space travel.

An interior photo captured by a camera on the Space Solar Power Demonstrator.

An interior photo captured by a camera on the Space Solar Power Demonstrator. (California Institute of Technology)

Cameras attached to the SSPD are being monitored by the researchers who aim to complete a full assessment within several months.

"No matter what happens, this prototype is a major step forward," Hajimiri said in a recent press release.

"It works here on Earth and has passed the rigorous steps required of anything launched into space. There are still many risks, but having gone through the whole process has taught us valuable lessons. We believe the space experiments will provide us with plenty of additional useful information that will guide the project as we continue to move forward," Hajimiri said.

The research team believes that some of the main benefits of this technology are accessing the unlimited supply of solar power at a higher intensity and without interruptions, such as changing seasons or clouds.

Watch below: Solar guru's TikTok making the tech more approachable
Click here to view the video

The team aims to eventually launch a constellation of modular spacecraft that will produce energy for many areas around the world, especially in places that do not have access to reliable sources of electricity.

Despite this sector's infancy, there are already several players that are researching and developing space-based solar power (SBSP) technologies. The federal governments in China, the United Kingdom, and the United States are in various stages of studying and developing SBSP projects. Private companies, such as Airbus, are also experimenting with beaming energy over small distances in hopes of one day scaling their projects.

 PHOTOS California Institute of Technology