These guys really don't care': 

TTC employee draws praise after 

blasting Toronto Mayor John Tory, 

chaotic system

Toronto, a world-class city, is 'frazzled and on edge' because 

of its underwhelming transit system, expert says

Elianna Lev

Thu, January 26, 2023

Toronto’s Transit Commission, along with Mayor John Tory are facing a flood of backlash after a spate of violent attacks aboard various transport services over the last few months, as well as chaotic and severely delayed service during this week’s snow storm.

The pattern of lacking services, combined with violence the TTC has faced recently has made many people fed up and unsettled using public transit. The most recent attack on Wednesday involved the stabbing of a 16-year-old boy on a bus, which resulted in serious injuries. Earlier in the week, one person was arrested for allegedly chasing a pair of TTC workers with a syringe.

It appears even TTC drivers are fed up with the chaotic situation. Earlier this week, when Toronto was hit by a winter storm, a rider captured a subway announcement in which the TTC employee candidly relayed that there was no service between several stations, and to take up their displeasure with Toronto Mayor John Tory.

I do apologize for the lack of communications from transit control. These guys really don’t care what you guys are doing.TTC employee on speaker

The brave employee's actions were immediately praised by social media viewers who empathize with the staff struggle.

Many others took to social media to voice their concerns and frustrations with the delayed and cancelled services and crowded platforms that overwhelmed the system during Wednesday’s snow dump.

Toronto's transit system is 'microcosm' for wider society

'Swarming' attack by 10 to 15 young people leaves 2 transit workers hurt: Toronto police

Toronto police are investigating a 'swarming' assault of two TTC employees on a bus in the city's east end on Monday afternoon, police and the transit agency say.

Matti Siemiatycki is the director of the Infrastructure Institute and a professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. He says the feeling that things are falling apart at the seams when it comes to public transit stem from larger issues in the city, like lack of mental health services and the need for more affordable housing.

“Transit is a microcosm of wider society,” he tells Yahoo Canada News. “Transit is the focus point right now because so many high profile events have happened on public transit.”

He says the issues with the TTC also fall against the backdrop of the city’s budget, which recently involved cutting transit services and raising fares.

There’s concern that transit is going to enter the death spiral of lower ridership, then service cutbacks, raising fares and the spiral continues. Issues around safety and personal security are really just amplifying it. The safety and reliability of a transit system are critical to the functioning of a big city like Toronto.Matti Siemiatycki, Director of the Infrastructure Institute, Geography and Planning professor, University of Toronto

He adds that a city’s success is undermined once people start looking into other ways to get around, in order to avoid taking public transit. Central issues like housing for those without it and services for people struggling with addiction and mental health challenges are critical to address in order for things to shift.

“It’s really imperative that solutions are found quickly,” Siemiatycki says. “We need to be thinking about the underlying causes here but there is an immediacy of a city that’s frazzled and on edge. “

In response to the recent TTC safety issues, Toronto police are increasing 'daily presence' of officers on the city's transit system starting this week. Upwards of 80 officers will be present on all lines, and are encouraged to chat with passengers and staff members to catch "crimes of opportunity."

Toronto Mayor John Tory also suggested a summit that would bring mayors, ministers, premiers and the PM together to discuss people living with mental health and addiction. He reassured the public that Toronto is doing everything it can.

"The TTC must be safe for everyone, without exception," he said.

—With files from CBC News

COYOTES ARE URBAN ANIMALS
Toronto residents shocked to see coyote running through the streets, 'steps from the CN Tower'

Do not approach coyotes, their dens or their young, the city warns
        
Abhya Adlakha
·Editor, Yahoo News Canada
Mon, January 30, 2023 

A coyote was spotted roaming around a downtown Toronto neighbourhood on Monday morning. (Twitter/ Adrian Ghobrial)

A coyote was spotted running around Toronto on Monday morning.

According to a video captured by CTV News' Adrian Ghobrial, the coyote was seen running around Queens Quay near the CN Tower around 9 a.m.

"Happening now: a coyote is running along Queens Quay in Toronto’s Harbourfront community just steps from the CN tower. Take a look as it surprises multiple pedestrians," Ghobrial tweeted.

In the video, the coyote is seen sauntering around pedestrians on the sidewalk before running across the street just before a truck and a streetcar passes by.

According to an advisory by the City of Toronto, coyotes don't pose a danger to people but can be dangerous for pets.

"They are active during the day and at night, particularly dusk and dawn, and help to control rodent and rabbit populations," the advisory reads.

"Coyotes will eat whatever food is available such as small mammals and birds, and improperly stored garbage."

The city also offers tips regarding people who spot coyotes:

Never feed coyotes


Do not approach coyotes, their dens or their young


Do not touch coyotes, even if they appear tame, sick or injured


Keep your dog on a leash


If you see a coyote, do not run but make some noise to scare it away


Dispose of garbage and waste before leaving parks

People are also advised to call 311 whenever they spot a coyote in a park or an open area.

https://theconversation.com/coyotes-are-here-to-stay-in-north-american-cities-heres-how-to-appreciate-them-from-a-distance-186893

Coyotes are here to stay in North American cities - The Conversation 

Aug 3, 2022 ... Studies show that urban coyotes generally avoid direct interactions with people. A long-term study in Chicago found that these animals are ...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/urban-coyotes-eat-lot-garbageand-cats-180974461

Urban Coyotes Eat a Lot of Garbage—and Cats | Smart News 

Mar 23, 2020 ... Coyotes thrive in urban environments—in fact, these crafty canids can now be found in nearly every city in the United States.

RIP 

Blackhawks legend Bobby Hull dies at 84

Hull notched 610 goals and 1,170 points in 1,063 NHL games and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983.

Arun Srinivasan
·Writer
Mon, January 30, 2023 

Bobby Hull, a Hockey Hall of Famer and Chicago Blackhawks legend, has passed away at the age of 84. (Getty Images)

Former Chicago Blackhawks winger Bobby Hull died at 84 on Monday, the NHL Alumni Association confirmed.

Hull is widely considered one of the greatest players in NHL history, winning the Hart Trophy twice, three scoring titles and is considered by some to be the greatest Blackhawks player ever. He broke into the league as a teenager but truly emerged in his third season, where he recorded 39 goals and 81 points during the 1959-60 campaign, before lifting the Stanley Cup the following season. Hull notched 610 goals and 1,170 points in 1,063 NHL games and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983.

Nicknamed “The Golden Jet,” Hull was known to shoot with tremendous velocity and helped popularize the slap shot. Some have incorrectly attributed the development of the slap shot to him, although it was invented by Eddie Martin of the Coloured Hockey League's Halifax Eureka in the early 1900s. He was also instrumental in the widespread adoption of curved stick blades — then referred to as "banana blades" — in the 1960s. In response, the NHL implement a rule — widely regarded as the Bobby Hull Rule — limiting the curvature of the blade due to the dangers it posed to goaltenders, who didn't all wear masks at the time.

Hull was an outsized figure in the hockey world and he contested the NHL’s hegemony over professional hockey, believing that he was underpaid relative to his stature in the league. As a result, Hull joined the World Hockey Association’s (WHA) Winnipeg Jets for the 1972-73 season, while still in the latter stages of his prime. Hull played for the Jets until 1979-80, then returned to the NHL for a brief nine-game stint with the Hartford Whalers during the same season.

Off the ice, Hull was a more complex figure and an accurate biography cannot overlook his numerous transgressions. Hull told a Russian newspaper in 1998 that the Nazis were not without merit and that Adolf Hitler had good ideas. He openly said that he did not care if he was perceived to be a racist. Hull was accused by his wife, Joanne, and his third wife, Deborah, of domestic assault and battery. He was convicted of assaulting a police officer during an 1986 domestic dispute with Deborah. His daughter, Michelle, spoke openly in 2002 that Hull would become abusive when he drank and she became a lawyer for victims of domestic abuse in large part due to her father’s actions. Chicago dropped Hull as a team ambassador in February 2022.

Hull is the father of NHL legend Brett Hull, who went on to score 741 goals in the NHL. They are the only father-and-son combination to have both won the Hart Trophy.

'Hazel McCallion was unstoppable': Politicians, internet react to former mayor's death

The former mayor of Mississauga, Ont. died at her home at the age of 101.


Chris Stoodley
·Lifestyle and News Editor
Sun, January 29, 2023 

Hazel McCallion, who earned the nickname "Hurricane Hazel," died at the age of 101. (Photo by Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images)

People on social media are mourning the death of "trailblazer" Hazel McCallion, who died at age 101.

Known for her tenacity in Canadian politics, McCallion led Mississauga, Ont. as mayor for 12 terms, up until she was 94-years-old. She was the city's fifth mayor between 1978 and 2014.

"My dear friend Hazel was an extraordinary woman who wore many hats: A businessperson, an athlete, a politician and one of Canada's — and the world's — longest-serving mayors. Nicknamed 'Hurricane Hazel' for her bold political style, she was unstoppable," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote in a statement.

"She inspired countless others, including myself, in her decades of tireless and selfless service. I will miss her as a friend, and I'll always cherish the conversations we had, and the wisdom she shared over the years."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford shared his statement on Sunday morning, announcing that McCallion died "peacefully" at her Mississauga home.

"Hazel was the true definition of a public servant. She dedicated her long life to her community, including 36 years as mayor of Mississauga — the longest serving mayor in the city's history," Ford shared in his statement. "She led the transformation of Mississauga into one of Canada's largest cities. Hazel's mark on her community can be found in the many places and organizations that bear her name, including the Hazel McCallion Line.

"There isn't a single person who met Hazel who didn't leave in awe of her force of personality. I count myself incredibly lucky to have called Hazel my friend over these past many years. As I entered the world of politics, I was fortunate enough to learn from her wisdom and guidance, which she selflessly offered until the very end."

Bonnie Crombie, Mississauga's current mayor, shared her own statement Sunday morning, noting her "condolences" to the city's first-ever female mayor.

"Today, we grieve the loss of Mississauga's matriarch, Hazel McCallion — a fierce and passionate leader who touched the lives of many and who served as an inspiration to women in politics across the country. On behalf of the City of Mississauga, I offer my condolences to the entire McCallion family, who are mourning the loss of their mother and grandmother today," she penned in her statement.

"Hazel lived a good life, and the truth is that even in her final days, she never stopped giving back to this great city and to the people who proudly call it home. As our first female mayor at a very critical time in our history, she helped grow and shape Mississauga from farmland and fruit trees into the seventh-largest city in Canada with a quality of life that is 'second to none.'"

Social media users shared in the mourning of McCallion's death. Posts from politicians, Canadians and more left her name trending on Twitter.

UK
Tea and cake breaks are healthy for office morale


Sun, 29 January 2023


THE GUARDIAN / LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

It saddens me deeply that the chair of a national agency should be so dismissive of the human relations aspect of work (People should not take cakes into the office, suggests food watchdog chief, 17 January). Many friendships develop in occupational settings, and I recall fondly playing cricket for my first psychology department, and playing an elephant in my first hospital Christmas pantomime. Decades later, I am still in contact with friends I made in those two jobs.

The late Bill Keatinge demonstrated the value of a weekly collective tea break with a few biscuits or cupcakes. The then London Hospital Medical College had many departments, but the friendliest and perhaps the most stable and productive was the department where Prof Keatinge budgeted for someone to make tea, where workmates who wanted a sit-down chat knew they would all be welcome. I would not support a constant exposure to sugar and fat (that might be obesogenic), but in work settings where there is no opportunity to play a pantomime elephant (or even to have a leisurely lunch together), it may be quite supportive sometimes to share tea and cake.
Woody Caan
Retired professor of public health

• Prof Susan Jebb, chairwoman of the Food Standards Agency, suggests that people should not bring cake into the office for the sake of their colleagues’ health. She has a point. Although retired for a number of years, I still remember how difficult it was to resist temptation on the frequent occasions that colleagues brought in delicious home-baked cakes when I worked for Food Standards Agency Wales.
Mike Pender
Cardiff

In Brazil, Forests Returned to Indigenous Hands See Recovery, Study Finds

Mon, January 30, 2023

Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Alex Popovkin via Wikipedia

Granted formal rights to their ancestral lands in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, Indigenous people have stemmed forest loss and improved tree cover, a new study finds.

“Our paper shows that each year after tenure was formalized, there was a 0.77 percent increase in forest cover, compared to untenured lands, on average — which can add up over decades,” Rayna Benzeev, who helmed the study while a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a statement.

The Atlantic Forest, which runs along more than 1,800 miles of the Brazilian coast, has been heavily denuded. Less that 12 percent of the original forest remains, with intact areas often found in Indigenous lands.

To gauge the impact of granting Indigenous people land tenure, the study looked at satellite imagery of 129 Indigenous territories in the Atlantic Forest from 1985 to 2019. It found less deforestation and more reforestation in the 77 areas where Indigenous communities had land tenure, as compared with the 52 areas where Indigenous communities were still working toward land tenure. The findings were published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

“These communities often have a strong incentive to conserve and restore forests,” said Peter Newton, an environmental researcher at the University of Colorado and a coauthor of the study. “Institutional support and legal recognition can help them protect forests more effectively.”

In the past decade, the process of granting land tenure has stalled for hundreds of Indigenous communities. Only one community included in the study has won formal tenure rights since 2012.

“Much of the stagnation in the land tenure process has taken place in recent years and mainly for political reasons,” Benzeev said. “This is exactly what makes the legal component of tenure important: when tenure is legally granted, Indigenous peoples are able to gain territorial autonomy irrespective of political shifts over time.”

The Bloody Reign of Terror That Almost Destroyed the Amazon


Lewis Beale
Sat, January 28, 2023

AFP via Getty Images

One landowner was known for chainsawing in half the peasants who refused to sell their land to him. Another had a jar in his office in which he kept the severed ears of the men he had ordered murdered. There were as many as 20 clandestine cemeteries used to dispose of the remains of murdered workers. And whole populations of Indigenous people had been wiped out by dynamite, machine guns, and sugar laced with arsenic.

This was, and in some ways still is, the Amazon rain forest, a lawless land of legal impunity and environmental degradation, where to be an activist or peasant fighting against land grabs and slave labor-like working conditions is courting death.

“In the Brazilian rain forest, grilagem, or land grabbing, is a central cause of deforestation, violence, and the array of crimes associated with illicit forest economies—fraud, money laundering, corruption,” says Heriberto Araujo, author of Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World’s Last Frontier. “And in the 1970s,” he adds, “the reigning lawlessness prompted some criminals and psychopaths to take extreme actions in order to earn a name in the region. By becoming an evil myth, they perhaps could deter squatters from claiming their land-grabbed ranches and farms.”

Araujo’s book is centered on the Brazilian state of Para, the country’s second largest, which has accounted for the largest number of land control murders, and 80 percent of Brazil’s 18,000 slave labor complaints. In explaining what is happening there, and all over the Amazon, he focuses his story on several key players in the area: Dezinho, president of the rural workers union, who is eventually murdered for his advocacy; Maria Joel, his wife, who takes up the causes he fought for; Joselio, a landowner accused of torture, murder and enslavement; and Decio Nunes, a lumber baron twice convicted of murder who has yet to spend a day in prison.

More Than a Third of What’s Left of the Amazon Rainforest Is Dying

Araujo, who was interviewed by The Daily Beast via email from his home in Spain, believes that accountability is a central problem in this area, that “those who violate the law, either because they deforest an area or commit a violent crime, including murder, often manage to dodge prison. The fact that many crimes are committed through middlemen and hired killers represents a challenge for the police and the prosecution offices.”

The numbers seem to bear this out. From 1985-2018, of the 1,790 land and resource-related murders in Brazil, most of them in the Amazon, 92 percent resulted in no arrest or trial. But if this sounds all Wild West, Araujo cautions that there are significant differences between how the American West and Brazilian Amazon were opened up for development, and the land rushes that followed. In the latter, he says, “the federal government never really succeeded, if it ever really attempted, to put in place an effective and lawful system to distribute public lands among the population. The U.S. [government] did play a crucial role in systematically overviewing, if not controlling, the distribution of plots and the records of that process to prevent major fights for land. I don’t argue it was perfect, but it was done in a more professional way than in Brazil.”

The Amazon was essentially opened for major development in 1966 under Operation Amazonia, a campaign to develop and settle the jungle, which included construction of roads to, and into, the interior. But in 1969, when an Indigenous tribe slaughtered a peasant family, the country was forced to develop a policy that protected their lands against invasion. Still, according to the Jornal do Brasil as quoted in Araujo’s book, this didn’t stop planters and cattlemen with powerful ties in other states who had illegally “demarcated great areas, including in the Indian territory, and sold the land, without any deeds, to colonists.” Other pioneers, simply by clearing the land, became owners of it, the idea being that whoever cleared a plot became its owner, no matter the legislation. This became known in Brazil as “Land for people without land.” The harm to nature was seen as the price of progress, and, says Araujo in his book, “the world cared about the fate of the forest, but the immediate concern of many breadwinners was getting a job.”

Eventually the government began to prioritize massive farms, no longer supported the little guy, and by the early years of this century, soybeans had become a major crop, with iron or and gold mining also contributing to the despoliation of the land (The Guardian recently reported about a 75-mile long illegal road cut through an Indigenous reserve to reach an outlaw gold mine). But because of this, the country was also becoming an agricultural superpower, and under the presidency of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) exports tripled.

Still, there was progress in the early years of this century when, says Araujo, “illegal deforestation reached historic lows, and the reason for that progress was that the federal government had allocated resources to fight the networks of criminals behind the looting of the jungle.”

But that progress ground to a halt under the rule of President Jair Bolsonaro when, Araujo claims, “there was a real and purported attempt to destroy that capacity and knowledge, both because he removed key figures and underfunded the environmental agencies fighting the criminal networks operating deep in the forest. As a result, deforestation spiked and those reporting on these problems became a target.” Proof of this came last year, with the murders of Indigenous activist Bruno Pereira and journalist Dom Phillips, an incident that drew international attention to the ongoing lawlessness in the Amazon.

And yet there is hope going forward. Lula’s recent re-election signifies an end to Bolsonaro’s destructiveness, and just days into his new term in office, Lula has named an Amazon activist as minister of environment and an Indigenous woman as the country’s first minister of Indigenous peoples. He has also pledged that unlike his second term in the early 2000s, when he began catering to farmers, he is now embracing proposals for preservation.

Can he make a real difference? “Lula faces multiple challenges,” says Araujo, “from a sophisticated and violent criminality to a widespread mind-set that considers the Amazon a place to plunder. Ultimately, I think he has a chance to end illegal logging if the international community takes part in the process of setting the foundations to sustainable development. The Amazon requires a new model of development that puts at the center the whole system—the rainforest and its people, including Indigenous populations.”

The Daily Beast.

BLUE HYDROGEN
Exxon Mobil sets large-scale hydrogen plant start-up for 2027

Mon, January 30, 2023
By Sabrina Valle

HOUSTON, Jan 30 (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp disclosed on Monday its plan to start operations at its large-scale hydrogen plant in Texas in 2027 or 2028, Exxon's Low Carbon business president Dan Ammann told Reuters.

The unit is part of Exxon's efforts to create a new business to make money out of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from other companies looking to decarbonize their own operations. Exxon estimates 10% or more of return for the business.

Exxon has budgeted $7 billion for hydrogen, carbon capture and biofuels projects between 2022 and 2027. A final investment decision for the hydrogen project is expected by 2024.

"People will see that this works and that it can be economically viable," Ammann said.

Exxon said its Baytown facility in Texas is expected to produce 1 billion cubic feet of blue hydrogen per day. The fuel, which produces no emissions when burnt, is targeted at heavy industries trying to switch from fossil to renewable fuels.

Blue hydrogen is made from natural gas in combination with carbon capture. Exxon plans to permanently bury underground 98% of the associated CO2 produced, or about 7 million metric tons annually.

Last year, Exxon struck its first commercial carbon storage deal with the world's top ammonia maker CF Industries under an effort to target a projected $4 trillion CCS market by 2050. Ammonia in its liquid form can be used to transport hydrogen to different parts of the world, as a hydrogen carrier.

"You are starting to see the foundation of our Low Carbon solutions business taking shape," Ammann said. (Reporting by Sabrina Valle; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

UK
Anger over 'disruption' caused by Esso pipeline project

Chris Yandell
Sun, 29 January 2023 

Mandy Shannon runs Four Marks Golf Course, which has been cut in two by the pipeline work. Photo: BBC (Image: BBC)

BUSINESSES and landowners have hit out at the disruption being caused by the installation of a new underground pipeline between Southampton and London.

Esso is currently constructing a 90km facility that will transport aviation fuel from Boorley Green to an Esso storage facility at Hounslow, near Heathrow Airport.

Described as nationally important, it will replace part of a pipeline that already links Fawley refinery to the capital.

The new section is due to be completed next year and will carry the equivalent of 100 road tankers' worth of fuel each day between Southampton and Hounslow.

READ MORE: Activist who disrupted Hampshire to London pipeline is jailed

Protesters include Mandy Channon, who runs Four Marks Golf Course near Alton. She said the course had been sliced in two by the work, leaving the top four holes inaccessible.

Esso has made an interim compensation payment.

But Ms Shannon said the muddy corridor where the work was being carried out would need to be re-seeded so grass could grow before the section of the course could be reopened.

She told the BBC she would be left with "half a golf course" until next year.

"If it weren't for the members, the locals, the pool team, I'd have no business," she said.

READ MORE: Hampshire to London pipeline given the green light

Other critics include Sarah Oppenheimer, owner of the Headmore Stud, who said a horse was frightened by a digger and bolted from its field, injuring its front leg.

Ms Oppenheimer said the horse was found three-quarters of a mile away "in a very distressed state".

She added: "They should have been out by October. "We're nearly in February and they're still up there with their diggers and it's just going on and on."

Esso has agreed to pay for the horse's veterinary treatment.

In a statement the company said existing agreements with the vast majority of landowners required it to make payments to compensate for any losses.

Local teams were in contact with those affected by the work and it was "grateful for residents' continued patience" during the final stage of the project.

RIGHT WING PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Trump's Justice Department Goons Oversaw an Actual Witch Hunt While He Screamed About One

Jack Holmes
Mon, January 30, 2023 

Trump's Attorney General Oversaw Actual Witch Hunt

Sorry, but even in this age of goldfish-brain news cycles, we cannot allow a certain development from last week to just fade into obscurity. You may remember that Donald Trump, American president, loved to say the investigation into whether his campaign coordinated with Russia's effort to influence the 2016 election was a "witch hunt" pursued by shadowy bureaucrats with an ax to grind. In his telling, that investigation was opened for political reasons, without justification, and that's why it dragged on forever and ultimately concluded with Special Counsel Robert Mueller declaring "NO COLLUSION!" and shooting off a bunch of confetti like a gender reveal. It was such an egregious violation that it required a counter-investigation overseen by Trump's attorney general, Bill Barr, and his hand-picked hard-nosed prosecutor, John Durham. They would find justice.

Well, the counter-investigation was everything he said about the Russia investigation, as a fantastic report from the New York Times laid out last week. The former took way longer than the latter and failed to uncover anything they said it would. But more than that, it was an actual witch hunt. By the summer of 2020, it was clear Durham had failed, and the Justice Department inspector general published a report that found no evidence the FBI was politically motivated in 2016. But Trump was absolutely losing it on Fox News, floating that Obama and Biden would be indicted for their offenses against him—"the single biggest political crime in the history of our country"—and the only way they wouldn't be was if his two pet prosecutors, Barr and Durham, decided to be "politically correct." (God forbid!) Enter the Times:

Against that backdrop, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham did not shut down their inquiry when the search for intelligence abuses hit a dead end. With the inspector general’s inquiry complete, they turned to a new rationale: a hunt for a basis to accuse the Clinton campaign of conspiring to defraud the government by manufacturing the suspicions that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, along with scrutinizing what the F.B.I. and intelligence officials knew about the Clinton campaign’s actions.

So having failed to produce the goods in time to give Trump some political ammunition for the 2020 election, they just kept the investigation going with an entirely new focus? They came up with nothing, so they started to work the name "Clinton" in there? How is that even the same investigation? It isn't, except for one crucial respect: It continued as a vehicle for Trump's shadowy accusations against his political opponents. As long as the investigation was "ongoing," he had extra salt on his claims that anyone caught up in it was disgustingly corrupt. In this respect, it's a lot like the Ukraine extortion that got Trump impeached the first time: He just wanted Zelenskyy to announce Ukraine was opening an investigation into the Bidens. The subtext, of course, was that Trump would do the rest.

Durham seems to be another guy whose lifelong reputation for honest work could not survive a run-in with Donald Trump.Getty Images

It's clear from his public behavior throughout that Barr—again, the attorney general of the United States—also considered the investigation a political endeavor. As the Times traces, Barr fought the inspector general's report, fearing its (honest) conclusions could endanger his and Durham's probe. He was on Fox News all the time misrepresenting what their counter-investigation was doing and what it had uncovered about the original investigation, just as he'd done with his "summary" of the Mueller report. He waited until after the 2020 election to admit their probe had failed to find evidence to support the conclusion they'd decided on beforehand. And most appallingly, there was The Italian Job.

...Italian officials — while denying any role in setting off the Russia investigation — unexpectedly offered a potentially explosive tip linking Mr. Trump to certain suspected financial crimes. Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore. But rather than assign it to another prosecutor, Mr. Barr had Mr. Durham investigate the matter himself — giving him criminal prosecution powers for the first time — even though the possible wrongdoing by Mr. Trump did not fall squarely within Mr. Durham’s assignment to scrutinize the origins of the Russia inquiry...

This all remained secret until this Times report, in which there are some further observations about Barr's public behavior. After it became public that Durham's probe now included a criminal investigation, without any specifics about the crime in question, the entire news media was operating on the assumption that it was the Russia investigators who were now under full-on criminal scrutiny. This was false—Trump was under criminal investigation! But "Mr. Barr, who weighed in publicly about the Durham inquiry at regular intervals in ways that advanced a pro-Trump narrative," the Times notes, "chose in this instance not to clarify what was really happening."

So the probe of the Russia investigation actually uncovered possible financial crimes by Donald Trump, but when there was only a partial leak (and who leaked that?), Barr allowed a narrative that was close to the opposite of reality to blossom in the media, all because it was to Trump's political benefit during an election? Oh, and by the way, knowing all this, is the public supposed to have confidence that whatever allegations made by the Italians were properly investigated by Durham and Barr?

And here's where we might mention how amazing it's been to watch the discussion about Trump and Russia play out. Somehow, "famously amoral lout comes to friendship of convenience with authoritarian strongman" is now considered liberal QAnon—Blueanon—and the counterstory pushed by the biggest public liar in American history has gained broad acceptance. Yeah, the liberals who started talking about Trump being a "Russian asset" lost the plot, but his 2016 campaign manager's previous job was working for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine. Paul Manafort also worked directly for one of Putin's closest allies, Oleg Deripaska, a guy who has overseen political influence campaigns in countries all over the world. The Senate Intelligence Committee, at the time controlled by Republicans, published a report that found that "Manafort hired and worked increasingly closely with a Russian national, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer," and that "Manafort sought to secretly share internal campaign information with Kilimnik." At the time, Manafort was millions of dollars in debt to Deripaska and was working for the Trump campaign for free.

Maybe Trump was entirely innocent as all this was going on, unaware of his campaign manager's connections, just as those allegations from the Italians may have been nothing. It's not like this guy had to shutter his university and his foundation after allegations of fraud. It's not like his flagship company has been convicted of fraud. He was not, in fairness, charged with conspiring in the 2016 Russian influence campaign, though that investigation was hindered by Trump's repeated obstruction of justice. But considering that Trump was yelling "witch hunt" while his cronies conducted an actual witch hunt, we should probably keep an eye on the new "Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government" his allies just rolled out.

Apes talk in a ‘language’ that humans can understand, study suggests. But why?

BRENDAN RASCIUS

January 25, 2023

Gary Stewart/AP

It turns out you don’t have to be Jane Goodall to understand apes.

Even untrained humans can decipher ape communication, including gestures related to grooming and sex, according to a new study published on Jan. 24 in the journal PLOS Biology.

The findings suggest humans may be able to tap into shared ancestral knowledge preserved long after our evolutionary split from apes, researchers said.

As part of the study, 5,656 participants were asked to watch a series of 20 videos displaying gestures from chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living ancestors. Only common gestures with confirmed meanings were shown in the experiment.

Some participants, in addition to the videos, were also provided a one-line description of each gesture for context.

Afterwards, participants chose the meaning that they thought best matched each gesture from a multiple choice list.

Among some of the gestures presented in the videos were the “Big Loud Scratch,” which means an animal wants to be groomed, and the “Object Shake,” which signals a desire to have sex, researchers said.

Participants accurately interpreted the meaning of the gestures at a rate “significantly higher than expected by chance,” researchers said.

“Overall they had 52% accuracy when they just saw the gesture action, and 57% when they were told what happened before the gesture,” Dr. Kirsty Graham, a coauthor of the study, told McClatchy News. “If they were randomly clicking we’d expect about 25% accuracy.”

As to why untrained humans can decode ape signals, researchers are not sure, though they have ventured several guesses.

It’s possible apes and humans just happen to share the ability to interpret meaningful signals due to general intelligence and other visual clues, researchers said. After all, some gestures resemble the actions that they want to happen.

It’s also possible that the shared lexicon is inherited biologically from a common ancestor, illustrating “deep evolutionary continuity between” human and ape communication, researchers said.

“The main takeaway is that we now have a clearer idea where humans fit into the great ape gesture picture,” Graham said. “It seems to be a shared communication system across great apes and one that was likely used by our last common ancestors.”

Though researchers disagree about the exact timetable, recent studies indicate humans ancestors diverged from those of chimpanzees and bonobos about eight million years ago.

If you want to take a try at recognizing ape gestures, the test can be taken online here.