Gautam Adani: Will tycoon’s wealth woes hit India’s green energy dreams?

Soutik Biswas - India correspondent
Tue, February 21, 2023 

The Adani Group plans to spend $70bn in green energy and become a global renewable player by 2030

Two years ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced ambitious plans to make India a green energy colossus.

He pledged cutting emissions to net zero or becoming carbon neutral, meaning not adding to the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere by 2070. (Although its demand for power and emissions are lower than Western countries', India is the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gasses.) Mr Modi also promised for India to get half of its energy from renewable resources by 2030, and by the same year to slash projected carbon emissions by a billion tonnes.

The school dropout's high-risk journey to become Asia's richest man

One businessman who's key to Mr Modi's green energy plans is Gautam Adani, one of Asia's richest men who runs a sprawling port-to-energy conglomerate with seven publicly traded companies, including a renewable energy firm called Adani Green Energy. Mr Adani plans to spend $70bn (£58bn) in green energy and become a global renewable player by 2030. This money is expected to be spent on hybrid renewable power generation, making batteries and solar panels and using wind energy and green hydrogen.

But Mr Adani's recent troubles have raised concerns about whether this means a setback for India's soaring energy ambitions. The listed companies in his group have seen some $120bn wiped off their market value after the US-based investment firm Hindenburg Research published a report accusing it of decades of "brazen" stock manipulation and accounting fraud. The group has dismissed the allegations as malicious and untrue, calling them an "attack on India".

The Adani Group has denied allegations of financial fraud

In the first sign of investors getting skittish, TotalEnergies, a French oil and gas group, put on pause a planned $4bn investment in a green hydrogen project with the Adani Group until there was more "clarity" on the situation. (Total has already invested more than $3bn in energy projects with the group). To calm investors, the group has said that its companies faced no "material refinancing risk or near-term liquidity issues". A spokesperson of the Adani Group told the BBC: "We do not anticipate change in energy transition plans of [the] Adani portfolio".

Experts believe it is too early to determine the impact of recent developments on India's climate plans. "The Adani group is a big player in the green energy space. Some of the fresh investments may be delayed. If they are not able to raise more financing, it will have some impact on green energy investments that it had originally planned," says Vibhuti Garg of the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. "But the momentum in renewable energy will continue."

Coal shortage sparks India's power woes

In the coming decades, India's energy transition will be the biggest in the world. With 1.4 billion people, the country still needs to hook up large swathes of population and the last holdouts with power. India adds a city the size of London to its urban population every year. Industrial activity is increasing. There are more extreme weather events like heatwaves. A push towards electrical vehicles will further exacerbate demand for power.

Not surprisingly, the electricity regulator reckons that demand is expected to double in the next five years. India is the world's second-largest producer and consumer of coal. Three-quarters of the electricity produced uses coal and India is still building thermal plants. Yet the plan is that most of the additional capacity will come from renewable sources. And to reach net zero emissions by 2070, India needs $160bn every year between now and 2030, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That's three times today's level of investment.

Three-quarters of the electricity produced in India uses coal

Apart from the Adani Group, the other big player in green energy are the Ambanis. Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Group, India's biggest firm, plans to spend $80bn on renewable power projects in the western state of Gujarat. Energy giant Tata Group is also revving up its clean energy play. Yet experts say India's insatiable energy demand requires many more players.

"If we need to meet so much of energy demand, we need many more private players, a few big and many small," says Ashwini K Swain of Centre for Policy Research, a Delhi-based think tank. He believes the the numbers of domestic green energy players has to grow. "We cannot work with half a dozen players and a couple of players who are disproportionately big," he says.

Can India's Adani Group recover from $100bn loss?

That's why the Adani Group's troubles could actually be an opportunity for other renewable energy players, says Tim Buckley of Australia-based Climate Energy Finance. He says he sees "huge potential capacity for other national players to "step up, leveraging their domestic skills and capacity, combined with expanding global capital access and interest in investing in Indian renewables and grid infrastructure".

India's total generation capacity of clean and dirty energy is 400 GW - and it plans add 500 GW in clean energy alone by 2030. It is an audacious ambition. A transition of this scale in a country which has depended on coal and oil so far to meet its energy demands is not going to be easy.

Mr Swain believes India should stop expanding coal capacity, and instead move to meeting some of its new demand from cleaner sources. For example, a fifth of India's electricity demand comes from irrigating its vast farms; powering the farms during daytime with solar energy could make everybody happy. "India's progress on renewable energy has been remarkable. There may be some delays and slowdowns, but those should not hamper the renewable energy growth," says Ms Garg.

One killed, a dozen injured after blast at Ohio factory scatters molten debris, starts fire






Explosion rocks Ohio metals plant, media reports

Mon, February 20, 2023 
By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) -An explosion tore through an Ohio metals plant on Monday, scattering molten metal and debris that rained down on neighboring buildings, killing one person and injuring at least a dozen others, officials, witnesses and a media report said.

The blast sent smoke billowing into the sky that could be seen for miles around the damaged factory about 15 miles (24 km) southeast of Cleveland.

The explosion of unknown origin at the I. Schumann & Co. metals plant in Bedford drew fire departments from throughout northeast Ohio.

Oakwood Fire Department Captain Brian DiRocco addressed the media on scene earlier on Monday, saying 13 people were taken to hospital, many of them with burn wounds, and one more was being treated on site.

At least one was in critical condition, and one was pulled from the debris, DiRocco had said. All of those injured were on site, the falling debris having spared those at neighboring businesses.

A spokeswoman for Cuyahoga County confirmed later that a 46-year-old man had died, according to the New York Times.

Both the company and the county officials did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

"The people were mostly walking wounded," DiRocco said. "I'm sure there's a lot of people that work here that were in shock."

DiRocco said he had inspected the site before and found it a safe place "except for the fact that it's a foundry. You are dealing with molten metal, so there's always an inherent danger."

The cause was unknown, and damage to the plant was "significant," the company said.

"We will work alongside investigators in their search for answers as part of our commitment to Northeast Ohio, where we have been operating for more than 100 years," I. Schumann and Co., which produces copper, brass and bronze alloys, said in a statement.

Matthew Wiggins, owner of the neighboring business Rose Colored Gaming, told WOIO he heard a large explosion and that "within a second or two, it sounded like large amounts of debris were hitting the roof."

"Things were falling off the walls, falling off shelves. We went out front and there was like smoldering rocks and molten metal in the yard. Tons and tons of smoke. Fire billowing out of the building across the street," Wiggins said.

Another witness, Joe Sarconi, said a brick wall enclosing the property was obliterated.

"A beam flew across the street. That other beam flew across the street and blew out our window," Sarconi said. "Exciting, but horrible."

The explosion was about 70 miles (112 km) northwest of East Palestine, Ohio, where earlier this month a train loaded with toxic chemicals derailed, causing a fire that sent a cloud of smoke over the town and forced thousands of people to evacuate.

(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, Calif.; Additional reporting by Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru; Editing by Sandra Maler, Chris Reese and Lincoln Feast)

Biden: Japanese American internment camps ‘one of the most shameful periods in American history’



Stephen Neukam
Sun, February 19, 2023 

President Biden on Sunday called the use of internment camps for Japanese Americans in the U.S. during World War II “one of the most shameful periods in American history.”

“When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, eighty-one years ago today, it ushered in one of the most shameful periods in American history,” Biden said in a statement marking the anniversary of Roosevelt’s executive order.

“The incarceration of Japanese Americans reminds us what happens when racism, fear and xenophobia go unchecked,” Biden added. “As we battle for the soul of our nation, we continue to combat the corrosive effects of hate on our democracy and the intergenerational trauma resulting from it.”

Around 120,000 Japanese Americans were held in internment camps during World War II, with Biden saying on Sunday that they “tore families apart.”

“The wrongful internment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent tore families apart,” Biden said. “Men, women and children were forced to abandon their homes, their jobs, their communities, their businesses and their way of life. They were sent to inhumane concentration camps simply because of their heritage.”

In early 2022, Biden signed a bill that designated a former internment camp site in Colorado as a national historic site. The site, where more than 10,000 people were detained, now includes a cemetery, a monument and reconstructed structures from its time as an internment camp.

Groups fighting ‘invasive’ wind farm project near Idaho WW2  incarceration camp site

Shaun Goodwin
Mon, February 20, 2023 

About 80 years ago, on a 33,000-acre plot of land about 60 miles northeast of Twin Falls, over 13,000 people of Japanese descent were incarcerated in a camp over a four-year span because of their ancestry. Those inside the camp were subject to cramped living conditions and often spent their winters struggling to walk through knee-high mud and below-freezing conditions.

But how did they end up there?

At the height of World War II, on Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast of the United States following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese Americans living in “military zones” on the West Coast were deemed a threat to national security and incarcerated in camps throughout the country.

The Minidoka Relocation Center was Idaho’s sole camp. Following the camp’s closing in 1945, much of the land that once belonged to Minidoka — farmed and cultivated by those incarcerated — was auctioned off to local farmers.

The historic footprint of the site is now under threat from a new wind farm project funded by a New York private equity company. The potentially 400-turbine wind farm, called the Lava Ridge Wind Project, would be built directly north of the Minidoka National Historic Site on historic Minidoka land, casting an imposing view over the site.

Despite the region’s dark past that has affected generations of Japanese Americans, some groups are trying to preserve and restore the camp in the name of education, including Friends of Minidoka, the National Park Service and the National Parks Conservation Association.
The Lava Ridge Wind Project

The Lava Ridge Wind Project is being headed by Magic Valley Energy, a subsidiary of investment firm LS Power. Magic Valley Energy has proposed to develop the wind farm on a nearly 200,000-acre area, potentially as close as 2 miles north of Minidoka. The wind farm would power approximately 350,000 houses in Idaho, according to Luke Papez, senior director of project development for Magic Valley Energy.

About 340 of the turbines, which stand approximately 740 feet tall — for comparison the Statue of Liberty is 305 feet tall — would be visible from the visitor center at Minidoka.

Papez told the Idaho Statesman that the company selected the land north of Minidoka for the project because the region is “already crisscrossed and fragmented by several high voltage transmission lines and has a long history of wildfires.”

Magic Valley Energy looked at other locations for the project, Papez said, such as the China Mountain area southwest of Twin Falls and the Cassia Division, also called the South Hills, south of Twin Falls. But concerns about sage grouse and other environmental concerns pushed the company away from those locations and toward Lava Ridge.

The project would occupy about 75,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management land. BLM filed a Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Jan. 20, outlining several alternatives for the project. Some of those alternatives are more imposing than others. BLM is taking public comment on the project until March 23.

“Some of the alternatives have wind towers on the historical footprint (of Minidoka), which is not actually on the (National) Park Service part of the site that exists now,” Janet Keegan, Friends of Minidoka board member, told the Statesman in an interview at the Minidoka National Historic Site in early February.

Friends of Minidoka supports the preservation of the camp for educational purposes. The group works with the National Park Service, which has administered the site since 2001.

“The historic footprint was many thousands of acres,” Keegan continued. “That would be in their original plan of development.”

Today, the Minidoka National Historic Site sits at the center of what was once the Japanese American incarceration camp. The National Park Service took ownership of the land after the camp was named a national monument in 2001. The site includes a visitor center and a few structures from its time as a camp, including a guard tower and housing barracks, spread over a 1,000-acre patch of land.

Two of the original structures at Minidoka National Historic Site have been preserved. A food hall on the left and a barracks were part of a larger camp where 13,000 people of Japanese descent were placed during World War II.

The Lava Ridge Wind Project would also impose upon the land of local farmers and ranchers. Driving along Hunt Road, the long and barren stretch that takes you from Idaho 25 to the historical site, handmade signs are nailed into wooden posts with messages to “Stop Lava Ridge.”

Multiple alternative plans outlined in the DEIS acknowledge the wind farm’s impact on Minidoka, Wilson Butte Cave and wildlife. BLM outlined two alternatives that it thinks would be most effective: Alternative C, which would reduce the farm to 146,389 acres and 378 turbines, and Alternative E, which would reduce it to 122,444 acres and 269 turbines.

Papez said that Magic Valley Energy is comfortable pursuing Alternative C, saying that he thinks it provides a “great compromise.”

“That alternative would incorporate, I believe, it’s up to approximately a five-mile setback from the Minidoka National Historic Site,” Papez said. “And that is really quite a reduction in the visual change to that location.”

Visual simulations created for Alternative C show that the nearest wind turbines would be 5.5 miles from Minidoka but still visible in the distance from the Minidoka visitor center.

“It’s still invasive,” Keegan said. “It’s not like they’d move it clear out of the viewshed.”

A visual simulation showing what the nearest turbine siting corridor would look like from the Minidoka National Historic Site visitors center under Alternative C.

The project’s impact on Minidoka

While there are concerns about the Lava Ridge wind farm creating an imposing view over the site, those included in pushing back against the project are also worried about the historical damage it could inflict.

Robyn Achilles, executive director of Friends of Minidoka, said she was frustrated at how Minidoka was described in the Environmental Impact Statement, a federal document outlining how a project will affect the surrounding environment. Terms like “recreational” and “tourist spot” were used, lumping in Minidoka with other nearby landmarks such as Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve.

“It’s also a sacred place for survivors and descendants to come,” Achilles said in an interview with the Statesman. “So it’s not just an educational space; it really is more of a reflective, sacred healing location for us. So it’s not like a regular park. It’s a site of conscience.”

Large swaths of empty land surround the visitor center. A short walk from the center takes you past a long-abandoned sports field to the left and an abandoned root cellar to the right. At the bottom of the path stands the last standing barracks — locked from the outside and derelict within. Standing silent, all that you can hear is the passing wind.

“It will forever change the immersive and educational experience at Minidoka National Historic Site,” said Robyn Achilles, executive director of Friends of Minidoka. She refers to a commercial energy plan to construct a wind farm on BLM land near the site in Jerome.

Friends of Minidoka’s primary purpose is to act as a supporter and vehicle for education regarding Japanese American incarceration. The group played a part in helping to open the new visitor center in 2020 and has helped protect and restore historic buildings on the site, such as the guard tower and a barrack.

But it’s getting more difficult to fulfill that mission, Keegan said, because of the fight against Lava Ridge. In 2021, Friends of Minidoka spent $18,000 — about 5% of its total income — on resources to push back against the Lava Ridge Wind Project, according to the organization’s financial report.

But it’s not just educational and financial impacts that Friends of Minidoka is concerned about. It’s the larger historical impact, too.

Karen Hirai Olen knows that more than most people. Her parents and grandparents were forcefully removed from their homes and incarcerated because of Executive Order 9066, and Hirai Olen was born in the camp in the summer of 1943. She remained there until her father earned a job as a farmhand about 18 months later, Hirai Olen told the Statesman.

“Minidoka had about 13,000 people pass through it, 70% of whom were American citizens,” Hirai Olen said. “I think it’s something that all communities need to consider. Because the evacuation basically denied that they had any value. And I think that the Lava Ridge Project denigrates our whole history.

“I think it’s important for … my generation to make sure the value of Minidoka is perpetuated. Because otherwise, my parents and grandparents’ struggles are being defined as worthless.”

“I think the Lava Ridge project denegrates our whole history here,” said Karen Hirai Olen, who was born to Japanese American parents at Minidoka. “I think it’s important for sanseis, my generation, to make sure the value of Minidoka is perpetuated.” Lava Ridge is a proposed wind farm that would place as many as 400, 740-foot tall wind turbines in the skyline nearby Minidoka National Historical Site in Jerome, where about 13,000 Japanese Americans were relocated during World War II.

Papez said that Magic Valley Energy is listening to the concerns surrounding the wind farm construction and wants to work with organizations like Friends of Minidoka to come to a solution.

“They have a very important site that is worthy of protection. We’re hoping we can work with them with this project to help tell their story even better,” Papez said. “This is just the draft EIS that shows, ‘here’s what the issues are, how they could be avoided, minimized, or mitigated.’ And it’s at this point where they start to weigh all those items and get further feedback. So there are ways to avoid impact to that historic boundary.”

It’s not just Hirai Olen who understands the pain of what life was like living in incarceration camps. Achilles and Keegan also had family incarcerated at camps — Minidoka was one of 10 camps in the United States.

Whenever Keegan drives down Hunt Road, she said, she can’t help but think how difficult it would have been for her ancestors to live in such a harsh environment. According to Leonard Arrington’s book “History of Idaho,” the flimsy barracks were made from tar paper, and mud around the camp would get so thick in the winter that children and small adults would often sink up to their knees.

Achilles says she thinks about the pain it caused many families, including her own.

“I feel like if they go ahead and push forward with this project, it has similar, in my mind, lines as when they forced removal of the Japanese American community,” Keegan said. “It’s not the appropriate place for a project like this.”
How to get involved

Time is running out for those who want to provide feedback to the BLM on the project near Minidoka. The bureau has tentatively scheduled the final EIS to publish in the late summer and a Record of Decision on whether the project will go ahead in the fall.

Assuming there are no delays, Keegan fears that Magic Valley Energy could begin planning the wind farm by the end of 2023. Papez told the Statesman that if BLM issues its Record of Decision in favor of Magic Valley Energy, construction would likely begin in 2024.

Keegan urges people to read the EIS thoroughly and to submit comments on why the Lava Ridge Wind Project would affect Minidoka and the surrounding area. She also said people can write to their local BLM office or representative, as well as to their legislators and county commissioners.

The Lava Ridge Wind Project would be built on land in Jerome, Lincoln and Minidoka counties.

“Obviously, Friends of Minidoka supports renewable energy,” Achilles said. “And we know we’re in a climate crisis, but we really need to be thoughtful about the full impacts and consequences of these projects on our environment.”

MISSISSIPPI GODDAMN
In Mississippi's Capital, Old Racial Divides Take New Forms


Michael Wines

The New York Times
Mon, February 20, 2023 

Empty streets in the area near the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Feb. 11, 2023. 

(Emily Kask/The New York Times)

JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi’s struggling capital has been a favored target of Republican leaders since the GOP took total control of the state a decade ago. But perhaps none of the slings and arrows flung at Jackson has provoked as much outrage as the one the state House of Representatives loosed earlier this month.

Legislators approved a bill that would establish a separate court system for roughly one-fifth of Jackson, run by state-appointed judges and served by the state-run police force that currently patrols the area around Mississippi government buildings. For the neighborhoods it would cover, the entire apparatus would effectively supplant the existing Hinds County Circuit Court, whose four judges are elected, and the city-run Jackson Police Department.

The proposal might be less provocative if not for the inescapable context: More than 8 in 10 of Jackson’s 150,000 residents, as well as most of its elected leaders, judges and police officers, are African Americans. The proposed court system and the police force would be controlled almost exclusively by white officials in the state government.

Atop that, the new courts and police patrols would serve neighborhoods that contain the bulk of Jackson’s white population. The city’s Black neighborhoods would largely be skirted.

For many prominent Jacksonians, this evoked earlier eras in Mississippi’s complicated racial history. The city’s Black Democratic mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, minced no words after the House vote.

“Some of the other legislators, I was surprised that they came half-dressed, because they forgot to wear their hoods,” he said.

That stung the bill’s chief sponsor, state Rep. John Thomas “Trey” Lamar, a 43-year-old Republican from Mississippi’s rural northwest. Lamar said his bill was a sincere effort to solve two of the city’s most pressing problems: soaring crime and a huge backlog in the courts.

“There’s absolutely nothing about House Bill 1020 — when I say nothing, I mean absolutely zero — that is racially motivated,” he said in an interview.

The debate may seem familiar. The uproar in Jackson retraces old fault lines in American society: race, police violence, fear of crime, partisan rancor between rural Republicans in state legislatures and Democratic leaders of beleaguered, largely Black cities.

But in Mississippi, that template overlays the nation’s poorest state and the one with the greatest percentage of Black citizens. The issue is compounded by a bitter racial history in which old wounds resurface in new forms, never to completely heal.

And in Jackson, a decade of Republican control of the Statehouse has brought a nasty partisan edge to long-standing racial disconnects with the state’s largest city.

The state’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, has sometimes accused Lumumba of mismanaging the city, focusing on the state’s need to help when the long-neglected local water system collapsed in 2021. On a visit last year to Hattiesburg, Reeves called it “a great day to not be in Jackson” because, he suggested, he did not have to direct the city’s emergency response and public works efforts.

This year, Lamar’s legislation is but one of several GOP-backed bills that would, among other things, assert control over the water system and reallocate Jackson’s use of sales tax collections.

The racial subtext is difficult to ignore: All 112 Republican state senators and representatives are white. All but four of the 58 Democratic legislators are Black.

State Sen. John Horhn, a Black lawmaker who represents the Jackson area, called it “the most toxic atmosphere between the city and the Legislature that I’ve seen in my 31 years” in office.

Lumumba, who, at 34, is the youngest leader in the city’s history, likened the takeover bills to colonization.

“It’s their fundamental belief that the people of Jackson don’t deserve to run the city,” he said in an interview.

Mississippi is not the first state in which majority-Black cities have found themselves at odds with Republican state leaders. Under Gov. Rick Snyder, the Michigan state government took over management of Flint and Detroit, both majority-Black cities, during fiscal crises in 2011 and 2013. An emergency manager appointed by the governor made the cost-cutting decision in 2014 to draw Flint’s public water supply from a nearby river, which led the next year to lead contamination of the drinking water supply for 100,000 people.

For all the acrimony in Jackson, concern about the city’s decline crosses political and racial lines. “This is not a situation where there’s unanimous support for the mayor and Jackson police in the Black community and harsh criticism in the white community,” said Cliff Johnson, a University of Mississippi law professor who opposes the legislation. “It’s not that simple.”

Jackson is a city with Southern bones — graceful churches, monumental civic buildings, a stunning antebellum mansion that houses the governor. But it is in sharp decline, its population and tax base sapped by white flight — and later, flight by Black middle-class families — to the city’s northern suburbs and outlying counties.

A parade of mayors have wrestled unsuccessfully with declining schools and infrastructure, like streets and the water system, and with policing. Crime increased sharply with the onset of the COVID pandemic, and the city recorded one of the nation’s highest murder rates in 2021. The police department is roughly 100 officers short of full strength, according to the Jackson City Council.

Hundreds of cases are backed up in the courts, leaving people accused of crimes awaiting trial for months and even years in conditions that can charitably be called substandard.

Six years ago, leaders on both sides launched a modest effort to ease the city government’s burden. The state created a Capitol City Improvement District that included downtown and state government buildings, and agreed to take over maintaining streets and other public assets within the district. To keep order, a small force of capitol security officers patrolled the district in hatchbacks topped with flashing orange lights.

That, it turned out, was only the beginning.

As crime rose, Reeves expanded the district’s borders and hired new officers in 2021. Last year, the Legislature voted — with Democratic support that included some Black lawmakers — to dramatically beef up the policing effort. A force projected to reach 150 officers began patrolling last spring in new black-and-white SUVs that seemed to command almost every street corner.

Crime in the capitol improvement district ebbed. Those who lived inside its boundaries took notice — but in different ways.

The dense knot of white government workers who live near the state offices within the district have applauded the new patrols. Many Black residents saw something different and complained that officers were both disrespectful and too aggressive toward them.

On July 9, Capitol Police officers shot and wounded a suspect. Officers wounded another suspect July 25, another Aug. 14 and a fourth Sept. 12.

Then, on the evening of Sept. 25, officers fatally shot Jaylen Lewis, a 25-year-old Black man, as he sat in a car with his girlfriend. Officials said the shooting occurred as the officers were attempting to make a traffic stop.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation opened an inquiry into the fatal shooting. Nearly five months later, the investigation remains open, a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Safety said Friday.

Brooke Floyd, an official at a local nonprofit that advocates for Jackson’s Black residents, said she was troubled not just by the new police force’s tactics, but by the fact that both the Capitol Police and the new court system — unlike local judges and police officers — do not answer to Jackson taxpayers.

“It’s concerning on a lot of levels, because it seems there’s no oversight and no accountability,” she said. “We don’t have a video. We don’t have access to reports. They’re not releasing anything.”

The state public safety commissioner, Sean Tindell, called Lewis’ death tragic, and the state-appointed police chief, Bo Luckey, said he had ordered a change in policing tactics. But in December, another shooting left another suspect wounded.

Against that backdrop, Lamar’s bill to expand the Capitol Police force’s jurisdiction into mostly white residential areas, and then layer a new court system atop it, landed like a bombshell.

Both Black and white critics have accused GOP lawmakers of effectively creating a separate court and policing system for a white population that already enjoys the city’s lowest crime rates. “It feels like the kind of reactionary, prejudiced, provincial, anti-democratic reaction that takes Mississippi back 60 years,” said Johnson, the University of Mississippi law professor.

Lamar and other supporters of the measure point out that the population of the enlarged district would be 55% African American. But Jackson’s white community is so small that including most of it in the new district would still leave as many as 7 or 8 out of 10 Black residents outside its boundaries.

On Feb. 7, the House voted 76-38, largely along racial and party lines, to send the bill to the Senate. Whatever happens next, the hourslong, sometimes anguished debate in the House left the divide between the two sides unmistakably clear.

During that debate, Lamar bristled at the implication that as a rural lawmaker, his solution to Jackson’s problems was driven by racial bias. “I like to come to Jackson because it’s the capital city, and so do my constituents back home,” he said. “White, Black, yellow, brown, it doesn’t matter.

“You’re talking to a guy who has been carjacked in Jackson,” he added. “All I’m interested in is helping make the capital city of Mississippi safer.”

Rep. Christopher Bell, a Black lawmaker from Jackson, asked why nobody had consulted legislators from Jackson and Hinds County about the bill before it was introduced. “There are several people who reside in Hinds County who I have spoken with,” Lamar responded.

“Do any of them look like me?” Bell asked.

Lamar paused, then replied, “All God’s children are unique.”

© 2023 The New York Times Company

Alligator captured in New York park, possibly 'cold shocked'

AFP
February 20, 2023

A four-foot-long alligator, shown in a photo provided by NYC Parks, is tended to by park officials and local rangers in Prospect Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, hundreds of miles (km) north of its native habitat

A four-foot-long alligator, shown in a photo provided by NYC Parks, is tended to by park officials and local rangers in Prospect Park in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, hundreds of miles (km) north of its native habitat

New York (AFP) - A "very lethargic" alligator was captured in a New York park, city officials said Monday, likely released by its owner far away from the species' warmer habitat in the southeast United States.

The reptile was spotted Sunday morning in Prospect Park, a favorite place for Brooklyn residents to picnic and stroll with their pets, especially when winter temperatures are in the 50s Fahrenheit (10-15 Celsius) like over the holiday weekend.

Rangers captured the four-foot-long (1.2 meters) alligator, which was "found very lethargic and possibly cold shocked," New York City Parks said in a statement.

It added that such urban public spaces "are not suitable homes for animals not indigenous to those parks" and that their release, while illegal, could also "lead to the elimination of native species and unhealthy water quality."

The alligator was later transported to the Bronx Zoo for rehabilitation, the statement said, adding that "thankfully no one was harmed."

The last publicized discovery of an alligator in New York was in June 2001 when authorities, the press and curious residents spent five days following the pursuit and capture of a stray caiman in Central Park.

New York's Urban Park rangers respond to about 500 animal health reports a year.

Alligator found in lake in New York City park

EMILY SHAPIRO and WILL MCDUFFIE
Mon, February 20, 2023 at 8:28 AM MST·1 min read

A 4-foot-long alligator has been recovered from a lake at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, according to city officials.

Park maintenance staff noticed the gator Sunday morning, and when removed, the animal was "very lethargic and possibly cold shocked since it is native to warm, tropical climates," the parks department said.

MORE: Flaco the owl becomes New York attraction, as he settles into Central Park home

No one was hurt by the animal, New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation said in a statement.

The gator has been taken to the Bronx Zoo.

PHOTO: A four-foot-long alligator has been recovered from a lake in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York. (Courtesy of NYC Parks)

It's not clear how or when it ended up in the lake.

The parks department warned, "In addition to the potential danger to park goers this could have caused, releasing non-indigenous animals or unwanted pets can lead to the elimination of native species and unhealthy water quality."

Alligator found in lake in New York City park originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Australian humpback whales are singing less and fighting more. Should we be worried?

The Conversation
February 17, 2023

Humpback whale (Shutterstock)

As eastern Australian humpback whale populations have recovered over the years, males have adapted their mating strategy in a highly strategic way, new research finds.

I analysed 123 days’ worth of data on Australian humpbacks (Megaptera novaeangliae), collected from 1997 to 2015, and found male humpbacks sang less and fought more as the whale population ballooned.

We think this shift in behaviour is a result of not wanting to attract other males to a potential mate, as we explain in research published today in Communications Biology.
Rapid growth, rapid adaptation

Humpbacks have recovered magnificently since 1965, when the species became globally protected.

One population off Australia’s east coast grew from less than 500 in the 1960s and is estimated to contain at least 30,000 today. This population has provided experts a rich dataset. The males in particular are great subjects thanks to their striking song broadcasts.

Whale Song from 2003. Rebecca Dunlop, Author provided 6.69 MB (download)

Carrying on work started by University of Queensland Professor Michael Noad in the ’90s, we set out to investigate exactly how the eastern humpbacks have adapted to the growth numbers.

Luckily for us these whales migrate close to the coastline, so we were able to establish a land-based observation station at Peregian Beach, a small coastal town on the Sunshine Coast.

Volunteers onshore helped us track individual whales as they moved down the coast, while an acoustic array moored offshore recorded the whales’ song and tracked singing whales. This method (which Professor Noad first established) allowed us to pinpoint the exact location of a particular whale in real time.

A trend emerged when our data were coupled with those collected by Professor Noad’s team. As the eastern humpback population grew, males weren’t singing as much as they used to. Instead they were increasingly opting to quietly find a female to mate with, or fighting off other male competition.

Specifically, the proportion of singing males decreased from two in ten in 2003–2004, to only one in ten by 2014–2015. Data from 2003–2004 also show males were less likely to sing when they had a higher proportion of males in their social circle.

And it seems the change in tactics led to a change in results. In 1997 singing males were almost twice as likely as their counterparts to be seen joining with a female and escorting her, likely to attempt to mate. But by 2014-2015, non-singing males were almost five times more likely to be seen joining a group with a female.

That said, we can’t say for sure when joining a group actually results in mating with the female and fathering a calf. That’s another piece of this puzzle: how many of the males that join groups (singing or otherwise) actually end up mating and then fathering a calf?


Megaptera novaeangliae is one of three subspecies of the humpback whale.

Cetacean Ecology Group/University of Queensland., Author provided

What’s driving males to fight?

A species will carry out a behaviour for as long as the benefits outweigh the costs. If something changes, and the costs start to outweigh the benefits, they will stop. It’s a basic principle, but it goes a long way towards explaining our findings.

In the early years of data collection, when there were fewer whales around, a male could sing and broadcast himself to nearby females quite comfortably – not having to worry about hordes of other males wanting his neck.

Now, with a more than burgeoning population, the same tactic attracts the risk of being interrupted by other males. As a male humpback, you’re better off spending the breeding season quietly seeking a female to mate with and not attracting the attention of other males.

Or, if you fancy yourself a big, tough guy, you might take the chance to fight other males to become the “primary escort” of a group. And this relates to one of our working theories about why singing among the eastern humpbacks has diminished through time, and fighting has increased.

Until it was banned, whaling was likely targeting larger mature adults. This could have left an immature population, full of young whales less equipped to fight. Coupled with a sudden decrease in competition overall, this may help explain why whales in the early years preferred singing as a mating tactic.

By the same token, once these same males started to mature and grow large in later years, they may have tended more towards fighting off competition.

We have observed some of these bigger and more assertive whales, the “primary escorts”, on the breeding grounds. They move from group to group, displacing other males – always maintaining their alpha status.

Are whales losing their song?

Despite what our research has observed, we don’t think whales are at risk of losing their song. The eastern humpback whales have simply changed their behaviour to improve their chances of mating. As researchers working out in the field, we still hear whales singing, so we’re not worried.

But we do have questions moving forward.

For one thing, we don’t know how the population dynamics in the eastern humpback may have changed in the past seven years. The dataset used in our study ended in 2015 (and the population has since grown). It would be interesting to know if the trend we observed from 1997 to 2015 is ongoing or has stabilized.

We also want to better understand the factors that drive a male whale’s choice to sing. Is it age, or size, a combination of both, or something else?

Until then, we can safely conclude one thing: whales are incredibly socially complex creatures – and our findings indicate they can adapt remarkably to the social pressures around them.

By the same logic, however, any species under threat that can’t adapt to changing population dynamics stands to lose out. Humpbacks have managed to bounce back, but what about the other precious animals in the world?



Adult humpback whales can grow up to 17 meters in length. Cetacean Ecology Group/University of Queensland., Author provided

Rebecca Dunlop, Senior Lecturer in Physiology, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Editorial: Can California's legal cannabis industry survive while illegal competitors still operate?

2023/02/20

A photo from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’ s Department shows marijuana plants inside an illegal grow operation in the Antelope Valley. 

- L.A. County Sheriff’s Department/Handout/TNS

California voters' 2016 decision tolegalize the recreational use of cannabis was mostly driven by the idea that whether or not to use the drug should be a choice left up to adults — not be dictated by laws written in an era in which "reefer madness" was seen as a societal scourge. But it was also sold in part as a smart way to create a large new revenue stream for local and state governments. While Gavin Newsom, then lieutenant governor and now governor, made this argument as one of the leading voices for the Proposition 64 campaign, he also offered some notes of caution. In a May 2018 interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, he said he expected it would take "five to seven years to substantively address the black market."

He's running out of time on that prediction. Five years later, California isn't anywhere close to the progress Newsom imagined. The latest evidence came last week with the report that revenue from the city of San Diego's cannabis tax was plunging, mostly because the city's two dozen authorized legal dispensaries are being undercut by illegal delivery services whose unregulated, untaxed products are much cheaper and which have proliferated because of comparatively tiny startup costs. The city now forecasts revenue of $19.8 million for the budget year that ends June 30, far less than the $25.7 million it previously expected. Broader struggles of the legal cannabis industry have led the Legislature to eliminate some cultivation taxes — and San Diego County supervisors to set low tax rates on the five authorized cannabis stores in unincorporated areas. Assemblymember Matt Haney, D-San Francisco, also wants to help the industry by legalizing the sale of food and nonalcoholic beverages at cannabis retailers and lounges.

It's a tall order. As long as illegal cannabis products cost half as much as legal ones — as documented last year by University of California, Davis economists Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner — they will dominate sales. Voters' 1996 approval of a law allowing legal "medicinal" cannabis — with buyers essentially self-attesting to why their health issues required its use — set up a multibillion-dollar industry that often skirted state laws. A prescient 2018 analysis by the Southern California News Group noted that the industry was only emboldened by the fact that Proposition 64 reduced the penalties for most cannabis crimes and eliminated others entirely.

Legal shops in California clearly need a more level playing field to thrive. Given that most illegal sellers advertise their services, authorities have a blueprint for an effective crackdown. But the longer that doesn't really materialize statewide, the less likely lawmakers who aren't enamored of a law-and-order agenda will be to pursue it. California will never "substantially address" the black market as a result.

Five years ago, Newsom said he felt "a deep sense of responsibility" to make sure Proposition 64 worked well. It's time for him to demonstrate that.

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© The San Diego Union-Tribune

Jimmy Carter and the end of democratic capitalism

Robert Reich
February 20, 2023

Former President Jimmy Carter at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in 2018.. - (Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)

I’m honoring Presidents’ Day by sharing with you some thoughts about Jimmy Carter, who is now in hospice care.

Carter’s administration marked the end of 45 years of democratic capitalism, whose goal had been to harness the private sector for the common good.

It’s important to understand what happened and why.

For years, the rap on President Carter has been that his presidency failed yet his post-presidency was the best in modern history.

This is way too simplistic.

Carter’s life after his presidency was exemplary for the same reason he was elected president after the disasters of Richard Nixon and Nixon’s vice president, Gerald Ford (who unconditionally pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed): Carter’s modesty, decency, and humanity.

Not only were these traits the opposite of Nixon’s, but they would shine even brighter 40 years later in contrast to the loathsome Donald Trump.

One-term presidents are always presumed failures because voters didn’t reelect them. But Carter lost his reelection bid (as would George H.W. Bush 12 years later) not because his presidency failed but because the Federal Reserve Board hiked interest rates so high as to bring on a recession. Recessions do not just choke off inflation; they also choke off presidencies.

During Carter’s term of office, the OPEC oil cartel raised oil prices from $13 a barrel to over $34, resulting in double-digit price increases across the economy. Paul Volcker, Carter’s appointee as Fed chair, was determined to “break the back of inflation” by hiking interest rates to nearly 20 percent by 1981, bringing on a deep recession and causing millions of people to lose their jobs — including Carter.

It was not Carter’s fault that democratic capitalism ended with him. To the contrary, he appointed many consumer, labor, and environmental advocates to his administration.

Full disclosure: I was a Carter appointee, but met him only twice, once at a Rose Garden ceremony and years later at a dinner party at the home of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. (He was uncharacteristically late for dinner but made a surprise entry, coming down the stairs from a bedroom where he had taken a nap. He apologized profusely, making two un-Trump-like concessions in a single sentence: “I’m getting old and need my nap,” he said with a self-effacing grin, “but I should have told someone I was heading upstairs.”)

Many of his initiatives — ending funding for the B-1 bomber, seeking a comprehensive consumer-protection bill, proposing broad-based tax reform, opposing traditional “pork barrel” spending, establishing a “superfund” to clean up toxic waste sites, and deregulating the airline, trucking, and railroad industries (resulting in lower transportation costs for industry and consumers) — were commendable.

But much of what he did seemed to justify Lewis Powell’s warning to corporate America in a 1971 memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that corporations must bulk up their lobbying muscle in Washington or suffer political defeat.

The untold story of the Carter years is the vast increase in corporate political firepower during this time. Trade associations, law firms, lobbying firms, political operatives, and public-relations specialists swarmed Washington, offering executives so much money that most retiring members of Congress also became lobbyists.

The city went from being a sleepy if not seedy backwater to the hub of America’s political wealth — replete with tony restaurants, upscale hotels, expensive bistros, and 25-bedroom mansions (one of them now owned by Jeff Bezos), and bordered by two of the richest counties in the nation.

With the defeat of Carter’s consumer protection legislation in 1978 at the hands of corporate lobbyists, Richard Lesher, then president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, presciently boasted that: “30 to 40 years from now people will look back and say ‘These were the years when the transition took place.’ … We're waking up. And big business is going to be in the forefront of this drive.”

Perhaps Carter could have staved this off had he been more politically cunning, but I doubt it. After 45 years playing defense, corporate America was eager to grab back the reins of power. Despite his best efforts, Carter paved the way for Ronald Reagan — and America’s return to the corporate capitalism that had dominated the nation before the Great Depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY

Lamar Johnson calls on Missouri lawmakers to start compensation program for exonerees

Lamar Johnson, who St. Louis' circuit attorney says was wrongly convicted in a 1994 murder, speaks at Jefferson City Correctional Center in Jefferson City, Missouri, on Wednesday, April 20, 2022. - Emily Curiel/The Kansas City Star/TNS

2023/02/20

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Six days after a judge declared him a free man, Lamar Johnson told members of a Senate panel Monday that the state must compensate people who have been freed from prison for crimes they didn’t commit.

Johnson, 49, who served nearly three decades in the Missouri prison system for murder, said he and others who have been freed not only need a stream of income, but they need housing, a vehicle and a way to cover educational costs lost while they were locked up.

“It’s hard to put into words what it’s like to be free. Nothing can ever give me back what I lost,” Johnson said. “But this bill would provide the security I need to get on my feet.”

Johnson said he walked away from his prison term Tuesday with little more than clothes he received from friends.

“I have no car, no furniture and no place to call home,” he said.

At issue for members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are laws proposed by Democratic Sens. Brian Williams of University City and Steve Roberts of St. Louis that could give those who like Johnson are wrongfully imprisoned up to $65,000 for each year they spent in a cellblock.

In Johnson’s case, that would amount to more than $1.8 million.

The hearing marked the second year that lawmakers considered similar changes. Legislation debated last year failed to advance to the governor’s desk.

Johnson was joined by other exonerees at the hearing, including Ricky Kidd, a former cellmate who was exonerated in 2019.

“During that 23 years of being wrongfully convicted, I lost a lot,” Kidd said.

Under current state law, unless DNA evidence absolves an innocent person, Missouri doesn’t compensate prisoners released from custody for a crime they didn’t commit.

That has left Johnson reliant on fundraising efforts. Johnson’s GoFundMe account has generated more than $520,000 since he was released last Tuesday.

Johnson is the latest beneficiary of a new law that allows a prosecutor to file a motion for a judge to vacate or set aside a guilty verdict based on new information or evidence that clears the convicted person of wrongdoing.

Johnson was convicted of the 1994 murder of Markus Boyd. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office determined Johnson had not committed the crime. St. Louis Circuit Court Judge David C. Mason announced he agreed last week, saying there was “actual innocence” and constitutional errors in Johnson’s case.

Specifically, the legislation would grant damages of $179 per day for each day of imprisonment, topping out at a maximum of $65,000 per fiscal year,

Additionally, the damages awarded shall not be less than $25,000 for each additional year served on parole.

Although the proposals call for the money to be paid out on a yearly basis, a judge could order the award to be paid in one lump sum.

In addition to the damages, the claimant also could receive attorney’s fees and court costs not to exceed a total of $25,000. The person also could receive housing assistance, counseling and tuition assistance.

Josh Kezer, a southeast Missouri man whose wrongful murder conviction was overturned in 2009, said the law doesn’t go far enough. He believes exonerees who chose to stay in Missouri should not have to pay taxes.

“We’ve already paid our debt to society,” said Kezer, who has been advocating for inmates in Missouri prisons whom he believes are innocent.

Kezer added that Johnson’s ability to raise more than $520,000 should not be a barrier to his receiving compensation from the state.

“That’s got nothing to do with why this law is needed,” Kezer told the Post-Dispatch.

The Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys also backs the legislation.

No one testified in opposition to the legislation.

Along with efforts in the Senate to compensate wrongly imprisoned people, Democrats in the House are pushing similar legislation.

The legislation is Senate Bill 253 and Senate Bill 146.

© St. Louis Post-Dispatch