Thursday, March 16, 2023

TikTok dismisses calls for Chinese owners to sell stakes

today

The icon for the video sharing TikTok app is seen on a smartphone, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. TikTok was dismissive Wednesday, March 15, of reports that the Biden administration was calling for its Chinese owners to sell their stakes in the popular video-sharing app, saying such a move wouldn't help protect national security. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — TikTok was dismissive Wednesday of reports that the Biden administration was calling for its Chinese owners to sell their stakes in the popular video-sharing app, saying such a move wouldn’t help protect national security.

The company was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., part of the Treasury Department, was threatening a U.S. ban on the app unless its owners, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., divested.

“If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access,” TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said. “The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing.”

The Journal report cited anonymous “people familiar with the matter.” The Treasury Department and the White House’s National Security Council declined to comment.

Late last month, the White House gave all federal agencies 30 days to wipe TikTok off all government devices.

The Office of Management and Budget called the guidance a “critical step forward in addressing the risks presented by the app to sensitive government data.” Some agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State, already have restrictions in place. The White House already does not allow TikTok on its devices.

Congress passed the “No TikTok on Government Devices Act” in December as part of a sweeping government funding package. The legislation does allow for TikTok use in certain cases, including for national security, law enforcement and research purposes.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in both the House and Senate have been moving forward with legislation that would give the Biden administration more power to clamp down on TikTok.

Rep. Mike McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has been a vocal critic of the app, saying the Chinese Communist Party is using it to “manipulate and monitor its users while it gobbles up Americans’ data to be used for their malign activities.”

“Anyone with TikTok downloaded on their device has given the CCP a backdoor to all their personal information. It’s a spy balloon into your phone,” the Texas Republican said.

TikTok remains extremely popular and is used by two-thirds of teens in the U.S. But there is increasing concern that Beijing could obtain control of American user data that the app has obtained.

The company has been dismissive of the ban for federal devices and has noted that it is developing security and data privacy plans as part of the Biden administration’s ongoing national security review.
How coconuts protect the Jersey Shore, other eroding coasts

By WAYNE PARRY
March 12, 2023

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Logs of coconut husk known as coir sit on the bank of the Shark River in Neptune, N.J., Jan. 31, 2023, where the American Littoral Society doing a shoreline restoration project incorporating coconut fibers. The material is being used in shoreline stabilization projects around the world. 
(AP Photo/Wayne Parry)

NEPTUNE, N.J. (AP) — Coastal communities around the world are adding a tropical twist to shoreline protection, courtesy of the humble coconut.

From the sands of the Jersey Shore to the islands of Indonesia, strands of coconut husk, known as coir, are being incorporated into shoreline protection projects.

Often used in conjunction with other measures, the coconut material is seen as a cost-effective, readily available and sustainable option. This is particularly true in developing countries. But the material is also popular in wealthy nations, where it’s seen as an important part of so-called “living shorelines” that use natural elements rather than hard barriers of wood, steel or concrete.

One such project is being installed along a section of eroded river bank in Neptune, New Jersey, about a mile from the ocean on the Shark River. Using a mix of a federal grant and local funds, the American Littoral Society, a coastal conservation group, is carrying out the $1.3 million project that has already added significantly to what was previously a severely eroded shoreline in an area that was pummeled by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.

“We’re always trying to reduce wave energy while shielding the shoreline, and whenever we can, we like to employ nature-based solutions,” said Tim Dillingham, the group’s executive director. “This material is readily available, particularly in developing countries and it’s relatively inexpensive compared with harder materials.”

Coir is made of the stringy fibers of coconut shells, and spun into mats or logs, often held together with netting. In developing areas, discarded or ripped fishing nets can be incorporated.

Its flexibility allows it to be molded and contoured as needed on uneven areas of shoreline, held in place by wooden stakes.

The coconut-based material biodegrades over time, by design. But before it does, it is sometimes pre-seeded with shoreline plants and grasses, or those plants are placed in holes that can be punched into the coir logs.

The logs hold the plants in place as they take root and grow, eventually breaking down and leaving the established plants and sediment around them in place to stabilize the shoreline.

Coconut-based materials are being used around the world for erosion control projects.

One of them is in Boston, where Julia Hopkins, an assistant professor at Northeastern University, is using coconut fibers, wood chips and other material to create floating mats to blunt the force of waves, and encourage growth of aquatic vegetation. A pilot project has four such mats in waterways around Boston. Hopkins envisions a network of hundreds or even thousands of mats linked together to protect wider areas.

She’s pleased with what she’s seen so far.

“Coconut fiber is organic material, it’s relatively cheap and it’s a discard,” she said. “It’s actually recycling something that was going to be discarded.”

Two projects in East Providence, Rhode Island, used coconut logs in 2020, and 2,400 feet (731 meters) of shoreline in New York’s Jamaica Bay that were eroded during Superstorm Sandy were stabilized in 2021 by a project that also included coconut coir logs.

Cape Cod, Massachusetts, did a similar project last year, and the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control is offering funding to help landowners, homeowner associations and others install living shorelines made of materials that can include coconut fibers.

A project in Austin, Texas, stabilized part of the Lake Austin shoreline; monitoring from 2009 to 2014 showed decreased erosion and the healthy growth of native plants at the water’s edge.

Indonesia is the world’s largest coconut producer, with more than 17 million metric tons in 2021. Scientists from the Oceanography Program of Bandung Institute of Technology used coconut husk material to help build a sea wall in the Karangjaladri village of Pangandaran Regency in 2018.

Residents of Diogue Island in Senegal are using wooden structures and coconut fronds and sticks to reclaim eroded sections of beach.

It doesn’t always work, however.

In 2016, the Felix Neck Wildlife Refuge in Edgartown, Massachusetts, on Martha’s Vineyard installed it at the Sengekontacket Pond, where a salt marsh had eroded by several feet in previous years. While it did help reduce erosion for a while, the husks did not last long due to strong wave action.

“It got blown out multiple times,” said Suzan Bellincampi, the sanctuary’s director. “We had it in place for a few years and we decided not to reinstall it.

“The project was really interesting in terms of what we wanted to do and how we adapted it,” she said. “It’s not for every site; it has to be site-specific. It works in some places; it doesn’t work in all places.”

Similarly, coconut fiber mats and logs were used recently on Chapel Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, but they were damaged by bad weather.

Another Canadian site, Lac des Battures, a lake on Montreal’s Nuns’ Island, uses coconut mats to control the growth of invasive reeds along the shoreline.

At the New Jersey site, a few miles south of the musical hotbed of Asbury Park, trucked-in sand has joined with sediment accruing from the tides to create a beach that is noticeably wider than what used to be there.

“Underneath your feet right now are hibernating fiddler crabs,” said Capt. Al Modjeski, a restoration specialist with the Littoral Society. “They’ll be excited about this new habitat.”

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Follow Wayne Parry on Twitter at https://twitter.com/WayneParryAC.
Scientists: Largest US reservoirs moving in right direction

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN
today

In this aerial photo, a bathtub ring of light minerals show the high water mark on the shore of Lake Mead along the border of Nevada and Arizona, Monday, March 6, 2023, near Boulder City, Nev. Climate experts say all the snow and rain over the winter months helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of the western U.S., but the precipitation is nowhere near enough to unravel the long-term effects of a stubborn drought afflicting Lake Powell and Lake Mead. (AP Photo/John Locher)

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Parts of California are under water, the Rocky Mountains are bracing for more snow, flood warnings are in place in Nevada, and water is being released from some Arizona reservoirs to make room for an expected bountiful spring runoff.

All the moisture has helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of the western U.S. Even major reservoirs on the Colorado River are trending in the right direction.

But climate experts caution that the favorable drought maps represent only a blip on the radar as the long-term effects of a stubborn drought persist.

Groundwater and reservoir storage levels — which take much longer to bounce back — remain at historic lows. It could be more than a year before the extra moisture has an effect on the shoreline at Lake Mead that straddles Arizona and Nevada. And it’s unlikely that water managers will have enough wiggle room to wind back the clock on proposals for limiting water use.

That’s because water release and retention operations for the massive reservoir and its upstream sibling — Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border — already are set for the year. The reservoirs are used to manage Colorado River water deliveries to 40 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico.

Still, Lake Powell could gain 45 feet (14 meters) as snow melts and makes its way into tributaries and rivers over the next three months. How much it rises will depend on soil moisture levels, future precipitation, temperatures and evaporation losses.

“We’re definitely going in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go,” said Paul Miller, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service’s Colorado Basin River Forecast Center.

Federal forecasters are scheduled Thursday to roll out predictions for temperature, precipitation and drought over the next three months, as well as the risk for springtime flooding.

California already has been drenched by a fire hose of moisture from the Pacific Ocean that has led to flooding, landslides and toppled trees.

Ski resorts on the California-Nevada border are marking their snowiest winter stretch since 1971, when record-keeping began. In fact, the Sierra Nevada is on the verge of surpassing the second-highest snow total for an entire winter season, with at least two months still to go.

In Arizona, forecasters warned that heavy rain was expected to fall on primed snowpack in the mountains above the desert enclave of Sedona. One of the main creeks running through the tourist town was expected to reach the flood stage and evacuations were ordered for some neighborhoods late Wednesday.

“We’ve pretty much blown past all kinds of averages and normals in the Lower Colorado Basin,” Miller said, not unlike other western basins.

Forecasters say the real standout has been the Great Basin, which stretches from the Sierra Nevada to the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. It has recorded more snow this season than the last two seasons combined. Joel Lisonbee, with the National Integrated Drought Information System, said that’s notable given that over the last decade, only two years — 2017 and 2019 — had snowpack above the median.

Overall, the West has been more dry than wet for more than 20 years, and many areas will still feel the consequences.

Storm clouds and snow are seen over the San Gabriel mountain range behind Griffith Observatory in the Hollywood Hills part of Los Angeles on Feb. 26, 2023. Parts of California are under water, emergency flood declarations are in place in Nevada, and water is being released from some Arizona reservoirs to prepare for a bountiful spring runoff. Climate experts say all the snow and rain over the winter months helped alleviate dry conditions in many parts of the western U.S. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)




An emergency declaration in Oregon warns of higher risks for water shortages and wildfires in the central part of the state. Pockets of central Utah, southeastern Colorado and eastern New Mexico are still dealing with extreme drought, while parts of Texas and the Midwest have become drier.

Forecasters are expecting warm, dry weather to kick in over the coming weeks, meaning drought will keep its foothold in some areas and tighten its grip elsewhere.

Tony Caligiuri, president of the preservation group Colorado Open Lands, said all the recent precipitation shouldn’t derail work to recharge groundwater supplies.

“The problem or the danger in these episodic wet year events is that it can reduce the feeling of urgency to address the longer-term issues of water usage and water conservation,” he said.

The group is experimenting in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, the headwaters of the Rio Grande. One of North America’s longest rivers, the Rio Grande and its reservoirs have been struggling due to meager snowpack, long-term drought and constant demands. It went dry over the summer in Albuquerque, and managers had no extra water to supplement flows.

Colorado Open Lands reached an agreement with a farmer to retire his land and stop irrigating the about 1,000 acres. Caligiuri said the idea is to take a major straw out of the aquifer, which will enable the savings to sustain other farms in the district so they no longer face the threat of having to turn off their wells.

“We’ve seen where we can have multiple good years in place like the San Luis Valley when it comes to rainfall or snowpack and then one drought year can erase a decade of progress,” he said. “So you just can’t stick your head in the sand just because you’re having one good wet year.”

___

Associated Press writer Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, contributed to this report.
EXPLAINER: Next steps for Black reparations in San Francisco

By JANIE HAR
yesterday

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A crowd listens to speakers at a reparations rally outside of City Hall in San Francisco, Tuesday, March 14, 2023. Supervisors in San Francisco are taking up a draft reparations proposal that includes a $5 million lump-sum payment for every eligible Black person. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco supervisors have backed the idea of paying reparations to Black people, but whether members will agree to lump-sum payments of $5 million to every eligible person or to any of the more than 100 other recommendations made by an advisory committee won’t be known until later this year.

The idea of Black reparations is not new, but the federal government’s promise of granting 40 acres and a mule to newly freed slaves was never realized. It wasn’t until George Floyd, a Black man, was killed in police custody in 2020 that reparations movements began spreading in earnest across the country.

The state of California and the cities of Boston and San Francisco are among jurisdictions trying to atone not just for chattel slavery, but for decades of racist policies and laws that systemically denied Black Americans access to property, education and the ability to build generational wealth.



WHAT IS THE ARGUMENT FOR REPARATIONS IN SAN FRANCISCO?

Black migration to San Francisco soared in the 1940s because of shipyard work, but racially restrictive covenants and redlining limited where people could live. When Black residents were able to build a thriving neighborhood in the Fillmore, government redevelopment plans in the 1960s forced out residents, stripped them of their property and decimated Black-owned businesses, advocates say

Today, less than 6% of Black residents in San Francisco are Black yet they make up nearly 40% of the city’s homeless population.

Supporters include the San Francisco NAACP, although it said the board should reject the $5 million payments and focus instead on reparations through education, jobs, housing, health care and a cultural center for Black people in San Francisco. The president of the San Francisco branch is the Rev. Amos C. Brown, who sits on both the statewide and San Francisco reparations panels.

WHAT IS THE ARGUMENT AGAINST REPARATIONS?

Critics say California and San Francisco never endorsed chattel slavery, and there is no one alive today who owned slaves or was enslaved. It is not fair for municipal taxpayers, some of whom are immigrants, to shoulder the cost of structural racism and discriminatory government policies, critics say.

An estimate from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, which leans conservative, has said it would cost each non-Black family in San Francisco at least $600,000 in taxes to pay for the costliest of the recommendations: The $5 million per-person payout, guaranteed income of at least $97,000 a year for 250 years, personal debt elimination and converting public housing into condos to sell for $1.

A 2022 Pew Research Center survey found 68% of U.S. respondents opposed reparations compared with 30% in favor. Nearly 80% of Black people surveyed supported reparations. More than 90% of Republicans or those leaning Republican opposed reparations while Democrats and those leaning Democratic were divided.

HOW WILL SAN FRANCISCO PAY FOR THIS?

It’s not clear. The advisory committee that made the recommendations says it is not its job to figure out how to finance San Francisco’s atonement and repair.

That would be up to local politicians, two of whom expressed interest Tuesday in taking the issue to voters. San Francisco Supervisor Matt Dorsey said he would back a ballot measure to enshrine reparations in the San Francisco charter as part of the budget. Shamann Walton, the supervisor leading the charge on reparations, supports that idea.



WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OTHER REPARATIONS RECOMMENDATIONS?


Recommendations in education include establishing an Afrocentric K-12 school in San Francisco; hiring and retaining Black teachers; mandating a core Black history and culture curriculum; and offering cash to at-risk students for hitting educational benchmarks.

Recommendations in health include free mental health, prenatal care and rehab treatment for impoverished Black San Franciscans, victims of violent crimes and formerly incarcerated people.

The advisory committee also recommends prioritizing Black San Franciscans for job opportunities and training, as well as finding ways to incubate Black businesses.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?


There is no deadline for supervisors to agree on a path forward. The board next plans to discuss reparations proposals in September, after the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee issues a final report in June.

WHAT ABOUT REPARATIONS FROM THE STATE?


In 2020, California became the first state to form a reparations task force. But nearly two years into its work, it still has yet to make key decisions on who would be eligible for payment and how much. The task force has a July 1 deadline to submit a final report of its reparations recommendations, which would then be drafted into legislation for lawmakers to consider.

The task force has spent multiple meetings discussing time frames and payment calculations for five harms experienced by Black people, including government taking of property, housing discrimination and homelessness and mass incarceration. The task force is also debating state residency requirements.

Previously, the state committee voted to limit financial reparations to people descended from enslaved or freed Black people in the U.S. as of the 19th century.





NY bank’s demise: Contagion or a problem with the business?

By GEOFF MULVIHILL
today
Covering state government issues nationally
geoffmulvihillgmulvihill@ap.org

Customers do business at a branch of Signature Bank in New York, Monday, March 13, 2023. President Joe Biden is telling Americans that the nation's financial systems are sound. This comes after the swift and stunning collapse of two banks that prompted fears of a broader upheaval.
 (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)


Signature Bank’s collapse came stunningly fast, leaving behind the question of whether there was a fundamental flaw in the way it did business — or if it was just a victim of the panic that spread after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank.

There were few outward signs that Signature Bank was crumbling before the New York Department of Financial Services on Sunday seized the bank’s assets and asked the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. take over its operations. The FDIC will run it as Signature Bridge Bank until it can be sold.

But leading up the the takeover, there were calls on social media warning depositors to get their funds out of the bank — and those were followed with a real-life frenzy of withdrawals. There hasn’t yet been a public accounting of exactly how much money was withdrawn from the bank with a history of being friendlier than most in the U.S. to the cryptocurrency industry.

“This is not about a particular sector in the case of Signature Bank,” Adrienne Harris, superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, said at a media briefing this week. “But we moved quickly to make sure depositors were protected.”

The department has described the New York-based financial institution as a “traditional commercial bank,” but its two-decade history was certainly unconventional.

Signature catered to privately held businesses and their owners and executives. It became one of the 20 largest banks in the country that way, based on deposits. By the same measure, it was also the third largest U.S. bank to fail, after Washington Mutual’s collapse in 2008 and Silicon Valley Bank’s demise last week.

Founded in 2001, it was a major lender to New York City apartment building owners. Clients included former President Donald Trump and the family of his son-in-law and former White House adviser, Jared Kushner. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, who also became a key Trump administration adviser, was on the bank’s board of directors from 2011-13, before her father’s run for president.

She wasn’t the only high-profile member of the board. Over the years, two former members of Congress also served on it: Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, a New York Republican, and Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who was a co-author of the landmark 2010 legislation that overhauled regulation of the financial industry.

Signature also made loans to New York taxi drivers seeking medallions, a part of the business that struggled as ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft took off and the value of medallions fell.

Unlike most U.S. banks, it was also friendly to cryptocurrency businesses, becoming the first FDIC-insured bank to offer a blockchain-based digital payment platform in 2019.

Partly because of crypto, the bank’s deposits grew by 67% in 2021. But last year, as the crypto exchange FTX crashed and declared bankruptcy, Signature pulled back. Its deposits over the year declined by $17 billion, or nearly 17%. The bulk of that was because of what the bank called a “planned reduction” in crypto-related assets.

In a January earnings release, Joseph DePaolo, then Signature’s CEO, said the bank planned to expand geographically.

“We see growth on the horizon,” DePaolo said.

Even as he made the prediction, the bank’s stock was falling amid crypto struggles and a broader stock market slump. After hitting a high of $365 in early 2022, the bank’s stock plunged to less than one-third that value by late February of this year. The freefall began this month until trading was halted on March 10 with the stock sitting at $70.

Until it was shuttered, it had been a go-to bank for the crypto industry. Konstantin Shulga, co-founder and CEO of Cyprus-based Finery Markets, which connects cryptocurrency businesses with banks and other businesses, said that many of his firm’s clients banked with Signature or Silvergate Capital, which last week voluntarily shut down its bank, warning it could end up “less than well capitalized.”

Shulga said that having so few banks catering to the cryptocurrency industry is a problem.

“Because of this concentration, both parties failed,” he said. “The clients failed because they were only forced to operate within these two banks, and the banks failed because they were not able to pick up more business from other areas to diversify.”

The other problem, he said: Social media accelerated the run on Signature deposits.

Twice in March, Signature took the uncommon step of issuing financial updates as depositors fled Silicon Valley Bank, which was taken over by regulators two days before Signature was.

It said that as of March 8, 80% of its deposits came from “middle market” businesses including law and accounting firms, healthcare companies, manufacturers and real estate management firms.

But it also shared had one key characteristic with Silicon Valley Bank, which was a major player in financing the tech industry: a high portion of uninsured domestic deposits. Signature Bank was fourth in that category as of the end of 2021, with nearly 90% uninsured. Silicon Valley Bank was second. Uninsured deposits are amounts above the FDIC insurance limit of $250,000 per individual account. Only after the bank was taken over did the FDIC waive the insurance cap for depositors in both it and Silicon Valley Bank.

In the meantime, the bank’s reassurances did not slow the withdrawals, which picked up Friday and then continued into the weekend, until regulators stepped in.

Frank, the former congressman, called it “an unjustified total shutdown” and said he believed it came about because New York banking officials wanted to send a message to banks to stay away from the crypto business. He said that things were stabilizing.

The state regulatory agency that shut it down rejected that claim and pointed to what bank executives did as withdrawals continued to mount.

“The bank failed to provide reliable and consistent data, creating a significant crisis of confidence in the bank’s leadership,” an agency spokesperson said in an email.

A spokeswoman for the bank’s former leaders declined to respond, but Frank said that the numbers were changing because the situation was shifting.

An autopsy of the bank could play out in court.

This week, a shareholder filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn claiming the bank and its executives misrepresented the facts with its two assurances this month that the business was healthy.

“We intentionally maintain a high level of capital, strong liquidity profile and solid earnings,” Eric Howell, then Signature Bank’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement March 9, three days before the bank in its old form ceased to exist, “which continues to differentiate us from competitors, especially during challenging times.”
Major oil project approval intensifies Alaska Natives’ rift

By MARK THIESSEN and MATTHEW BROWN
today

This 2019 photo provided by ConocoPhillips shows an exploratory drilling camp at the proposed site of the Willow oil project on Alaska's North Slope.The Biden administration's approval of the massive oil development in northern Alaska on Monday, March 13, 2023, commits the U.S. to yet another decades-long crude project even as scientists urgently warn that only a halt to more fossil fuel emissions can stem climate change. ConocoPhillips' Willow project was approved Monday and would result in at least 263 million tons of planet-warming gases over 30 years.
 
(ConocoPhillips via AP)



ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Biden administration’s approval this week of the biggest oil drilling project in Alaska in decades promises to widen a rift among Alaska Natives, with some saying that oil money can’t counter the damages caused by climate change and others defending the project as economically vital.

Two lawsuits filed almost immediately by environmentalists and one Alaska Native group are likely to exacerbate tensions that have built up over years of debate about ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project.

Many communities on Alaska’s North Slope celebrated the project’s approval, citing new jobs and the influx of money that will help support schools, other public services and infrastructure investments in their isolated villages. Just a few decades ago, many villages had no running water, said Doreen Leavitt, director of natural resources for the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope. Housing shortages continues to be a problem, with multiple generations often living together, she said.

“We still have a long ways to go. We don’t want to go backwards,” Leavitt said.

She said 50 years of oil production on the petroleum-rich North Slope has shown that development can coexist with wildlife and the traditional, subsistence way of life.

But some Alaska Natives blasted the decision to greenlight the project, and they are supported by environmental groups challenging the approval in federal court.

The acrimony toward the project was underscored in a letter dated earlier this month written by three leaders in the Nuiqsut community, who described their remote village as “ground zero for industrialization of the Arctic.” They addressed the letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American to lead a Cabinet department.

They cited the threat that climate change poses to caribou migrations and to their ability to travel across once-frozen areas. Money from the ConocoPhillips project won’t be enough to mitigate those threats, they said. The community is about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Willow project.

“They are payoffs for the loss of our health and culture,” the Nuiqsut leaders wrote. “No dollar can replace what we risk....It is a matter of our survival.”

But Asisaun Toovak, the mayor of UtqiaÄ¡vik, the nation’s northernmost community on the Arctic Ocean, told the AP that she jumped for joy when she heard the Biden administration approved the Willow project.

“I could say that the majority of the people, the majority of our community and the majority of the people were excited about the Willow Project,” she said.

Willow is in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a vast region on Alaska’s resource-rich North Slope that is roughly the size of Maine. It would produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, the use of which would result in at least 263 million tons (239 million metric tons) of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years, according to a federal environmental review.

The Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Sierra Club and other groups that sued Tuesday said Interior officials ignored the fact that every ton of greenhouse gas emitted by the project would contribute to sea ice melt, which endangers polar bears and Alaska villages. A second lawsuit seeking to block the project was filed Wednesday by Greenpeace and other environmental groups.

For Alaska Natives to reconcile their points of view with one another, it will take discussions. “We just continue to try to sit at the table together, break bread and meet as a region,” said Leavitt, who also is the secretary for the tribal council representing eight North Slope villages.

“I will say the majority of the voices that we heard against Willow were from the Lower 48,” she said of the contiguous U.S. states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

ConocoPhillips Alaska said the $8 billion project would create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and other revenues to be split between the federal and state governments.

The project has had widespread support among lawmakers in the state. Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, and Alaska Native lawmakers also met with Haaland to urge support.

Haaland visited the North Slope last fall, just hours after state Rep. Josiah Aullaqsruaq Patkotak, a whaling captain along with his brother on their father’s whaling crew, harvested a roughly 40-ton (36-metric tons) bowhead whale and spent hours pulling it on the ice from the Arctic Ocean at UtqiaÄ¡vik. He left the ice around 7 a.m. to be ready to meet with Haaland just two hours later.

For him, the juxtaposition of those activities on the same day underscored the dual life led by Alaska Natives on the North Slope and highlights the choices that communities make every day for their survival.

“That’s the walk our leaders have to walk,” said Patkotak, an independent who supported Willow. “We maintain our culture and our lifestyle and our subsistence aspect where we’re one with the land and animals, and the very next hour you may be having to conduct yourself, you know, in a manner that you’re playing the Western world’s game.”

He invited Haaland to view the bowhead whale that they harvested, but when Patkotak couldn’t provide a street name of where she would go, her security didn’t allow it. “Well, it’s on the ice, there are no street names,” he said.

Patkotak met again with Haaland this month in Washington, D.C., where he extended an invitation to leaders in the White House to visit Utqiagvik, “because it’s our duty to tell our story so that we’re able to strike that balance of both worlds.

“That’s a reality for us,” he said.

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.




Students call for education reform in Hungary protest march

By JUSTIN SPIKE

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People carry a huge Hungarian flag during a march, marking the 175th anniversary of a failed 1848 uprising, in Budapest, Hungary, Wednesday, March 15, 2023. A "freedom march" was organized by dozens of civic organizations who are calling for greater social solidarity and an end to what they call intimidation from Viktor Orban's government. (AP Photo/Denes Erdos)

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Thousands of students and other opponents of Hungary’s government marched in the capital Budapest on Wednesday to demand educational reforms and a change in the Central European country’s political culture.

The protest, dubbed a “freedom march” by organizers, was called by teachers unions and student groups who have spent months pressuring Hungary’s government to provide salary raises and better working conditions for educators. The groups have also demanded the repeal of legislation that limits teachers’ right to strike.

Marchers chanted slogans like “no teachers, no future” and “striking is a basic right” as they moved down one of Budapest’s main avenues. Student groups and teachers have engaged in strikes, walkouts and other acts of civil disobedience in recent months after the government didn’t fulfill their demands, resulting in several teacher firings.

Katalin Torley, a teacher that was fired from a Budapest high school after working there for 23 years, said at the demonstration that Hungary had become an “extremely centralized authoritarian system” which has taken away autonomy from those working in the public sphere.

“I think that this movement is not anti-government but against the system,” she said. “Those teachers who engaged in civil disobedience showed that a normal system must be restored.”

The March 15 demonstration came on a national holiday commemorating the 175th anniversary of Hungary’s failed 1848 revolution against Habsburg rule. One of Hungary’s most important national holidays, March 15 often features large patriotic demonstrations as well as protests in the capital.

Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orbán, broke with his tradition of giving an address in Budapest, instead speaking to supporters in the small town of Kiskoros, around two hours from the capital.

The address was given in front of the childhood home of Sandor Petofi, widely regarded as one of Hungary’s greatest poets who was instrumental in fomenting the Hungarian rebellion against the Austrian empire in 1848.

In his speech, Orbán spoke at length about Petofi’s contributions to Hungarian political culture, saying the poet had “created the dialect of Hungarian freedom.”

Although Petofi is thought to have been killed in 1849 as he fought in the revolution, Hungarians still feel his presence today when foreign forces attempt to impose their will on Hungary, Orbán said.

“He flashes before our eyes, whenever we hesitate, when we falter. We see him as he rebels when foreigners want to tell the Hungarians how to live. We see him turning against the great powers of the world who want to reintegrate Hungarians into a European superstate,” he said.

Hungary’s government is a frequent critic of the European Union, which has held up billions in funding to Budapest over concerns that Orbán has overseen widespread official corruption and violated the bloc’s rule-of-law standards.

Orbán has often referred to the EU as an “empire” that seeks to dominate Hungary, just as the Austrian Empire and Soviet Union had in the 19th and 20th centuries. He won his fourth-straight term in office in elections in 2022.

“We will never allow the flag of freedom to be wrenched from the hands of the Hungarians,” Orbán said Wednesday. “We will not allow it, and it will not succeed.”








Thousands of LA school district workers to hold 3-day strike

today

 A Los Angeles Unified School District bus driver walks past parked vehicles at a bus garage in Gardena, Calif., on Dec. 15, 2015. Tens of thousands of workers in the Los Angeles Unified School District will strike for three days next week over stalled contract talks and teachers will join them, likely shutting down the nation's second-largest school system, union leaders announced Wednesday, March 15, 2023.
 (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tens of thousands of workers in the Los Angeles Unified School District will strike for three days next week over stalled contract talks and teachers will join them, likely shutting down the nation’s second-largest school system, union leaders announced Wednesday.

The strike was set to begin Tuesday. It was announced at a rally by the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 30,000 teachers’ aides, bus drivers, custodians, cafeteria workers and other support staff.

United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing 35,000 teachers, counselors and other staff, expressed solidarity.

“Educators will be joining our union siblings on the picket lines,” a UTLA tweet said.

Teachers waged a six-day strike in 2019 over pay and contract issues but schools remained open.

This time, schools would likely close and there wouldn’t be any access to virtual learning, Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said in an email to parents on Monday.

“We would simply have no way of ensuring a safe and secure environment where teaching can take place,” Carvalho said.

On Wednesday, Carvalho accused the union of refusing to negotiate and said that he was prepared to meet “day and night” to prevent a strike, which he said would harm students already struggling to regain academic ground lost when classrooms were closed and they were forced to learn remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a news conference, he said averting a strike “will avoid keeping kids home, will avoid kids from going hungry in our community without access to the food they get in school.”

“We are calling on them to come to the table for staff and students, right now,” he said in a later statement.

The SEIU says district support staffers earn, on average, about $25,000 per year and many live in poverty because of low pay or limited work hours while struggling with inflation and the high cost of housing in LA County. The union is asking for a 30% raise. Teachers want a 20% pay hike over two years.

The district has made what it called an historic offer to the SEIU of a $15 wage increase, some of it retroactive, and 9% in retention bonuses.

The strike has wide support among union members. Thousands of people, many dressed in red, rallied Wednesday outside City Hall, holding signs, chanting, and garnering support in the hours before the strike date was announced.

The district has more than 500,000 students. It serves Los Angeles and all or part of 25 other cities and unincorporated county areas.

SEIU members have been working without a contract since June 2020 and the contract for teachers expired in June 2022. The unions decided last week to stop accepting extensions to their contracts.
Dozens at big Nissan Tennessee plant will vote on own union

By JONATHAN MATTISE
today

Workers at the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tenn., walk by a Nissan Altima sedan, May 15, 2012. A group of 75 employees out of the thousands who work at a Nissan assembly plant in Tennessee will finally vote Thursday, March 16, 2023, on whether to form a union. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig, File)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Several dozen workers among thousands at a Nissan factory in Tennessee will hold a long-delayed vote on whether to unionize Thursday. Those leading the drive hope for an elusive win at a foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the traditionally anti-union South.

After years of legal wrangling that spanned two presidential administrations, organizers successfully argued that the group of 75 tool and die technicians are eligible for standalone representation because they have extremely specialized skills for a job that can’t be done by others at the facility. The Japan-based company has contended the employees are not sufficiently distinct from other plant workers to be eligible for their own unionized bloc.

Organizers have cited a variety of reasons to unionize at the Nissan plant in Smyrna, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) outside Nashville. Those include retirement, work-life balance and health care issues they want to negotiate.

Nationwide, several high-profile unionization campaigns — at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and other companies — have given organized labor a renewed spotlight of late, even as the union membership rate reached an all-time low last year. The number of workers belonging to a union actually increased by 1.9% to 14.3 million, but that failed to keep pace with higher overall employment rates.

A federal ruling in 2021 nearly killed the union drive in Smyrna. After that decision was overturned this year, organizers said the election could now be a close call instead of an easy win, saying years of waiting have taken a toll on the campaign.

A National Labor Relations Board official sided with Nissan in June 2021, ruling that the smaller group of workers couldn’t vote to unionize without including thousands more employees at the plant. The union didn’t pursue the facility-wide vote.

But once the U.S. Senate completed its confirmations of new Biden administration appointees, control of the board switched from Republicans to Democrats. The panel overturned the previous ruling last month, giving the union a green light for the vote.

Since plant workers first reached out to the machinists union in 2020, some supporters have quit, others retired and some moved on to unionized workplaces elsewhere, said Tim Wright, grand lodge representative for southern territory with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

“This two-year process, it chilled this campaign to the point to where this is going to be a close election, potentially,” Wright said in an interview Tuesday. He said he hopes the campaign can create a “buzz” with other workers as well.

A spokesperson for Nissan, which has about 7,000 employees at the Smyrna facility, has said the company believes its workplace is “stronger without the involvement of third-party unions” like the machinists union. Still, it emphasized that employees have the right to decide whether to join a union — a right that has been enshrined in federal law since the 1930s.

Unions have run into opposition from Republican politicians when they attempt to organize at foreign automakers in the South, including in Tennessee. Still, it doesn’t appear that GOP officials have sought to weigh in much on the campaign at Nissan.

Tennessee already has a big union presence at an American automaker: The General Motors plant in Spring Hill has thousands of production and skilled trades workers represented by the United Auto Workers union.

In a radio ad for the campaign — which featured former University of Tennessee and Pittsburgh Steelers football player Ramon Foster — the machinists union highlighted its representation of some workers at Trane Company, Tennessee Valley Authority, Arnold Air Force Base, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NWI Aero and in the railroad industry.

Nissan does work with organized labor in the rest of the world, but votes to unionize broadly at the two Nissan plants in the U.S. have not been close. Workers in Smyrna rejected a plantwide union under the UAW in 2001 and 1989.

The automaker’s other U.S. assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi, rejected facility-wide representation by the UAW during a 2017 vote.

The margin was much closer in 2014 and 2019 votes at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where workers twice rejected a factory-wide union under the UAW.

The year after the 2014 vote failed, 160 Chattanooga maintenance workers won a vote to form a smaller union, but Volkswagen refused to bargain. The German automaker had argued the bargaining unit also needed to include production workers. As a result, the 2019 factory-wide vote followed.

There’s also an open question about whether workers will unionize at four sprawling new factories planned by Ford in Kentucky and Tennessee by 2025, with an aim of hiring nearly 11,000 workers. Three of the plants — two in Kentucky, one in Tennessee — will be built with Ford’s South Korean corporate partner, SK Innovation, to produce electric vehicle batteries. A fourth, in Tennessee, will make electric F-Series pickup trucks.
First Quantum resumes operations at Panama copper mine

Reuters | March 15, 2023

The Cobre Panama mine is located in Colon province, 120 km west of Panama City. Credit: First Quantum Minerals Ltd.

First Quantum Minerals, the operator of the Cobre Panama mine, has resumed operations to normal levels at the mine, gold-focused royalty and streaming company Franco-Nevada Corp said on Wednesday.


Franco-Nevada has contributed a total of $1.36 billion to the construction of Cobre Panama and the mine accounted for 18% of the company’s revenue in 2021. Copper miner First Quantum owns a 90% interest in the mine through its unit Minera Panama SA (MPSA).

First Quantum had suspended ore processing operations at the mine on Feb. 23 after a Panama government order halted its loading permissions at the port, limiting its capacity to store copper.

Last week, the government and the miner agreed on the final text for a contract to operate the key copper mine.

The new contract guarantees a minimum annual income of $375 million to the Central American government, and will be effective for 20 years with the option to renew it for 20 more.

On Tuesday, Panama’s Maritime Authority lifted the suspension on First Quantum Minerals’ operations at the port of Punta Rincon, which the Canadian company uses to export copper concentrate from the Cobre Panama mine.

(By Ankit Kumar; Editing by Maju Samuel and Devika Syamnath)