Fire shuts Peabody coal mine and there’s no estimate for restart
Bloomberg News | March 30, 2023 | 

Shoal Creek coal mine. Credit: Peabody Energy

Peabody Energy Corp., the top US coal producer, shut operations at an Alabama mine following a fire Wednesday with no estimate of when it will reopen.


The Shoal Creek Mine, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) west of Birmingham, is the company’s lone producer of metallurgical coal for export in the US. It is an underground mine that generated about 800,000 tons of coal last year for steelmaking, accounting for a little more than one-tenth of the company’s total met coal exports, according to filings.


Peabody didn’t provide estimates of the fire’s impact on the mine or on its overall operations and didn’t respond to emailed questions. The Mine Safety and Health Administration is investigating, the company said in a statement. Shoal Creek employs 419 workers, all of whom were safely evacuated.

The mine will be shut while the fire is under investigation, said Andrew Blumenfeld, an analyst at McCloskey by Opis. If the cause is easily identified, it could be open within days, Blumenfeld said. But if the investigation is more complicated, the site could be closed for months.

“That’s not atypical with mine fires,” he said.

Met coal for making steel is higher quality than coal for power plants and typically commands a significantly higher price. The fire comes as Peabody is pushing to expand its seaborne metallurgical operations, including by starting redevelopment efforts at the North Goonyella mine in Australia, which has been closed since a 2018 fire.

Peabody said when firefighters evacuated the Shoal Creek mine, they reported no flames were visible. Fires in underground coal mines are notoriously hard to fight because firefighting operations are more challenging underground and because the coal provides fuel for the blaze.

Peabody’s shares were down 2.7% in late trading in New York.

(By Mark Chediak and Will Wade)

Glencore’s bid for Teck shows it’s willing to abandon coal
Bloomberg News | April 3, 2023 |

Credit: Glencore

Glencore Plc’s rejected $23 billion proposal for Teck Resources Ltd. has offered the first concrete sign that the biggest shipper of coal — and for years one of its most vocal defenders — is thinking about exiting the business.


While many rivals have long retreated from thermal coal under pressure from investors, Glencore has continued reaping massive profits from mining the dirtiest fuel. In an interview just last month, chief executive officer Gary Nagle called coal “a necessary fuel for today,” and the company has argued that it is better placed than others to responsibly manage the decline in production over time.

Now, Glencore has proposed an all-share deal to acquire Canadian miner Teck and then spin off the combined companies’ coal operations into a new business. Teck has rejected the proposal, but Glencore indicated on Monday it is doubling down on the idea and seeking discussions with the other company’s management.

Glencore’s current plan is to simply run its coal business to closure by 2050. The company has previously said that it was only prepared to exit the coal business if a majority of its shareholders asked for it.

But the Teck proposal “shows that Glencore do see merit in spinning off coal, which they’ve never said before,” said George Cheveley, a portfolio manager at Ninety One UK Ltd., who owns both Glencore and Teck. “If they can’t do Teck, then people will ask whether it would make sense just to do a coal spin-off.”

The stance on coal has faced pushback from some investors, with almost a quarter of shareholders voting against its climate report in October. The company’s sprawling coal mines, which stretch from Australia to Colombia, have also weighed on the share price by dampening its appeal as an ESG-compliant play.

And the coal assets have also been seen as a possible deterrent for any potential suitor for Glencore itself, at a time when the world’s biggest mining companies are finally regaining their appetite for mega deals. Glencore is a major producer of copper, nickel and cobalt — all strategic metals seen as key to electrifying the world. However, industry leader BHP Group itself is in the process of slowly exiting coal, while others like Rio Tinto Group are out already.

Coal has traditionally vied with copper as Glencore’s biggest driver of earnings. Last year high coal prices meant it contributed $17.9 billion of profit, compared with $5.7 billion for copper. Glencore said Monday that the two combined coal companies would have posted profit of $26 billion last year, while the base metal divisions would have made $16 billion.

Speaking to investors, Nagle argued the Glencore proposal would create more value than Teck’s own plan to split its business.

“What we are doing here is something different, not just a vanilla divestment,” Nagle said. “This is something that’s using the divestment of the coal assets to create value for Glencore and Teck shareholders.”

(By Thomas Biesheuvel, with assistance from Jack Farchy)

Teck said to be open to offers once coal spinoff is complete

Bloomberg News | April 4, 2023 | 

Highland Valley Copper operation in British Columbia. (Image courtesy of Teck Resources).

Teck Resources Ltd. is willing to entertain offers from potential suitors after it finishes the spinoff of its steelmaking coal business, according to people familiar with the matter.


The Canadian miner said Monday it rejected an unsolicited $23 billion proposal from Glencore Plc and will forge ahead with an April 26 shareholder vote on separating its metals and coal divisions. If investors approve, the split is expected to happen by the end of May, with the base metals producer being renamed Teck Metals Corp.

At that point, the Teck board is likely to be open to hearing offers from prospective partners or buyers including Glencore, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private.

The Swiss commodities firm’s offer for Teck, at a 20% premium, is another sign that big mining companies are on the hunt for acquisitions. BHP Group Ltd. and Rio Tinto Plc are also said to be actively looking to increase their copper exposure.

“The board and special committee are confident that the proposed separation into Teck Metals and Elk Valley Resources is in the best interests of Teck and all its stakeholders,” Chris Stannell, a spokesperson for Teck, said in an emailed statement. “Teck’s proposed separation positions Teck Metals and EVR for success and does not foreclose future opportunities for other value-enhancing transactions at the appropriate point and time.”

In rejecting Glencore’s all-share offer, Teck chief executive officer Jonathan Price said Monday that the spinoff structure proposed by the Swiss firm would expose Teck shareholders to its large thermal coal and oil trading businesses. Norman Keevil, Teck’s chairman emeritus, said that “now is not the time to explore a transaction of this nature.”

Teck has also proposed ending the dual-class share structure that gives control to Class A shareholders — the Keevil family and its partners. But that change wouldn’t take effect for six years. In the meantime, a hostile takeover of Teck is impossible.

(By Jacob Lorinc and Dinesh Nair)

NO F...ING WAY

Companies can vie to mine the deep sea starting in July
Bloomberg News | April 4, 2023 | 

The Metals Co, formerly known as DeepGreen, intends to produce metals from polymetalic rocks, found in deep oceans.(Image courtesy of The Metals Company.)

A United Nations-affiliated organization is expected to start accepting applications this summer from companies looking to mine deep sea ecosystems for valuable metals, despite failing on Friday to establish regulations governing the embryonic industry.


That doesn’t necessarily mean mining is set to begin anytime soon. Given the absence of environmental regulations, as well as ongoing disagreement among the International Seabed Authority’s 167 member nations over whether deep sea mining should even proceed, there are doubts about whether licenses will be issued and under what conditions. Regardless, the failure to establish a regulatory framework before the deadline — for environmental standards, royalty payments, environmental impact assessments, inspection or compliance — means that whatever happens next will take the ISA into unchartered territory.

The organization is “sleepwalking into a legally uncertain situation,” Ambassador Hugo Verbist, head of Belgium’s delegation, told the ISA Council on Friday as the organization’s 36-nation policymaking body concluded more than two weeks of negotiations in Kingston, Jamaica.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea established the ISA in 1994 to regulate the industrialization of the seabed in international waters and to ensure the effective protection of the marine environment. The ISA had been slowly developing regulations, called the mining code, before Nauru, a South Pacific island nation of 8,000 people, sped things up by triggering a so-called two-year rule in the Law of the Sea treaty. That provision required the ISA to complete the mining code by July 9, 2023, or accept mining applications under whatever regulations exist at the time.

All mining contractors must be sponsored by an ISA member state and Nauru is the sponsor of The Metals Company, a Canadian-registered venture formerly known as DeepGreen. Nauru invoked the two-year rule shortly after The Metals Company told potential investors that it expected to begin mining by 2024, according to US securities filings. The Metals Company also holds contracts sponsored by two other small South Pacific island nations to prospect for cobalt, nickel and other metals used to make electric car batteries.

During the recent ISA Council meeting, a Greenpeace ship anchored off the ISA’s harborside headquarters and anti-seabed mining protestors gathered outside the building. Inside, China, Russia and Norway were among those countries urging the Council to fulfill the ISA’s mandate and complete regulations. But a growing number of nations, including Germany, France, Spain, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Chile, Panama, Palau, Fiji and the Federated States of Micronesia, called for a moratorium or pause in deep sea mining. They cited a lack of scientific knowledge about the biology of deep ocean ecosystems targeted for mining and the role they play in the global climate.

Brazil, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland and other countries, meanwhile, have indicated that they would not approve any mining contracts until robust environmental protections for the seabed are enacted.

“We reiterate today, conditions don’t exist for deep sea exploitation to be carried out,” Mexican delegate Marcelino Miranda told the Council on Friday. The Dominican Republic on Friday also joined the cause for a pause. “When in doubt, favor nature,” said Dominican Republic’s Ambassador Edward Aníbal Pérez Reyes. “We should not move ahead.”

None of the countries asking for a moratorium or pause on seabed mining have formally proposed such a resolution. Pradeep Singh, an international ocean governance scholar at the University of Bremen in Germany, noted that the Council operates by consensus, requiring unanimity to approve the mining code. “Technically, even if there is one formal objection, then it cannot get adopted,” said Singh, who attended the recent ISA Council meeting as an observer.

Although the ISA Council still has three months to enact regulations, it wouldn’t even be able to agree on any until its next scheduled meeting on July 10, one day after the deadline. A resolution adopted by the Council on Friday requests that the ISA secretary-general notify it within three days of receiving any mining application. The Council also noted that it retains the authority to provisionally approve or reject an application. Left to be decided is whether the Council can postpone a decision on an application until mining regulations are in place.

Nauru has said it won’t sponsor a specific mining application on behalf of The Metals Company until after the Council meeting in July. On a March 23 earnings call, Metals Company executives said they expect to file an application in the second half of 2023 and to receive an ISA mining license in 2024, with production to begin later that year or in early 2025.

But there’s a question about whether The Metals Company, or any other privately owned applicant, will be able to raise the considerable capital needed to begin mining operations. (That’s not an issue for nations like China, which holds five exploration licenses, but to date its state-backed contractors have not indicated they’re ready to begin mining.) The private ISA contractor with the deepest pockets, US defense giant Lockheed Martin, abruptly exited the industry this month when it sold its seabed mining subsidiary to a Norwegian startup.

In securities filings, The Metals Company has estimated a full-fledged mining operation with an onshore processing plant would cost $10.6 billion to launch, with annual operating expenses of $1.8 billion after 2030. On its March 23 earnings call, the company, which had a net loss of $109.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, said it would need to raise $100 million to $150 million to begin mining after receiving an ISA license. The company’s shares closed at 83 cents on Friday.

(By Todd Woody)

 

Salvors Begin Oil Containment and Removal for Princess Empress Wreck

PCG / Fukada Salvage

PUBLISHED APR 2, 2023 6:07 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

The Philipping Coast Guard and a Japanese salvor have begun a bagging operation to seal off leaks from the sunken tanker Princess Empress, one month after the vessel went down south of Luzon. A supplier from the United Kingdom provided specialized bags for the purpose, which will be installed using an ROV from the Japanese salvage vessel Shin Nichi Maru. 

“We are grateful for all the support from the other countries in addressing this emergency. We hope that along with these international assistance, the integrated response between government agencies and the local government units will enable us to accelerate the effort to contain the leakage,” said Ariel Nepomuceno, head of the Philippines' National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

The bagging operation is a preliminary step in the remediation process. After sealing identified leaks, the salvors will use hot tapping to siphon off the tanker's fuel oil cargo. 

Illustration of typical hot tapping process

The product tanker Princess Empress went down off Pola, Oriental Mindoro on February 28. The crew were rescued safely by a good samaritan vessel, but petroleum began to leak out of the wreck's cargo tanks, spreading a plume that eventually reached from Calapan and Verde Island in the northwest to the Caluya Islands and Palawan in the south. An estimated 175,000 people have been affected, including fishermen who have lost their livelihoods due to a fishing ban. 

The Princess Empress went down with about 800-900,000 liters of fuel oil on board, and the Philippine Coast Guard estimates that 400,000 liters were released, based on assessments of damage to the vessel's tanks. 14,000 liters of oil water mixture have been collected during the spill response. 

The full cost of the damage and the extent of the claims are not yet known. The damages may exceed the P&I club's limit of liability, triggering additional coverage from the UN-administered International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds (IOPC Funds). The insurers recently agreed to start collecting claims for compensation from affected residents, and have set up local offices in Oriental Mindoro to facilitate the process.

Canada’s West Coast Longshore Contract Expires

The longshore contract convering Canada's West Coast ports including Vancouver has expired (Port of Vancouver)

PUBLISHED APR 3, 2023 11:50 AM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

The labor contract for Canada’s West Coast ports expired on Friday, March 31 with the union already saying that they are at an impasse with their employers. The Canadian federal government is becoming involved, deferring the possibility of strikes till at least June in what is likely to be protracted negotiations.

The last five-year contract covered over 7,400 longshore workers and foremen at the ports including Vancouver and Price Rupert, which collectively handle approximately 25 percent of the country’s imports and exports. Estimates are that the West Coast ports handle nearly C$300 billion worth of cargo annually (US$225 billion). The last agreement, which took approximately 18 months of negotiations and resulted in a brief lockout, sets the wages, benefits, hours of work, and employment conditions for the longshore workers.

The International Longshoremen & Warehouse Union Canada (ILWU) filed an official notice in November 2022 under Canadian labor law to commence the negotiations to renew the collective agreement with the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association. At the time they said they expected to begin discussions in January 2023, but the first meeting did not take place till February 16 during which proposals were exchanged and dates established for the negotiations in March and April.

After only a few sessions, the ILWU filed a notice of dispute on March 20 with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. At the time, the union said it was taking that action because “there has been no meaningful progress with the BCMEA in discussions to renew the Industry Collective Agreement.”

Observers were left to speculate on what is happening due to the quick action to seek mediation. While it is the same process they followed for the prior negotiations the action came quicker than anyone anticipated. The Federal government which had fifteen days to act also moved quickly with the Minister of Labor appointing two conciliation officers on March 29. 

The speculation varies between efforts to accelerate the process this time or deep divisions between the two sides. Before the start of the negotiations, the union made public comments saying that it was seeking significant wage increases. While both benefits and work conditions were expected to be discussed during the negotiations, the union’s primary concern is automation. Similar to the U.S. West Coast labor union which has yet to resolve its contract negotiations, the Canadian union is opposed to efforts toward port automation. It is likely to be a primary issue in Vancouver where they are working to build a new container terminal.

BCMEA in its statements has repeatedly said it has a “sincere objective of reaching a fair and equitable agreement that recognizes the efforts and skills of B.C.’s waterfront workforce, while also ensuring West Coast ports remain competitive, resilient, and affordable for all Canadians.” When the union filed its notice of dispute, the employer’s association emphasized the critical role the ports play in the economic and social well-being of Canada.

Under Canadian labor laws, the appointment of the conciliation officers starts a mandated 60-day period where they will seek to guide the negotiations. That period could be extended by the mutual consent of the two sides. At the end of the conciliation period, a further 21-day cooling-off period begins if there is no agreement. Observers are noting that based on that timeline it would be at least June before there could be a sanctioned strike or the employers would be permitted to lock out any workers.

THIRD WORLD U$A

She lost her child in a home birth. Prosecutors charged her with murder

Sam Levin in Los Angeles
Mon, 3 April 2023 

Kelsey Carpenter was alone in her San Diego apartment when she went into labor on 14 November 2020.

The mother of two had planned a home birth for her third child. But the baby came two weeks earlier than expected, so she delivered on her own, then passed out, records show. When she awoke, her newborn - whom she named Kiera - was not breathing. Despite her attempts at CPR, the baby did not survive.

The loss, however, was only the beginning of Carpenter’s nightmare.

Police soon after arrested Carpenter, 33. The San Diego district attorney is moving forward with charges of murder “with malice” and child endangerment and has cited her decision to have an “unattended delivery” as well as her alleged drug use. Prosecutors have continued to pursue the case despite the county medical examiner saying the manner of death was an “accident”; medical experts testifying that the state’s cause-of-death claims were not backed by scientific evidence; and the passage of a new California law explicitly prohibiting the criminalization of pregnancy loss.

If convicted, Carpenter could face a life sentence.

“I am still stunned and horrified that a person could have the biggest tragedy of their life and lose a child who was loved and was so wanted, and then be charged with such a horrible crime,” Carpenter told the Guardian in a recent message from jail. “I had cherished the idea of this baby and was totally committed to becoming the best mother I knew how to be. I mourn every day for Kiera.”

The case comes as women across the US have been increasingly subjected to surveillance, arrest and charges for abortions, stillbirths, and other actions that police claimed “endangered” their fetuses, with routine healthcare decisions and pregnancy outcomes treated as crimes.



It’s this American idea that we can police our way out of these social problems

Dana Sussman, Pregnancy Justice

Since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022, a Nebraska teenager and her mother were charged with unlawful abortion and “concealing the death of another person” after allegedly obtaining abortion pills; a South Carolina woman was arrested after delivering a stillborn fetus in a hospital; a pregnant woman found with marijuana was jailed for months in Alabama to “protect” her fetus; and three women were sued for wrongful death after a Texas man alleged they helped his ex-wife obtain an abortion. Carpenter’s prosecution in California, a state considered a leader on reproductive justice and women’s rights, was a reminder that this crackdown was not limited to conservative states, advocates said.

“It’s this American idea that we can police our way out of these social problems – that placing someone in jail or prison is a way to address mental health needs, substance use disorders or lack of access to healthcare,” said Dana Sussman, acting executive director of Pregnancy Justice, a legal advocacy group assisting Carpenter. “It has really devastating outcomes for everyone.”
A tragic ‘accident’

Carpenter has struggled with substance use disorder for much of her adult life, stemming from sexual abuse and trauma she endured as a child, she said: “I tried to hide the pain of those experiences in drugs.” She repeatedly sought treatment and went to rehab, but said that medical professionals who learned of her addiction in some cases responded with punitive measures that caused her life to further unravel.

Her first son was born in 2012 and her second in 2019. In both cases, the hospitals reported that the infants tested positive for drugs and called California Child Welfare Services (CWS), which immediately took custody – despite the fact that both were healthy births, there was no indication either child suffered adverse consequences due to drug exposure, and she was taking prescribed addiction medication, her lawyers say. She has maintained relationships with both kids, with her mother adopting her oldest and Carpenter regaining joint custody of the youngest.

When Carpenter became pregnant again with Kiera, she was determined that this time would be different: “I did not want to risk losing my third child to the system … I love my babies and hoped to provide a sibling to them. I had imagined my sons being her big brothers and protecting her and showing her love.” In 2020, she prepared for a home birth, getting literature on delivery at home, reaching out to a midwife, and buying medical supplies, baby care items, a changing table and a crib.

She was also in drug treatment again. Records show that in September, she visited a methadone clinic, which prescribes patients medications to manage addiction and withdrawal. The facility was aware she was pregnant and had her take buprenorphine, which leading medical associations and US health agencies recommended for pregnant patients with opioid use disorder.

After delivering her baby, she cut the umbilical cord and secured it with cloth and tape, and also tried unsuccessfully to breastfeed her newborn before losing consciousness amid significant blood loss, her lawyers said. After discovering her baby was lifeless, she attempted CPR and called 911.

She was hospitalized – and then arrested for child endangerment.
‘Like someone ripped my heart out’

Shande Carpenter, Kelsey’s mother, showed up to the Oceanside police station where her daughter was in shock and severe physical pain while being questioned by officers: “She was hysterically crying, collapsing in my arms, completely inconsolable, hyperventilating. She told me Kiera had passed away and the police were blaming her. It was gut-wrenching. I felt like someone was ripping my heart out.”

She was initially released, but in March 2021, Summer Stephan, the San Diego district attorney, charged Carpenter with murder, prompting local news stories headlined “Drug addict loses third child”. She faced significant online abuse, death threats and harassment, including someone spraying “baby killer” on her car, her mother said: “I was fearful for her safety, and all of this was happening while she was trying to mourn Kiera.”

Related: She was jailed for losing a pregnancy. Her nightmare could become more common

Kelsey Carpenter said the stress was overwhelming, and she was consumed by grief: “Before I was arrested I slept with Kiera’s ashes next to me every night and told her all of the hopes I had had for us. She was so fully loved for the few minutes I had her. I miss her so much.”

The county coroner’s November 2020 autopsy deemed the loss an “accident”, and said the cause was “perinatal death associated with methamphetamine and buprenorphine exposure and unattended delivery”. But a Yale University expert who reviewed placental records for Carpenter’s lawyers said a rupture was the most likely cause, meaning blood loss prior to or during delivery, and that there was no evidence that drug exposure was responsible.

At a hearing in September 2022, a police detective acknowledged that it was not illegal to have an unattended home birth nor to use buprenorphine. And the medical examiner, when cross-examined by Carpenter’s attorney Brian White, acknowledged it was “not a homicide because there’s no intent to kill”, it would be “reasonable” to “certify this death as undetermined” and it was possible the baby might not have survived if the birth had been at a hospital.

In addition to the legality of home birth and uncertainty about the cause of death, Carpenter’s lawyers grew more confident in their case late last year when lawmakers adopted reproductive rights legislation that made clear this kind of prosecution simply isn’t allowed.

But the new law has not stopped the San Diego DA.
‘Who do these prosecutions serve?’

AB2223, which went into effect in January, states that a person cannot be charged for conduct during pregnancy that results in abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth or perinatal death. Its adoption came after a district attorney in California’s Central Valley spent years pursuing murder cases against Chelsea Becker and Adora Perez, two women who had stillbirths, alleging without scientific basis that drug use caused their losses.

Advocates, backed by the state’s attorney general, argued that California’s “murder of a human fetus” statute has long only applied to third parties – if, for instance, someone shoots a pregnant person, leading to a miscarriage. The new law makes this explicit and is supported by medical experts, who argue that criminalizing pregnancy outcomes is unethical, counter to scientific evidence and harmful for public health.



Why are we prosecuting tragedies instead of preventing them?

Jennifer Chou, ACLU

Research shows that policies that punish people for substance use during pregnancy can lead to worse outcomes, in part because people skip prenatal care and treatment out of fear, said Dr Sarah CM Roberts, University of California, San Francisco, professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences: “We’re prosecuting and blaming people for a decision to avoid care, when we as a society put the policies in place that made them scared to get care.”

Reproductive rights and health experts who submitted a brief in Carpenter’s case also noted that scientific studies have not demonstrated that a pregnant person’s use of methamphetamine causes infant death.

“It’s concerning that people who have anything but a perfect birth are vulnerable to this kind of state misinterpretation of the event as willful and the individual therefore culpable for the tragic outcome,” said Dr Mishka Terplan, an OB-GYN physician and addiction expert. “Who do these prosecutions serve? They certainly don’t serve Ms Carpenter. What is to be gained from this?”

Jennifer Chou, ACLU of Northern California staff attorney, said Carpenter’s case served to create further mistrust in the medical system: “Why are we prosecuting tragedies instead of preventing them? For Ms Carpenter, Ms Perez and Ms Becker, what would have been helpful is connections to resources that they needed to stay healthy, but instead we put them into the criminal system.”

Before Roe v Wade was overturned, Pregnancy Justice tracked 1,700 cases of pregnancy criminalization in the US, many involving substance use claims. While prosecutions of pregnant people suffering from addiction have not typically sparked widespread outrage, Sussman said she hoped people were now paying attention; those cases are the “blueprint” for the broader crackdown on bodily autonomy in a country that increasingly values “fetal personhood” and no longer has a constitutional right to abortion.
Separated from her kids

As Carpenter’s lawyers have moved to dismiss the case by citing AB2223, San Diego prosecutors have focused on her conduct after the birth, claiming she did not properly secure the umbilical cord, that she took 28 minutes to call 911 after waking up, and that if she had sought help faster, “the baby would have survived”.

Tanya Sierra, a DA spokesperson, said in an email that the DA “fully recognizes the reproductive rights enshrined by AB 2223”, but alleged that the new law was not relevant: “Carpenter is not being prosecuted for her decision to have a home birth or substance use. This is not a case involving abortion, stillbirth, or any other pregnancy outcome. This is a case about a newborn baby who died as a direct result of a parent’s acts and omissions after the baby’s live birth.”

Carpenter’s attorneys have countered that there was no clear evidence any of her actions after delivery caused the death and that the DA was still criminalizing her lawful home birth: “The law is clear: decisions a woman makes during pregnancy cannot be used to prosecute her for the outcome of the pregnancy,” said Daniel Arschack.

It’s unclear if Stephan, the DA, has prosecuted similar cases, which are rare in California. A former Republican, now a registered independent, Stephan has presented herself as a champion for women and children, and has made national headlines for her conspiracy case against leftist protesters demonstrating at a pro-Trump rally. Oceanside police did not respond to inquiries. The medical examiner declined to comment.

Carpenter was originally released on bail, but after a failure to appear in court, she was arrested again and brought to jail in January, her lawyers said, once again separating her from her children.

Shande said she wished the DA and the public understood who her daughter really was – a mother deeply devoted to her sons, who has a gentle spirit. “She’s a beautiful, loving, caring, sweet woman, who has been trying so hard for years to heal from the pain that drives her addiction, so she can conquer this disease.” One of the hardest parts of her incarceration is that her two sons can only see her during brief video visits; the oldest, age 11, cries, saying he misses cuddling and playing with his mom, and the youngest, age three, doesn’t understand why he has to talk to her on a screen.

Carpenter had been working to get her real estate license to better support her kids, but she is now unsure she’ll be able to pursue that career, she said, adding that the turmoil of her case had exacerbated her struggles with addiction.

“I wish that instead of taking my babies away when I was trying to beat my dependency problem, I could have been supported and been assured that having a baby in a hospital while being treated for dependency did not mean that my baby would be taken away,” she said. “I have been a good mother to my children and I would have been to Kiera if I’d had the chance.”

Brian Moser obituary

Jan Rocha

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 3 April 2023 



In October 1967, when the body of Che Guevara was brought out of the Bolivian jungle lashed to a helicopter, Brian Moser was the first photographer on hand in Vallegrande to take what became iconic pictures of Latin America’s most famous revolutionary leader.

A week later, the trial began in nearby Camiri of Régis Debray, the French Marxist intellectual who had been captured after visiting the rebels, and Brian was there to film it, smuggling Debray a note with a message from Fidel Castro.

In 1985, when the remains of Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor of the Auschwitz death camp, were found in Brazil, Brian was there to interview the Austrian couple who had sheltered him and who still talked approvingly of the need to eliminate the untermenschen, the Jews. The footage formed part of the film The Search for Mengele, narrated by David Frost.

Brian, who has died aged 88 of heart complications, was not only present to record key moments in Latin America’s recent history, but he was also a documentary film-maker who pioneered a groundbreaking series for Granada TV called Disappearing World. The award-winning series, which began in 1970 and ran for more than 20 years, told the stories of indigenous peoples under threat from the advance of the outside world, in their own words.

His 1967 film on Che Guevara, End of a Revolution, shown by Granada’s World in Action series, refuted the official version that Guevara had died in a gunbattle. Brian’s version, that Guevara was captured alive and then killed, was based on a tipoff from a member of the American special forces who were present in the jungle region where Guevara and his guerrillas were trying to start a peasant revolution. The film, made by Brian with the help of his wife Caroline, turned them into objects of suspicion for the CIA.

Brian studied geology at Cambridge University, and then spent two years in Colombia with the anthropologist Donald Tayler, recording the music of eight remote indigenous tribes, the beginning of his long love affair with South America, and particularly Colombia. The film he made caught the attention of the Granada TV programme controller Denis Forman, who decided to invest in the amateur film-maker, providing training and then hiring him to work on World in Action.

In 1967 he married the anthropologist Caroline Shephard and they spent several years in Latin America, where together they developed the idea of the Disappearing World films.

Caroline says “There were two guiding principles – first, we would work with anthropologists who worked with tribal groups to give us access. Second, they would tell their stories in their own language and words, with subtitles, with little or no commentary, a revolutionary departure from the usual custom of having a presenter, invariably a white male.”

Disappearing World became a landmark anthropological series, internationally acclaimed, offering intimate portraits of remote communities, like the Cuiva, Embera and Panare of South America but also the nomadic Tuareg of the Sahara, the Kurdish Dervishes and the Meo of Mongolia. Each episode was filmed on 16mm film, usually taking about four weeks. A three-month edit in the Granada studios in Manchester followed. For Forman, Disappearing World and Coronation Street were two of the best series Granada ever made: both were commercially successful.

In 1976 Brian moved to Central TV and made the series Frontier, exploring the lives of people living on the edge of society. For the first episode, the couple and their two small children lived for months in a tiny bamboo hut built above a swamp in a slum community in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

In 1982 Brian and Caroline divorced and he later married the Colombian soprano Marina Tafur and spent most of the next few years in her home country. Because of his work recording and documenting indigenous peoples he was made an honorary citizen of Colombia, regarded as a pioneer of visual anthropology. Many of his sound recordings and photos are held there, while others are at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford and at the British Museum.

Brian was born in London. His father, Charlie Moser, was a Jewish businessman whose family, originally from Germany, were successful wool merchants in Bradford. His mother, Eliza (nee Henderson), grew up in Chile, where her family ran an export-import business, sending her to Britain for her education. In London she became an artist.

Brian said that when he was nine years old he would catch the No 11 bus from his home in Chelsea to a cinema in Victoria where they showed newsreels of the war and he saw pictures of Belsen concentration camp being liberated. “Perhaps it was the ability of those images to tell such a powerful story that sowed the seeds of my future career.” He saw the films he made for Disappearing World as “telling the stories of ordinary people often struggling for survival and frequently fighting for their rights”.

Brian was charismatic, charming, risk-taking. He loved the rainforest; he hated urban life. He spent his last few years living in a cottage in Dorset, organising his huge collection of photos into a book with the help of his son Titus.

He is survived by Marina, Titus and Nat, his grandchildren, Tage, Kaia, Sebastian, Savva and Elinor, his stepchildren Juanita and Sandra, and his sister, Leonora.

• Brian John Moser, documentary film-maker, born 30 January 1935; died 16 February 2023

Former union man takes on top job at Scottish Labour

Hamish Morrison
Mon, 3 April 2023 

Anas Sarwar pictured with former Scottish Labour general secretary James Kelly (far left) (Image: PA)

A FORMER senior trade union figure has been appointed general secretary of Scottish Labour.

John Paul McHugh takes on the post from former MSP James Kelly who has held the role since September 2021.

McHugh was assistant general secretary of the Community union until leaving the post in December, having been at the union for 15 years.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “I am delighted that John Paul has been appointed as our party’s new general secretary.

“John Paul brings with him a wealth of experience and knowledge and will be ready to build on the great work done by outgoing general secretary, James Kelly.

READ MORE: Scottish Labour reject anti-SNP tactical voting ploy with Tories

“The people of Scotland need a Labour government and Scotland needs a strong Scottish Labour Party.

“Together, we can lock the Tories out of Downing Street and the SNP out of Bute House. Scottish Labour – the change that Scotland needs.”

McHugh said: “It is an honour and a privilege to join the team at this exciting and hopeful moment for our movement.

“I will do all that I can to build on the legacy left behind by James Kelly and do all I can to deliver the Labour government that Scotland desperately needs.”

Prior to joining the Community union, McHugh worked as a mechanical fitter.

Eco-anxiety: climate change affects our mental health – here's how to cope


Matthew Adams, Principal Lecturer in Psychology, University of Brighton
Mon, 3 April 2023

A climate protest in Ontario, Canada. Ali Jabber/Shutterstock

As a psychologist, I have been researching, writing and talking about psychological and social responses to climate change for over ten years. An increasingly common response appears to be extreme worry.

The University of Bath recently published the results of its 2023 Climate Action Survey. Out of almost 5,000 respondents, 19% of students and 25% of staff said they were “extremely worried” about climate change, while 36% and 33% stated they were “very worried”. Climate worry was higher compared with results from the previous year’s survey.

In 2021, a global survey of how children and young people felt about climate change found similarly high levels of worry. Most of the 10,000 participants reported feelings of sadness, anxiety, anger, powerlessness, helplessness and guilt.


This phenomenon is called eco-anxiety, and it’s no surprise that so many people suffer from it. Wherever we are, more of us are now starting to experience the effects of the climate crisis in some way, whether this be drought, food shortages, flooding or extreme weather. Calling the climate crisis a crisis has also gone mainstream after years of being on the margins, and is now front and centre of wildlife documentaries, films, news media and celebrity culture.
Eco-anxiety can’t be ‘fixed’

Being worried or anxious about the climate and ecological crisis is a reasonable and predictable response to a dangerous situation. We should expect an increase in distress and complex emotional responses.

This is an important point for me and many other psychologists and psychotherapists that engage with the climate crisis as a profound societal and psychological challenge. It means that we should be wary of trying to accurately measure distress-related responses like eco-anxiety as individual traits.

When we do, the issue too easily becomes about the individual and the solution to fix them. This is often done by helping them adapt to reality through therapy and even medication.

But in framing the problem this way, we collectively engage in a form of denial. Can we, in good conscience, come up with “tips” for dealing with eco-anxiety if they are only aimed at finding ways to make the bad feelings go away and ignore their source?

I think we can. Distress can be overwhelming and debilitating. We do need to find ways to manage it both individually and collectively, while recognising that eco-anxiety is, in many ways, a “healthy” response.

Here are some tips for coping with eco-anxiety whenever the despair gets too much.
1. Acknowledge difficult emotions

Remind yourselves that anxiety and other emotions reflect a healthy psychological response to the fact that we are living in a time when so much of what we accept about the nature of a good life, progress, and what the future holds is unravelling.

By acknowledging these difficult emotions in yourself and others, you are less likely to engage in denial and defence mechanisms. These mechanisms include minimising the scale of the problem, blaming others and deepening support for opposing viewpoints.

The counterproductive nature of these mechanisms in our ability to collectively deal with societal problems is well-documented. For example, if everyone redirects the responsibility of climate action to others, then climate solutions are unlikely to get much traction.

A figure showing the different discourses that result in delayed climate action.

2. Recognise that it’s normal to feel overwhelmed

Doing things that reduce your carbon footprint is a common response to eco-anxiety. This might include recycling more or buying goods with reduced packaging. It can also be a stepping stone to other, more substantial lifestyle shifts like eating less meat or avoiding flying.

Much of this behaviour happens socially, so it can create conversations with others and shift social norms. The more we break the collective silence around the reality of the climate crisis, the more likely we are to see it as a shared problem. This in turn is the basis for political engagement and imagining a different kind of future.

But it is important to recognise that it is normal to feel overwhelmed both by the difficulty of removing ourselves from existing carbon-intensive lifestyle choices, such as shopping, holidays, driving, flying and buying stuff, and by the lack of visible results on a wider scale that follow from the changes we might already be making.

There is a long history of vested interests asserting the mantra of personal responsibility in maintaining the status quo. From those pushing tobacco to fossil fuel companies, a key strategic emphasis has been to “blame the consumer”, such as the endorsement of “tips” for reducing individual consumption.

This focus deflects from the need for bigger economic, social and structural change. After all, a structural problem requires a structural solution, not an individual one.
3. You’re not alone

It is best to think of eco-anxiety as something that we share, both collectively and culturally. We are in the midst of a planetary problem, with an accompanying planetary-scale emotional charge. You are tapping into what millions of other people are feeling too, however difficult it is to express.

In fact, as American climatologist Michael E. Mann has long argued, if you want to think about effective individual behaviour change, then contributing to collective pressure for bigger policy changes is the most useful thing you can do. This starts by sharing our concerns and connecting with others.

Talking about your concerns with others is a good start. AndriiKoval/Shutterstock

One final tip. Never lose sight of why you care so much in the first place. Eco-anxiety stems from biophilia – a love of all life.

So slow down, keep noticing nature and voicing what you care about. Whatever loss we are already mourning, whatever we are scared of losing, there is still a world out there to care for.

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

The Conversation

Matthew Adams is a member of the Climate Psychology Alliance.

Pacific trade deal ‘will make mockery of UK’s climate ambitions’

Fiona Harvey and Helena Horton
Mon, 3 April 2023

Photograph: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images

The UK’s membership of a Pacific trade agreement will result in more deforestation overseas, endanger animal welfare and “make a mockery” of the government’s environmental commitments, campaigners have said.

Ministers signed an agreement late last week for the UK to become a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trading bloc of 11 nations including Japan, Canada, Australia and Mexico.

The government said membership of the bloc would add about £1.8bn a year to the UK’s economy and free up trade for products such as whisky and pork. But environmental groups have raised concerns about the implications of the trade deal after the UK agreed to scrap European tariffs on palm oil as a condition for entry into the Pacific deal.

Last week Kemi Badenoch, the trade secretary, told Sky News that “you have to make trade-offs” in signing trade deals, and that palm oil was “a great product” and “not some illegal substance”. She added: “There are other crops in the EU that are causing deforestation that fit within EU rules.” The remarks enraged environmental and animal welfare groups, which warned that the deal would encourage deforestation overseas, particularly in south-east Asia, and could allow for the import of cheap low-quality meat produced under conditions that would be illegal here.

Palm oil produced in Malaysia is of particular concern as tariffs on the product, currently at 12%, will be eliminated and imports could increase, including from areas that have been deforested. Research by conservation groups over years has shown palm oil is closely associated with deforestation, the loss of habitats for rare species including the orangutan, and devastating forest fires.

Daniela Montalto, a forest campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “The UK has no safeguards in place to ensure it is not importing or financing palm oil operations that damage critical forests, peatlands, Indigenous lands and habitats for threatened species including orangutans. Cutting palm oil tariffs will only incentivise further destruction and runs completely counter to the government’s promise to embed the environment at the very heart of trade. It is beyond outrageous.”

At the Cop26 summit in Glasgow in 2021, the UK government spearheaded a global forests initiative, aimed at halting deforestation, and ministers have also brought in new rules to prevent goods from deforested areas being sold in the UK.

Montalto said: “[The Pacific trade deal] makes a total mockery of the UK government’s legislation to tackle deforestation in UK supply chains and runs completely counter to the government’s promise to put the environment at the very heart of trade.”

Angela Francis, the director of policy solutions at WWF, said: “By joining the CPTPP, the UK government is encouraging hugely destructive agriculture, which would be illegal in the UK, into our market. This announcement risks more imports of food produced in ways that drive deforestation, us harmful pesticides, or rely on unregulated fishing practices – all of which undermine the high standards UK producers are already required to meet.”

Animal welfare would also suffer, according to the RSPCA. Many members of the CPTPP use methods of production that would be illegal in the UK, including sow stalls and battery eggs, as well as antibiotic use, hormone treatment and pesticides that are outlawed here. There are no explicit references to animal welfare standards in the trade bloc’s formal conditions, according to the charity, which fears that products using these methods could be unwittingly bought by UK consumers.

David Bowles, the head of public affairs at the RSPCA, said: “The UK joining this transpacific trade bloc is another potential nail in the coffin for animal welfare standards back home. We now fear there will be nothing to stop those products [produced with lower standards] being imported into the UK.”

He added: “We were hoping that this transpacific agreement would result in a far better outcome in terms of animal welfare than the standalone trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, but this looks like another catastrophic own goal for animal welfare.”

Badenoch claimed doubling the amount of palm oil the UK imports from Malaysia would not have an impact on deforestation, adding that “you have to make trade-offs” when doing a deal and said the UK currently bought 1% of Malaysia’s palm oil exports but “moving to 2% from 1% is not what is going to cause deforestation”.

A spokesperson for the Department of Business and Trade told the Guardian: “The UK is committed to tackling illegal deforestation within our supply chains, and our agreement to join CPTPP does not change that. We will always support the sustainable production of palm oil, and at accession we will publish a joint statement with Malaysia to protect forests. Existing UK tariffs on Malaysian palm oil are already low, and the UK accounted for around 1% of Malaysia’s global palm oil exports last year, with deforestation related to palm oil in Malaysia falling 60% since 2012.”