29 Nigerian children may be sentenced to death for protesting against cost-of-living crisis
DYEPKAZAH SHIBAYAN
Fri, November 1, 2024 a

FILE - People run away from tear gas during a protest on the street in Kano, Nigeria, Aug. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Sani Maikatanga, File)

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Twenty-nine children could be facing the death penalty in Nigeria after they were arraigned Friday for participating in a protest against the country’s record cost-of-living crisis. Four of them collapsed in court due to exhaustion before they could enter a plea.

A total of 76 protesters were charged with 10 felony counts, including treason, destruction of property, public disturbance and mutiny, according to the charge sheet seen by The Associated Press.

According to the charge sheet, the minors ranged in age from 14 to 17 years old.

Frustration over the cost-of-living crisis has led to several mass protests in recent months. In August, at least 20 people were shot dead and hundreds more were arrested at a protest demanding better opportunities and jobs for young people.

The death sentence was introduced in the 1970s in Nigeria, but there have been no executions in the country since 2016.

Akintayo Balogun, a private lawyer based in Abuja, said the Child Rights Act does not allow any child to be subject to criminal proceedings and sentenced to death.

“So taking minors before a federal high court is wrong, ab initio, except if the government is able to prove that the boys are all above 19 years,” Balogun said.

The court eventually granted 10 million naira ($5,900) bail to each the defendants and imposed stringent conditions they are yet to meet, Marshal Abubakar, counsel to some of the boys, said.

“A country that has a duty to educate its children will decide to punish those children. These children have been in detention for 90 days without food,” Abubakar said.

Yemi Adamolekun, executive director of Enough is Enough, a civil society organization promoting good governance in Nigeria, said authorities have no business prosecuting children.

“The chief justice of Nigeria should be ashamed, she is a woman and a mother,” Adamolekun said.

Despite being one of the top crude oil producers in Africa, Nigeria remains one of the world’s poorest countries. Chronic corruption means the lifestyle of its public officials rarely mirrors that of the general population. Medical professionals often strike to protest meager wages.

The country's politicians and lawmakers, often accused of corruption, are some of the best-paid in Africa. Even the president’s wife — her office nowhere in the constitution — is entitled to SUVs and other luxuries funded by taxpayers.

Nigeria’s population of over 210 million people — the continent’s largest — is also among the hungriest in the world and its government has struggled to create jobs. The inflation rate is also at 28-year high and the local naira currency at record lows against the dollar.

On Thursday, Nigeria was classified as a “hotspot of very high concern,” in a report from United Nations’ food agencies, as large numbers of people are facing or are projected to face critical levels of acute food insecurity in the West African country.


Police fire tear gas during a protest against Nigeria's cost-of-living crisis in Abuja on Aug. 1, 2024.

Nigeria charges 76, including minors, with treason after August protests

Camillus Eboh
Fri, November 1, 2024 

Protesters shout slogans as they participate in a protest along a road in Lagos,

By Camillus Eboh

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria charged 76 people, including 30 minors, with treason and inciting a military coup after they took part in deadly August protests against economic hardship, court documents showed on Friday.

Protesters in August demonstrated in Abuja, the commercial capital Lagos and several other cities to show discontent with economic reforms that have led to rampant inflation and inflicted increasing hardship on ordinary Nigerians. President Bola Tinubu has vowed to pursue the changes which he says are needed to keep the country afloat.

Amnesty International said at least 13 people died during clashes with security forces on the first day of protests.

A rights group said the minors have been held since August by the Nigerian police after participating in protests against worsening insecurity and deprivation in the country.

The charge sheet said the suspects had been investigated between July and August. A police spokesperson did not answer calls seeking comment on the minors' detention.

The minors were granted bail and the case will come to trial in January, their lawyers said.

Nigerians are grappling with a severe cost-of-living crisis and widespread insecurity which has damaged the farming sector, with armed gangs kidnapping residents and school children for ransom in the north.

(Writing by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Microsoft workers fired over Gaza vigil say company ‘crumbled under pressure’

Michael Sainato

THE GUARDIAN
Sat, November 2, 2024

A silent protest on 29 December called out Microsoft’s business dealings with Israel and the war in Gaza.

Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images

Two Microsoft employees who were fired last week after organizing a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza say the company retaliated against them for their pro-Palestinian activism.

The two, Abdo Mohamed, a researcher and data scientist, and Hossam Nasr, a software engineer, organized the event outside Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on 24 October. They were fired later that evening.

“Microsoft really crumbled under pressure, internally and externally, to fire me and to shut down and retaliate against our event, not because of policy violations, simply because we were daring to humanize Palestinians, and simply because we were daring to say that Microsoft should not be complicit with an army that is plausibly accused of genocide,” said Nasr, who has been criticized on social media and in internal Microsoft employee communication groups over his support for Palestine.

Both employees were members of No Azure for Apartheid, a group of Microsoft workers protesting the company’s sale of its cloud computing technology to Israel.

Related: ‘A betrayal’: Google workers protest Israeli military contract at vigil for ex-intern killed in airstrike

The group demands Microsoft sever all Azure contracts and partnerships with the Israeli military and government, disclose all ties with Israel, call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the conflict in Gaza, and protect and uphold the free speech of employees.

Microsoft denied that the two, who are originally from Egypt, were fired for their activism. “We remain dedicated to maintaining a professional and respectful work environment and provide many avenues for all voices to be heard. But, importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not disrupt business operations and be aligned to our company policies and behavior expectations,” a spokesperson said.

“We do not permit employees to use devices like bullhorns and speakers in public areas to disrupt the work of their colleagues. We were clear about our policies in advance with the event organizers and instructed that this gathering take place on public property. The organizers chose to disregard this guidance and were terminated.”

But Mohamed and Nasr reject allegations that the vigil was disruptive and claim it was in accordance with Microsoft policies. They say that the event, which sought to raise money for humanitarian efforts in Gaza, followed the same procedures as other employee charity events regularly held by other employee groups. The vigil was set up outdoors during lunchtime on the Microsoft headquarters campus, with a microphone for speakers and some chairs and signs set up for attenders.

According to No Azure for Apartheid, more than 200 employees attended the vigil in person and virtually.

Nasr and Mohamed both claimed they were in communications with Microsoft ahead of time, and addressed any concerns that were brought up before the lunchtime event, the purpose of which they said was to honor Palestinian lives lost in the conflict and call attention to Microsoft’s ties to Israel. They said police were called to the event but only observed it, and that only a microphone for speakers was used.

“They never at any point said that termination was on the table or even the disciplinary consequences were on the table,” Nasr told the Guardian.

They both questioned how it happened that Nasr’s dismissal was publicized by the group Stop Antisemitism before they themselves were notified they had been fired. Nasr provided a call log showing he received a call from Microsoft at 9pm on 24 October, while the group posted on social media that Nasr was “no longer with Microsoft” an hour and a half earlier.

Nasr also alleged a double standard at the company, arguing that he had experienced repeated internal investigations and reprimands for comments about Gaza that he had posted on Microsoft internal employee groups, while posts he flagged internally for racism or personal attacks against him did not result in any disciplinary actions.

He pointed to posts insinuating he and another employee are “members of Hamas or just supporters”. As far has he knows, these never resulted in reprimands. He also said HR opened an investigation into a post of his that said: “With or without your sympathy, Palestinians will attain the dignity, the freedom, the respect, and the liberation that they deserve, everywhere from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” However, he reported, the company did not act when another employee wrote: “From the river to the sea, Israel will forever be.”



A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the specific examples.

The No Azure for Apartheid group characterized the firings as retaliatory and alleged Microsoft has engaged in intimidation toward Palestinian voices. The group disputed Microsoft’s claims of policy violations by the employees and is calling for their reinstatement and an explanation for the leak of their termination before the employees were themselves notified.

A Palestinian employee at Microsoft who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation told the Guardian that Microsoft’s internal message board has been full of messages in recent days expressing anger at the firings. They also accused Microsoft of double standards when it comes to enforcing harassment and behavior policies toward Palestinian voices.

“It was unjust and very intentional as a message to the community to silence the loudest voice in our community,” said another Palestinian worker at Microsoft who requested to remain anonymous.

A spokesperson for Microsoft did not comment on the ‘No Azure for Apartheid’ campaign, its demands, or allegations of bias.

Related: Microsoft sails as AI boom fuels double-digit growth in cloud business

The spokesperson added the company was investigating the allegation that a social media post about the terminations was published by Stop Antisemitism before the employees were informed.

A report by the Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine reported that the Israeli military has increased the purchase of services from Microsoft Azure since October 2023 and for years it had been the main cloud service provider for Israel. The company has also funded several Israeli startups that provide services to the military.

“Microsoft is refusing to hear its worker demands,” said Mohamed. “This is what’s happening within Microsoft. People are calling them out, and they’re even refusing to engage and look at serious concerns that come with the use of these technologies.”

US tech firms who do business with Israel have faced rising unrest internally in the last year. In April, Google fired more than 50 workers in response to a protest over the company’s military ties to the country.

As data center industry booms, an English village becomes a battleground

KELVIN CHAN
Updated Fri, November 1, 2024 

Horses graze in a field on the outskirts of Abbots Langley, England, on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. Plans to build a data center at the site has pitted the national government's priorities against the interests of local villagers. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)ASSOCIATED PRESS

Stewart Lewis poses near his home in Abbots Langley, England, on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. Plans to build a data center in a field on Abbots Langley's outskirts has pitted the national government's priorities against the interests of local villagers. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)ASSOCIATED PRESS

Horses graze in a field on the outskirts of Abbots Langley, England, on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. Plans to build a data center at the site has pitted the national government's priorities against the interests of local villagers. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)ASSOCIATED PRESS

The main road in Abbots Langley, England, is shown on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. Plans to build a data center in a field on Abbots Langley's outskirts has pitted the national government's priorities against the interests of local villagers. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)ASSOCIATED PRESS

James Felstead poses near his home in Abbots Langley, England, on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. Plans to build a data center in a field on Abbots Langley's outskirts has pitted the national government's priorities against the interests of local villagers. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan)ASSOCIATED PRESS

ABBOTS LANGLEY, England (AP) — Originally built to store crops from peasant farmers, the Tithe Barn on the edge of the English village of Abbots Langley was converted into homes that preserve its centuries of history. Now, its residents are fighting to stop a development next door that represents the future.

A proposal to build a data center on a field across the road was rejected by local authorities amid fierce opposition from villagers. But it's getting a second chance from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government, which is pursuing reforms to boost economic growth following his Labour party's election victory in July.

Residents of Abbots Langley, 18 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of London, worry the facility will strain local resources and create noise and traffic that damages the character of the quiet village, which is home to just over 20,000 people. Off the main street there's a church with a stone tower built in the 12th century and, further down the road, a picturesque circular courtyard of rustic thatched-roof cottages that used to be a farm modeled on one built for French Queen Marie Antoinette.

“It’s just hideously inappropriate,” said Stewart Lewis, 70, who lives in one of the converted houses in the 600-year-old Tithe Barn. “I think any reasonable person anywhere would say, ‘Hang on, they want a data center? This isn’t the place for it.'”

As the artificial intelligence boom fuels demand for cloud-based computing from server farms around the world, such projects are pitting business considerations, national priorities and local interests against each other.

Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has stepped in to review the appeals filed by developers of three data center projects after they were rejected by local authorities, taking the decision out of the hands of town planners. Those proposals include Abbots Langley and two projects in Buckinghamshire, which sits west of London. The first decision is expected by January.

The projects are controversial because the data centers would be built on “greenbelt” land, which has been set aside to prevent urbanization. Rayner wants to tap the greenbelt for development, saying much of it is low quality. One proposed Buckinghamshire project, for example, involves redeveloping an industrial park next to a busy highway.

“Whilst it’s officially greenbelt designated land, there isn’t anything ‘green’ about the site today,” said Stephen Beard, global head of data centers at Knight Frank, a property consultancy that’s working on the project.

“It’s actually an eyesore which is very prominent from the M25″ highway, he said.

Greystoke, the company behind the Abbots Langley center and a second Buckinghamshire project to be built on a former landfill, didn’t respond to requests for comment. In an online video for Abbots Langley, a company representative says, “We have carried out a comprehensive search for sites, and this one is the very best.” It doesn't specify which companies would possibly use the center.

The British government is making data centers a core element of its economic growth plans, deeming them “critical national infrastructure” to give businesses confidence to invest in them. Starmer has announced deals for new centers, including a 10 billion pound ($13 billion) investment from private equity firm Blackstone to build what will be Europe's biggest AI data center in northeast England.





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The land for the Abbots Langley data center is currently used to graze horses. It's bordered on two other sides by a cluster of affordable housing and a highway.

Greystoke's plans to construct two large buildings totaling 84,000 square meters (904,00 square feet) and standing up to 20 meters (66 feet) tall have alarmed Lewis and other villagers, who worry that it will dwarf everything else nearby.

They also doubt Greystoke's promise that it will create up to 260 jobs.

“Everything will be automated, so they wouldn’t need people," said tech consultant Jennifer Stirrup, 51, who lives in the area.

Not everyone in the village is opposed.

Retiree Bryan Power says he would welcome the data center, believing it would benefit the area in a similar way as another big project on the other side of the village, the Warner Bros.' Studio Tour featuring a Harry Potter exhibition.

“It’ll bring some jobs, whatever. It’ll be good. Yeah. No problem. Because if it doesn’t come, it’ll go somewhere else,” said Power, 56.

One of the biggest concerns about data centers is their environmental impact, especially the huge amounts of electricity they need. Greystoke says the facility will draw 96 megawatts of “IT load." But James Felstead, director of a renewable energy company and Lewis’ neighbor, said the area’s power grid wouldn’t be able to handle so much extra demand.

It's a problem reflected across Europe, where data center power demand is expected to triple by the end of the decade, according to consulting firm McKinsey. While the AI-fueled data boom has prompted Google, Amazon and Microsoft to look to nuclear power as a source of clean energy, worries about their ecological footprint have already sparked tensions over data centers elsewhere.

Google was forced to halt plans in September for a $200 million data center in Chile’s capital, Santiago, after community complaints about its potential water and energy usage.

In Ireland, where many Silicon Valley companies have European headquarters, the grid operator has temporarily halted new data centers around Dublin until 2028 over worries they’re guzzling too much electricity.

A massive data center project in northern Virginia narrowly won county approval last year, amid heavy opposition from residents concerned about its environmental impact. Other places like Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Singapore have imposed various restrictions on data centers.

Public knowledge about the industry is still low but “people are realizing more that these data centers are quite problematic,” said Sebastian Lehuede, a lecturer in ethics, AI and society at King’s College London who studied the Google case in Chile.

U.S. regulators raise questions about siting data centers at power plants

People react to a period of hot weather in Houston

Updated Fri, November 1, 2024 
By Laila Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Costs and reliability concerns related to the burgeoning trend of building energy-intensive data centers next to U.S. power plants were the focus of a technical conference held on Friday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

As the technology industry races to deploy data centers for technologies like generative artificial intelligence, quickly accessing the massive amounts of electricity for the centers has become a critical problem.

Connecting data centers directly to power plants, in an arrangement known as co-location, has presented a fast route to accessing large amounts of electricity, instead of toiling for years in queues to connect to the broader grid.

"I believe that the federal government, including this agency, should be doing the very best it can to nurture and foster their development," said FERC Chairman Willie Phillips, adding he considered AI centers vital to national security and the U.S. economy.

This year Amazon bought a data center powered directly by a Pennsylvania nuclear plant owned by Talen Energy. Shares of fellow major independent nuclear operators, including Constellation and Vistra, have shot up this year partially on the prospect of striking similar deals.

The possibility of a ballooning number of co-located data centers has raised questions about potentially higher power bills for everyday customers because the centers will use grid infrastructure and services paid for by the public.

Connecting data centers directly to power plants that had been supplying power to the public has also sparked reliability concerns, in part, because they can divert steady power from the grid.

FERC questioned whether the co-located centers will use the grid as backup power and what will happen if the neighboring power plant unexpectedly goes offline.

"Does the customer get to still draw power from the grid? Because if it does, that's going to have a huge impact," said Commissioner Mark Christie.

The technical conference could lead to new co-located data center guidelines, including ones that determine who is responsible for transmission and distribution upgrade costs and how agreements for the centers are governed.

FERC is also currently gathering details on a regulatory battle being waged by electric utilities over the co-located Amazon data center agreement with Talen Energy. Talen's interconnection agreement for the center is being opposed by utilities Exelon and American Electric Power, and FERC's decision on the case could set a precedent for similar deals.

The data center would take as much as 960 megawatts, or enough to power nearly 1 million American homes, of nuclear energy from the largest U.S. electrical grid.

At Friday's conference, Joseph Bowring, watchdog for PJM Interconnection market activity, said more co-located data centers at nuclear plants would exacerbate the region's supply-demand imbalance.

"It is not a way to solve the problem, it is a way to actually make it worse," Bowring said, recommending that data center developers instead help bring more power online.

Brian George, Google's head of global energy market development and policy, said Google's interest in co-located developments is being driven by a need to access electricity and not to avoid the associated costs.

"We will pay for our fair share of those costs," George said.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by David Gregorio)

Bank of Canada begins registration of payment service providers

The Bank of Canada building on Parliament Hill in Ottawa ·

Reuters
Fri, November 1, 2024 


OTTAWA (Reuters) -The Bank of Canada on Friday started registering payment service providers as part of a plan to bring them under its regulation and promote secure and reliable digital transactions.

Critics have complained that Canada's digital payment infrastructure is archaic when compared with some advanced countries, such as the UK and Australia, and lags even many developing countries.


"Today marks a big step toward giving Canadians added confidence in the safety and security of retail payment service providers," said Ron Morrow, the central bank's executive director of payments, supervision and oversight.

A payment service provider, or PSP, is any company that helps people store or move their money electronically, such as PayPal and Square. This encompasses businesses that offer digital wallets, provide point-of-sale terminals or facilitate cross-border money transfers.

Carol Brigham, managing director of the Bank of Canada's supervision department, said any payment service provider which holds users' data and funds, facilitates electronic fund transfers and clears and settles payments will fall under the its oversight.

The central bank expects at least 3,000 to 3,500 payment service providers to register by the middle of this month when the registration closes, she said.

Canada's payment systems are mainly controlled by the country's biggest five banks, an arrangement that critics say has led to high fees and delays and throttles competition.


"We are also expecting that it (supervision) will improve innovation," Brigham said, adding that the payment service providers will also have ability to compete with top players as they become direct participants in "real-time rail," which will become Canada's first real-time payment systems when it is launched in 2026.

After the registration period, the central bank will evaluate all applications and the federal government will conduct national security reviews of the applicants.

The Bank of Canada will publish a list of all registered payment service providers on Sept. 8, 2025, from which time the regulations for managing risk and safeguarding funds will come into effect, it said.

(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee in OttawaEditing by David Ljunggren, Matthew Lewis and Paul Simao)

Germany's upstart leftists chip at pro-Ukraine consensus

BSW top candidate Sahra Wagenknecht campaigns in Eisenach

FILE PHOTO: Session of the lower house of parliament Bundestag, in Berlin

FILE PHOTO: Protest against militarisation and in support of peace negotiations, in Berlin

By Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke
Updated Sun, November 3, 2024

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's new leftist populist party aims to exact a high price from mainstream parties for helping them govern three eastern states: demanding that their regional officials join calls to stop arming Ukraine.

Such concessions risk eroding the pro-Ukraine consensus in Germany, Kyiv's second biggest military supporter against Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbour. They are also fostering tensions in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's three-way federal coalition in Berlin, which is already hanging by a thread.

Launched in January, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) is the only party to oppose arming Ukraine besides the far-right AfD, a pariah because other parties refuse to work with it.

The BSW's electoral successes in the states of Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony in September make it a near-indispensable partner for mainstream parties seeking to form coalitions there.

Sahra Wagenknecht, the popular but divisive leader after whom the Russia-friendly, NATO-sceptic party is named, wants its regional branches to force any potential partners to sign up to its anti-war positions as the price of a coalition.

That led this week to the Brandenburg branch of Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) endorsing a joint statement with the BSW which included the message: "The war will not be ended by further weapons deliveries."

The text, which also criticised the possible deployment of U.S. long-range missiles in Germany, sparked outrage in Berlin and disquiet among some within the SPD.

Agnieszka Brugger, senior lawmaker for the Greens - junior partner in Scholz's government - accused the SPD of kowtowing to the BSW's "cynical and populist course".

"Anyone who talks about peace but means an end to support for Ukraine does not want real peace," she told Reuters. "Such a policy would jeopardise the security of our country and our allies."

The SPD mayor of Munich, Dieter Reiter, said the Brandenburg party's language was "unacceptable".

While Germany's state governments have no direct influence over foreign policy, the BSW's stance comes as some surveys show public opinion already cooling on support for Ukraine at a critical time - with Russia making battlefield advances and U.S. policy on Ukraine dependent on the Nov. 5 U.S. election.

The BSW's manoeuvres are also strengthening the SPD's traditionally Russophile left flank, said Stefan Marschall, political scientist at the University of Duesseldorf.

The SPD last month appointed as General Secretary leftist Matthias Miersch who appears to be rehabilitating Gerhard Schroeder, the former chancellor who worked for Russian state oil company Gazprom and calls President Vladimir Putin a friend.

RISK OF IMPLOSION

Blending paternalistic economic policies with an anti-migration stance, the BSW scored double-digit results in all three states in September and is on track to win 7-9% at the federal election next year, according to polls.

That has turned the cerebral Wagenknecht, 55 - who started out as a Leninist theoretician for the old East German Communist party - from a cult figure of marginal political importance to talkshow staple.

But there are signs that her demands on local party barons are already straining the limits of her authority, in turn testing the young party's cohesion.

In Thuringia, regional BSW leader Katja Wolf, a popular former mayor of Eisenach, was content in coalition talks with the SPD and the conservatives to relegate talk of peace and war to a vaguely worded, non-binding preamble.

For Wolf, who said she had joined the new party out of alarm at the far-right's success in her state, building a stable government was the priority.

Wolf earned a stern rebuke from party headquarters who demanded a more “recognisable BSW signature” in the agreement.

Critics say Wagenknecht would rather forgo regional power than dilute her message ahead of the bigger prize of the national election.

Wagenknecht has a bad track record of sustaining political movements and the BSW could yet implode, said political scientist Oliver Lembcke at the University of Bochum.

The "Rise Up" initiative she launched in 2018 petered out within a year. Wagenknecht said at the time that she left the movement due to burnout.

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke; additional reporting by Thomas Escritt; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Rescuers find body of worker swept away from Tennessee factory by Hurricane Helene flood

FORCED TO WORK DURING HURRICANE

Associated Press
Fri, November 1, 2024

FILE - Damage caused by flooding from Hurricane Helene is seen around Impact Plastics in Erwin, Tenn., on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File

ERWIN, Tenn. (AP) — Rescue workers in Tennessee said Friday they have recovered the body of the final person still missing after massive flooding from Hurricane Helene hit a plastics factory there.

Rosa Andrade, 29, was one of six employees killed after they were unable to escape the rising waters around Impact Plastics in Erwin, a small town in East Tennessee. Surviving workers have stated they were not allowed to leave until water had flooded the plant’s parking lot and the power went out. Eleven people were swept away and only five were rescued.

The captain of Unicoi County Search and Rescue, Andrew Harris, said emergency workers discovered Andrade's body on Wednesday, more than a month after the Sept. 27 flood of the Nolichucky River.

Normally running 2 feet (61 centimeters) deep, the river rose to a record 30 feet (9.1 meters) that day, with more than 1.4 million gallons (5.3 million liters) of water running downstream each second — twice as much as Niagara Falls.

Relatives of some of those who were killed have sued Impact Plastics and its owner, Gerald O’Connor. They include the family of Johnny Peterson, who managed to climb onto a bed of a semi-trailer that was attempting to escape the area and send text messages to his family before being swept away.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is probing the allegations involving Impact Plastics at the direction of the local prosecutor. The state’s workplace safety office has also opened its own investigation into the circumstances behind the deaths.

O’Connor has said no employees were forced to keep working, and they were evacuated at least 45 minutes before the massive force of the flood hit the industrial park.

The workers who died were among the more than 200 people killed by Helene in remote towns throughout the Appalachians. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland since Katrina in 2005. The storm also left millions without power, knocked out cellular service and destroyed drinking water systems.

Federal Union Blasts Montana GOP Senate Hopeful For 'Disdain' Of Wildland Firefighters

Chris D'Angelo
Sat, November 2, 2024

Tim Sheehy, the founder of Bridger Aerospace and a U.S. Republican Senate candidate for Montana, is pictured in a hangar in Bozeman, Montana, on Jan. 18, 2024. Louise Johns/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A union representing thousands of federal wildland firefighters excoriated Montana GOP Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy after he accused firefighters of dragging their feet to put out infernos and “milking” disasters for overtime pay.

“Sheehy’s comments are not only unfounded and disrespectful of wildland firefighters across the country, but they also show a severe lack of understanding of the essential and dangerous work these brave men and women do to defend our country from devastating fires – especially communities in Montana,” said Randy Erwin, the national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, in a press release dated Thursday.

“Sheehy’s disdain for firefighters is out of step with true Montanans and the rest of America,” he added.

Erwin’s blistering takedown comes about two weeks after HuffPost first reported that Sheehy, who made millions running an aerial firefighting company that relies heavily on lucrative federal contracts, has repeatedly claimed, with little evidence, that a significant number of boots-on-the-ground firefighters are standing around while wildfires rage.

In the 2023 book “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” Sheehy described an encounter with firefighters battling blazes in Idaho in 2015. He wrote that one firefighting pilot told him of the blaze: “We don’t want it to go too fast. ... There’s a lot of overtime pay to be earned out there! We put it out, it’s back on salary!’”

That conversation “smacked less of concern or common sense than it did laziness — or, worse, greed,” Sheehy wrote. “I wouldn’t call it malevolence; anyone who climbs into a plane or picks up a shovel to fight wildfires clearly has a capacity for goodness and a desire to help. That said, even in positions that are demonstrably service-oriented, there is the potential for self-interest, if not outright corruption, leading to a response that is not necessarily in the public’s best interest.”

“If there is no fire, there is no money,” he added. “And the faster that a fire is extinguished, the sooner the money dries up or goes elsewhere. It might seem ridiculous to worry about a shortage of work to keep the wildfire industry busy given the extraordinary expansion of the season in recent years, not to mention the gnawing sense that firefighters will forever be overmatched against nature. But old beliefs and protocols die hard, and clearly there were some in the industry who saw nothing wrong with milking every fire for what it was worth despite the risks and the blurring of ethical boundaries.”

Sheehy walks up to the stage during a rally for former U.S. President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, at Montana State University on Aug. 9 in Bozeman, Montana. Michael Ciaglo via Getty Images

It’s not the only time Sheehy has hurled such accusations at public servants who work in the same field as him. Sheehy is the founder of Belgrade, Montana-based Bridger Aerospace, a company that has a fleet of firefighting aircraft, and he has consistently highlighted his company’s work in campaign ads and speeches. At a book signing in Huntsville, Alabama, in April, months after launching his campaign against three-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, Sheehy told attendees, “There’s a very real dynamic in wildfire that a lot of those people don’t want to put the fire out.”

“They don’t want to put the fire out because that’s where they get their overtime, that’s where they get their hazard pay,” he added.

Wildland firefighters are notoriously underpaid for a job that is becoming increasingly dangerous amid worsening climate change.

In an October post on X, formerly Twitter, Tester called Sheehy’s comments “insulting.”

On its website, the National Federation of Federal Employees notes that its advocacy for wildland firefighters includes “fighting for a permanent, competitive pay fix, enhanced mental health and physical wellbeing resources, adequate housing, and more.” In Thursday’s press release, Erwin said that NFFE represents many federal wildland firefighters across the country, including in Montana. And he highlighted the myriad challenges these workers are facing.

“Wildland firefighters have been doing more with less for decades, and the current shortage of firefighters places them and other first responders at greater risk while they work longer deployments fighting hotter and bigger fires each year,” Erwin said. “Sheehy and his arial company have profited heavily from taxpayer-funded contracts to fight wildfires while many wildland firefighters struggle to pay the rent because of low pay.”

He slammed Sheehy’s remarks as “elitist and self-serving.”

“Federal wildland firefighters and other first responders deserve better, as do all the residents of Montana,” Erwin said.

When HuffPost reached out to Sheehy’s campaign last month, a spokesperson called HuffPost’s reporting on the GOP candidate “embarrassing” without addressing specific questions about his comments — a tactic his campaign has increasingly turned to in recent months amid a seemingly endlessstreamofcontroversies.

While polling previously showed Sheehy with a commanding lead over Tester, a poll released last week showed the two in a dead heat.

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'So confusing': GOP candidate's rambling answer about gunshot story stumps Megyn Kelly

Tom Boggioni
November 2, 2024 

Megyn Kelly, Tim Sheehan (Screenshot)


Businessman Tim Sheehy, who is vying for Montana Democrat Sen. Jon Tester's U.S. Senate seat, did not do his campaign any favors by appearing on conservative Megyn Kelly's podcast.

Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL, has been under fire for claiming during his campaign he was shot in combat which has been disputed by a park ranger who recalled dealing with him and his wound after he accidentally shot himself during a family trip in Glacier National Park in 2015.

With the cloud of where, when and how he was shot hanging over his head, host Kelly gave him a chance to clear the air on Friday and he seemed unprepared with a straightforward answer.

"But were you wounded? In the park? Did you have a wound, Tim, in the park?" Kelly pressed her guest.

'No, no. Yes," he replied. "I fell and injured my arm when we were hiking. So that’s why I went, because, you know, I could feel the bullet get dislodged when I fell and fell on the arm, you could feel the bullet get dislodged, and then went to the ER to say, 'Hey, you know, look, you know, I’ve got internal bleeding going on here, I’ve injured my arm, can you take a look at this, make sure there’s nothing serious going on here.'"

Pressed further by a puzzled-looking Kelly who asked, "Are there medical records where the ER could say, “We did not treat a gunshot wound”? he replied, "Well, there, there isn’t, I mean that’s the point. You go in, you check on it, and you leave."

"There’s not an extensive medical record for any of this stuff. And unfortunately, that’s the crux of this, is there’s just not a whole lot to talk about. They’ve decided to take this one report from a park ranger, that I gave them that report, I stood in the parking lot and said 'Hey, this is what happened,' you know, and, five minutes, you know, we go on our way, and they’ve decided to make that the focal point of all this."

"So confusing" was all Kelly could reply.

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FALL BACK

Could daylight saving time ever be permanent? Where it stands in the states

Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAY
Sat, November 2, 2024

It's that time again. On Sunday, most Americans will set their clocks back an hour, and many will renew their twice-yearly calls to put an end to the practice altogether.

On Nov. 3, those who have been on daylight saving time for the last eight months will "fall back," and gain an hour of sleep. Early risers will have an earlier sunrise, but that also means the sun sets an hour earlier.

For years, the beginning and end of daylight saving time has been accompanied by renewed calls to end time changes altogether. All but two U.S. states observe daylight saving time. Some states want to make it permanent, while others have moved to make standard time permanent.

The result is a confusing patchwork of proposed legislation, but no real change because the federal government doesn't allow it – yet. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida repeated a call this week to pass a bill he introduced that would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide. The Sunshine Protect Act passed the Senate in 2022, but hasn't made progress in the House of Representatives, despite being introduced during multiple legislative sessions.

"It’s time to lock the clock and stop enduring the ridiculous and antiquated practice of switching our clocks back and forth," Rubio said.

Experts say the time changes are detrimental to health and safety, but agree that the answer isn't permanent DST.

"The medical and scientific communities are unified ... that permanent standard time is better for human health," said Erik Herzog, a professor of biology and neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis and the former president of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms.

Most Americans would prefer to do away with time changes. About 43% want year-round standard time, 32% want permanent daylight saving time and 25% want to stick with the status quo, an October 2021 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found. For now and for the near future at least, most Americans will keep going through the jarring time changes that come around twice a year.

Here's where things stand:

Which states want to do away with time changes?

No state can adopt permanent daylight saving time unless U.S. Congress passes a law to authorize it first. But several states have adopted or considered legislation to make the switch if or when Congress comes around to the idea.

States have considered hundreds of pieces of legislation about daylight saving time in recent years, including 30 in 2024, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Oklahoma became the most recent state to pass a measure authorizing permanent daylight saving time, pending Congressional approval, in April.

Nineteen other states have passed laws or resolutions to move toward daylight saving time year-round, if Congress were ever to allow it, according to the NCSL. They are: Colorado, Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, Idaho, Louisiana, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, Delaware, Maine, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington and Florida. In California, voters approved a ballot initiative to allow their legislature to pass such a law.

Some of those states made the provision contingent on neighboring states doing the same thing. Idaho, which is split into two different time zones, passed a measure that would make the switch to daylight saving time in the northern part of the state only if neighboring Washington does so. Delaware's law would enact daylight saving time year-round only if Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland also do, Delaware Public Media reported.

FALL BACK: Here's when daylight saving time ends in 2024

Why don't Arizona and Hawaii change their clocks?

Only two states and some territories never have to set their clocks forward or backward.

Federal law prohibits states from enacting permanent daylight saving time, but Arizona (except for the Navajo Nation) and Hawaii have instead made standard time permanent, which is perfectly acceptable under federal law.

So why don't states that feel so strongly about ending time changes just enact permanent standard time? Rubio and other pro-permanent DST advocates argue that the benefits include more time for outdoor activities or work in the evening hours, and energy conservation. Many experts agree that time changes contribute to health issues and even safety problems.

Changing the clocks may be bad for your health

Herzog said the time changes disrupt the body's circadian rhythm, which is like our internal clock. Springing forward an hour in March is harder on us than falling back in November. The shift in spring is associated with an increase in heart attacks, and car accident rates also go up for a few days after, he said.

But the answer isn't permanent daylight saving time, according to Herzog, who said that could be even worse for human health than the twice-yearly changes. By looking at studies of people who live at the easternmost edge of time zones (whose experience is closest to standard time) and people who live at the westernmost edge (more like daylight saving time), scientists can tell that health impacts of earlier sunrises and sunsets are much better. Waking up naturally with the sun is far better for our bodies than having to rely on alarm clocks to wake up in the dark, he said.

Herzog said Florida, where Rubio has championed the Sunlight Protection Act, is much less impacted by the negative impacts of daylight saving time because it's as far east and south as you can get in the U.S., while people in a state like Minnesota would have much more time in the dark in the morning.

"Florida is motivated by the calculation that they can get more people golfing in the afternoon if you have some daylight hours after work," he said.
Permanent daylight saving time hasn't worked well in the past

We've had daylight saving time for longer than eight months at a time before, and it wasn't a big hit.

From February 1942 until September 1945, the U.S. took on what became known as "War Time," when Congress voted to make daylight saving time year-round during the war in an effort to conserve fuel. When it ended, states were able to establish their own standard time until 1966 when Congress finally passed the Uniform Time Act, standardizing national time.

Amid an energy crisis in 1973, former President Richard Nixon signed a bill putting the U.S. on daylight saving time starting in January 1974. While the American public at first liked the idea, soon "the experiment ... ran afoul of public opinion," The New York Times reported in October 1974. Sunrises that could be as late as 9:30 a.m. some places in parts of winter became increasingly unpopular. It didn't take long for Congress to reverse course in October 1974.

Contributing: Krystal Nurse, USA TODAY

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Daylight saving time: States push for legislation to

Commentary: This week in Bidenomics it's jobs galore


Rick Newman · Senior Columnist
Sat, November 2, 2024 

The October jobs report was a dud, with hurricanes and the Boeing (BA) strike dampening hiring. Employers created just 12,000 jobs for the month, way below the average of 194,000 for the prior 12 months.

But employment will almost certainly rebound in the November count. Beyond that, the weak October number still continues a remarkable string of job gains under President Biden, just days before voters will pass judgment on the economic record Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, have racked up.

Job growth has been positive every single month since Biden took office in January 2021. Donald Trump didn’t accomplish that during his one presidential term, from 2017 to 2021. Barack Obama did preside over an unbroken string of monthly job growth during his second term, from 2013 to 2017. But that was part of the wan recovery from the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, a rebound many Americans found painfully slow.

Before that, no president enjoyed a perfect record on monthly job growth, going back to 1939. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton each came close in their second terms, reflecting the booming economies of the mid-1980s and late 1990s. But Reagan had one spoiler month when employment declined, while Clinton had three.

King of jobs? President Joe Biden delivers remarks at NHTI Concord Community College in October in Concord, N.H. (Scott Eisen/Getty Images) · Scott Eisen via Getty Images

Biden still has three more months in office, so his perfect record isn’t complete. But there’s no reason to expect a late-game miss. The economy is growing, consumers are spending, and Federal Reserve interest rate cuts now provide a modest tailwind.

More important than Biden’s standing in the history books is the credit voters give Biden, and by extension Harris, for prosperity in real time. And it’s pretty obvious ordinary Americans are unimpressed.

Biden’s approval rating is a dismal 39%, more or less where it has been for the last two years. Biden’s approval sank as inflation crept up to its 9% peak in 2022. Inflation got a lot better, but Biden's approval ratings didn't. The year-over-year rate of price hikes is now just 2.4%. Biden has gotten no benefit from that.

Harris’s approval rating matters more, of course, since she replaced Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate over the summer. Voters like Harris better than Biden. Her approval rating is around 48%. An incumbent running for reelection would prefer an approval rating above 50%, but Harris is in the ballpark.

Voters also view Harris differently than Biden on the economy, which is the top election issue, as usual. Luckily for Harris, voters rate her higher than Biden on the economy, suggesting they don’t blame Harris for the top economic problem of the last three years, inflation. Yet there’s also not much evidence voters give either Biden or Harris credit for the record job growth of the post-COVID years.

That’s not such a bad thing for Harris. If voters paid close attention to the monthly job numbers, then the lame tally for October would be a liability. The 12,000 new jobs in October was the lowest number by far of the Biden presidency. Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, could paint that as a sign of an imminent recession and amplify it everywhere on social media.

The economy is on her side. Maybe. Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024, in North Las Vegas, Nev. (AP Photo/John Locher) · 

But voters don’t really care about the overall employment level. They don’t care about statistics in general. If they did, Biden would be much more popular, given that just about everything has been going right in the economy, except for inflation.

What voters do care about is the price of milk and chicken at the grocery store, the price of gasoline, the bite rent takes out of their budget, and what the job market feels like wherever they live. Inflation has been coming down, of course, and to some extent, the election is a referendum on whether enough people feel high inflation is vanquished — and not coming back.


But the strong job market is still a meaningful plus for Harris. One thing she doesn’t have to explain to voters is high unemployment. In that sense, record job growth under Biden represents the absence of a problem for Harris.

It could be a lot worse.

Harris can tout the lowest unemployment rate — 4.1% — of any presidential candidate representing the incumbent party in nearly a quarter century. Barack Obama won reelection with a higher unemployment rate in 2012 (7.8%), as did George W. Bush in 2004 (5.5%). And neither had job growth close to that of the last three years. Strong job growth might not compel voters to pick Harris. But they certainly can't hold it against her.

Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @rickjnewman.

Opinion

Trump’s Horrific Friendship With Jeffrey Epstein Revealed in New Audio

Edith Olmsted

THE NEW REPUBLIC
Fri, November 1, 2024 




Explosive new audio reveals that Donald Trump detailed how he really felt about his White House staff to Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein touted old photos of Trump with half-naked women taken at the site of the pedophile’s rampant sexual abuse of young girls.

On author Michael Wolff’s Thursday episode of his podcast Fire and Fury, Wolff shared a recording of a conversation with Epstein from 2017, in which the convicted sex offender and alleged human trafficker recounted Trump’s true feelings about members of his administration, The Daily Beast reported.

“His people fight each other and then have outsiders—he sort of poisons the well outside,” Epstein told Wolff. Epstein went on to paraphrase Trump’s candid statements about his former strategist Steve Bannon, former chief of staff Reince Priebus, and counselor Kellyanne Conway.

“He will tell 10 people, ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kelly has a big mouth’—what do you think? ‘Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson,’” Epstein said.

“‘So Kelly[anne]—even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband—Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard.’ And then he tells Bannon, ‘You know I really want to keep you, but Kellyanne hates you,’” Epstein continued.

Wolff said that he had recordings of roughly “100 hours of Epstein talking about the inner workings of the Trump White House and about his long standing, deep relationship with Donald Trump.”

Epstein also shared photos from the “late 90s” of Trump surrounded by “topless young women” at Epstein’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, where the disgraced financier victimized dozens of underage girls alongside his friend Ghislaine Maxwell.

“And in some of the pictures, they’re sitting in his lap,” Wolff said. “I mean, and, and then there’s one I especially remember where there’s a stain, a telltale stain and on the front of Trump’s pants, and the girls are pointing at him and laughing.”

Wolff claimed the FBI discovered the photos in Epstein’s safe when the agency raided his home in 2019, but never released the images to the public. Wolff described the photographs when discussing how he used Epstein as a main source for his book Fire and Fury, which focused on the Trump White House.

Wolff said that Epstein was afraid of Trump, believing that he was “capable of doing anything.”

The Trump campaign dismissed Wolff’s claims in a statement to The Daily Beast. “Michael Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics,” a spokesperson said in a statement.


il days before the election to make outlandish false smears all in an effort to engage in blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris. He’s a failed journalist that is resorting to lying for attention.”

Last week, a former model came forward with allegations that Trump had once groped her at a party, as part of a “twisted game” he was playing with Epstein. Trump recently praised Epstein, calling the sex offender, who died in prison before ever standing trial for sex trafficking charges, a “good salesman.”

“He had some nice assets that he’d throw around, like islands,” Trump said in September, clarifying that he’d never been to Epstein’s infamous hub of sex trafficking. Trump waffled for years on the prospect of releasing files on Epstein’s known associates, and claimed that they likely contained “phony” stuff.

This story has been updated.

Opinion: 

This Is Why I Am Releasing The Epstein-Trump Tapes: Michael Wolff

Michael Wolff

DAILY BEAST
Sat, November 2, 2024 

An animated GIF of Donald Trump and sound waves.

Starting in the Summer of 2016 and then through the first year of the Trump administration, as I wrote my book Fire and Fury about the first months of the Trump White House, I spoke periodically to Trump’s longtime and now estranged friend, Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein, of course, would go on to be branded as among the world’s most famous sexual predators and, in 2019, died, most likely a suicide, under federal indictment and as a prisoner in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, a federal prison.

But in 2016 and in the nascent days of the Trump administration, Epstein, although the subject of many allegations and lawsuits, was still a free man, living alone in extraordinary splendor in one of the largest private residences in Manhattan.

Among the reasons he agreed to talk to me was his own incredulity that Donald Trump, a man who, in their friendship, had displayed so many disqualifying attributes to high office, was on his way to becoming president—indeed, who became president. In short, even Jeffrey Epstein was appalled.

Our conversations took place in the dining room in the back of his house on East 71st Street, where he customarily conducted something like an ongoing colloquium with a long and now notorious list of the rich, powerful, and celebrated. Or we would sit, up a grand staircase, in the baronial study which ran the length of the mansion.

Epstein was, clearly, obsessed with Trump, and I believe personally afraid of him. He was not the only one who knew the real Donald Trump, he told me, but he did, surely, know him, really know him, he would emphasize.

Now, he was groping for a way to explain how the man he knew—a man who had hardly ever tried to hide his blatant moral flaws—had risen to the very top of American politics.



Last week, on the podcast I host with James Truman for iHeart, Fire and Fury—The Podcast, we first broached the Epstein-Trump subject after the model Stacey Williams came forward to discuss how Trump had abused her when she was Epstein’s girlfriend in the 1990s. The response to the podcast was immediate and overwhelming, suggesting a hunger to know about a story, the Trump-Epstein relationship, that has seemed for so long to hide in plain sight.

The friendship between these two men ended in 2004 but has never been fully explored.

The Fire and Fury podcast has partnered with the Daily Beast, which has helped with the myriad technical difficulties of bad recordings (my fault here), to publish, in Epstein’s own words, some of the highlights of his experiences with and observations about what I think can be fairly described as his fellow predator.

During the podcast I noted the glaring and confounding circumstance that one of these predators ended up in the country’s darkest prison and the other in the White House.

We still need to understand how that came to pass.

Editor’s note: The Daily Beast’s Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles holds an investment in Kaleidoscope, the maker of the Fire and Fury podcast



King Charles “Cuts Brother Andrew’s Cash Following Backlash Over Jeffrey Epstein Friendship” – Report

Caroline Frost
Sat, November 2, 2024


Prince Andrew has seen his financial support from his brother King Charles cut off, the Daily Mail newspaper reports.

Andrew, who was second in line to the British throne when he was born in 1960, has seen his standing fall dramatically since his non-apology for his former friendship with Jeffrey Epstein emerged in a BBC interview in 2019.

The resulting outrage saw him stripped of military titles and patronages, and forced to step back from public life. However, he has continued to live in a royal home west of London and receive a £1million/year ($1.3million/year) allowance from the royal purse.

Now, the Daily Mail newspaper reports that King Charles has broken his brother’s financial ties, and instructed royal accountants to cease payments of this allowance.

The Mail quotes an updated biography by royal author Robert Hardman, who writes that Andrew “is no longer a financial burden on the King.”

The Times of London reports the same story, adding that Buckingham Palace and the Crown Estate declined to comment, while Andrew could not be reached for comment.