Tiny copper ‘flowers’ bloom on artificial leaves for clean fuel production

University of Cambridge

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Tiny copper ‘nano-flowers’ have been attached to an artificial leaf to produce clean fuels and chemicals that are the backbone of modern energy and manufacturing.

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Credit: Virgil Andrei

Tiny copper ‘nano-flowers’ have been attached to an artificial leaf to produce clean fuels and chemicals that are the backbone of modern energy and manufacturing.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge and the University of California, Berkeley, developed a practical way to make hydrocarbons – molecules made of carbon and hydrogen – powered solely by the sun.

The device they developed combines a light absorbing ‘leaf’ made from a high-efficiency solar cell material called perovskite, with a copper nanoflower catalyst, to convert carbon dioxide into useful molecules. Unlike most metal catalysts, which can only convert CO₂ into single-carbon molecules, the copper flowers enable the formation of more complex hydrocarbons with two carbon atoms, such as ethane and ethylene — key building blocks for liquid fuels, chemicals and plastics.

Almost all hydrocarbons currently stem from fossil fuels, but the method developed by the Cambridge-Berkeley team results in clean chemicals and fuels made from CO2, water and glycerol – a common organic compound – without any additional carbon emissions. The results are reported in the journal Nature Catalysis.

The study builds on the team’s earlier work on artificial leaves, which take their inspiration from photosynthesis: the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. “We wanted to go beyond basic carbon dioxide reduction and produce more complex hydrocarbons, but that requires significantly more energy,” said Dr Virgil Andrei from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, the study’s lead author.

Andrei, a Research Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, carried out the work as part of the Winton Cambridge-Kavli ENSI Exchange programme in the lab of Professor Peidong Yang at University of California, Berkeley.

By coupling a perovskite light absorber with the copper nanoflower catalyst, the team was able to produce more complex hydrocarbons. To further improve efficiency and overcome the energy limits of splitting water, the team added silicon nanowire electrodes that can oxidise glycerol instead. This new platform produces hydrocarbons much more effectively — 200 times better than earlier systems for splitting water and carbon dioxide.

The reaction not only boosts CO₂ reduction performance but also produces high-value chemicals such as glycerate, lactate, and formate, which have applications in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and chemical synthesis.

“Glycerol is typically considered waste, but here it plays a crucial role in improving the reaction rate,” said Andrei. “This demonstrates we can apply our platform to a wide range of chemical processes beyond just waste conversion. By carefully designing the catalyst’s surface area, we can influence what products we generate, making the process more selective.”

While current CO₂-to-hydrocarbon selectivity remains around 10%, the researchers are optimistic about improving catalyst design to increase efficiency. The team envisions applying their platform to even more complex organic reactions, opening doors for innovation in sustainable chemical production. With continued improvements, this research could accelerate the transition to a circular, carbon-neutral economy.

“This project is an excellent example of how global research partnerships can lead to impactful scientific advancements,” said Andrei. “By combining expertise from Cambridge and Berkeley, we’ve developed a system that may reshape the way we produce fuels and valuable chemicals sustainably.”

The research was supported in part by the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, St John’s College, the US Department of Energy, the European Research Council, and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

---

Journal

Nature Catalysis

DOI

10.1038/s41929-025-01292-y 

Article Title

Perovskite-driven solar C2 hydrocarbon synthesis from CO2

Article Publication Date

3-Feb-2025

US CDC orders pullback of new scientific papers involving its researchers, source says

Julie Steenhuysen and Nancy Lapid
Sun, February 2, 2025 

 A general view of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta

(Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is seeking to withdraw all papers involving its researchers that are being considered for publication by external scientific journals to allow for a review by the Trump administration, a federal official told Reuters.

The sweeping order came in an email from the CDC's chief science officer on Friday addressed to all division heads at the agency, the official, who has seen the email, told Reuters. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The review is aimed at removing language to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order saying the federal government will only recognize two sexes, male and female. Officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment.
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The withdrawal order, first reported by the Inside Medicine Substack, goes beyond an initial directive on Jan. 21 that federal health agencies pause their own public communications to allow for a review of those materials by Trump appointees.

Inside Medicine published a list of specific words targeted for removal in the communications review, including gender, transgender, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) and nonbinary. The federal official said that such a list went out from CDC to its divisions.

The Friday withdrawal order involves all manuscripts written or co-written by CDC scientists. If CDC scientists are co-authors on a paper that originated outside of the agency, they are asked to take their names off the paper, the official said.

Public health experts said the removal of such terms threatens their ability to address all kinds of medical needs as they affect different groups, including those with HIV and sexually transmitted diseases.

"We can't just erase or ignore certain populations when it comes to preventing, treating or researching infectious diseases such as HIV. I certainly hope this is not the intent of these orders," said Carl Schmid, an advocate and executive director of the HIV+ Hepatitis Policy Institute.

Editors of scientific journals, including the American Journal of Public Health, questioned the legality of the move. For scientific papers that have been accepted by a journal but not yet published, "we have the copyright. The author can no longer make changes," said Dr. Alfredo Morabia, Editor in Chief of the AJPH.

For papers under review but not yet accepted by a journal, "a collective response is warranted from journal editors and publishers. There should be some common strategies," he said.

"It sounds incredible that this is compatible with the First Amendment. A constitutional right has been canceled," he said. "How can the government decide what words a journal can use to describe a scientific reality? That reality needs to be named."

"This is a travesty," Dr. Carlos Del Rio, chief section editor for HIV/AIDS for NEJM Journal Watch Infectious Diseases, said in an email.

"CDC scientists publish every year important work that informs the field of public health. Stopping publications is never good," he said.
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On Friday, the CDC and other U.S. health agencies took down web pages on HIV statistics and a database tracking behaviors that increase health risks for youth, among other information, to comply with Trump administration orders on gender identity and diversity, raising concerns among physicians and patient advocates about censorship.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen and Nancy Lapid; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Diane Craft)


CDC Orders Its Scientists To Withdraw New Papers To Hunt Out ‘Forbidden Terms': Reports

Nick Visser
Sun, February 2, 2025

HUFFFPOST




The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered government scientists to withdraw or pause the publication of all papers set to appear in medical or scientific journals so the Trump administration can review the material for “forbidden terms” such as “gender,” “LGBT” or “pregnant person,” according to a shocking new report.

Inside Medicine, a Substack published by Dr. Jeremy Faust, obtained an email the CDC’s chief science officer sent to researchers instructing them to stop the advancement of manuscripts that are currently being revised or those that have already been accepted for publication. Researchers were told to remove any mention or reference to a list of terms.

That list includes “gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female,” Inside Medicine, citing the email, reported.

Reuters later confirmed the reports.



The order applies to any paper authored or co-authored by a CDC scientist. Reuters added that if any scientists are co-authors on a paper with outside researchers, they must remove their names from the manuscripts.

The CDC has already moved to comply with orders from the Trump administration. The agency removed or edited references to trans people and gender identify from its website on Friday after a deadline to do so was imposed by the Office of Personnel Management. The office recently ordered an end to all agency programs “that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology” following an executive order signed by Trump on the day of his inauguration.

Inside Medicine noted that many scientific manuscripts could be affected by the order as terms like “gender” are often used to describe simple demographic information. Faust added that there was just one political appointee serving in the entirety of the CDC, acting Director Susan Monarez.

It’s unclear if anyone besides her would have the authority to approve the publication of any paper that is flagged as being violation of the recent order.

“How can one person vet all of this?” an unnamed official told Inside Medicine


CDC deletes info on HIV, LGBTQ care from website to comply with Trump’s attack on diversity

Clarissa-Jan Lim
Sat, February 1, 2025

Public health information related to LGBTQ care and to HIV was scrubbed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website Friday as the agency seeks to comply with President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders.

The CDC’s main HIV page was still accessible as of Saturday afternoon, although a disclaimer at the top states that the agency’s website “is being modified to comply with President Trump’s Executive Orders.” Pages that previously contained HIV data — including resources for health care providers, information on racial disparities and data on transgender people, gay and bisexual men — have been removed and remain unavailable as of this writing.

The agency also took down its pages on LGBTQ care, including those containing data about suicide rates among LGBTQ youth. A page with information on food safety for pregnant people was also removed.

CDC employees were informed in a memo this week that they are barred from promoting “gender ideology” and to begin removing all public-facing media that might “inculcate or promote” such concepts by Friday afternoon. The term “gender ideology” is one that the advocacy organization GLAAD calls “a malicious rhetorical construct that falsely asserts that LGBTQ — notably trans — people are an ideological movement rather than an intrinsic identity.”

One government staffer told NBC News that CDC officials struggled with implementing the policy and “began pulling down numerous HIV-related webpages — regardless of whether it included gender — rushing to meet the deadline.”

It’s unclear whether the CDC might restore the webpages at a later date, and if so, how the information might be presented differently.

In his first week in office, Trump signed executive orders, essentially, to prohibit the government from recognizing transgender people and to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion policies in federal agencies. The Defense Intelligence Agency, which is part of the Pentagon, announced on Friday that all activities and events related to “special observances,” such as Black History Month, Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, National American Indian Heritage Month and Holocaust Remembrance Day, will be halted to comply with Trump’s anti-diversity order.

When asked by a reporter on Friday about government websites being scrubbed of information even tangentially related to race or gender, Trump pleaded ignorance but said it “doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.”

“DEI would’ve ruined our country and now it’s dead ... So if they want to scrub the websites, that’s OK with me.” Trump said, adding that the “real leaders” in the military are “very happy about it.”

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com

Africa knew Trump's 'America First' pledge meant it might be last. Then came the freeze on aid

GERALD IMRAY, MOGOMOTSI MAGOME, FARAI MUTSAKA and MARK BANCHEREAU
Sun, February 2, 2025 a

A man sits outside the closed Isizinda Sempilo clinic in the Johannesburg township of Soweto Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Alfonso Nqunjana)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Four days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing almost all U.S. foreign aid, an email landed in Claris Madhuku's inbox in rural Zimbabwe. Stop all activities immediately, it said.

The message confirmed Madhuku's fears that Trump's return to office might affect his organization's efforts to save African girls from child marriages.

Many Africans had known that Trump’s “America First” outlook meant their continent was likely to be last among his priorities. But they hadn't expected the abrupt halt to foreign aid from the world's largest donor that stops money flowing for wide-ranging projects like disease response, girls' education and free school lunches.

Even after global outrage prompted some exemptions to Trump's order, sub-Saharan Africa could suffer more than any other region as most global aid pauses 90 days for a spending review. The U.S. gave the region more than $6.5 billion in humanitarian assistance last year.

For Madhuku and countless others, the damage has been done. His Platform For Youth and Community Development is one of hundreds of small non-governmental organizations in Africa that receive assistance from the U.S. government — and ultimately from the American people — to do good work.

Without U.S. aid, Madhuku's group can't give around 100 volunteers allowances for food and public transport as they do outreach seeking to keep girls in school and out of early marriages.

“We had to stop everything, no warning, no time to adjust," Madhuku said. “I appreciate that Trump might have some justification in trying to account for American taxpayers’ money ... but it has caused disaster here.”

The world's most successful foreign aid program

For many in Africa, thoughts immediately turned to arguably the world's most successful foreign aid program, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

Over two decades, the program with bipartisan support has been credited with saving more than 25 million lives, the vast majority in Africa, the continent it was designed to help most.

“The world is baffled,” the health minister of South Africa, the country with the most people living with HIV, said after the U.S. freeze on aid.

The minister, Aaron Motsoaledi, said the U.S. funds nearly 20% of South Africa’s $2.3 billion annual HIV/AIDS program through PEPFAR, and now the biggest response to a single disease in history is under threat.

More than 8 million in South Africa live with HIV, and authorities say PEPFAR helps provide life-saving antiretroviral treatment to 5.5 million people every day.

HIV patients are turned away

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that programs offering “life-saving” assistance including medicine, medical services, food and shelter would be exempted from the aid freeze, though what qualifies is not immediately clear.

The United Nations AIDS program said many organizations receiving PEPFAR funding had closed due to the aid pause and there was "lack of clarity and great uncertainty about the future.” More than 20 million people globally receive HIV treatment with PEPFAR support, UNAIDS said.

In South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg, and elsewhere, PEPFAR-funded facilities were still shut days after the exemptions were announced and HIV patients were referred to government hospitals and clinics.

In Johannesburg's largest township, Soweto, two workers at the PEPFAR-funded HIVSA center turned patients away. And a notice at the renowned Wits RHI Key Populations Clinic, which serves adults and children living with HIV, read: “We apologize for the inconvenience this causes."

Delays could be dangerous

Experts said the effects on HIV programs remain unclear but the consequences could be swift, even dangerous.

"We need to know a lot more before we can say people won’t die directly because of the pause to funding,” said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, noting that while the waiver should cover HIV drugs, HIV diagnostic tests are also critical to ensure treatment gets to those who need it.

Kenny said even short interruptions to antiretroviral treatment — which stops the virus replicating in the body — are risky.

“HIV viral loads rebound in about three weeks if you go off antiretrovirals,” he said.

Overall, even senior officials in the aid community are not sure which U.S.-funded programs are allowed to at least briefly continue operations.

The Trump administration has warned contractors and staffers with USAID — the agency responsible for dispersing America’s foreign aid — they could be disciplined if they speak to anyone outside the agency without top-level approval, and aid groups fear they may permanently lose funds if they speak publicly.

Stopping aid in war zones

A humanitarian official told The Associated Press that at least 1.2 million people in Congo could lose life-saving support because of the aid freeze. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said almost half of their organization’s funding is from USAID.

Overall, more than $100 million for the organization’s humanitarian programs in more than 30 countries worldwide has been halted, according to the official.

The block on aid came during a major escalation in fighting in eastern Congo, where millions of people were already displaced and where outbreaks of the mpox virus were declared a global health emergency last year.

In civil-war-torn Sudan, which is grappling with cholera, malaria, and measles, the aid freeze means 600,000 people will be at grave risk of catching and spreading those diseases, the official said.

Even with the exemption for life-saving services, the official said their organization had been told they should not resume any USAID-funded activities until they received notification that the waiver applies to them.

___

Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa, Mutsaka reported from Harare, Zimbabwe, and Banchereau reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Maria Cheng in London, Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington and Jacob Zimba in Lusaka, Zambia, contributed to this story.

___

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

AMERIKA

As bird flu ravages poultry industry, the damage spreads

Martha Teichner
Sun, February 2, 2025 

There are seven generations of Corwins in the Aquebogue, Long Island, town cemetery. Their graves overlook the farm that's been in the family since the 1640s. Some family members' tombstones are adorned with ducks. "I'm gonna say it was my grandfather's idea, because he did it first," said Doug Corwin.

It was Corwin's great-grandfather who started raising ducks in 1908, when Long Island was famous for its duck farms. Now, Crescent Duck Farm is the only one left. It produced a million ducks a year, until two weeks ago, when bird flu shut the farm down. Corwin said, "I saw a flock one day that was great, and the next day was lethargic, wasn't eating. It looked like something I'd never seen before."

Dozens of state and local agricultural workers, dressed in biohazard suits, assisted in the euthanasia of the entire flock – 100,000 ducks. Whether it's ducks or chickens, since the current strain of bird flu, H5N1, reached the United States in 2022, over 148 million birds have been ordered euthanized.

"It's a staggering number, there is no doubt," said Jodie Guest, a professor of epidemiology with Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta.

 "But it is, and always has been a policy across administrations, with the USDA, that this is how they handle infections like this among poultry. And as we've seen bird flu move [across] species, it becomes even more important to try to contain that infection in the flocks that it's in, so that we don't continue to see spread."

Except that's exactly what has happened. H5N1, Guest said, was in all 50 states by the end of 2023, transmitted by wild birds through their feces and saliva. "So, in 2024 we saw bird flu jump from our poultry and wild birds, to mammals, to cows. And that was a very startling change," she said.

Until 2024, there was only one human case in the U.S. In just a few months, the number jumped to 67, with one death. Most of those cases were workers at dairy operations and poultry farms. They experienced mild symptoms.

Guest said, "So far, we've not seen human-to-human transmission, and that would have to happen in order for us to be on the verge of an epidemic or a pandemic." She added, however, that she is not scared of that happening: "I feel very strongly that human risk is still very, very low."

But the spread of H5N1 is not being contained … and look what culling has already done to the price and availability of eggs.

The issue has become politicized. Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "The Biden administration and the Department of Agriculture directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore lack of egg supply, which is leading to a shortage." In fact, the last Trump administration followed the same policy.

Doug Corwin says, "A vaccine program is the only thing that's gonna get us out of this."

The proposal is controversial: allow poultry farmers to vaccinate their birds against H5N1, something theoretically doable but currently forbidden, because it would cripple U.S. poultry exports to the many countries which ban vaccinated birds. "The disease is becoming much bigger than the export situation, because the disease is so getting out of hand right now," Corwin said.

Corwin can't decide which is worse: losing 100,000 ducks, or having to lay off 48 people.

I said, "You seem ambivalent about whether or not you even want to try again?"

"Martha, think about what I've been through over the last two weeks," Corwin replied. "It's devastating, utterly devastating. It reminds me of losing both of my parents, that sudden ... that grief. It's just that feeling like you've lost something that's part of you."

For more info:
Crescent Duck Farm, Aquebogue, N.Y.Jodie Guest, professor of epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University


Story produced by David Rothman. Editor: Emanuele Secci.

Trump Aide Rips Newsmax On Air for Calling ‘Trade War’ What It Is

NAVARO IS AN OFFICIAL 'KNOW NOTHING'

Will Neal
Sun, February 2, 2025 

Newsmax / Newsmax


A senior White House trade adviser absolutely went off on a Newsmax host for suggesting Donald Trump’s newly-imposed tariffs against Mexico and Canada effectively amount to an act of economic warfare.

Speaking with network anchor John Glasgow on Sunday morning, Peter Navarro came down hard on Glasgow describing the recent measures exactly as they are, and as they have indeed been received by the nation’s southern and northern neighbors.

“I want to get your reaction here, Prime Minister Trudeau pushing back. I mean, he only has a few weeks left in office, he’s likely gonna get voted out. But I mean, it’s a pretty firm stance here from Canada, as well as Mexico, saying ‘this 25 percent tariff, we’re not gonna take it, we’re gonna send one right back at you’.”

Navarro quickly shot back, “It’s interesting to hear Trudeau talk about pain to the Canadian people. Hey, memo to Canada, we’ve had half a million Americans die from fentanyl and other synthetic opioids that come across your border, come across the Mexican border, and start as the fruit of the poisonous tree in China. President Trump promised to stop this carnage, and he’s going to do it.”
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Last year, U.S. border patrol intercepted roughly 9,600 kilograms of fentanyl coming into the country across the southern border, as per the New York Times. For Canada, that number stood at just 19 kilograms, or 1% of the amount from Mexico.

Mindful of these inconvenient details, Glasgow pushed Navarro further on Trump’s new tariffs, asking, “But my question is, does a bigger trade–call it a war–does that help or hurt the American people.”

“Don’t call it a war!” Navarro blasted back. “This is not a trade war! That’s the rhetoric of the globalists who want to send our jobs offshore and our factories offshore.”

He later also claimed that a single cup of fentanyl “can kill millions of people,” only slightly wide of the mark set by the DEA itself, given the agency claims it’d actually take more than a kilogram to cause the deaths of even half that number.

Notwithstanding the facts, Navarro chose to round off his interview with further threats to the Canadian prime minister, remarking “enough came over last year to kill 10 million Americans, Mr Trudeau, from Canada.”

DANGEROUS GUNBOAT LUNACY

Pete Hegseth Won’t Rule Out Invading Mexico to Stop Drug Cartels

Will Neal
Sat, February 1, 2025 

Fox News


U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth won’t rule out military action in Mexico to prevent drugs from crossing America’s southern border amid the Trump administration’s renewed effort to crack down on transnational crime.

Speaking with Fox News on Friday night, the former network host said “all options will be on the table” after President Donald Trump signed an executive order designating “certain international cartels (the Cartels) and other organizations” as foreign terrorist organizations.

As Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade put it to Hegseth, “If they continue to fire at our border patrol, and if they continue to pour fentanyl into our country, as secretary of defense, are you permitted now to go after them in Mexico or wherever they are?”

Hegseth responded, “I don’t want to get ahead of the president, and I won’t. That’s ultimately going to be his decision, but let me be clear: all options will be on the table if we’re dealing with what are designated to be foreign terrorist organizations who are specifically targeting Americans on the border.”
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He added, “We’re finally securing our border. We’ve been securing other people’s borders for a very long time. The military is orienting, shifting toward an understanding of homeland defense on our sovereign territorial border.”

Hegseth said that the U.S. military intends to pursue these goals “robustly,” and “should the cartels continue to pour people, gangs and drugs and violence into our country, we will take that on.”

He added, “Ultimately, we will hold nothing back to secure the American people.”

Trump’s “day one” executive order has called for the Pentagon to mobilize roughly 1,500 active-duty soldiers to further bolster Defense Department and border patrol officials already at the U.S.-Mexico border.

It is, however, unclear at this stage whether the Trump administration has any designs for an actual incursion into the nation’s southern neighbor, given the likely severe international blowback and extreme danger posed to U.S. civilians by any prospect of all-out violence in America’s borderlands.

Meanwhile, on Friday, the White House also pushed on with imposing tariffs of 25 percent on the flow of goods into the U.S. from Mexico and Canada—a move designed to further curtail cartel activity, but which economists have said threaten to seriously drive up the price of products coming in from abroad.


US Defense Secretary Hegseth to visit border on first trip

Sun, February 2, 2025 

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Washington

By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's first trip since taking office will be to the United States' border with Mexico on Monday, in the latest sign that fortifying the border will be a priority for the Pentagon under President Donald Trump.

Trump has increasingly turned to the military to help carry out his immigration agenda, including sending additional troops to the border, using military aircraft to fly migrants out of the United States, and opening up military bases to help house them.

"POTUS wants 100% operational control of the border—and we will deliver," Hegseth said on Sunday on X, referring to Trump, as he announced the trip to visit troops on the border.

Trump declared a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act on Saturday, citing the "extraordinary threat" from fentanyl and illegal immigration, and imposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada and an extra duty on Chinese goods.

Republican Trump last week said he was expanding a detention facility at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold 30,000 people. His White House border czar, Tom Homan, has said he hopes to start moving migrants there within 30 days.

Additional U.S. Marines arrived at Guantanamo Bay in recent days to prepare to expand a facility that holds migrants.

The Pentagon has also started providing flights for the deportations of more than 5,000 immigrants held by U.S. authorities in El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that U.S. military aircraft flew detained migrants to Honduras and Peru over the weekend.

The military flights are a costly way to fly migrants. Reuters reported that a military deportation flight to Guatemala last week likely cost at least $4,675 per migrant.

That is more than five times the $853 cost of a one-way first-class ticket on American Airlines from El Paso, Texas, the departure point for the flight.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Saad Sayeed)

Column: A president who won't tell the truth about California may unfairly punish the state

Mark Z. Barabak
Sun, February 2, 2025 

California's prolonged vote counting frustrates many, but there's nothing nefarious going on. Claims to the contrary — along with bogus assertions of widespread fraud — sow needless doubts about election integrity. (Josh Edelson / For The Times)

California has a problem with its elections.

Not the way they're conducted or administered, though there's certainly room for improvement.

The problem is with a certain pouty president who can't get over the fact California voters just aren't that into him.

Donald Trump lost the state by a whopping 4.2 million votes in 2016. He nursed his bruised ego by suggesting the result was tainted by "millions and millions" of fraudulent ballots — even though there's zero evidence supporting that claim.

In November, Trump won back the White House, but still lost California by nearly 3.2 million votes. Not exactly a nail-biter, but definitely better than his showings in 2016 and 2020. Apparently, though, a gold star for progress wasn't enough to boost our needy president's self-esteem.

“I think we would’ve won the state of California,” Trump told supporters at a post-inauguration celebration, "if the state had stronger voter identification laws." Another assertion that's not remotely grounded in reality, but Trump's gonna Trump.

Yes, it's grown tiresome. But all that whining could be written off as just more gaseous venting had the president not threatened to withhold desperately needed aid to fire-ravaged Southern California.

"I have a condition,” he told reporters before touring the charred remains of Pacific Palisades: Voter ID legislation to remedy what Trump falsely described as "a very corrupt” state election system.

Read more: Column: Compassion and decency are lost amid wildfires as California foes seek cheap political points

(He also reiterated his demand that California change its water policies, but maybe that's been solved by the troops Trump supposedly sent to turn on the water flow from the Pacific Northwest. There were no troops and there is no such flow, but whatever.)

Predictably, House Speaker Mike Johnson chimed in with his own false election claims, asserting that Republicans lost three California House seats in November because of vote-counting chicanery. "Inexcusable," he huffed, echoing Trump's suggestion there may be political terms for wildfire relief.

There is so much wrong with those kinds of threats, including the fact they're morally reprehensible and utterly without precedent in the American annals of natural disaster — that is, until Trump came along. But we'll save those lamentations for another day.

There's also a great deal that Trump, Johnson and their California-bashing allies get wrong about the integrity of the state's election system.

For starters, repeated nationwide studies have shown that voter fraud "is vanishingly rare and voter impersonation is nearly nonexistent," as the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy think tank at New York University, has noted.

That leaves us — let's quickly do the math — millions and millions shy of the supposedly fraudulent votes that tipped California away from Trump.

As for the state's notoriously prolonged vote-counting process, it may be a source of vexation. (Including to many within the state.) But there's nothing nefarious going on there, either.

Over the years, California lawmakers have enacted policies aimed at encouraging the greatest voter turnout possible, which is a commendable goal in a representative democracy. Once votes are cast, the state makes every effort to ensure they're properly tabulated. And there are a great many to be counted. The number of presidential ballots cast in California last November — nearly 16 million — exceeds the population of all but four states.

It takes time to ensure that each of those ballots is legitimate. (That's how you prevent fraud.)

That may require verifying an individual’s address or checking his or her signature against the one on file. Or shipping a mail ballot that was dropped off at the wrong location to the county where it should have been cast.

A considerable number of provisional ballots also need to be processed. For instance, if someone shows up at the wrong polling place they are allowed to cast a ballot, which then must be scrutinized.

All those steps hold up the final count, which, unfortunately, has invited disingenuous claims about vote-switching and stolen House seats. There is a straightforward, perfectly innocent reason why Democratic candidates sometimes pull ahead after trailing in early returns: Election day balloting has skewed Republican in recent years while mail ballots, which are counted later, have tended to favor Democrats.

If you want quicker results, the state should shell out more money to pay for it. Counties are responsible for tabulating ballots, but get nothing from Sacramento for that responsibility. Let the state pay to hire more staffers. Also, lawmakers could do more to help election offices in rural California, which are cash-starved compared with those in big urban areas.

Another change worth considering: Would shifting from county-managed voter registration databases to a state-managed system boost efficiency?

Those are all relatively small modifications, however, in a system that needs no major overhaul.

“For eight years, Trump has cried wolf, pushing claims attacking the integrity of California’s elections," Sen. Alex Padilla, the state's former elections chief, said in an email. "There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and Trump’s actions are an attempt to sow distrust in California’s elections because he doesn’t like the results."

Read more: Column: Trump pardoned a lot of bad apples. Now he and Republicans own the barrelful

It's said, quite rightly, that elections have consequences. So does lying about elections.

Bogus claims only serve to undercut faith in our democratic process and insult the many people working diligently to ensure the honesty and efficiency of our election system. They do so under increasingly stressful and sometimes dangerous conditions.

There's no harm considering whether things can be done better.

But not by holding hostage tens of thousands of people whose lives have been devastated by wildfire. "They deserve support from their president," Padilla rightly stated, rather than "political gamesmanship."

And not by seeking needless fixes for a nonexistent problem conjured up by a president who's not just a sore loser but a sore winner, as well.

Get the latest from Mark Z. Barabak
Focusing on politics out West, from the Golden Gate to the U.S. Capitol.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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Israeli military blows up buildings in West Bank refugee camp CITY

Reuters
Sun, February 2, 2025 


Smoke rises after an Israeli strike, in Jenin


RAMALLAH/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -The Israeli military blew up buildings in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Sunday in an operation that the Palestinian state news agency said leveled around 20 buildings.

Footage capturing the demolitions showed a series of simultaneous explosions in the densely populated camp.

Thick clouds of smoke rose above the Palestinian city where Israeli forces have been conducting a major military operation for nearly two weeks that the military says targets Palestinian militant fighters and the seizure of weapons stockpiles.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a statement urged the United States to end Israel's military operation and requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council "to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people".

The Israeli military said 23 structures had been "dismantled" in the northern West Bank after explosives laboratories, weapons and observation posts were uncovered.

In a previous statement on Sunday the military shared images of firearms, ammunition, and what appeared to be gas canisters. It did not say where exactly those images were taken.

Jenin Government Hospital Director Wisam Baker told the Palestinian state news agency that part of the hospital was damaged in the explosions but that there had been no casualties.

Jenin is home to a crowded refugee camp of descendants of Palestinians who were driven out, or fled their homes, in the 1948 war when the state of Israel was established. The refugee camp there has been a centre of militant activity for decades and the target of repeated raids by Israeli security forces.

Israeli forces, backed by helicopters and armoured bulldozers, began the assault on the city on Jan. 21, two days after a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and the militant group Hamas took effect.

Israel regards the West Bank as one part of a multi-front war against Iranian-backed groups established around its borders, from Gaza to Lebanon and including the Houthis in Yemen, and it turned its attention to the area immediately after the halt to fighting in Gaza.

The United Nations' agency for Palestinian refugees has said that almost all of the Jenin camp's 20,000 residents have been displaced over the past two months.

Hamas on Sunday called for an "escalation in the resistance" against Israel following the demolition of buildings in Jenin.

The Palestinian Authority, a Hamas rival, exercises limited governance over the West Bank where around 3 million Palestinians live and over which Israel maintains overall military control.

Israeli forces have engaged in gun battles with local militants since the operation began. Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday said security forces would stay until the operation is complete, without saying when that would be.

At least 25 Palestinians have been killed since the Israeli military operation began in Jenin, including nine members of armed groups, a 73-year-old man and a two-year-old girl, according to Palestinian officials. The Israeli military says it has killed at least 35 militants and detained over 100 wanted individuals.

The Palestinian state news agency also said that a 27-year-old man had been killed on Sunday by Israeli forces raiding a refugee camp near Hebron.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Alexander Cornwell in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Ros Russell)

Opinion: Democrats Must Hold the Line Against Trump’s Immoral Majority

Jill Filipovic
Sun, February 2, 2025
THE DAILY BEAST

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images


Donald Trump has spent his first days in office issuing a flurry of executive orders. Read through them and you’ll notice a theme: One order, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” asserts that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle” and “is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” Another, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” claims that diversity initiatives and anti-discrimination laws “undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement” and “threaten the safety of American men, women, and children across the Nation by diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination.”

A third, “Keeping Americans Safe in Aviation,” claims that “the FAA betrayed its mission by elevating dangerous discrimination over excellence” by prioritizing diversity in hiring. (Trump also purged an FAA safety committee and dumped the TSA director; just days later, the United States experienced its first commercial airplane crash in almost two decades, leaving dozens dead.)

Honor, truth, and discipline are indeed important values for soldiers to hold—whether trans or cisgender—which makes Pete Hegseth, Trump’s narrowly-confirmed new Department of Defense chief, an all the more eyebrow-raising pick. This is a man who has a history of heavy drinking, has faced accusations of sexual misconduct and assault (which he has denied), has defended soldiers accused of serious war crimes and argued that the Geneva Conventions and other rules of war are too restrictive.

Hegseth has cheated on two wives, impregnating his current one while married to the second, with whom he had an affair while married to the first—not exactly the definition of honor, truthfulness, or discipline. (The president, too, is on his third marriage, having had a very public affair with his second wife, and haing been alleged to have cheated on his current wife, Melania Trump, with multiple women.) Hegseth is also the least-qualified Department of Defense chief ever confirmed. “Merit-based” is not how one can reasonably describe his ascendance to his Cabinet role.

The same can be said for a great many of Trump’s nominees, many of whom seem also to have come onto Trump’s radar simply by virtue of appearing on Fox News. Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to head the FBI, is so unexperienced he even members of Trump’s administration were shocked by his being installed in a role at the National Security Council—his primary qualification seems to be that he is endlessly submissive to Trump. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services, has no health expertise, other than declaring himself an expert based on his half-formed (and potentially deadly) opinions on vaccines, and his general hostility to processed food.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s choice for Director of National Intelligence, lacks much in the way of intelligence experience other than palling around with hostile foreign nations; Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, was the governor of one of America’s least-populous states and perhaps most ‘famous’ for boasting in her memoir about shooting her puppy (and a goat)—quite the defense of one’s homeland.

I could go on. It is, in fact, harder to find Trump cabinet picks who are objectively qualified for their roles than to identify one after another who obviously are not. Even many the ones who aren’t especially controversial aren’t exactly the cream of the crop—Kelly Loeffler, Trump’s choice to head the Small Business Administration, has been investigated for insider trading. They have all bought into Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

Which makes it all the more repulsive that Democrats are acting as if many of these nominees are normal. Yes, some are pushing back on some of the most extreme and awful among them. But others are being approved despite lacking the merit necessary for the role. Perhaps Democratic senators believe that they have to pick their battles, and they do—but why are they not picking these ones?

This very well may be the most immoral, least qualified cabinet in modern American history. And that’s on purpose: People who are qualified have reputations to maintain and professional futures to protect. Those who don’t understand that their fates are tied to Trump and Trump alone—and Trump understands that, too.

Opinion - They won’t tell you these truths about nuclear energy

Cindy Folkers and Amanda M. Nichols, opinion contributors

THE HILL
Sun, February 2, 2025 




Scientists have been arguing about the health risks from radiation since the end of the 19th century, when radioactivity was first discovered. Today, with electricity demand soaring and AI companies clamoring for their own nuclear power plants, from small modular reactor projects to giant new nuclear builds, that century-old argument is ongoing.

But now it’s mostly a battle between scientists on the one hand and the nuclear industry, the politicians it lobbies and gullible media on the other.

Currently, scientists are being drowned out. The Biden administration proposed to triple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050, and President Trump is perceived as favoring nuclear expansion as well. Despite reams of peer-reviewed studies and books showing radiation’s harmful effects, there is persistent denialism that seems impervious to fact-checking.

It took until this century for the U.S. government to finally admit that radiation had killed workers at nuclear weapons plants. For Congress, compensating them remains politically radioactive: lawmakers failed to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that expired in 2024. Media coverage increasingly and uncritically repeats the talking points of nuclear industry spokespeople, who preposterously claim you would have to stand next to nuclear waste for a year to get as much radiation as having an X-ray, or that eating a banana gives you as much radiation exposure as living next to a nuclear plant.

This is dangerous disinformation in a long line of dangerous disinformation.

After the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan, the director of the Manhattan Project, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, debunked reports of radiation sickness as Japanese “propaganda.” Later, when he had to admit its existence, Groves misled Congress and the public by saying it was “a very pleasant way to die.”

Spreading such lies is bad enough. What is even worse is that the truth of the matter has been actively and deliberately suppressed.

Scientists who first dared to expose radiation’s harms — cancer, birth defects, disproportionate impacts on females — had their funding and data seized and suffered professional ostracism and vilification.

Yet their early scientific findings were largely vindicated. It’s now well established that exposure to ionizing radiation has adverse health impacts, affecting the heart, lungs, thyroid, brain and immune system, causing blood disorders, cataracts, malignant tumors, keloids and other chronic conditions. It wreaks genetic havoc that can result in cancer, organ dysfunction and immune and metabolic disorders. Children and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable.

It’s also proven that ionizing radiation disproportionately impacts women and girls, with the youngest worst affected. Ethnicity and other factors beyond biological sex and age may be contributing or compounding factors. There is also a growing body of evidence that radiation has transgenerational impacts.

Meanwhile, regulators set dose limits for radiation exposure that fly in the face of the evidence. These limits purport to set a “safe” level of radiation exposure, ignoring radiation researchers who have long stressed there is no such thing as a safe level, since any exposure can contribute to adverse health impacts.

In fact, nuclear technologies, including civilian power reactors, have poisoned large swaths of land — and not only the areas around Chernobyl and Fukushima, whose radioactive cesium contaminated Tokyo. The U.S. nuclear industry has left a lasting legacy of radiation in our environment, including in our water and food, which U.S. regulators are hardly able to effectively track, let alone remediate.

Uranium mining and nuclear weapons testing particularly and disproportionately affect Indigenous land and Native Americans, compounding the harms of colonization, exploitation and marginalization on already overburdened communities. Nuclear technologies have done and will continue to do long, slow violence, especially to the poor and marginalized, leaving long-lasting ecological, human-health and genetic impacts.

We seem unable to keep these inconvenient truths in our heads, the more so since well-financed nuclear lobbyists and their government targets have misdirected our attention by reframing nuclear power as key to fighting climate change.

This is a fallacy. There’s actually plenty of evidence showing the opposite — that relying on nuclear power actually makes climate change worse, and undercuts the true climate solution of renewables and efficiency. Even the Government Accountability Office called out the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its nonsensical refusal to consider the growing dangers of operating nuclear plants amid climate change. But none of that has prevented countenancing the myth of nuclear as a climate strategy and other big lies about it.

Perhaps the biggest lies about nuclear stem from Eisenhower’s 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech, a carefully crafted bid to recast nuclear technology as peaceful after the atrocious 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Atoms for Peace promised to make electricity “too cheap to meter” and “make the deserts bloom,” while deliberately concealing the truth that nuclear was utterly uncompetitive and not remotely economically viable as a power source. Civilian nuclear power was misdirection away from the real agenda of building nuclear power plants, which was to help supply the nuclear weapons complex, producing enriched plutonium as feedstocks for nuclear bombs in the burgeoning arms race.

Today, nuclear weapons are still the hidden agenda and secret rationale behind the otherwise nonsensical nuclear power industry. The resurgent nuclear arms race is the real reason why many tens of billions in federal subsidies ($53.5 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act alone, plus billions more in state subsidies) are propping up the utterly uncompetitive nuclear power industry, and why many billions more of taxpayers’ money is now getting thrown at corporations pushing chimerical “advanced” nuclear and uneconomical, dirty, failing small modular reactors (SMRs).

But some are pushing back, like Indigenous nations and public interest advocates in southwest Washington, where Amazon is pushing to build SMRs to power its AI business, heedless of their negative impacts and prohibitive costs.

Of all the dangers of reckless nuclear boosterism, the most insidious is disinformation concealing and denying nuclear’s past, present and future harms while wildly exaggerating its benefits. These are the perennial tactics of the nuclear industry. They litter its history, and they’re again getting traction today.

But they can be countered with sunshine — both the kind that powers real renewables with which nuclear can’t compete, and the kind that exposes its prevarications and lies with scientific evidence and public scrutiny.

Cindy Folkers is the radiation and health hazard specialist at the NGO Beyond Nuclear, and co-author with Ian Fairlie of the new book “The Scientists who Alerted us to the Dangers of Radiation.” Amanda M. Nichols, Ph.D. is a postdoctoral research fellow at University of California Santa Barbara’s Environmental Studies Program, and managing editor of the peer-reviewed Journal of Religion, Nature and Culture.

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