CANADIAN Senator accused of being China's 'mouthpiece' worries about rise of anti-Asian racism

OTTAWA — Last June, 33 Canadian senators voted to defeat a motion decrying China's treatment of Uyghur Muslims as a genocide.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

While they all faced criticism from some quarters, only one — Sen. Yuen Pau Woo, leader of the Independent Senators Group — seems to have been singled out as an alleged stooge of China's communist regime, told to resign and "go home."

Last week, Woo got a similar reaction when he tweeted about the release of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, the two Canadians arbitrarily detained by China for nearly three years in retaliation for Canada's arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the behest of the United States.

Woo tweeted that it was a "happy day" for the families of the Canadian men who became known around the world as the "two Michaels" and for Meng, who was simultaneously released and allowed to return to China. He urged Canadians to ponder the lessons learned from the affair.

He attached a link to an op-ed published in the Toronto Star that cited a former U.S. ambassador, Chas Freeman, saying that the "U.S., assisted by Canada, took Meng hostage in the first place as part of its trade-and-technology war with China."

That earned Woo a scathing rebuke from Chris Alexander, a former diplomat and one-time immigration minister in Stephen Harper's Conservative government.

DURING THE 2015 ELECTION ALEXANDER PROMOTED AN ISLAMOPHOBIC BARBARISM CULT HOTLINE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS..THAT DIED FAST DURING THE CAMPAIGN

Chris Alexander: The Conservatives' golden boy falls

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/chris-alexanders-fall-a-golden...

2015-10-20 · Chris Alexander's very bad day: A golden boy falls, but for how long? Right now he represents Conservative failures. One day he may run the party. By Cathy Gulli October 20, 2015. Chris Alexander ...

• Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins

"By claiming Meng was 'taken hostage' @yuenpauwoo has violated his oath as a Canadian senator and should resign," Alexander tweeted.

"Mouthpieces for foreign propaganda … should have no place in Canada's Parliament," he added.

Alexander's tweet was shared by others who variously referred to Woo as "pond scum" and a "Chinese commie f---" who should be "sent back to China along with Meng."

China has maintained from the outset that Meng's arrest was politically motivated. Canada and the U.S. have strenuously denied it but plenty of American and Canadian experts nevertheless share Freeman's view that she was a political bargaining chip.

That view was fuelled by former U.S. president Donald Trump, who was attempting to negotiate a trade deal with China at the time of Meng's arrest and who said he'd intervene in her extradition case "if I think it's good for what will be the largest trade deal ever made."

John Manley, a former Liberal deputy prime minister and Canadian foreign affairs minister, said at the time that Trump's comments had "given Ms. Meng's lawyers quite a good reason to go to the court and say, 'This is not an extradition matter. This is actually leverage in a trade dispute and it's got nothing to do with Canada.'"

Woo notes that Manley and others who have echoed similar views have not been denounced as mouthpieces for China.

That's a specific kind of opprobrium, he believes, meant to stigmatize people of Chinese descent and he's worried about where the rising tide of anti-Asian sentiment in Canada could lead.

"I am Exhibit A, if you will, only because I have a bit of public profile," Woo said in an interview.

"But there are many others in the community who do not have my protections and are genuinely fearful of the increasing typecasting and stigmatization that's going on."

Woo was actually born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore before coming to Canada at age 16.

He has been accused of being unabashedly "Beijing friendly," a mouthpiece and lobbyist for the Communist Party of China, even though he points out he's "three generations removed from the mainland (China)."

He fears recent immigrants from China, who still have connections to family there, are considered even more suspect and are less able to defend themselves.

Woo points to reports suggesting that Chinese Canadians might have been influenced by or acting on the behest of China when they voted in last month's federal election, resulting in the defeat of several Conservative incumbents who had advocated a hardline stance against Beijing.

"This is really a slanderous and dangerous way of thinking because it makes assumptions about Chinese Canadians … who have views that may not be mainstream (and) it presumes that they are not able to think for themselves," he said.

"The accusation that they are foreign agents or stooges of the Chinese government is a very, very serious allegation and, of course, hearkens back to the days of McCarthyism when careers were ruined and lives were lost and we have to be very careful not to go back to that place."

One of those defeated Conservative MPs, Kenny Chiu, who lost his B.C. riding to a Liberal in the Sept. 20 election, told The Canadian Press that during the campaign there were WeChat posts he says contained false information about the Conservatives and allegations a private member's bill he tabled would discriminate against Chinese Canadians. But he also said his party could have done a better job speaking directly to members of that community.

When Woo spoke against the motion labelling China's treatment of Uyghurs a genocide last June, he argued that Canada, given its history of forcing Indigenous children to attend residential schools, should not try to lecture China from a position of moral superiority on human rights.

Rather, he said, Canada should appeal to its Chinese "friends" not to make the same morally wrong and societally damaging mistake of trying to repress and forcibly assimilate a minority group.

Sen. Peter Harder, the former government representative in the Senate who now sits with the Progressive Senate Group, made a similar argument.

Sen. Peter Boehm, a former senior Global Affairs bureaucrat and Sherpa for prime ministers at G7 summits, argued that the motion's "few paragraphs of what passes for megaphone diplomacy" would accomplish nothing, other than to anger China and possibly hurt attempts to win the release of Kovrig and Spavor.

Boehm, a member of the Independent Senators Group, said in an interview that both he and Harder got "a few brickbats" for their speeches, including from his former colleague, Alexander.

Alexander could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

"What I was getting was 'You're an experienced diplomat, you should know better, shame on you.' That was basically what I was getting from Chris Alexander and from others who consider themselves experts," Boehm said.

But unlike Woo, he said: "No one has tweeted or commented that I should go back to China."

Boehm agrees with Woo that "there's a correlation here with anti-Asian racism on the rise in Canada … and some of this is permeating into the utterances or what various Canadians who should know better are putting on their social media feeds.

"I think it's unfair and demeaning."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 3, 2021.

Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press

BJP HINDUTVA NATIONALISM IS FACISM

India’s Christians living in fear as claims of ‘forced conversions’ swirl
Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Chhattisgarh 

It was a stifling July afternoon when the crowd moved into the small district of Lakholi, in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, and gathered outside the house of Tamesh War Sahu. Sahu, a 55-year-old volunteer with the Home Guard who had begun following Christianity more than five years previously, had never before had issues with his neighbours.

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images

 An Indian church at Christmas. The Christian community in Chhattisgarh numbers about 500,000, according to the last census.

But now, more than 100 people had descended from surrounding villages and were shouting Hindu nationalist slogans outside his front door. Sahu’s son Moses, who had come out to investigate the noise, was beaten by the mob, who then charged inside.

As the men entered the house, they shouted death threats at Sahu’s wife and began tearing posters bearing Bible quotes down from the walls. Bibles were seized from the shelves and brought outside where they were set alight, doused in water and the ashes thrown in the gutter. “We will teach you a lesson,” some people were heard to shout. “This is what you get for forcing people into Christianity.”

Sahu’s family was not the only one attacked that day. Four other local Christian households were also targeted by mobs, led by the Hindu nationalist vigilante group Bajrang Dal, known for their aggressive and hardline approach to “defending” Hinduism. “We had never had any issue before but now our local community has turned against us,” said Sahu.

Since the beginning of the year there have been similar attacks across Chhattisgarh, already the Indian state with the second highest number of incidents against Christians. In some villages, Christian churches have been vandalised, in others pastors have been beaten or abused. Congregations have been broken up by mobs and believers hospitalised with injuries. The police, too, stand accused – of making threats to Christians, hauling them into police stations and carrying out raids on Sunday prayer services.

The attacks have coincided with renewed attention on a longstanding claim from rightwing Hindu groups: that a string of forced conversions are taking place in Chhattisgarh. Such claims have been made by senior figures in the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), which governs India but is in opposition in the state government, as well as rightwing vigilante groups.

Speeches, rallies and press statements in recent months have openly attacked Christian pastors and activists for allegedly converting, through force and coercion, tens of thousands of people from tribal communities and poor, lower-caste Hindu families. They allege they are lured into churches by proselytising pastors offering cash payments, free medical assistance and foreign trips, funded by foreign donors.

Dozens of “anti-conversion” rallies have been held across Chhattisgarh in the past month, as well as direct violent action On 29 August, 100 people, led by members of another rightwing group, Hindu Sara Ja Jagtar Samiti, tried to attack three churches in the district of Kawardha.

In the first church, in Polmi village, Pastor Moses Logan was conducting the Sunday prayer service when the mob burst in. Logan’s wife and mother were badly beaten, the church curtains torn down, musical instruments smashed and furniture destroyed. Logan’s clothes were ripped as the mob grabbed him and marched him to the local police station, where they attempted unsuccessfully to get a police report filed against him for conducting forced conversions.

As Logan’s car left the police station that night with an escort for safety, it was set upon by people waiting outside, who threw boulders and sticks and smashed the windscreens.

Hindu nationalist groups have attempted to file dozens of similar police reports against members of the Christian community, and in multiple incidents mobs have charged into police stations to try to force the arrest of pastors.

Senior BJP figures told the Guardian that forced conversions were now at the forefront of their agenda in the state.

“We are loudly challenging this issue because it will change the demography of the country and is a threat to law and order,” said Brijmohan Agrawal, a BJP former minister in Chhattisgarh who has spoken at several anti-conversion rallies. “These conversions are foreign funded and so those are who are lured in and converted will also be turned against India. Their patriotism then comes under question.”

Yet the Christian community in Chhattisgarh, which according to the last census numbers about 500,000, denies all charges of forced conversion as false and unfounded. Those who spoke to the Guardian said they had no outside funding and were involved in no active proselytising, as per the state law, though Bibles are often distributed in rural villages and slum areas.

Many members of tribal communities and lower-caste families in Chhattisgarh do attend church services, and they are referred to as “believers” rather than Christians. However, most spoke of first coming to church of their own accord seeking community or on the recommendation of a friend or neighbour. While dozens of complaints have been recently made to police against pastors, no official police reports have been filed nor any arrests made, owing to lack of evidence.

Chhattisgarh is one of nine Indian states that already have draconian laws regulating religious conversions. Those wishing to change their religion are required to gain permission from the local district magistrate, and anyone carrying out forced conversions can be punished with a three-year jail sentence.

Instead, many in the Christian community allege that they have become a political target, saying that the conversion claims has been revived by the BJP as a way to tarnish the reputation of the Congress party, which rules the Chhattisgarh state government.

“There have never been any tensions between Hindus and Christians before, this is a completely political issue,” said Obed Das, a pastor in Durg district who was recently threatened after he was accused of forced conversions.

Amit Sahu, the state president of the BJP youth wing in Chhattisgarh, claimed that tens of thousands of pastors and Christian activists were involved in forced conversions and said the plan was to catch them and “fill the jails”.

He said that across the state, BJP workers were being instructed to make lists of Christians they believed were converting tribal and Hindu families and keep them under surveillance. “When our party workers are aggressive, then no one can save these pastors,” said Sahu. “We will do anything to save our religion, to save our culture, to save our country.”

The impact on the Christian community has been palpable. Many spoke of being demonised in their own communities and living in fear or in hiding. Those who spoke to the Guardian agreed to do so only in remote locations so they would not be seen. Pastor Ashish Nag, of Good Shepherd church in Bagbahara, who was among those recently reported to the police for forced conversions, said he had been told he was now a target.

“I am worried and scared,” said Nag. “I have been told I’m under surveillance from these Hindu groups, and they report on my movements and who comes to my church.”

Harish Sahu, 43, a pastor at New Life Fellowship ministry church in Bhatagon, Raipur, had a police report filed against seven members of Bajrang Dal who had attacked him in a police station, and two arrests have been made, but police are now stationed outside his church during Sunday service for protection.

There are signs that the claims of forced conversions are now being taken up by the BJP and rightwing groups in other states such as Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.

Some of the threats in Chhattisgarh have come directly from the BJP rather than fringe groups. In early August, Pastor Benu Mehananda, of Church of God church in Shamma, Raipur, was accused by two local BJP leaders of carrying out forced conversions. Standing outside his church, they told him if he did not leave the community he would end up like Graham Staines, the Australian Christian missionary who was burned alive with his two sons by members of Bajrang Dal in neighbouring state of Odisha in 1999.

“The BJP has no issue to attract voters here so they are using conversion to polarise the voters down religious lines,” said Mehanada. “The impact for Christians is terrifying. Some families have stopped coming to my services.”

Rishi Mishra, the state coordinator for Bajrang Dal, said: “Religious conversion is the biggest problem in Chhattisgarh and the top of our agenda. Until recently, this problem was limited to rural areas and the tribal belt. But of late they have started their work of religious conversions in urban areas, in an open and fearless manner.”

Mishra claimed that even when they presented police with evidence and witnesses of forced conversions, the police refused to file cases due to pressure from the ruling Congress government. He said Bajrang Dal was also working to convert many of the believers back to Hinduism, and that they had succeeded with 15 families so far.

“Bajrang Dal was established for dealing with things in an aggressive manner,” he said. “Whoever attempts to convert Hindus should be in fear of Bajrang Dal. Bajrang Dal was created for this very purpose. “

Mahendra Chhabda, a member of the ruling Congress government in Chhattisgarh and chair of the minority commission, said forced conversions were not a problem in the state. However, he said he had had a meeting recently with leaders of the Christian community and advised them to stop distributing Bibles to try to ease tensions.

“The BJP and other groups are talking about forced conversions but I have never been presented with evidence for a single case where a person says they have been forced to convert or given benefits to come to church,” said Chhabda. “All over India the BJP have been targeting Muslims to win votes. Now in Chhattisgarh they have decided to come for the Christians.”

Additional reporting by Mohammad Sartaj Alam

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

MUTUAL AID

Elephants will cooperate to acquire food -- assuming there's enough

Cooperation lies at the beating heart of most societies. For Asian elephants in a recent study, a bit of teamwork helped them access delicious bananas. A new study examines elephants' ability to work together for a reward and the circumstances that limit their capacity for cooperation.

Li-Li Li, a doctoral student at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said she chose to work on elephants because she had always longed to work with the biggest animals on the planet. Li and her colleagues also wanted to understand what motivated cooperation. Elephants, evolutionarily distant from primates, were a perfect vehicle for studying how cooperation could crop up in distant species.

Back in 2011, a group of researchers published a paper showing that Asian elephants in Thailand could cooperate to obtain food rewards on an out-of-reach table, using a rope they had to pull at the same time. They would wait for partners before pulling, showing they understood how cooperation worked and that their partner's behavior mattered for success. But in that first study, the researchers paired the elephants, so they couldn't choose their partners.

© STOCK IMAGE/Cheryl Ramalho/Shutterstock

 2 adult female Asian elephants carouse together in a field in rural northern Thailand in an undated photo.

In the new study, published Sept. 28 in the journal PLoS Biology, the team of international researchers went further, offering a group of nine elephants free access to the testing table -- handing the decision of picking teammates and figuring out how to cooperate to the animals themselves. They found that cooperation was maintained at a high rate (more than 80% of the time) even in the face of competition, and only broke down when the food on the table was limited and could easily be monopolized.

The complexity of cooperation, particularly in an experimental task, is rarely investigated outside primates or birds, the researchers said. The elephants in the study were part of the Myaing Hay Wun Elephant Camp in Taikkyi, Yangon, Myanmar, all owned by the Myanma Timber Enterprise. When logging was banned in Myanmar in 2016 these creatures retired from their work and came under the care of an elephant handler who works full time bathing and checking up on each elephant. The surrounding forests are also home to wild elephants. The retired, semi-wild elephants sometimes intermingle with them.

The retired elephants were subjected to a classic teamwork task, which was first developed in the 1930s and has been tested on species from otters to macaques. The elephants had to pull two ends of the same rope to access trays of bananas or tamarind balls.

© Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images, FILE 

Asian elephants eat in a forest at the Asian Elephant Breeding and Rescue Centre in Xishuangbanna in southwest China's Yunnan province, July 20, 2021.

In the first part of the study, there were two trays, so both partners could feast. But in the second part of the study, there was only one tray of tasty treats -- so one partner could monopolize the food. That's when the competition became more fierce, more intense, Li says, with more fights and more monopolizing of the treats. The allegiance broke down quickly from there.

Similar breakdowns in cooperation happen in other species, including humans, when benefits are reduced, said Alicia Melis, an experimental psychologist at the University College London in the United Kingdom who was not involved in the study. She pointed out that there are several different kinds of cooperation: One type is where both parties benefit, as in this teamwork exercise, and another, more altruistic, type is where one side benefits immediately and the other is just helping out for potential future benefits.

Melis has worked on similar experiments in bonobos and chimpanzees, and she said the elephant results aren't terribly surprising: It could be that some higher-ranking individuals are monopolizing the food intake.MORE: Whitest white paint could help fight climate change

The problem of cooperation is cheaters, she said. Recognizing others' contributions to the collaborative effort by rewarding them with part of the spoils is key to keeping collaborators motivated long term -- and something that develops in children around age 3. Cheaters, those who plunder the spoils without collaborating, undermine this delicate balance.

"Other species, like the elephants here, or chimps in our studies, seem a bit more constrained in this regard," Melis said. "The more dominant individuals monopolize the food, not rewarding partners, which leads to cooperation breaking down. However, if the monopolization potential is reduced by placing the food rewards far apart, they successfully coordinate their actions."

Li said she learned that elephants have individual personalities and temperaments -- and their own ways of dealing with others. Knowledge of the individuals and their personalities can help conservation of Asian elephants in China, where they number only around 300, and where she is evaluating the protected areas. Li said that in developing strategies to protect them, it helps to know if a group of elephants is a family or a loose herd of bachelor males. "Different elephants have different kinds of culture, as well as personalities."

Inside Science is an editorially independent nonprofit print, electronic and video journalism news service owned and operated by the American Institute of Physics.

Mutual aid: Kropotkin's theory of human capacity | ROAR ...

https://roarmag.org/essays/kropotkin-mutual-aid

2021-02-08 · In Mutual Aid Kropotkin used his “anarchized” evolutionary theory to attack advocates of state order or “subordination.” While this included laissez-faire liberals and

GRIMES TROLLS PAPARAZZI AS A MARXIST


Grimes

It looks like Grimes has fooled photographers following her around after her high-profile split from SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

On Saturday (Oct. 2), the “Violence” singer admitted on Twitter that she recently trolled paparazzi by staging a photo of herself reading Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto while sitting on a sidewalk in downtown Los Angeles.

“Paparazzi followed me 2 a shoot so I tried 2 think what I could do that would yield the most onion-ish possible headline and it worked haha,” Grimes captioned a screenshot of a New York Post article about the images in question.

Grimes added on Instagram that she’s still living with Musk and clarified that she’s “not a communist.” The art-pop singer also issued a playful warning to other celebrity photographers: “If paparazzi keep chasing me perhaps I will try to think of more ways to meme — suggestions welcome!”

Her IG post garnered supportive comments from fellow musical artists like SZA, Kiesza, Lights and Jewel. “Unreal veteran move,” Lights wrote. Jewel added, “I love this so much!” And SZA said, “I mean ya look hot lol.”

Last week, Grimes released a new song titled “Love” that addresses her feelings about the heightened media scrutiny surrounding her personal life and directly called out members of the paparazzi who’ve reportedly harassed her.

“I wrote and produced this song this week in response to all the privacy invasion, bad press, online hate and harassment by paparazzis I’ve experienced this week,” she wrote on Instagram.

In late September, Musk confirmed he and Grimes had broken up after dating for three years in a statement to Page Six, and explained what their co-parenting strategies are like with their 1-year-old son, X Æ A-12.

“We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently and are on great terms,” Musk said. “It’s mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or traveling overseas, and her work is primarily in L.A. She’s staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room.”

Following the announcement, Grimes made headlines when she joked in a statement about “colonizing Europa [one of Jupiter’s moons] separately from Elon for the lesbian space commune.”

See Grimes’ tweet about trolling the paparazzi below.

People are flocking to Colorado for the great outdoors, but air pollution is leading to more days when residents are stuck inside

kvlamis@insider.com (Kelsey Vlamis)

© Marianne Ayala/Insider 

With mild winters, plenty of open space, and endless opportunities for outdoor recreation, it's easy to see why Colorado is one of the fastest-growing states in the US.

"We were tired of having to spend nine winter months indoors without the sun," Ashley O'Connor, who moved to Colorado from Chicago in 2015, told Insider. "We like to joke that we traded skyscrapers for mountains."

O'Connor and her husband are hardly alone. According to census data, Colorado was one of the fastest-growing states from 2010 to 2020, increasing its population by nearly 15%. Colorado real estate has also been booming for years and experienced an even greater boost during the pandemic as urbanites ditched cities for less crowded spaces.

But one of the state's biggest draws - abundant access to the outdoors - is under threat.

The air in Colorado is getting dirtier, resulting in more days where haze obscures the mountains and when public health officials say it's unsafe to be outside, let alone do something active.

"For the last three months, three out of four days were air quality alerts," Frank Flocke, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, told Insider in mid-September. "We just had a clear day for the first time for weeks, where you could actually see the mountains."

 A hazy view of the downtown Denver skyline from Sloan Lake in Denver, Colorado on Tuesday, August 3, 2021.

Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post/Getty Images

Ozone pollution and wildfire smoke are largely responsible for obscuring the view of the Rocky Mountains, an increasingly common sight in Colorado, according to Flocke.

This summer, Colorado public health officials issued an ozone alert every day from July 5 to August 14, marking a 41-day stretch of air quality warnings. The state issued 65 ozone action day alerts from June through August, more than any year since 2016, when the current ozone standard was set.
'Hazy, smoky mountain ranges have become a bit of a regular sight'

For longtime residents, the change in air quality, and the impact it's had on their outdoor life, is evident.

"Honestly, it's heartbreaking," Susanna Joy, who has lived in Colorado most of her life, told Insider. "Those of us that are from here have noticed a really big shift in our ability to enjoy life how we grew up."

Joy said she grew up outdoors and remains an avid hiker who loves camping and being outside as much as possible. She said air quality and wildfires weren't even on her radar growing up, a stark difference from recent years.

"I never thought about air quality when I was planning outdoor adventures and now it's something that we look at consistently," Joy said.


Now, she gets an email every morning from a local newspaper that tells her the air quality for that day, so she can decide if she even wants to think about doing something outside.

"There's been multiple times where we're planning a 40-mile bike ride and we just don't do it because the air quality is too bad or it's too hot," she said.

Checking in on air quality has become a daily part of many Coloradoans' lives. The air quality index, or AQI - a tool used by government agencies to convey to the public how safe the air is on any given day - has become as common a discussion point as which 14er, or mountain peak higher than 14,000 feet, is hardest to hike to.

Even for recent transplants, the change is palpable, according to O'Connor, who lives in the Rockies in Summit County, home to some of the state's most popular ski resorts, like Breckenridge and Keystone.

Being outside "isn't just about hobbies, it is a way of life," O'Connor said. She loves to ski, bike, take her sailboat out on the Dillon Reservoir, and hike the many trails located minutes from her home.

But the "hazy, smoky mountain ranges have become a bit of a regular sight since moving here," she said. "Not only has it affected the amount of time we are willing to spend outdoors, but how we spend it."

O'Connor said she and her husband even wake up sometimes with "red, burning, itchy eyes" and congestion due to the poor air quality.

Sun sets behind the Rocky Mountains on Sept. 10, 2021, in Colorado, where smoke from western wildfires has funneled into the region to create colorful sunsets and sunrises and trigger air quality alerts. 

David Zalubowski/Associated Press

The culprits: 'A product of our own doing'

Ozone is the primary pollutant taking a toll on Colorado's air, according to Flocke.

Colorado has some of the worst ozone pollution of anywhere in the US. In 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency reclassified the Denver area as a "serious" violator of federal air quality standards. The agency gave the state until July of this year to get the ozone pollution under control, but that deadline came and went.

Ozone is a naturally occurring and man-made gas found in Earth's atmosphere. High-altitude ozone, like that found in the ozone layer, protects the planet by absorbing UV rays from the sun. Ground-level ozone, on the other hand, is emitted by things like cars, chemical plants, and oil and gas refineries, and enters the air we breathe.

Flocke said ozone pollution is "mainly a product of our own doing," calling transportation of people and goods and the oil and gas industry the "elephants in the room" when it comes to cutting ozone emissions.

A 2019 study co-authored by Flocke found the fossil fuel and transportation sectors were the major contributors to ozone on Colorado's front range.

 In this Jan. 7, 2018, photo, traffic backs up on Interstate 70 in Colorado, a familiar scene on the main highway connecting Denver to the mountains. 

Thomas Peipert/Associated Press

The millions of recent Colorado transplants aren't helping the problem, as the increase in population and traffic only causes those emissions to rise.

Breathing ozone can lead to serious health effects, according to the EPA, including coughing, throat irritation, chest pain, and shortness of breath, as well as longer-lasting issues like declining lung function. There is also strong evidence linking higher ozone levels with asthma attacks, increased hospitalizations, and increased mortality.

Sensitive groups, including older people, children, and people with respiratory issues are especially at risk, but high ozone levels can trigger symptoms even for people who aren't at higher risk.
'The fires make everything worse'

Those impacts are only magnified by the other pollutant permeating Colorado's air: fine particulate matter from wildfires. Particulate matter, or PM pollution, refers to tiny particles found in the air that are so small they can be inhaled when breathing.

"The fires make everything worse because they add the particles to the ozone," Flocke said.

The particles emitted from wildfires can get deep into the lungs and even the bloodstream, according to the EPA. Studies have linked PM to premature deaths in people with heart or lung disease, heart attacks, decreased lung function, and respiratory problems.

Even in years when Colorado has a relatively mild wildfire season, like this year, the state still deals with dangerous levels of PM blown in from other parts of the West. This year, fires in California and Oregon brought hazy, smoky days all the way to Colorado.

Smoke from the Grizzly Creek Fire blankets Glenwood Canyon and Interstate 70 on August 26, 2020 in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. 

Alex Edelman/Getty Images

"They made a lot of the days multiple pollutant warning days, where you had ozone exceed the standard and particulates exceed the standard at the same time," Flocke said. "For people that are sensitive to pollution, that really makes it hard to be outside and enjoy life."

Flocke said the issue is worsened by the fact that the meteorological conditions that prevent the local ozone from being flushed out by cold fronts are the same conditions that bring in the wildfire smoke from the coast.
'If we tackle the climate problem, we will slowly also tackle our air quality problem'

The impact of wildfires on Colorado's air quality is unlikely to let up so long as the climate continues to warm, according to Russ Schumacher, director of the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University.

"Many studies, going back 10 to 15 years, have projected that the amount of acreage burned of wildfires in the West was going to increase as the climate warms," he told Insider. "We're starting to see that now."

Schumacher said the wildfires aren't solely due to climate change, but that climate change and the related droughts and heatwaves have set the stage for these big fires.

Climate change and air quality are "intimately connected," according to Flocke: "Our lifestyle causes emissions of CO2, which exacerbate climate change, which exacerbate the fires, which exacerbate our air quality problems."

 Denver Skyline as seen from the Cherry Creek Dam road in Denver, Colorado on a relatively clear day in 2015. 

Helen H. Richardson/ The Denver Post/Getty Images

But, he said, both crises could be addressed in Colorado with many of the same actions. Enacting tighter regulations on oil and gas emissions, improving public transportation, and disincentivizing driving would all help cut greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollutants.

"If we tackle the climate problem, we will slowly also tackle our air quality problem," Flocke said, adding that the solutions are "clear" but that there needs to be political will to actually implement them.

He said the increase in awareness about air quality, partly driven by the wildfires and climate change, could result in a greater push for change. The many transplants moving to the state could have a positive impact on that as well.

"People move to Colorado because they have this idea that we have clean mountain air," he said. "Maybe they will be more susceptible to accept stricter regulations."

Joy echoed those sentiments, saying she's "hopeful that this isn't just how summer is now, because I enjoyed summer so much as a kid."

While she personally tries to minimize her impact on emissions, she said she's also trying to come to terms with the fact that "until we make some big changes that help us reduce the impact that we're having overall, it's not going to change. It's going to continue to amplify."

Have a news tip? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@insider.com.
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Facebook whistleblower reveals identity, accuses the platform of a 'betrayal of democracy'

Lauren Feiner, CNBC

A Facebook whistleblower who brought internal documents detailing the company’s research to The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Congress unmasked herself ahead of an interview she gave to “60 Minutes,” which aired Sunday night.

Frances Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, according to her website, revealed herself as the source behind a trove of leaked documents. On her personal website, she shared that during her time at the company, she “became increasingly alarmed by the choices the company makes prioritizing their own profits over public safety — putting people’s lives at risk. As a last resort and at great personal risk, Frances made the courageous act to blow the whistle on Facebook.”

Haugen previously worked as a product manager at Pinterest, Yelp and Google, according to her LinkedIn profile. She also lists herself as the technical co-founder behind the dating app Hinge, saying she took its precursor, Secret Agent Cupid, to market.

“I’ve seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I’d seen before,” Haugen told “60 Minutes.”

Haugen told “60 Minutes” she left Facebook in May.

Jeff Horwitz, the Journal reporter who wrote the series of articles based on the leaked documents, also shared Haugen’s identity on Twitter on Sunday night, revealing her as the key source behind the stories.

The documents, first reported by the Journal, revealed that Facebook executives had been aware of negative impacts of its platforms on some young users, among other findings. For example, the Journal reported that one internal document found that of teens reporting suicidal thoughts, 6% of American users traced the urge to kill themselves to Instagram.

Facebook has since said that the Journal’s reporting cherry-picked data and that even headlines on its own internal presentations ignored potentially positive interpretations of the data, like that many users found positive impacts from engagement with their products.

“Every day our teams have to balance protecting the ability of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place,” Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch said in a statement following Haugen’s identity reveal. “We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true.”

Haugen said she decided this year to make Facebook’s internal communications public, saying she realized she would need to do so “in a systemic way” and “get out enough that no one can question that this is real.”

Haugen in turn copied and released tens of thousands of pages of documents, “60 Minutes” reported.

Haugen pointed to the 2020 election as a turning point at Facebook. She said Facebook had announced it was dissolving the “Civic Integrity” team, to which she was assigned, after the election. Just a few months later, social media communications would be a key focus in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“When they got rid of Civic Integrity, it was the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous,’” Haugen told “60 Minutes.”

Facebook told the news program that it had distributed the work of the Civic Integrity team to other units.

Haugen pointed to Facebook’s algorithm as the element that pushes misinformation onto users. She said Facebook recognized the risk of misinformation to the 2020 election and therefore added safety systems to reduce that risk. But, she said, Facebook loosened those safety measures once again after the election.

“As soon as the election was over, they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety,” Haugen said. “And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.”

In an interview with the Journal published shortly after the “60 Minutes” piece began to air, Haugen said she had found much of the research she took with her in Facebook’s internal employee forum, which she said was accessible to virtually all Facebook employees. She looked for research from colleagues she admired, according to the Journal, which she often found in goodbye posts calling out Facebook’s alleged failures.

Haugen also told the Journal that she openly questioned why Facebook didn’t hire more workers to tackle its issues with human exploitation on its platforms, among other things.

“Facebook acted like it was powerless to staff these teams,” she told the Journal.

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told the Journal that it has “invested heavily in people and technology to keep our platform safe, and have made fighting misinformation and providing authoritative information a priority.”

Lawmakers have appeared unmoved by Facebook’s responses to the Journal’s reporting based on Haugen’s disclosures. During a hearing before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection Thursday, senators on both sides of the aisle lambasted the company, urging it to make its temporary pause on building an Instagram platform for kids permanent. The lawmakers said they did not have faith Facebook could be a good steward of such a platform based on the reports and past behavior.

The whistleblower is scheduled to testify before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection on Tuesday. Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis told lawmakers on Thursday that Facebook would not retaliate against the whistleblower for her disclosures to the Senate.

“Facebook’s actions make clear that we cannot trust it to police itself,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chairs the subcommittee, said in a statement Sunday night. “We must consider stronger oversight, effective protections for children, and tools for parents, among the needed reforms.”

Haugen said she has “empathy” for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saying he “has never set out to make a hateful platform. But he has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are that hateful, polarizing content gets more distribution and more reach.”

She called for more regulations over the company to keep it in check.

“Facebook has demonstrated they cannot act independently Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,” Haugen told “60 Minutes.” “It is subsidizing, it is paying for its profits with our safety. I’m hoping that this will have had a big enough impact on the world that they get the fortitude and the motivation to actually go put those regulations into place. That’s my hope.”


Facebook Whistleblower Reveals Herself In ’60 Minutes’ Interview, Says Company Is “Paying For Its Profits With Our Safety”

Ted Johnson 

A former Facebook employee who has, with the release of a trove of internal documents, become a whisteblower over the company’s practices, revealed herself on Sunday on 60 Minutes.

Frances Haugen, a data scientist who until May worked on the company’s efforts to combat misinformation, told correspondent Scott Pelley that the company is “paying for its profits with our safety.” Haugen copied thousands of pages of internal documents, revealing research on how its platform amplifies hate speech and how it can be harmful to teens. She released those documents to The Wall Street Journal, which revealed them in stories last month that immediately triggered criticism from Capitol Hill lawmakers.

Haugen’s attorney also filed at least eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission, on the grounds that the company is making material misstatements that adversely affect investors.

“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” Haugen said in the interview. “And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.”

She is scheduled to testify before a Senate Commerce subcommittee on Tuesday.

In the interview, Haugen said that she worked on the Civic Integrity unit at the company. She said that after the election, the unit was dissolved, but “fast forward a couple months, we got the insurrection. And when they got rid of Civic Integrity, it was the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.'”

She pinned part of the blame on the spread of misinformation and hate speech on how Facebook has chosen to design its algorithm.

Haugen said that they are “optimizing for content that gets engagement, or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it’s easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions.”

“Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money,” she said.

The company told 60 Minutes that the work of the Civic Integrity unit was given to other units. But 60 Minutes showed how the platform was used to help organize the January 6 insurrection.

In the interview, Haugen said that “no one at Facebook is malevolent, but the incentives are misaligned, right?”

“Facebook makes more money when you consume more content,” she said. “People enjoy engaging with things that elicit an emotional reaction. And the more anger that they get exposed to, the more they interact and the more they consume.”

The company told 60 Minutes that “every day our teams have to balance protecting the right of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place. We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true.”

The company also told 60 Minutes that “if any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments and society would have solved them a long time ago.”

See the segment here.

Click here to read the full article.

Facebook whistleblower to claim company contributed to Capitol attack
Edward Helmore 

A whistleblower at Facebook will say that thousands of pages of internal company research she turned over to federal regulators proves the social media giant is deceptively claiming effectiveness in its efforts to eradicate hate and misinformation and it contributed to the January 6 attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.

© Photograph: Dado Ruvić/Reuters 

Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs Nick Clegg called the claims ‘misleading’.

The former employee is set to air her claims and reveal her identity in an interview airing Sunday night on CBS 60 Minutes ahead of a scheduled appearance at a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

In an internal 1,500-word memo titled Our position on Polarization and Election sent out on Friday, Facebook’s vice-president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, acknowledged that the whistleblower would accuse the company of contributing to the 6 January Capitol riot and called the claims “misleading”.

The memo was first reported by the New York Times.

The 6 January insurrection was carried out by a pro-Trump mob that sought to disrupt the election of Joe Biden as president. The violence and chaos of the attack sent shockwaves throughout the US, and the rest of the world, and saw scores of people injured and five die.

Clegg, a former former UK deputy prime minister, said in his memo that Facebook had “developed industry-leading tools to remove hateful content and reduce the distribution of problematic content. As a result, the prevalence of hate speech on our platform is now down to about 0.05%.”

He said that many things had contributed to America’s divisive politics.

“The rise of polarization has been the subject of swathes of serious academic research in recent years. In truth, there isn’t a great deal of consensus. But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization,” Clegg wrote.

The memo comes two weeks after Facebook issued a statement on its corporate website hitting back against a series of critical articles in the Wall Street Journal.

California oil spill: Dead birds and fish wash up on Huntington Beach, officials say

By Alta Spells, Holly Yan and Amir Vera, CNN 

A swath of the Southern California coast is covered with oil after 3,000 barrels' worth gushed into the Pacific Ocean -- devastating some of the local wildlife, officials said.

© KCAL/KCBS The oil has spread between Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, officials said.

A pipeline breach occurred about 5 miles off the coast of Huntington Beach, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley said Sunday.

"We've started to find dead birds and fish washing up on the shore," Foley said.

"The oil has infiltrated the entirety of the (Talbert) Wetlands. There's significant impacts to wildlife there," she said. "These are wetlands that we've been working with the Army Corps of Engineers, with the Land Trust, with all the community wildlife partners to make sure to create this beautiful, natural habitat for decades. And now in just a day, it's completely destroyed."

A total of 1,218 gallons of oily water mixture have been recovered from the spill, the United States Coast Guard said in a statement.

"This response is currently a 24/7 operation and response efforts are scheduled to continue until federal and state officials determine that the response to the crude oil spill is complete," the USCG statement read.

It said that one oiled Ruddy duck has been collected and is receiving veterinary care and other reports of oiled wildlife are being investigated.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced on Twitter that it's sending investigators to gather information and assess the source of the oil spill. CNN has reached out to the NTSB for further details.

The pipeline is owned by the Houston-based oil and gas company Amplify Energy, its president and CEO Martyn Willsher said at a news conference Sunday afternoon.

"We are fully committed to being out here until this incident is fully concluded," Willsher said, adding the company is working with numerous local, state and federal agencies on recovery efforts.

"Our employees live and work in these communities, and we're all deeply impacted and concerned about the impact on not just the environment, but the fish and wildlife as well," Willsher said. "We will do everything in our power to ensure that this is recovered as quickly as possible, and we won't be done until this is concluded."

An oil sheen was first reported to the US Cost Guard shortly after 9 a.m. Saturday morning, the Coast Guard said in a press release.

"It's probably been leaking longer than we know," Foley told CNN Sunday.

Willsher said his company notified the Coast Guard Saturday morning when employees were conducting a line inspection and they noticed a sheen in the water.

The spill -- equal to about 126,000 gallons of post-production crude -- is a "potential ecological disaster," Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr said Saturday.

As of Sunday morning, "the leak has not been completely stopped," the city of Huntington Beach said in a press release. It said preliminary patching has been completed to repair the oil spill site, and additional repair efforts will be attempted.

"Currently, the oil slick plume measures an estimated 5.8 nautical miles long, and runs from the Huntington Beach Pier down into Newport Beach," the press release said.

A sand berm is being built to protect the Talbert Channel from the oil spill washing ashore in Huntington Beach.

"The oil has already infiltrated many of our wetlands in Huntington Beach in the Talbert area, and we want to do everything we can to prevent it from intruding into that area even further," Foley said.

Willsher told reporters Sunday the facilities operating the pipeline were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Amplify has owned the pipeline for about nine years. There are about 17.5 miles between the pipeline and shore, Willsher said.

"It is about 4 ½ miles off shore where the potential source of the leak occurred. It is heavy crude oil that is pumped through that pipeline," he said.

The Coast Guard has classified the situation as a major oil spill, Huntington Beach Marine Safety Chief Eric McCoy said.

Huntington Beach officials canceled the final day of the Pacific Airshow and are encouraging people to stay away from the Santa Ana River Trail, Talbert Park and Talbert Marsh areas and the beaches in the impacted areas to prevent contact with potentially toxic oiled areas.

Foley urged residents to avoid the area.

"Please don't go down and try to help. We're not taking volunteers yet," she said. "If you do see oiled wildlife call 1-877-823-6926. That's the best way to help."

© Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

 Oil settles on the beach Sunday in Huntington Beach, California.

© Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images 

Boats help clean the oil spill near Huntington Beach on Sunday.

Size of California oil spill called 'worst case' scenario in 2012 pipeline operator report

David Douglas and Tim Stelloh and Yuliya Talmazan 

A 2012 plan prepared by the operator of an offshore oil pipeline that may have dumped thousands of barrels of oil off Southern California described such a spill as a “worst case” scenario that could cause “substantial harm.”

The plan produced by Beta Offshore and obtained by NBC News said that a full cut in the pipeline three miles from shore could release roughly 3,000 barrels, or 126,000 gallons, of oil.

Such a leak could cause “significant and substantial harm to the environment” because “of its proximity to navigable waters and adjoining shoreline areas designated as environmentally sensitive.”

Officials said that roughly 126,000 gallons of oil appeared to have spilled off the coast of Orange County over the weekend, creating a 13-square-mile slick near the cities of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. The chief executive of Beta Offshore’s parent company, Amplify Energy, said divers were investigating a potential source of the leak roughly four miles from shore.

Amplify Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the 2012 plan.

© Provided by NBC News Image: (Ringo H.W. Chiu / AP)

The company’s chief executive, Martyn Willsher, said at a news conference Sunday that the pipeline had been shut down and suctioned. But local officials said the damage may have already been done.

“We’ve started to find dead birds & fish washing up on the shore," Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley tweeted.

Yet only one animal was officially confirmed to have been injured in the spill, a duck found covered in oil, said a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Other reports of dead and injured wildlife were being investigated, he said.

Foley said she visited the area Sunday and felt the sting of vapor in the air.

“My throat hurt,” she said at a news conference.

Foley described seeing small clusters of oil along the shoreline that she compared to egg yolk. She pleaded with residents to stay away from the area and not disturb the oil clumps.

County health officials warned residents to be aware of dizziness, headaches and other side effects that exposure to an oil spill can cause. Some sections of the coastline in Huntington Beach were closed Sunday, and the city said in a statement that the spill had "substantial ecological impacts" on the shoreline and wetlands.

The spill forced the city to cancel the final day of its Pacific Airshow because, and skimming equipment and booms were deployed to prevent the flow of oil into ecologically sensitive areas, it said in a statement.

Miyoko Sakashita, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s oceans program, said the spill was a tragic reminder of the devastating threat offshore drilling can pose.

“I’ve seen the aging oil platforms off Huntington Beach up close, and I know it’s past time to decommission these time bombs,” she said. “Even after fines and criminal charges, the oil industry is still spilling and leaking into California’s coastal waters because these companies just aren’t capable of operating safely.”

Californians have been particularly wary of offshore oil spills since the disastrous leak off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969, when images of birds and other wildlife covered in heavy black gunk helped spark the modern environmental movement.

Willsher said the pipeline is connected to a processing platform 17.5 miles off the coast. The platform is one of three in the area owned by Houston-based Amplify Energy, Willshir said. They were built in the 1970s and ‘80s and have been owned by the company for nine years, he said.

The pipeline is inspected every other year and has been “meticulously maintained,” he said, adding that the most recent inspection occurred last week. The pipeline’s capacity is 126,000 gallons, and Willsher said he did not expect anymore leakage.

California authorities rush to mitigate impact of major oil spill

Issued on: 03/10/2021 

Oil washed up on the shore of Huntington Beach, California on October 3, 2021, after a pipeline breach connected to an oil rig off shore started leaking oil, according to an Orange County Supervisor Patrick T. FALLON AFP

Newport Beach (United States) (AFP)

Authorities in California's beachfront Orange County cities scrambled Sunday to mitigate the fallout from a major oil spill off the coast that caused "substantial ecological impacts."

As of Sunday, the oil slick plume from the 126,000-gallon (480,000 liters) spill of post-production crude was an estimated 5.8 nautical miles (6.7 miles, 10 kilometers) long and stretched along popular shorelines of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach, Huntington Beach city authorities said in a statement.

"The spill has significantly affected Huntington Beach, with substantial ecological impacts occurring at the beach and at the Huntington Beach Wetlands," the statement said.

The spill started around 9:00 am (1600 GMT) on Saturday and spread approximately 13 square miles (34 square kilometers), several miles off the coast, the Coast Guard said.

In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, oil and dead animals had begun washing up on Huntington Beach, a city of around 200,000 people located about 40 miles south of Los Angeles, Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley tweeted.

"We've started to find dead birds and fish washing up on the shore," she said.

Foley said in a statement she would meet with the environmental health office and city representatives on Sunday.

"We are deeply concerned by the events today," she said.

"The ramifications will extend further than the visible oil and odor that our residents are dealing with at the moment. The impact to the environment is irreversible."

- 'Potential contamination' -

Residents were warned to steer clear of the shoreline, and the ocean was closed to swimming and surfing "due to potential contamination," the city said, adding that the final day of the Pacific Airshow had been canceled.

The Coast Guard ran point on a unified command of federal, state, county and city agencies established to tackle the spill, with fire and marine safety personnel deployed to implement environmental containment efforts.

Residents were warned to steer clear of the shoreline and the ocean was closed to swimming and surfing "due to potential contamination" from the oil spill of the coast of Orange County, California Patrick T. FALLON AFP

"The leak has not been completely stopped, preliminary patching has been completed to repair the oil spill site," the city statement said.

"The size of the spill demanded prompt and aggressive action," it added.

Foley said the toxicity of the crude was "concerning enough that the city has deployed a Haz Mat team to further assess the situation."

It was not immediately clear what caused the spill from what Foley said was a pipeline breach connected to an oil rig offshore. An investigation has been launched into the incident, she added.

© 2021 AFP

Oil spill hits California beaches after pipeline breach

An oil spill in Southern California closed beaches and led authorities to cancel the last day of the Pacific Air Show. At least 126,000 gallons (98,420 liters) of oil spilled off the coast of Orange County.

Oil washed up on Huntington Beach Sunday

Waters off the US state of California were hit by oil spill on Sunday after what was believed to be an oil rig pipeline breach.

Authorities closed beaches from Huntington Beach to Santa Ana as crews worked to contain the environmental damage.

California State Senator Dave Min said efforts to contain the spill came too late.

"Unfortunately, the oil spill has reached our wetlands in Huntington Beach, home of many endangered species. This is clearly an environmental catastrophe."

The oil spill trashed popular beaches and destroyed wildlife, such as birds and fish. The US Coast Guard surveilled the damage by air and worked with local and state officials to contain the damage.

Approximately four miles (6.4 kilometers) of coastline remained closed. The final day of the Pacific Air Show, which normally draws thousands to Huntington Beach, was also called off as crews worked to assess and contain the damage.

In a statement, the city of Huntington Beach said at least 126,000 gallons (98,420 liters) of oil contaminated the waters off the coast of Orange County.

"The spill has significantly affected Huntington Beach, with substantial ecological impacts occurring at the beach and at the Huntington Beach Wetlands," the statement read in part, adding, "while the leak has not been completely stopped, preliminary patching has been completed to repair the oil spill site."

Huntington Beach is a city of almost 200,000 residents approximately 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of downtown Los Angeles.

The coast guard deployed skimmers and floating barriers known as booms to prevent further encroachment into the wetlands and the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve.

YO, DUDE! SURFING DOGS ON HUNTINGTON BEACH

Surf's up!

The canine competitors each have 12 minutes to prove their surfing skills. They're allowed to ride five waves and are closely observed by the judges. It's not just about their technique — the pups also get points for style.

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Carbon storage deep in the sea could be boosted by supercharged compounds

Isabella O'Malley 

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin are developing a technology that they hope can speed up the rate that the deep sea stores carbon.

Oceans absorb roughly 30 per cent of the carbon dioxide that is released by humans and can keep the captured carbon stored away for hundreds of years. However, this natural process takes time and scientists say that there could be a way to speed this up.

There are two main mechanisms that oceans use to capture this greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide dissolves into the oceans and forms carbonic acid, hydrogen ions, and bicarbonate ions. Some of this carbon is transported to great depths by ocean currents, whereas other carbon is ingested by microorganisms like phytoplankton that eventually die and sink down to the ocean floor.

The University of Texas researchers are working in partnership with ExxonMobil and say that their aim is to increase the amount of carbon that can be sucked out of the atmosphere to prevent the Earth from warming to dangerously high levels.

The researchers mixed carbon dioxide with water at high pressure and low temperature, which causes the water molecules to change their structure and “act as cages” that trap carbon dioxide. The resulting structure is called a hydrate and takes several hours or days to form in the ocean.

Carbon dixoide hydrates in a test tube. 

(University of Texas at Austin/ ExxonMobil)

Magnesium was added to boost this process and the researchers found that this addition caused the hydrates to form as fast as one minute, which is 3,000 times faster than the quickest method that scientists are currently using. The team states that this is the fastest hydrate formation pace that has ever been documented.

"The state-of-the-art method today is to use chemicals to promote the reaction," Vaibhav Bahadur, an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, said in the university’s press release.

"It works, but it’s slower, and these chemicals are expensive and not environmentally friendly."

The hydrates are created in reactors and the team says that they could potentially be placed on the seafloor. According to the press release, the researchers and ExxonMobil have filed a patent application so they can one day commercialize their technology.

Thumbnail credit: David Antoja/ 500px Prime/ Getty Images

NWSL Commissioner Baird resigns amid scandal


National Women's Soccer League Commissioner Lisa Baird resigned after some 19 months on the job amid allegations that a former coach engaged in sexual harassment and misconduct.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Baird's resignation was announced by the league late Friday, a day after The Athletic published the accounts of two former players who claimed misconduct, including sexual coercion, by North Carolina coach Paul Riley.

Riley was fired by the Courage on Thursday and the allegations touched off a wave of condemnation by players that forced this weekend's games to be called off.

Additionally, FIFA on Friday opened an investigation into the case. It is rare that soccer's international governing body gets involved in a controversy involving a member association. U.S. Soccer also announced an independent investigation on Friday.

U.S. Soccer was instrumental in founding the NWSL in 2013 and helped support the league until last year, when it became independent. The federation continues its financial support of the league.

“Player safety and respect is the paramount responsibility of every person involved in this game. That is true across every age, competition and ability level,” U.S. Soccer President Cindy Cone said in a statement. “We owe it to each athlete, each fan and the entire soccer community to take every meaningful action in our power to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.”

U.S. Soccer suspended Riley’s coaching license Thursday after The Athletic published claims of abuse made by former NWSL players Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim.

FIFA told The Associated Press it was “deeply concerned” by the case and will now be seeking further details from American soccer authorities about the issues raised.

“Due to the severity and seriousness of the allegations being made by players, we can confirm that FIFA’s judicial bodies are actively looking into the matter and have opened a preliminary investigation,” FIFA said in a statement to the AP. “As part of this, FIFA will be reaching out to the respective parties, including US Soccer and NWSL, for further information about the various safeguarding concerns and allegations of abuse that have been raised.”

The alleged harassment of Farrelly started in 2011 when she was a player with the Philadelphia Independence of the now-defunct Women’s Professional Soccer league.

She told the website the harassment continued when Farrelly was with the Portland Thorns. Shim, a former Thorns player, also allegedly experienced harassment. The Thorns said Thursday that the team investigated claims about Riley and passed those on to the league when he was dismissed.

Riley told The Athletic the allegations were “completely untrue.”

Outcry over the allegations rocked the league and forced this weekend’s games to be called off. The NWSL Players' Association said it hoped fans would understand and support the decision.

“It is OK to take space to process, to feel and to take care of yourself,” the union said. “In fact, it’s more than OK, it’s a priority. That, as players, will be our focus this weekend.”

Baird became commissioner of the NWSL in February, 2020, after serving as chief marketing officer of the United States Olympic Committee. She was praised for brining new sponsors to the NWSL and increasing the league's visibility on the national stage.

OL Reign midfielder Jess Fishlock, who has been playing in the NWSL since its inception in 2013, suggested the league, and women’s sports overall, are in the midst of a reckoning.

“I think women athletes specifically have gone through so much over the years, not just women’s football,” Fishlock said. “I think everybody knows what’s happened with USA Gymnastics that has gone on, and this is something that has been happening in women’s sports over and over and over again for years and years and years. And we’ve never felt safe enough to talk about it, and if we ever felt brave enough to talk about it, then it would just get swept under the rug, or we were told that we were in the wrong ... and I think we’re at a point now where we’re just done.”

Riley was head coach of the Thorns in 2014 and 2015. After he was let go by the Thorns, he became head coach of the Western New York Flash for a season before the team was sold and moved to North Carolina.

In its ninth season, the NWSL has been rocked by a series of recent scandals involving team officials.

Washington Spirit coach Richie Burke was fired after a Washington Post report detailed verbal and emotional abuse of players. The league formally dismissed Burke and sanctioned the Spirit on Tuesday after an independent investigation.

Gotham FC general manager Alyse LaHue was fired in July after an investigation connected to the league’s antiharassment policy. She has denied any wrongdoing.

Racing Louisville coach Christy Holly was fired in September but the reasons for his dismissal were not made public.

OL Reign coach Farid Benstiti abruptly resigned in July. On Friday, OL Reign chief executive officer and minority owner Bill Predmore said Benstiti was asked to step down after an undisclosed incident during practice.

Benstiti had previously been accused by U.S. national team midfielder Lindsay Horan of sexist behavior during his time as coach of Paris Saint-Germain. Horan has said she was berated by Benstiti because of her weight.

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AP Sports Writer Eddie Pells contributed to this report.

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More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Anne M. Peterson And Rob Harris, The Associated Press