Biden delays release of secret JFK assassination files

Daniel Chaitin, Misty Severi

WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Fri, October 22, 2021

President Joe Biden ordered yet another delay in the release of secret files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy yet to see the light of day more than 50 years after his death.

A White House memo, signed by Biden, said "[t]emporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure."

The order comes in response to the archivist of the United States recommending the president “temporarily certify the continued withholding of all of the information certified in 2018” and “direct two public releases of the information that has” ultimately “been determined to be appropriate for release to the public,” with one interim release on Dec. 15 and one more comprehensive release in late 2022, according to the memo.

Former President Donald Trump ordered in 2018 that documentation still under wraps stay redacted for national security reasons, with a deadline of Oct. 26, 2021. His administration said the decision was made at the behest of the intelligence community.

This time around, delays associated with the coronavirus pandemic were to blame for the recommendation to put off the release.

David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, reported “unfortunately, the pandemic has had a significant impact on the agencies” and National Archives and Records Administration, the White House memo said.

NARA “require[s] additional time to engage with the agencies and to conduct research within the larger collection to maximize the amount of information released," added the memo, which also said the archivist noted that “making these decisions is a matter that requires a professional, scholarly, and orderly process; not decisions or releases made in haste.”

Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Oswald was arrested and charged with the killings of Kennedy and Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. The 24-year-old denied shooting Kennedy, claiming he was a "patsy," before he was shot dead soon after on national television by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

According to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which was signed into law by former President George H.W. Bush in an attempt to minimize conspiracy theories about Kennedy's death, the Congress declared, “all Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy ... should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination.”

Congress also found at the time that “most of the records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are almost 30 years old, and only in the rarest cases is there any legitimate need for continued protection of such records.”

Tens of thousands of the JFK assassination documents, with varying levels of redactions, have already been released.

Among the information that has not been made public are highly sensitive details about U.S. operations against Cuba in 1963, according to the Intercept. There are also unseen passages about surveillance techniques that detected Oswald's visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City weeks before Kennedy's assassination.

"Since the 1990s, more than 250,000 records concerning President Kennedy’s assassination — more than 90 percent of NARA’s collection — have been released in full to the public. Only a small fraction of the records contains any remaining redactions," the memo said.

A lot of the information that has been made available to the public is not accessible online. Under the order Friday, Biden instructed the archivist to issue a plan for the digitization of the records by Dec. 15.

DO NOT LET THIS WOMAN FIND BIGFOOT  
Hunter had never seen a bear in Missouri. Then she killed a 268-pounder, officials say



Mike Stunson
Fri, October 22, 2021

A hunter’s patience paid off as she became the first woman to bag a bear this hunting season in Missouri.

The Missouri Department of Conservation said Kelsie Wikoff, of Hume, spent 48 hours in a tree stand while she was hunting.

Her reward was a 268-pound male bear, which officials say she killed Thursday.

Wikoff would not reveal her hunting location on Facebook, but said she intends to mount the full body of the bear. She said she had never seen a bear in the state before, except on trail cameras.

“So thankful for all the people and support along the way,” the hunter said on Facebook, calling the harvesting “rewarding.”

Missouri is home to about 800 black bears, with officials saying a highly-regulated hunting season is essential to managing the bear population.

Bear season in Missouri is from Oct. 18 to Oct. 27. Officials said Friday nine hunters have harvested a bear this season.

#STOPBEARHUNTS

#ENDPREDATORHUNTING

The Backstory: Long before the Champlain Towers collapse, there was money laundering. Here's how we uncovered it.


Chris Davis, USA TODAY
Fri, October 22, 2021

When USA TODAY investigative reporter Monique O. Madan sat down to handwrite the letter, she didn’t hold out much hope for a response.

“Dear Mr. Rosello,” she started. “I know this is totally random, and I’m sorry to cold call you (or cold mail you.) I’m working on a story about Champlain Tower and I think you can help.”

Madan and five of her colleagues had been trying for months to track down former residents of the South Florida condominium building that had collapsed in June, killing 98 people in one of the biggest and most tragic stories of the year.

People observe the partially collapsed Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, Fla., on June 25, 2021.

They wanted to know what people remembered about the earliest days of the condo tower. When did people first start noticing problems with the building? How did the homeowners’ association and government regulators respond to flooding in the building and to signs of crumbling concrete? Had someone made mistakes when the building was built?

But the effort wasn’t going well. The whole team was starting to wonder if anyone would be willing to talk.

“I made 160 phone calls to former residents and I got one person to talk to me for more than five minutes,” said Pat Beall, a veteran investigative reporter working for USA TODAY in South Florida.

Pedro “Peggy” Rosello was just one more name on a list of former residents. But he stood out on that list because of his current address: a federal prison cell in Miami.
We knew the Surfside story started long before the building's collapse. So we went back to the beginning.

Like many other news organizations, USA TODAY – and its affiliated local newsrooms across Florida – rushed reporters to the tiny town of Surfside when the building collapsed. We wrote dozens of stories about the rescue efforts and told our readers about the people who lost their lives. In the earliest days of the tragedy, our reporters uncovered important factors that might have contributed to the collapse, including the fact the building had been sinking into the sand unusually quickly.

At the same time, we gathered a group of reporters from the USA TODAY investigations team to chase the story in a different way. We wanted to go back to the beginning and trace as many details as we could find about what people knew and when. This is a tried and true technique of investigative journalism. Events happen now, but often the crucial context lives in the past. It’s part of our job to piece the whole story together by gathering up the witnesses to those past events.

READ THE INVESTIGATION: Left to rot: Collapsed condo born of botched construction and evidence of money laundering

Our reporters started with a list of people culled from public records including deeds and mortgages for each unit in Champlain South. They reached out to current residents, too, and gained access to a trove of documents produced by the building’s homeowners’ association, which for years had been grappling with how to pay to repair crumbling concrete and other problems.

They began looking through public records that are generated from real estate transactions. Deeds filed in local courthouses show who buys a property and whether they borrowed money for the purchase. Those records also show the purchase price and who put up the money for the mortgage.

Dan Keemahill, a reporter on USA TODAY’s data team, examined sales records en masse. He analyzed 30,000 condo sales in the area to compare prices at Champlain South over time with those of other nearby condo buildings.
Over days and weeks, the reporters started to notice a pattern.

Instead of individual people buying condos and borrowing from a traditional bank, they were seeing purchases from LLCs – corporate entities that can obscure who is behind a real estate deal. Many buyers were coming from overseas or were listing P.O. boxes as their primary address. Some of the mortgages were issued by an attorney who worked for the developer.

“As I’m pulling these deeds, I’m trying to explain to myself what the legitimate reasons could be,” Beall said. “Once you started plugging in names of the corporations … you kept getting total dead ends. Here’s a corporation and there is no other information about it.”

Money laundering has long been a part of real estate in South Florida. Money made from criminal enterprises, including from cartels in Central and South America, gets pushed through real estate purchases in a way that eventually makes the money appear to be legally earned.

Experts told our reporters that money laundering associated with a building could affect the quality of construction and repairs in at least two ways. First, if developers are willing to launder money, they may also be willing to cut corners on construction. And second, if buyers are primarily in the market to wash their money, they may not care what happens long-term to the building they are buying into.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, when Champlain South rose from the coastline, Miami was awash in money from the booming drug trade. Money laundering was rampant.

"The era we’re talking about is when Miami suddenly came out of the ashes. So how do you rush to fulfill the demand? You cut corners. You attached roofs with paper clips. You bribe the inspectors," said Jorge Valdes, who was not involved in Champlain South but helped build dozens of homes, apartment complexes and high-rises in the Miami region as a chief money launderer for the Medellin Cartel.
More telltale signs of money laundering at Champlain South emerged from our review of sales data.

When the developers first started selling units around 1980, the prices were inflated compared with units in other towers selling nearby. Over time, the average price per square foot in the tower evened out and then dropped compared with other condo buildings – evidence that buyers began to notice the building falling into disrepair.

As Beall dug through deeds, she found one signed by Herbert Batliner, an investment adviser from Liechtenstein who had been investigated by German authorities for helping clients evade taxes. Another unit was bought by a couple listing a Panama P.O. box as their home address. To pay for it, they borrowed money from Stanley Levine, the Canadian lawyer who represented Champlain South’s developer. Within a few months of purchase, the couple stopped paying their assessments and a lien was placed on their unit.

Levine had his own problems, records show.

He had been indicted after being accused of attempting to bribe an official in Florida on an earlier project. Reporters also learned from other media accounts that one building contractor hired to work on the Champlain South project was forced to surrender his license after numerous infractions. The architect’s license had been suspended in Florida after sign structures he designed collapsed during Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

And then there was Rosello.

In the Netflix docuseries "Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami," director Billy Corben lays out Rosello’s time as a notorious drug smuggler working alongside the likes of Willy Falcon and Sal Magluta. The series describes the high-rolling lifestyle of drug smugglers in South Florida. In one scene, a photo of Rosello lying in a bed inside his Champlain South unit holds the screen as the narrator speaks.

The location is not mentioned in the series, but Corben connected the dots in a Twitter post not long after the tower collapsed. Our reporters noted the post and interviewed Corben.

It was yet another hint at what might have been happening in the early days of Champlain South -- and another name for reporters to add to their pile.

By now, the reporting team had called hundreds of people and sifted through thousands of pages of records. Erin Mansfield, a reporter on USA TODAY’s quick-strike investigations team, was writing letter after letter by hand, in English and Spanish, trying to find residents willing to talk. Fellow reporters Katie Wedell and Sudiksha Kochi had all but reached the end of their list of possible contacts.
“The fact that nobody wanted to talk, I think it really speaks to the trauma that this story carries. It’s one like no other,” Madan said. “They felt very naked. They didn’t feel like talking about it. They didn’t see any point to it.”

The reporters kept writing and calling.

Rosello received Madan’s first letter in his prison cell, but he didn’t respond.

“I thought maybe he was flooded with letters because this documentary had come out,” Madan said. “I thought my letter would get lost in fan mail or whatever.”

A second letter got her a little closer. Rosello’s best friend called to screen Madan, asking what kinds of questions she wanted to ask and looking for previous stories she had written. Madan told her she had been a longtime reporter in Miami and that she was committed to the story because it was important. It was personal.

“I just wanted to make clear to him that I care deeply about the stories that we tell,” Madan said.

Still, Rosello didn’t call.

Madan tried a third letter and was researching what it would take to arrange a meeting at the prison when her cellphone rang. She didn’t recognize the number.

Rosello's voice came softly through the speaker: “My girl told me I could trust you.”

Over the next few weeks, Madan said, she talked to Rosello roughly 20 times. Each time, because of prison rules, the conversation lasted no more than 15 minutes.

Rosello talked of how, in the early days, Champlain South offered an under-the-radar refuge where cocaine dealing, Ferraris and indoor hot tub parties abounded. When he arrived there in 1988 as a renter, the luxury condo on Collins Avenue was a hub where kingpins partied, out of sight of undercover police.

“All the attention was still on South Beach, so I could walk into an elevator knowing nobody would catch on to me,” he told Madan. “But at the end, the building fell, just like our once cocaine empire.”

BIAFRAN FREEDOM FIGHTER POLITICAL  PRISONER
Nnamdi Kanu: Nigeria separatist pleads not guilty to terrorism

Fri, October 22, 2021

This was the first time Nnamdi Kanu (in white) had been seen in public since June

The Nigerian separatist Nnamdi Kanu has pleaded not guilty to charges levelled against him by the authorities, including terrorism and treason.

His appearance in court was the first time he had been seen in public since he was captured abroad and repatriated in June.

Mr Kanu's initial arrest in 2015 triggered protests by his supporters.

The authorities deem his Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) group a terror organisation.

Journalists were barred from entering the court in the capital, Abuja, with critics calling it a "secret trial".

At the trial, the Ipob leader appeared healthy and happy in pictures taken with his lawyer that are circulating online, including one photo where he can be seen smiling.

There was a strong security presence at the court proceedings, including the army and police who were deployed outside the premises.

Along with terrorism and treason, Mr Kanu is facing charges of running an illegal company and publishing defamatory material, which appears to relate to comments he made about President Muhammadu Buhari.

He is also alleged to have encouraged Ipob members to attack Nigerian security operatives, BBC Pidgin reports.

His lawyer Ifeanyi Ejiofor said the charges against the separatist leader had no basis in Nigerian law, the BBC's Chris Ewokor reports.

The case has now been adjourned to 10 November.

Mr Kanu was originally arrested in 2015 but he fled Nigeria in 2017 while out on bail.

Ipob wants a group of states in the south-east of the country, which mostly comprises the Igbo ethnic group, to break away from Nigeria and form an independent nation called Biafra.

In 1967 Igbo leaders declared independence for the state of Biafra, but after a civil war, which led to the deaths of up to a million people, the secessionist rebellion was defeated.

But the idea of Biafra has never gone away and despite arrests of his members, Mr Kanu's movement has seen a recent swell in its numbers.

 

Truckers in Brazil disband blockade after provoking fuel shortages


FILE PHOTO: Truckers block highways in support of President Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil

Roberto Samora and Gram Slattery
Fri, October 22, 2021, 9:31 AM·2 min read

SAO PAULO (Reuters) -Truckers blockading a major refinery in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais disbanded on Friday, allowing fuel supplies to normalize in the nation's second most populous state.

The protesters, principally truckers who deliver fuel, had been demanding a decrease in taxes on diesel. Since Thursday, they had blocked roads near the REGAP refinery near state capital Belo Horizonte, an action that spooked industry leaders and motorists and caused some gas stations in Minas Gerais to run low on fuel.

Truckers have grown increasingly vocal in recent months as a rise in global crude prices has pushed up the cost of diesel domestically and eaten into margins. Trucker groups have threatened a general strike next week, a move that could prove crippling for Brazil's economy, if widely observed.

A truckers strike over high fuel prices in 2018 ground the economy to a halt, and destroyed the remaining political capital of the already unpopular government at the time. As a result, Brasilia remains attentive to their demands.

On Thursday evening, President Jair Bolsonaro, who is expected to run for re-election next year, said that the government would give Brazil's 750,000 truckers 400 reais ($70) each, to help cushion the impacts of rising fuel prices.

Shortly after, four key Treasury officials quit amid signs the government is looking to lift a constitutional spending cap, a move that battered local equities markets and the real currency.

Speaking in Brasilia on Friday, Bolsonaro played down overspending concerns, saying that the payment to truckers would cost the government less than 4 billion reais in total.

Brazil-listed shares in Vibra Energia SA and Ultrapar Participacoes SA, the owners of the nation's largest and second-largest gas station chains, respectively, were both down over 3.5% in afternoon trade. The benchmark Bovespa equities index was off 1.1%.

(Reporting by Roberto Samora in Sao Paulo and Gram Slattery in Rio de Janeiro, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

'Rolling coal' to blow a thick cloud of exhaust like video of a busy Texas restaurant shows is legal in most states


Kenneth Niemeyer
Thu, October 21, 2021, 11:33 AM·2 min read


"Rolling coal" is legal in most states. Toa55/Getty Images

A viral TikTok video showed a Texas driver blasting a dark cloud of exhaust into a fast-food restaurant.

The practice of "rolling coal" to blow excess exhaust from a truck is only illegal in a handful of states.

People can report vehicles emitting excessive exhaust in North Texas, but drivers can't be ticketed for it.

"Rolling coal" - when drivers blow thick exhaust clouds from the tailpipe of a truck - may be obnoxious, but it isn't illegal in most US states.

Only a handful of states including Maine, Utah, New Jersey, Maryland, Colorado and Connecticut have laws that specifically prohibit the practice.

Most state laws that ban exhaust blasts also make it illegal to add modifications to the truck that would give it the ability to create excess amounts of exhaust.

New Jersey SB 2418, which went into effect in 2015, says "retrofitting any diesel-powered vehicle with any device, smokestack, or other equipment which enhances the vehicle's capacity to emit soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions" is prohibited.

A viral TikTok video viewed over 1 million times showed a Texas pickup truck driver blasting a large amount of black exhaust into a Whataburger fast-food restaurant.

Police have not arrested another teen driver in the state after he ran over a group of cyclists in Waller while trying to blow exhaust on them last month. The Waller Police Department posted a statement on Facebook that said it is still investigating the circumstances of the incident, and will submit its findings to the local district attorney to determine what charges may be warranted.

Still, the practice of "rolling coal" is not illegal in Texas.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality decommissioned a state-wide smoking vehicle reporting program in 2015. People in the northern region of the state can still submit reports of vehicles emitting excessive exhaust to the North Central Texas Council of Governments through its reporting program, but vehicles can only be reported in 16 of the state's 254 counties.

Drivers with out-of-state vehicles can not be reported to the NCTCOG and reported drivers also do not receive a ticket or citation after the report.

According to the council's website, when a vehicle is reported for excessive exhaust, the driver is sent a letter "encouraging" the owner to "have the vehicle checked out by their mechanic and to voluntarily repair it."

While "rolling coal" is not illegal in Texas, some public officials in the state think it should be, according to the Houston Chronicle.

" 'Rolling coal' when a person is in the vicinity and when the individual 'rolling coal' intentionally or knowingly causes that excess exhaust to contact that bystander is at a minimum an assault," Waller County District Attorney Elton Mathis wrote on Facebook.

Rolls-Royce Just Flew a Boeing 747 Jumbo Using 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel


Rachel Cormack
Thu, October 21, 2021

The world may be one step closer to cleaner air travel thanks to Rolls-Royce.

The company has just completed a successful test flight in a Boeing jumbo jet using 100 percent Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). The 747 in question was equipped with a Trent 1000 turbofan engine running solely on unblended SAF while the remaining three RB211 mills used standard jet fuel, according to Rolls-Royce. Boeing was on hand to provide technical support, while World Energy provided the low-carbon fuel for the flight.

The aircraft flew from Tuscon airport in Arizona across New Mexico and Texas, before arriving back at the airport just shy of four hours later. Rolls-Royce said there were no engineering issues during the test, which is further proof that SAF is a viable alternative to fossil jet fuel and could be suitable for commercial use.

One of the 747’s engines ran solely on unblended SAF. - Credit: Rolls-Royce


To recap, SAF is made from waste materials, such as the cooking oil or animal fats used in restaurants. Instead of flooding landfills, the waste is turned into this sustainable jet fuel that reduces carbon dioxide emissions by up to 80 percent. The biofuel also results in 90 percent less particulate matter (that white stuff you see in the sky) and eliminates sulfur oxide.

Aircraft are currently only certified to operate on a maximum of 50 percent SAF blended with conventional jet fuel, though Rolls-Royce says it continues to support efforts to green light non-blended SAF. In fact, just last week, the company announced plans to make all its Trent engines compatible with 100 percent SAF by 2023.

“We believe in air travel as a force for cultural good, but we also recognize the need to take action to decarbonize our industry,” Simon Burr, Rolls-Royce’s director of product development and technology for civil aerospace, said in a statement. “This flight is another example of collaboration across the value chain to make sure all the aircraft technology solutions are in place to enable a smooth introduction of 100 percent SAF into our industry.”

The flight proved SAF is a viable alternative to fossil jet fuel. - Credit: Rolls-Royce

World Energy is the world’s first (and America’s only) SAF producer currently working on a commercial scale, though that may soon change. President Biden recently recognized the need to significantly increase the production of SAF, launching a sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge to produce 3 billion gallons of the fuel a year by 2030. This is part of a wider aviation climate action plan that is to be released in the coming months.

The geography of the Great Resignation: First-time data shows where Americans are quitting the most

Alyssa Fowers and Eli Rosenberg
Fri, October 22, 2021

Kentucky, Idaho, South Dakota and Iowa reported the highest increases in the rates of workers who quit their jobs in August, according to a new glimpse of quit rates in the labor market released Friday.

The largest increase in the number of quitters happened in Georgia, with 35,000 more people leaving their jobs. Overall, the states with the highest rates of workers quitting their jobs were Georgia, Kentucky and Idaho.

The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics builds out a portrait of August's labor market, with historic levels of people leaving jobs and a near-record number of job openings showing the leverage workers have in the new economy. It offers the first detailed insight into the state-by-state geography of this year's Great Resignation.

"It is a sign of health that there are many companies that are looking for work - that's a great sign," said Ben Ayers, senior economist at Nationwide. "The downside is there are many workers that won't come back in. And long term you can't sustain a labor market that's as tight as it is right now."

Nick Bunker, an economist at the online jobs platform Indeed, said it was notable that more-rural states had the highest quit rates.

"Service-sector jobs tend to be concentrated in more dense, urban parts of the country, so to see the quits rate pick up in other places was interesting," he said. That "may be a sign there's more competition in those parts of the country than other parts."

The data comes on top of another government snapshot showing that 4.3 million people quit jobs in August - about 2.9% of the workforce, a pandemic-era record.

The phenomenon is being driven in part by workers who are less willing to endure inconvenient hours and poor compensation, and are quitting to find better opportunities. There were 10.4 million job openings in the country at the end of August - down slightly from July's record high, which was adjusted up to 11.1 million, but still a tremendously high number. This gives workers enormous leverage as they look for a better fit.

Mary Kaylor is part of that groundswell.

She left her job in early July after her employer began calling workers back to the office, saying they'd have to be at their desks at least four days a week.

But her old commute - 90 minutes each way, or worse with traffic, from where she lives north of Baltimore to her office in Alexandria, Va. - was no longer acceptable to her.

"It was affecting my health, and I couldn't get my work done," she said. "I decided, 'Why am I doing this?'"

So Kaylor resigned, even though she did not have another job lined up. It didn't take long for her to land on her feet, however.

Just a few weeks after she quit, a recruiter reached out to her on LinkedIn about a position at Robert Half, a San Ramon, Calif.-based consulting company. The job allowed her to work remotely, and she said she felt that the company had a very employee-centric culture that made the switch easy from afar. She started the new position in August.

"Everything that I had read about the jobs market being hot and opportunities being out there was absolutely 100% correct," she said.

Now she says she has a job she likes, but with more balance at home and time to take care of herself with no commute.

"I've been able to get back to a regular workout and exercise routine - time to run in the morning and do yoga," she said. "All the time I used to spend sitting on the Beltway I can spend outside, so I'm excited about that."

A volcano erupts in Spain – and challenges notions of recovery


Colette Davidson
Fri, October 22, 2021

In the first few days after the Cumbre Vieja volcano erupted, Roberto Leal frantically helped his family evacuate their homes in a rush to escape the spewing gray plumes of smoke and rivers of lava engulfing his isle on the Spanish Canary Islands. But soon, it swallowed up his own lifetime of memories too.

“I always thought it was going to stop,” he says. “But then the town church fell, my uncle’s house, my parents’ house, my brother’s and sister’s houses. On the 20th day, mine fell as well.”

Now, he and his extended family have been dispersed across the island in temporary housing – with little idea of when they might return if ever. “Where will we go for Christmas? New Year’s?” he asks, his eyes welling.

He joins some 7,000 people who have been forced from their homes since the La Palma volcano shot up from flat ground on Sept. 19. It has since destroyed more than 1,900 homes and more than 2,000 acres of land, including 600 acres of banana, grape, and avocado plantations – the island’s primary economic resource along with tourism.

Experts estimate that Cumbre Vieja is only halfway through its course, and no one can predict when it might end. On Wednesday and Thursday the area around the volcano registered 124 earthquakes. It’s creating a unique set of challenges for first responders and local authorities who are rushing to address immediate needs while the longer-term consequences mount.

It could be years before the ground cools enough to rebuild, and many whose homes have been swallowed up wonder whether they will ever feel confident enough to return. Amid so many unknowns, islanders are relying on the solidarity of local charities, churches, the military, and neighbors who are scrambling to preserve a sense of home, whatever form that takes.

“Completely different this time”

La Palma has seen a swell of volunteerism and donations since the volcano first erupted, some organizing with the Twitter handle #MasFuertesQueElVolcan, or “Stronger Than the Volcano.” People with second homes or extra rooms are offering their beds; hotels, recreation centers, and schools are also coming forward.

The Red Cross has received €3.3 million (about $3.8 million) in donations for immediate needs, but they say this relief work is unlike anything they have ever done before. “Our aid efforts are completely different this time,” says Miguel Angel Reyes, a technical coordinator for the Red Cross in La Palma. “With a forest fire or flood, people can go back home after about a week. With this type of emergency, it’s been a month and we can’t do anything to stop the volcano.”

Gen. Fernando Morón Ruiz of the Spanish army, which has provided shelter and emergency services to displaced people, says that “the situation of uncertainty and leaving everything behind has been very intense. We want to give people a sense of control and support. When they come (to shelter in army barracks) they can share the same experience as others, and this has provided a sense of resilience against fate and a bit of hope.”

General Morón’s soldiers are also working in the exclusion zone, removing ash that has piled up on roofs to heights of 1 ½ feet, to prevent their collapse.

“What can we learn from this?”

The residential hillsides in Tajuya, about three miles from the mouth of the volcano, offer a direct view of Cumbre Vieja, and full audio too. Deafening booms, as the volcano spits out rocks, are incessant. Piles of black ash collect on top of Sandra Riccoboni’s newly planted potato patches and leave a fine dust on her beloved orange trees.

“It’s horrid, like having a plane inside my head. … Sometimes the volcano goes berserk and the house starts to shake,” says Ms. Riccoboni, who has lived in her home for nearly 50 years. “You start crying at night, thinking maybe it’s your time to go. I’ll have nowhere to live. … I’m a bit old to start over again.”

This sense of control lost is something the Rev. Domingo Guerra is trying to help residents in the area sort through. Since the eruption, his church in Tajuya has become a meeting point, remaining open 24/7. Donations have poured in from around the world, and local churches are collaborating to distribute clothes and personal care items and provide floor space to sleep.

“There’s so much frustration. People are perplexed about what to do now,” says Mr. Guerra. “Humans aren’t owners of the earth, we’re the caregivers, and things like this make us seem even smaller. God is asking us, what can we learn from this? What do we really need in order to be happy?”

That question is measured in the tangible and intangible. In all, Mr. Leal’s family lost eight homes, as well as several banana plantations on which they had relied to make a living. The cedar chest that Mr. Leal’s grandfather handcrafted for his grandmother decades ago was too heavy to carry and had to be left behind, consumed by fiery crimson lava and pulled down the hillside into the Atlantic.

Some residents already have return on their minds, though. Local architect Jose Henry Garritano Pérez, for example, knows what he wants to do once Cumbre Vieja finally calms down, and he says history gives him hope.

Sweeping a fine layer of ash from his desk, he pulls up a photo on his mobile phone of the land where the San Juan volcano struck the south of the island in 1949. It’s now covered in leafy green trees, growing on soil spread over the lava.

Mr. Garritano Pérez has the same hopes for Todoque, the neighborhood where his home was among the many flattened by lava from Cumbre Vieja. He is working with architects across Spain to create plans for a natural park, comprising residential areas and agricultural patches currently covered in lava. He says that once it cools, homes can be built and fresh soil can be laid down.

“We can do it again”

“We already live on lava. Towns [in Tenerife] like Garachico are built on lava. People once said that was impossible, but nothing is impossible,” he says. “If for some reason people don’t want to live there again, we can at least do this for agriculture to bring money to the island. Whatever happens, we need to do this.”

Not all experts agree. Some geologists say the ultimate thickness of the hardened lava will determine whether it takes weeks or years to fully cool. Others say the magma will need to be broken up by dynamite in order for the soil to be useable again.

For local photographer Jonatan Rodríguez, the notion of home is comforting in this time of uncertainty. Mr. Rodríguez says he cried last week as he locked up his house in La Laguna, the latest town to receive an evacuation order, not knowing if he’d ever see it again.

He says if he has to start over and build a new house, he will, but it’s the daily routine he’ll miss most – going out to get bread, saying hello to neighbors in the street, playing racquetball with friends. Still, he’s confident the people of La Palma can restore what has been lost.

“We have a beautiful expression in the Canary Islands: ‘We’re made of sea salt and lava,’” says Mr. Rodríguez. “I think if the lava takes my house, I’ll rebuild on the land. We’ve built on a volcano before, and we can do it again.”

15 PHOTOS

No end in sight: Stunning images from the month-long eruption of Spain's La Palma volcano | Reuters.com

 

 

  

Cargo Force Wins $100 Million Postal Service Contract for Priority Mail

FreightWaves
Fri, October 22, 2021,


Cargo Force, which provides terminal handling services for U.S. Postal Service parcels moving by air via FedEx Express (NYSE: FDX), said Friday it is opening four new facilities to support express mail service after winning a seven-year, $100 million contract.

The new facilities in Seattle, San Diego, Detroit, and Orlando, Florida, cover 173,000 square feet in total and will create 255 jobs across the four sites, the company said. The contract also renews service in Jacksonville, Florida, and Omaha, Nebraska.

Last year, Cargo Force also won a large Postal Service contract to process Priority Mail in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Tampa, Florida. It now operates 14 airport facilities around the country to support the Postal Service.

Cargo Force is owned by investment firms Audax Private Equity and Greenbrier Equity Group. Sister company Alliance Ground International manages cargo operations for airlines at airports around the country and provides other services, such as de-icing aircraft and staffing ticket counters in passenger terminals.

Miami-based Cargo Force processes about 300 million pounds of Priority Mail, according to its website.

Local mail plants send Priority mail to Cargo Force warehouses, where it is scanned and sorted by destination, packed into containers, and tendered to FedEx. After FedEx flies the shipment to the destination city, Cargo Force retrieves and unpacks the containers, sorts and scans the mail by ZIP code, and delivers it to local mail centers. Postal drivers then carry the individual parcels to homes and businesses.

The Seattle-Tacoma facility opened Oct. 4 and the other locations will open Nov. 1, the company said.

Inside Japan’s Meltdown Over Princess’ ‘Cursed’ Wedding to Commoner

Jake Adelstein
Fri, October 22, 2021

Carl Court

TOKYO—At long last, Japan's Princess Mako and her “commoner” boyfriend, Kei Komuro, will marry on Oct. 26, after a three-year delay. But will they live happily ever after?

Yes, probably, if they follow through on their plans and get the hell out of Japan.

Opposition to the marriage by the general public, the press, and conservative politicians is strong. In an opinion poll taken by AERA magazine, 93 percent of respondents said they felt the marriage was nothing to celebrate. There have even been small street protests by elderly fanatics holding handmade signs that read, “No! Komuro,” “Do Not Pollute the Imperial Family With This Cursed Marriage.” And yet, Mako will not stand down.

Japanese Princess Mako Ditches Imperial Family to Marry Commoner Sweetheart

It should have been a classic Japanese imperial fairy tale: Princess meets brilliant boy in college, they fall in love and get engaged. This would be followed by a lavish royal wedding. But now, thanks to Japan’s post-war constitution—which also stipulates that patrilineage is the imperial way—the princess must immediately be booted out of the royal family upon tying the knot. There will be no elaborate Shinto rituals to mark the wedding of these two lovebirds. The traditional ceremonies for imperial family members’ weddings have been called off, and the official meeting with the emperor and empress prior to the marriage will not happen.

In an unprecedented decision, Mako has refused to accept a $1.3 million dollar “consolation prize” for giving up the royal registry for love and marriage. The money comes from taxes and is meant to ensure the dignity of departing aristocrats. The Imperial Household Agency, which rules over the royals here like China rules Hong Kong, announced, after much debate, that they “will allow her not to accept it.”

No one in the Japanese press has had the temerity to ask the Agency, “Why do you even announce you've accepted her decision not to take the money? Were you going to stuff it in her suitcase, instead? Isn't that her decision, not yours?” There are conservative scholars who argue Imperial Family members don't have the basic human rights guaranteed in the constitution. These scholars are part of a loud contingent of people in Japan who oppose their marriage on dubious grounds.

At first, it seemed like everyone was happy for Princess Mako. In 2017, the two held a press conference to announce their unofficial engagement. The conference was held at the Akasaka East Palace in Tokyo's Minato Ward. They appeared to be beaming, happy, and deeply in love.

That bliss did not last long. What went wrong?

Komuro and the princess met in 2012 when they were students at the International Christian University in Tokyo. Their wedding was initially scheduled to take place on Nov. 4, 2018, but before that could happen, a weekly magazine threw a wrench in their plans. In December 2017, Shukan Josei (Weekly Woman) reported what was considered a major scandal with the headline: “Imperial Family Shocked And Shaken, Komuro's Mother Owes Money To Former Fiance.”

The entire affair boiled down to this: Komuro's mother and her former fiance had money issues. The man claimed the mother and son had failed to repay a debt that was owed to him of about $36,000. Not long after, both the tabloids and the mainstream were shamelessly reporting on the private life of the Komuro family. No mistake was too small, no rumor too unsubstantiated to be put into print. In the gutters of social media, some asserted that Komuro was actually Zainichi, Korean-Japanese. In Japan, the Korean-Japanese, many of whom are now fourth-generation residents, originally brought to Japan as slave labor, are often looked down upon and marginalized.

The Imperial Household Agency went into panic mode after the reports of financial trouble and other flimsy scandals kept flooding in. They announced in February 2018 that the ritual ceremonies were going to be postponed. They also pressured Mako to release a statement explaining why the marriage would be delayed. She reluctantly complied.

In August 2018, Komuro left for the United States to study at Fordham University’s law school. The two remained engaged but things looked bleak. A couple of months later, Mako’s father, Prince Akishino, held a press conference. He said it wasn't feasible to host an engagement ceremony until the financial disputes were resolved. He implied that it wasn't a situation where “the Japanese people could really celebrate the event.” He also told the press, “Recently, I have not spoken much with [Mako], so I don't know how she feels.”

Mako responded to her father by releasing a statement in which she was adamant about her desire to marry her college love. She let it be known that she would wait for Komuro to graduate from law school and take the bar exam.

Mako and Komuro reportedly didn't meet again in person until he returned to Japan this September. When he arrived at the airport, the mass media went agog over his new hairstyle: He had a ponytail! Clearly, this was a sign that he was unfit to marry into the proximity of the Imperial Family. One sports newspaper ran the headline, “Ponytail Returns,” and included a diagram of the offending hairdo.

KEI KOMURA
Boyfriend of Japanese Princess Mako
Kyodo via AP

A Japanese media outlet even decided that the haircut merited serious investigative journalism. While Komuro quarantined at home, he reportedly had his hairstylist come to the house and trim his long hair. Evening tabloid Nikkan Gendai concluded that getting your hair trimmed at home may be a violation of Japan’s Beautician Laws.

The amount of vitriol launched at Komuro is shocking to anyone outside of Japan. “The hate Komuro campaign stems from the sexism of a patriarchal order,” professor Jeff Kingston at Temple University, author of the seminal modern history text Contemporary Japan, told The Daily Beast. “They can't tolerate women making their own choices and standing up to male authority. The shameless attack on his looks is not journalism. It's institutionalized bullying with a green light from powers that be.”

In the end, Mako won't get the lavish ritual send-off that some might have hoped for. She has opted for a low-key exit, including visiting the mausoleum of her great grandparents, ​​Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako. At their graves, she reportedly informed them of her decision to get married to a commoner. Perhaps they would have approved.

She may have given up a million dollars to marry her beloved, but the princess did send a powerful “fuck you” to the powers that be in Japan. The diminutive princess is no weeping willow. With her marriage, there will be only 17 members of the imperial family left, and unless the rules change, the family will keep getting smaller and smaller and even risks fading into oblivion. The union has sparked discussions about changing the laws to allow women who marry commoners to remain in the imperial family.

Kaori Shoji, author and essayist, sees the opposition to the marriage as indicative of a generational divide. “The union seems to be a thorn in the side of people mostly over 60, who had long idolized former Empress Michiko. For the older generation of Japanese, Michiko-sama represents all that's wonderful about Japanese womanhood: Marriage at an appropriate age for child-bearing, sacrificing her personal life completely in the name of upholding tradition, and supporting her husband for what is effectively an eternity.”

Princess Mako, on the other hand, “is not adhering to her grandmother's model at all,” says Shoji.

“She's both headstrong and sensitive and has a will of her own. In short, she's a modern young woman who wants nothing to do with the sacrifice and child-bearing BS that has defined the destinies of women in the royal household. She also seems to have no qualms about ditching her country, family, and lineage to be in New York with the man she loves.”

Princess Mako and Komuro have already made plans to move to New York City where she will find work as an art curator, and where he already works at a law firm. “Marrying into royalty is a tough job,” Shoji says, “but someone's gotta do it. And most Japanese are thankful it ain't them.”

How the 'economics of global warming' are unfolding differently in Russia

Brigid Kennedy, Contributing Writer
Fri, October 22, 2021

Russian Arctic. EKATERINA ANISIMOVA/AFP via Getty Images

The ever-present threat of climate change is a danger to all of us — but meanwhile, over in Russia, the "economics of global warming" are playing out differently, writes The New York Times.

Winter heating bills are on the decline, Russian fishermen have found "a modest pollock catch in thawed areas of the Arctic Ocean near Alaska," and, in Russia's Far North — where "rapidly rising temperatures have opened up a panoply of new possibilities" — potential mining and energy projects abound, the most "profound" prospect being year-round Arctic shipping as an alternative to the Suez Canal, writes the Times.

Multiple government-supported companies across the Russian Arctic, in fact, are midway through a plan to invest the equivalent of $10 billion over five years developing the Northeast Passage — a shipping lane between the Pacific and Atlantic — with the goal of securing some of the business that currently traverses the Suez. Traffic through the Russian Arctic rose by approximately 50 percent last year (though it still could not hold a candle to the Suez), per the Times. Arctic visitiation is expected to increase still next year.

And the "thawing ocean has also made oil, natural gas and mining ventures more profitable," the Times writes, and analysts estimate at least half a dozen large Russian energy, shipping, and mining companies will benefit from climate change.

The Russian government is not blind to the threat posed by global warming, but they seem to be enjoying things while they can, profiting where possible. Still, said Marisol Maddox, an Arctic analyst: "The evidence suggests the risks far outweigh the benefits, no matter how optimistic the Russian government's language."

U.K. Spent £69 ($95) Billion Supporting Furloughed Employees




Andrew Atkinson
Thu, October 21, 2021

The U.K. spent 69 billion pounds ($95 billion) paying the wages of furloughed workers by the time the program came to an end last month, according to government figures.

The total cost of subsidizing lost earnings touched 97 billion pounds when grants to self-employed workers hit by the pandemic are included, the Office for National Statistics data published Thursday show.

The job support programs were the centerpiece of a government response to the Covid-19 crisis, which is estimated to have cost taxpayers more than 370 billion pounds. That’s drove the budget deficit to levels not seen during British peacetime.

The furlough program, which paid up to 80% of a full-time wage to people whose workplaces were closed during the pandemic, supported almost 12 million jobs at various times. An estimated 1.1 million people were still furloughed around the time the program finished on Sept. 30, ONS figures Thursday show. A relatively small number of them are expected to end up unemployed, however.

In September, the cost of the so-called Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme declined to 740 million pounds, the lowest figure of the pandemic. In the early stages of the crisis, the bill was totaling over 10 billion pounds a month.

(Adds ONS furlough data)

At United Nations, Afghan women appeal: don't let Taliban in


Former Afghan diplomat Asila Wardak, former Afghan politician and peace negotiator Fawzia Koofi, Afghan journalist Anisa Shaheed and former Afghan politician, Naheed Fareed speak to reporters outside the U.N. Security Council


Michelle Nichols
Thu, October 21, 2021

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A group of Afghan women urged the United Nations to block the Taliban from gaining a seat at the world body, calling for better representation for their country during a visit to the organisation's New York headquarters on Thursday.

"It's very simple," former Afghan politician and peace negotiator Fawzia Koofi told reporters outside the UN Security Council in New York. "The UN needs to give that seat to somebody who respects the rights of everyone in Afghanistan."

"We are talked a lot about, but we are not listened to," she said of Afghan women. "Aid, money, recognition - they are all leverage that the world should use for inclusion, for respect to the rights of women, for respect to the rights of everybody."

Koofi was joined by former politician, Naheed Fareed, former diplomat Asila Wardak and journalist Anisa Shaheed.

"When the Taliban took Afghanistan ... they said that they will give permission to women to resume their jobs, to go back to the school, but they didn't keep that promise," said Fareed.

Since seizing power in mid-August, Taliban leaders have vowed to respect women's rights in accordance with sharia, or Islamic law. But under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, women could not work and girls were banned from school. Women had to cover their faces and be accompanied by a male relative when they left home.

The United Nations is considering rival claims on who should represent Afghanistan. The Taliban nominated their Doha-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen as UN ambassador, while Ghulam Isaczai - the UN envoy representing the government ousted by the Taliban - is seeking to remain in the country's seat.

UN member states are expected to make a decision by the end of the year.

Wardak urged countries to pressure the Taliban "to put their words in action" when it comes to women's rights, adding: "If you're going to give them a seat, there should be conditions."

The women spoke to reporters before addressing a UN event on support for Afghan women and girls, organized by Britain, Qatar, Canada, UN Women and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

The UN Security Council also met separately on Thursday to discuss women, peace and security.

"Women and girls in Afghanistan are pinning their hopes and dreams on this very council and world body to help them recover their rights to work, travel and go to school," Isaczai told the 15-member council. "It would be morally reprehensible if we do nothing and let them down."

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Karishma Singh)

Ontario is running out of places to dump garbage, here's one company's solution

Isabella O'Malley
Fri, October 22, 2021

Ontario is running out of places to dump garbage, here's one company's solution

Nearly 15 million people live in Ontario, which is roughly 38 per cent of the entire Canadian population. With this comes a growing appetite for resource consumption, even though the province is running out of space to dump its waste.

Based on population growth projections and economic trends, the provincial government estimates that 16 new or expanded landfills will be needed by 2050 without improvements in waste reduction and resource recovery.

Stormfisher, a company that turns food waste into energy, says that they have the solution for diverting more waste from landfills. The company operates the largest private organic waste-to-energy biogas facility in North America with locations currently operating in both the U.S. and Canada.

“Ontario is a leader in regards to anaerobic digestion. There are about 30 plants that are working on farms as well as industrial facilities like ours,” Brandon Moffat, StormFisher’s Vice President of Development, told The Weather Network.

“We need a lot more of these in Ontario, we figure maybe 100 more of varying sizes and scales and so we think that municipalities and industrial facilities, as well as farms, can play a role in the production of renewable natural gas from organic waste,” Moffat said.

a woman putting food into the food garbage 
Decomposing organic waste in landfills contributes to the staggering methane emissions. (Vesnaandjic/ E+/ Getty Images)

HOW FOOD GARBAGE TURNS INTO ENERGY

Energy is created when discarded organic waste is placed in a digester that is absent of oxygen and filled with bacteria. The bacteria release methane as they consume the organic matter, which can be used as-is or can be upgraded to a quality equivalent to natural gas that is extracted from the earth.

“We can make a pipeline-quality gas that is renewable in nature that we can then sell to natural gas utilities, corporations, institutions, and municipalities,” explained Moffat. The prospective biogas applications include anything that currently uses natural gas, such as home furnaces and heavy-duty trucks.

When methane is burned as a fuel it turns into water and carbon dioxide. This differs from the methane emissions that are released directly into the atmosphere without being burned, which occurs from conventional landfills, fossil fuel usage, and livestock farming.

Methane emissions are a notorious pollutant because they capture significantly more heat than carbon dioxide on multi-decadal timescales, and a growing number of scientists and policymakers are calling for drastic reductions of this greenhouse gas.

Although biogas is not a carbon-free energy source, it is regarded as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, which release staggering levels of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. According to IEA Bioenergy, the turnover time between carbon in plants and in the atmosphere is only a few hundred years, whereas the turnover time between carbon and fossil fuels is over 10,000 years.

In addition to the sustainable impacts, Moffat commented that the economic development and employment perspectives are some of the perks of what StormFisher does.

“The circularity of what we do is really great from the environmental side but there is also the economic side. We provide good-paying jobs for the staff that work in our facilities but also the indirect jobs for the trucking groups, mill rights, and electricians that support our type of infrastructure,” Moffat said.

“Just because it's circular people always think it costs more, when in fact we’re lower cost than most landfills in terms of our processing fees and we are able to put those fees back into the community in terms of the operating expenses to run our facilities day in and day out.”

Thumbnail credit: ugurhan/ E+/ Getty Images

Bourbon maker reaches tentative deal with striking workers

Kentucky Bourbon Producer-Strike

FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2021 file photo, members of Local 23D Union picket in front of Heaven Hill Distillery in Bardstown, Ky. Heaven Hill, one of the world's largest bourbon producers, announced a tentative contract deal Friday, Oct. 22, with striking union workers, just days after signaling it intended to start hiring permanent replacement employees for bottling and warehouse operations in Kentucky.(Silas Walker/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP, File)More

BRUCE SCHREINER
Fri, October 22, 2021, 

Heaven Hill, one of the world's largest bourbon producers, announced a tentative contract deal Friday with a union representing striking workers, just days after signaling it intended to start hiring permanent replacement employees for bottling and warehouse operations in Kentucky.

About 420 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 23D went on strike about six weeks ago, forming picket lines at Heaven Hill’s operations in Bardstown after rejecting a previous contract proposal. The workers will vote Saturday on the latest five-year contract offer.

The dispute revolved around health care and worker scheduling issues. Wrangling over scheduling was a sign of the bourbon industry’s growing pains as it tries to keep up with global demand.

“The agreement continues Heaven Hill’s long-standing commitment to its team members with industry-leading health care, wage growth and increased schedule flexibility,” Heaven Hill said in a statement Friday.

Neither Kentucky-based Heaven Hill nor union officials provided details Friday about the tentative contract deal. Local union President Matt Aubrey said the union reached a “fully recommended tentative agreement” with the company.

“With the strong support of the Bardstown community, these hardworking men and women have been standing together for more than a month to protect these good Kentucky jobs that their families have counted on for generations,” Aubrey said in a statement. "Heaven Hill workers will make their voices heard tomorrow when they vote on this tentative agreement.”

 

Family-owned and operated Heaven Hill produces Evan Williams, one of the world’s top-selling bourbons. The spirits company's other brands include Elijah Craig, Henry McKenna, Old Fitzgerald, Larceny and Parker’s Heritage Collection.

On Monday, Heaven Hill announced the contract talks had reached an impasse. The company said it would begin the process of hiring permanent replacement workers. Union leaders responded that they were willing to continue negotiations and accused the company of wanting to replace the striking employees with non-union workers.

But the public acrimony did not permanently derail the negotiations. The two sides resumed bargaining Thursday, resulting in the tentative agreement announced a day later.

Workers often spend long careers at Kentucky bourbon distilleries, and the jobs often attract multiple generations of families. Disputes flare up occasionally, and other strikes occurred in recent years at Jim Beam and Four Roses — other iconic names in the bourbon sector.

The bourbon industry has been on a long upward trajectory.

Combined U.S. sales for bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye whiskey rose 8.2%, or $327 million, to $4.3 billion in 2020, despite plunging sales from bars and restaurants because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States reported early this year.

Kentucky distilleries produce 95% of the world’s bourbon supply, according to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

US Fossil fuel executives to testify at "landmark" hearing focused on climate disinformation



Noah Garfinkel
Fri, October 22, 2021

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform announced on Friday it will hold a "landmark" hearing next week with fossil fuel executives focused on the industry's role in spreading climate disinformation.

Why it matters: This is the first time oil company CEOs, and the head of their main trade group, will testify under oath about their knowledge of the link between burning fossil fuels and climate change, per Axios' Andrew Freedman.

Details: The hearing will take place on October 28th and top executives from ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron, and Shell Oil are slated to appear, as are trade group execs from the American Petroleum Institute and President and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"We are deeply concerned that the fossil fuel industry has reaped massive profits for decades while contributing to climate change that is devastating American communities, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and ravaging the natural world," committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and subcommittee chair Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote in September. "We are also concerned that to protect those profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change."

The committee will also focus on efforts to block reforms and lobby against potential climate change action.

This hearing comes ahead of the the COP26 climate summit, slated to begin October 31 in Glasgow.

The big picture: Oil giants, under increasing pressure from activists and investors, have in recent years been stepping up their own climate efforts and investments in cleaner technologies. But oil and gas remain the dominant business lines, per Axios' Ben Geman.

OMG! BLASPHEMY! IS FREE SPEECH

Antifa protesters disrupt Texas college campus pro-life prayer vigil: 'F--- your God!'


Jon Brown

FOX NEWS IS OUTRAGED,OUTRAGED I SAY
Thu, October 21, 2021, 


EXCLUSIVE: Antifa protesters disrupted a pro-life candlelight prayer vigil Monday night on the campus of the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton.

The protesters, who reportedly numbered in the hundreds, chanted blasphemous slogans and attempted to drown out the small group of students gathering to demonstrate against abortion, as seen in video obtained by Fox News Digital.

The vigil had been organized by the UNT chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT), a student group that has existed in some form since 1980.


Kelly Neidert, who founded the UNT chapter of YCT and has chaired it since 2019, is unsure where all of the protesters came from but speculated they might have been summoned by an advertisement that circulated on social media earlier in the day. The ad was emblazoned with the three-arrow insignia of Antifa.

"Fascists are organizing in your area," read a release apparently directed to members of Antifa in the area of the university, which is approximately 40 miles north of Dallas. "Tonight the young conservatives have invited groyper influencers & white nationalists such as Lance Johnston to a pro life 'vigil' in supporting christo-fascist abortion legislation."

Explaining they were expecting only 10 or 20 protesters, Neidert told Fox News that she and her fellow demonstrators were caught off-guard by the size of their opposition.

"They harassed us, they were throwing things at us," she said. "They were chanting things. They brought all sorts of instruments that they were playing to drown out whatever we were saying. They brought their megaphones, they brought whistles."

Neidert said some of the protesters tried to pick fights with the pro-life students, told them to kill themselves, and followed them to their cars to harass them.

In one of the videos obtained by Fox News, the pro-life students chant, "Christ is king!" to which a protester responds by chanting, "F*** your God!"

In another video, a protester screams through a megaphone that she "loves sacrificing children."

Neidert noted that some protesters also expressed hatred for Gov. Gregg Abbott, R-Texas, who recently signed a controversial law banning abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.

UNT spokesperson Leigh Anne Gullett told Fox News in a statement: "A few hundred students with opposing views gathered on campus Monday evening to exercise their free speech rights. The gathering ended without incident."

Demonstrations by YCT against abortion have been repeatedly vandalized. In March 2020, the group placed 1,000 pink flags on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, each flag representing approximately 60,000 of the babies aborted each year in the United States. Within 12 hours, all the flags had been removed.

In October 2020, video captured students plucking up flags from a similar display at UNT.

Neidert has come to fear for her safety on campus, where she said other students often recognize her and flip her off.

"I think they just really hate anybody who doesn't agree with everything that they believe," she said of her opponents. "And they just really don't know how to cope with other people who have different beliefs. So they want to silence us and say that we're wrong, because they just don't understand that some people believe differently."

In July 2020, alleged practitioners of witchcraft sent Neidert direct messages on Twitter that threatened her with hexes and references to the devil.

The threats came in response to an initiative by which YCT encouraged students to celebrate National Coming Out Day by "coming out" as conservatives. They also made a point about affirmative action by holding a bake sale that charged different prices based on the customer’s ethnicity.

Neidert, a Christian, described the threats as "pure evil, especially when they make references to Satan and they think it’s funny.

"It’s not funny, and I’m definitely more concerned for them than I am for myself, if they think that’s okay," she added.