How many operable power plants will Texas have this winter? See a map by fuel type



Steve Wilson
Sun, December 12, 2021

Texas Power Plants
Here is a map of all operable Texas electric generating power plants from the US Energy Information Administration along with Texas' (ERCOT) power grid outlined in blue. The power plants are represented by circles that are color-coded by primary fuel types. The larger the circle, the more megawatts that plant produces. Tap on the power plants for more information.

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Goodyear Collaborates With Monolith On Carbon Black; Initial Testing Demonstrates Reduced Emissions

AKRON, Ohio, Dec. 9, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company today announced that it has signed a collaboration agreement and letter of intent with Monolith for the development and potential use of carbon black produced from methane and/or biomethane for tires. Goodyear is a leader in the industry in embracing this form of carbon black produced through a plasma-based methane pyrolysis process, which will help advance Goodyear's work to identify and use more sustainable materials.

"At Goodyear, we're committed to sustainability and making a positive impact by our choice of the materials we use," said Chris Helsel, senior vice president, global operations and chief technology officer. "Our collaboration with Monolith is one example of how we are using sustainable materials in quality products that deliver a better future."

Carbon black is a key ingredient in tires, providing compounds in the tires with strength, improved tear resistance, and increased abrasion resistance. A typical consumer tire is made of 15-20% carbon black by weight. Traditional carbon black comes from the combustion of residual oil or coal tar oil.

Goodyear is evaluating carbon black produced from methane and/or biomethane as part of its work with Monolith, a world leader in clean hydrogen and materials production. Monolith's plasma-based process takes advantage of renewable electricity to complete methane pyrolysis and results in the output of only carbon and hydrogen.

"We're proud to collaborate with Goodyear on high-quality, clean carbon black for Goodyear and support their ongoing mission to make their tires more sustainable," said Rob Hanson, co-founder and chief executive officer, Monolith. "We're honored to work with companies like Goodyear that share our passion for quality products that are responsibly manufactured, and we are eager to see what advancements this collaboration will bring to the tire industry."

A life cycle assessment completed for Monolith by a third party shows the plasma-based process should result in environmental benefits across the life cycle, including a reduction in carbon emissions, compared to traditionally produced carbon black.

In addition, the life cycle assessment shows that this technology has the potential for a carbon-neutral to carbon-negative impact, based on increased utilization of biomethane feedstock versus natural gas in the future.

Monolith's life cycle assessment is currently scheduled to undergo an external review and more details of the quantitative environmental benefits can be shared in the near future.

About The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company

Goodyear is one of the world's largest tire companies. It employs about 72,000 people and manufactures its products in 55 facilities in 23 countries around the world. Its two Innovation Centers in Akron, Ohio, and Colmar-Berg, Luxembourg, strive to develop state-of-the-art products and services that set the technology and performance standard for the industry. For more information about Goodyear and its products, go to www.goodyear.com/corporate.

About Monolith

Monolith is a next-general chemical and hydrogen company that uses 100% renewable electricity as part of a proprietary process to convert conventional and renewable natural gas to carbon black and hydrogen in an environmentally advantaged manner. Monolith is backed by Azimuth Capital Management, Cornell Capital LLC, Imperative Ventures, Warburg Pincus, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, SK Inc. and NextEra Energy Resources Inc. For more information on Monolith, visit monolith-corp.com.

SOURCE The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company

Pilot Captures Footage of Suspected UFOs Over Pacific Ocean (UPDATE)

Joshua Espinoza
Fri, December 10, 2021

ET: Footage of a more recent alleged sighting has now started gaining traction, including via a TMZ story on Saturday. The footage in question captures a separate reported sighting of unidentified aerial phenomena, this time in the Chino Hills region of California.

According to the report, the footage was shot on Dec. 9 and shows multiple unexplained light shapes moving in an erratic fashion. Per the woman responsible for the footage, the lights were first spotted by her grandson, who was taking out the trash at the time.

See the video below.

See original story below.

A new video circulating on social media has fueled the extraterrestrial debate.

The footage was reportedly captured by a pilot who was flying over the South China Sea at an altitude of 39,000 feet. The video shows three sets of mysterious light formations moving through the clouds near Hong Kong before quickly disappearing.

“I don’t know what that is. That is some weird shit,” a person is heard saying in the video, before the lights seemingly vanish one by one. “Gone.”

Though the lights don’t appear to be from any known aircraft, some social media users suspected they were either reflections from the cockpit glass or military flares. Chris Spitzer, who describes himself as an experienced atmospheric phenomena investigator, proposed the latter theory.

According to the Independent, the 53-second video was uploaded to a UFO tracking website earlier this month, but was reportedly filmed on Nov. 24—the same day the U.S. Defense Department announced the establishment of a UFO task force.

“The (Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group) will synchronize efforts across the Department and the broader U.S. government to detect, identify and attribute objects of interests in Special Use Airspace (SUA), and to assess and mitigate any associated threats to safety of flight and national security,” the DOD wrote in a press release.

“To provide oversight of the AOIMSG, the Deputy Secretary also directed the USD(I&S) to lead an Airborne Object Identification and Management Executive Council (AOIMEXEC) to be comprised of DoD and Intelligence Community membership, and to offer a venue for U.S. government interagency representation.”

The worker revolt comes to a Dollar General in Connecticut





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LONG READ

Greg Jaffe
Sat, December 11, 2021, 8:40 AM·19 min read

WINSTED, Conn. - The afternoon shift workers at Dollar General No. 18060 had listened with growing panic as an executive accused their store manager of stealing. They could hear the yelling and threats in the back office, a scene that had shaken all of them - especially Shellie Parsons.

In a life marked by poverty, addiction and physical abuse, Parsons, 37, had come to see her store - a beige prefabricated building on the outskirts of town - as her haven, a $15.75-an-hour pathway to a better life. She was desperately afraid of losing it

And so, after a brief discussion with a few trusted co-workers, she headed to a nearby Stop & Shop grocery store where years earlier she recalled seeing a picket line, walked back to the deli counter and asked one of the butchers, whom she had never met, whether he had a phone number for someone at their union. She dialed from the parking lot.

"Why does it got to be me?" she recalled thinking as the phone rang. She feared that talking to a union organizer could get her fired, even as she worried that doing nothing would leave her and her colleagues vulnerable to the whims of upper management.

All over the country, workers who had labored through a global pandemic for low pay and meager benefits were concluding that they deserved better from their bosses. Wages were rising and a wave of strikes was sweeping across the country, hitting iconic American brands such as Kellogg's and John Deere. And now Parsons's phone call was setting off one of the most lopsided battles of the ongoing low-wage-worker revolt.




On one side: six Dollar General employees, most of whom were making the minimum wage or just slightly above it. The group included a community college student, a struggling musician who had recently moved back home and two single moms, one of whom was Parsons. On the other: a company with yearly revenue approaching $34 billion, more than 157,000 employees and 17,683 stores, not one of which was unionized.

Four days after her Sept. 17 phone call, Parsons and a few of her co-workers met with the union organizer. To prepare, she had written out what they all hoped to gain, in a letter that went through three drafts and that Parsons had finished in the front seat of her car.

"We all want to make sure we can make a living and not worry we will get fired for false accusations or made up things," she wrote. "Take our words serious, don't just brush them off. . . . We are your employees, not strangers."

The workers wanted more job security. They wanted a process to ensure that their complaints weren't ignored. They wanted to know that their labor was valued and that they were respected.

Parsons and three of her co-workers signed it and handed it over to the organizer with Local 371 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Then they signed union cards, authorizing an election scheduled for Oct. 22 - exactly one month away. To prevail, all the signees - or four of the store's six workers - would have to vote for the union.

- - -

Parsons and her fellow workers weren't just trying to unionize; they were challenging a core aspect of the business model that has fueled Dollar General's boom over the past decade.

"We believe our union free status is one reason we continue to grow and provide employment while many unionized companies have declined," the company wrote in third paragraph of its 2015 employee handbook.

Dollar General had carved out a niche that allowed it to thrive in communities where people were struggling to put food on the table and pay their bills, and there were more and more of these places popping up throughout the country ever year.

To serve these communities, Dollar General has concentrated on needs, not wants. Each store typically consists of about 7,400 square feet of cramped, dimly lit aisles focusing on staples such as milk, eggs and diapers as well as products such as pain relievers, frying pans and motor oil. They are stocked in small sizes instead of bulk to keep prices low and profit margins high. Staffing is just as spare - typically six employees and a manager, who often works six or seven days a week.

The approach had proved so successful that by 2020 there were more dollar stores - a category that includes Dollar Tree and Family Dollar - in the United States than all the Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald's locations combined. Of these, Dollar General was the biggest of them all.

Before the vote at Parsons's store, the last serious effort to unionize a Dollar General came in December 2017 when workers in Auxvasse, Mo., sought to become the first store in company history to join the UFCW.

Dollar General moved swiftly to quell the Auxvasse uprising. In the weeks before the vote, company executives flew into town on a private jet and the vice president for human resources embedded herself in the store, working alongside employees cleaning windows, stocking shelves and making the case for rejecting the union, according to workers and court documents.

The employees voted 4 to 2 to organize, an outcome Dollar General spent the next 28 months fighting in the courts on the grounds that the vote was flawed. In the middle of its legal battle, the company fired the employee who initially called the union, for using a curse word in a private meeting with his district manager.

As part of a settlement approved by the National Labor Relations Board, Dollar General agreed to compensate the fired worker. The company was also required to post a notice in the Auxvasse store's break room acknowledging the monetary settlement and its workers' right to organize.

"WE WILL NOT fire you because of your union membership or support," the notice read.

Instead, the company took a more extreme step: It closed the store early last year, only weeks after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit ordered Dollar General to recognize and bargain with the union. Alan Bloom, 70, a cashier, said some of the store's employees, including its manager, negotiated transfers. Bloom decided to retire.

He had voted for the union, but now that the store was closing, he wished he hadn't. "For a while it felt revolutionary, like we were going to change things," he said. "But that didn't happen. The store just closed."

Dollar General was the town's only national chain, and the only place - besides a gas station convenience store - that sold frozen food, snacks and canned goods. "It's left a hole in our town," said Ashley Steinbeck, Auxvasse's mayor. "It was such a convenience for everyone, especially for elderly folks who can't get around really well."

In a statement, Dollar General said the decision to close the store, just weeks after it was ordered to negotiate with the union, was based on an "assessment of the store's future profitability."

David Cook, the president of UFCW Local 655 in Missouri, suggested a different motive. "It's a control issue," he said. "I don't think anybody out there recognizes the value an employer like Dollar General puts on having an at-will workforce. 'At will' means I can fire you for any reason I want as long as it's not color, religion or ethnicity. It's that ultimate power of intimidation. . . . You can't put a value on that if you're an employer - especially one the size of Dollar General."

- - -

Parsons didn't know any of this history when she placed her call to the union in September. She was just worried about losing a job that offered a sense of stability and predictability in a life that had often felt on the brink of collapse.

She had spent her teenage years in foster care, battled a heroin addiction and served a year in prison, but by the time she started at Dollar General in 2019, she was beginning to pull her life together. Other than a brief relapse and terrifying overdose in early 2019, she had been drug-free for most of the past 12 years. She was trying to end an abusive relationship, and her boss and colleagues had offered support, noticing the bruises on her body and encouraging her to leave her partner.

Aside from Bella, her 8-year-old daughter, Parsons's store had become the most important thing in her life, a place where she felt successful, earning pay raises and a promotion to assistant manager.

"I don't have any family. I have no one," she said. "And when I started working for Dollar General, I got away from my lifelong abuser and I survived, and I got a family and a future."

Parsons didn't expect better pay or benefits from unionizing. She just wanted to hold on to what she had.

In the days after she and her co-workers signed union cards, the company hired five anti-union consultants, each of whom was paid $2,700 a day, according to documents filed with the Labor Department. It dispatched three out-of-state executives to the store who shadowed the employees for the month, working alongside them. Sometimes the executives talked baseball, hunting or music with the store employees.

Other times, they warned them about the union, which they said would make them pay costly dues and ruin their relationship with their store manager, whom they liked and admired.

Mostly, the executives seemed to be spying on them, the employees said. About a week after they arrived at the store, Jake Serafini, 31, was restocking an aisle with one of his co-workers, he recalled. "I would never be able to do this job for $7.25 an hour," he said, thinking of the minimum wage in North Carolina, where he had lived before returning home to Winsted.

Seconds later, Serafini said, one of the corporate executives emerged from a nearby aisle. "The minimum wage in Connecticut is $13 an hour," he said.

Serafini, a part-time musician, agreed but noted that it was still a "little low" given the state's high cost of living. He didn't think much about the incident until the same executive spotted him a few days later stacking pizzas in a freezer that was badly overstocked.

"It looks there are sparks coming out of your ears," the executive said.

"Look at this f—ing bullsh—," Serafini replied, pointing to the mess. The executive offered to show him how to fix the oversupply problem, and Serafini said he apologized for cursing.

After his shift, Serafini said, two of his co-workers approached as he was walking to his car and told him they had been ordered to sign statements saying they had heard him curse. Serafini's store manager called that evening and fired him. In his five months with the company, Serafini hadn't missed a shift and had no disciplinary write-ups.

"My heart is breaking," Serafini recalled his boss saying. "I'm doing everything I can on my end. We're going to get you back."

The dismissal shook some of Serafini's co-workers, who were convinced that he was fired because he was pro-union, or possibly because the Dollar General executives believed he had instigated the union drive. It incensed Parsons, who felt responsible. Serafini had been filling in for her on the day he was fired.

At the union's request, Parsons did interviews with CNN, HuffPost and the Hartford Courant. She recorded a video for More Perfect Union, a labor advocacy group, in which she talked about Serafini's dismissal. "The only people that can save us is a union," she said on the video.

Six days before the vote, Parsons believed that three out of six employees, including Serafini, who despite his dismissal was allowed to vote, were pro-union. One was wavering, a worker named Jen whose vote was crucial. The woman did not respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post for this story. Parsons said that a Dollar General executive had warned Jen about the closing of the Auxvasse store and suggested that the same thing could happen in Connecticut.

"I need you to call Jen and talk to her," Parsons texted the UFCW organizer, Jessica Petronella. "They are getting to her. We have to act Very Quickly or we are going to lose her."

Three days before the vote, Parsons, Jen and Petronella met in a supermarket parking lot a short drive down the highway from the Dollar General. It was a spot where they hoped that the company's executives and consultants, who now outnumbered the workers, wouldn't see them.

Petronella said she asked Jen to draft a statement describing what she considered to be the company's threat to close the store, along with an account of Serafini's firing. Jen wrote that the executive told her to "look into the dollar general store that had been closed" and shared that Serafini's firing may have been related to corporate's belief that he had been the first to call the union.

Dollar General, in response to questions from The Post, said that no threats were made to close the Connecticut store and denied that Serafini was "treated unlawfully."

Petronella intended to give Jen's statement to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections to ensure they are fair. She also saw the letter as a positive sign that Jen still supported the union.

On election day, the NLRB set up a small white tent in the parking lot of the Dollar General. Parsons, who agreed to serve as an observer for the union, arrived at 8:30 a.m. and cast her ballot. A worker representing the company occupied a second table. For the next two hours, Parsons sat, watched and nervously waited as her co-workers cycled through.

Dollar General was challenging Serafini's ballot, but he was still allowed to vote. "It's a great day for democracy," he told Parsons as he entered the tent.

"Absolutely!" Parsons replied.

A second co-worker who backed the union grinned at Parsons as he dropped his ballot in the cardboard box. A good sign. There were two workers, both part-timers, who hadn't supported the union. Parsons assumed they both voted no.

She was most worried about Jen, who stood over her ballot for several seconds, shaking her head as if she was thinking, Parsons said. Parsons tried to catch her eye, but Jen hurried past her.

At 11:05 a.m., an NLRB representative counted the votes. To prevail, Dollar General needed at least three of the six workers to vote against the union. The first two votes were both no. Then there was a yes, followed by a brief pause as the NLRB representative unfolded the next ballot. Parsons breathed in through her light blue surgical mask.

"No," the NLRB official read.

At first, Parsons didn't believe it. She walked out of the tent and into the sunlight, lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. One of her co-workers called Serafini to let him know the outcome.

"I hate to be the one to tell you," he began.

"You're kidding," Serafini replied. He had assumed that the union would win and that he would be back to work in a week or two. Now he felt alone.

Parsons and Petronella drove to a nearby McDonald's to figure out what had happened and talk about their next steps. Tears streamed down Parsons's face. She believed that the election hadn't been fair, that Dollar General had "polluted" her colleagues' minds with falsehoods and fear.

"Obviously, Jen voted no," Petronella said.

Over the course of her life, Parsons had grown accustomed to feeling abandoned - by her parents, the foster-care system, the police and the courts. Now she wanted the union to stand with her, appeal the vote to the NLRB and keep fighting.

"What do we do now?" she asked Petronella.

- - -

For Petronella and the union, the answer was to move on to other battles. She could have sought an order that would have forced Dollar General to bargain with the union. "You have to hire lawyers, and it ends up costing a lot," Petronella said. For a company like Dollar General the expense was nothing. But the union's resources were limited.

Petronella decided that it would be faster and cheaper to wait 12 months and petition for another union vote, if Parsons and her co-workers were still interested. Her last piece of unfinished business from the Dollar General organizing effort was Serafini, who with the help of the union and a Labor Department lawyer was negotiating a wrongful-dismissal settlement with Dollar General.

Petronella wanted Dollar General to have to acknowledge publicly its agreement with Serafini, just as it had done in Missouri.

Serafini's immediate goal was to pay some bills and move on with his life, perhaps becoming a social worker. His dismissal, he said, had revealed what Dollar General really thought of its workers. "You have people go above and beyond for a minimum-wage job and then get tossed because a union might mean it costs a little more to run the store. It's all about greed," he said. "It just feels gross."

For Parsons there was only one option after the union organizing effort failed: A few weeks after the election, her alarm clock woke her at 5:15 a.m., giving her just enough time to stop by the methadone clinic for her daily dose before heading off to work.

The Dollar General executives had returned home, and the store had settled back into its old rhythms. Parsons helped unload a "humongous truck" that arrived that morning and fell off a ladder while trying to retrieve a box of adult diapers from a storage shelf for an elderly customer. In the afternoon, she headed off to a second job cleaning houses. She lugged bags of supplies and a scuffed yellow vacuum up the driveway of a small, brick ranch house, her back still throbbing from her fall. After only a few minutes of work, her forehead glistened with sweat.

Parsons was more than $5,000 behind on her electricity bill but was determined to use the money from her housekeeping jobs to pay the lawyer who was helping her fight for custody of her daughter. She saw Bella three times a week - visits that began with tense handoffs that Parsons knew took the heaviest toll on Bella.

After police charged Parsons's ex with "threatening" behavior and "breach of peace," the courts granted Parsons a restraining order and mandated that she and her former partner exchange Bella in a well-lit, public spot. For now, it was the Big Y supermarket. Inside the store, the two parents stood about 10 yards apart recording each other with their phones as their 8-year-old daughter ran with her head down from her father to her mother.

"Today Mommy doesn't have too much money," Parsons said as she hurriedly outlined some options for their three-hour visit. Bella chose a $5.75 matinee of the new Marvel movie, and Parsons began firing questions at her.

"Have you taken a shower lately?"

"What's Daddy feeding you?"

"You're still coughing, baby. Are you taking your medicine?"

Three-quarters of the way through the movie, Bella started to worry that they were going to be late for the court-mandated, 8 p.m. drop-off with her dad. So they left early, giving Parsons just enough time for a quick cigarette break before they sped through the Wendy's drive-through. Her feet were sore. Her back still ached. Her gas gauge hovered just above empty. Parsons lit a cigarette in the parking lot. A few kernels of movie theater popcorn, tossed by a giggling Bella, struck her on the cheek.

Back at the Big Y, they repeated the recorded drop-off in reverse. This was the worst part of Parsons's day, the time she felt most alone. "I fight addiction. I fight for my job. I fight for my kid. I fight for my survival," she said. "Every single way I turn, I have to fight."

One thing she could no longer afford to fight was Dollar General, and so these days she was focused relentlessly on the company's positives. Dollar General had dismissed the district manager who accused her boss of stealing - falsely, employees said - and replaced him with a new person who seemed fair. The new district manager had recently promised to start reimbursing store employees for their mileage when they had to drive to the bank to drop off the day's deposits. It wasn't yet clear whether they would be reimbursed thousands of dollars for earlier unpaid trips.

"After the election, I started to find out the truth about Dollar General," Parsons said. "It is not what we thought. If they knew what was going on they would have fixed it earlier. Really it was just a couple of bad people. Everyone has their flaws, but Dollar General is great people."

Parsons didn't regret calling the union. Without the organizing effort, she believed the problems at her store would never have been addressed. "It helped 100 percent," she said. But she also wasn't upset that the unionizing push had failed. "If we won, honestly I don't know anymore," she continued. "I don't know if it'd be different. Everything is just confusing."

Two weeks before Thanksgiving, Parsons received another bit of good news: Someone had posted on Parsons's employee group text chat that the store would be closed on the holiday, a change from previous years when it had been open for extended hours. "The union isn't involved, and they are still doing it," she said.

But it turned out that the company wasn't actually doing it. The store was open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day just as it had been the previous year, and Parsons was scheduled to work.

She didn't let it bother her. She needed the money. She worked an 11-hour shift and then rushed to the Big Y, where Bella was waiting.

- - -

The Washington Post's Abha Bhattarai and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.

Buffalo worker blasts 'union-busting' Starbucks as results at 1 cafe are challenged

Dani Romero
Sun, December 12, 2021

Workers at one Starbucks (SBUX) Store in Buffalo, New York, won a contentious victory last week by becoming the coffee giant's first unionized workplace.

Yet after votes were counted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a second cafe on Camp Road narrowly rejected the measure, an outcome organizers plan to challenge. Union organizers and their attorney claim there were “voices” that weren’t heard.

“I don't accept that as the full number at the end of the day, it being 12 [against] to 8 [in favor], just because as I know that there are people in my location that did not get their ballots counted,” Gianna Reeve, a shift supervisor at the Camp Road Starbucks, told Yahoo Finance on Friday.

Meanwhile, results from the third store were unclear as of Thursday's vote, because ballots were challenged during the counting process. However, Reeve is still counting it as a win.

“At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. Honestly, if Camp Road [store] chooses to organize or not because the battle was getting from zero organized Starbucks locations to one Starbucks location organized and now we have two,” Reeve said.

The union had challenged six ballots during the vote count, deeming them as “the employee no longer works there.”
'Union busting' accusations

Starbucks workers speak to the media after union vote in Buffalo, New York, U.S., December 9, 2021. REUTERS/Lindsay DeDario

The ballots will need to be certified by the NLRB's regional director, which could take a week. The next hurdle will be negotiating a contract with Starbucks.

According to Reeve, Starbucks — which publicly opposed the union vote — had closed down one of the locations in the area, and allowed those employees from that store to work at the third cafe on Genesee Street for about two weeks. The company then “declared” them eligible to vote, according to Reeve.

“We've always kind of theorized that this was a union busting tactic from Starbucks to kind of stuff the ballots,” said Reeve.

“We are declaring victory at Genesee Street. We have the hurdle still of having to go through those challenges and say that we're having contested votes,” she added.

The next day following the vote count, managers left an emotional letter for workers at the Elmwood location, describing themselves as "saddened" by the outcome.


The historic vote for Starbucks signals the rising power of labor and workers in the workforce. Starbucks executives have lobbied hard to keep workers from unionizing in the Buffalo location for months by holding face-to-face meetings – a move that Starbucks Workers United blasted “union busting.”

However, that hasn’t stopped three other nearby stores, and one Arizona cafe, to follow Buffalo’s lead.

“There's no more time for an empty seat at the table. We have proven that here in Buffalo, and we're proving that across the country and not just in Starbucks,” Reeve said.

“Service workers across the country, we have seen the surge already and I hope that this serves as an inspiration,” she added.

Nationwide support for unions was at 68% — its highest since the 1960’s, according to a Gallup poll in August, with support among people ages 18 to 34 at 77%. Still, the union membership rate in the U.S. was roughly 11% in 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, slightly higher than the prior year.

Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @daniromerotv

Spanish island volcano eruption hits local record of 85 days


Ash covers the streets and houses in Las Manchas village as lava flows from the volcano, on the Canary island of La Palma, Spain, Dec. 6 2021. A volcanic eruption in Spain’s Canary Islands shows no sign of ending after 85 days. It became the island of La Palma’s longest eruption on record on Sunday, Dec. 12. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, file)

MADRID (AP) — A volcanic eruption in Spain’s Canary Islands shows no sign of ending after 85 days, becoming the island of La Palma’s longest eruption on record Sunday.

The eruption has surged and ebbed since it first began spewing lava on Sept. 19. It has since destroyed almost 3,000 local buildings and forced several thousand people to abandon their homes.

On Sunday, after several days of low-level activity, the Cumbre Vieja volcano suddenly sprang to life again, producing loud explosions and blowing a vast cloud of ash high into the sky.

Scientists say volcanic eruptions are unpredictable. Spanish experts had initially said the La Palma eruption could last up to three months.

Mariano Hernández, the island’s senior government official, described the volcano as “stable” in recent days.

“The fact is that all the key indicators have been low,” he told Spanish public broadcaster RTVE. “But the scientists won’t say exactly when it might come to an end.”

He said experts continue to measure the number and magnitude of earthquakes in the area and local sulfur dioxide levels.

A soccer field is covered by black ashes as lava flows from the volcano, on the Canary island of La Palma, Spain, Monday, Dec. 6 2021. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

From Saturday to Sunday, authorities recorded 24 earthquakes, but none was felt by local people.

Despite the damage, no injuries or deaths have been directly linked to the eruption. Much of the area covered by rivers of lava, which are dumping molten rock into the sea, is farmland.

Life has continued largely as normal on most of La Palma, where a section of the southwestern side is hardest hit.

The volcanic Canary Islands, which are a favorite warm weather vacation site for Europeans, lie off Africa’s northwest coast.

A fissure is seen next to a house covered with ash on the Canary island of La Palma, Spain, Dec. 1 2021. A volcanic eruption in Spain’s Canary Islands shows no sign of ending after 85 days. It became the island of La Palma’s longest eruption on record on Sunday, Dec. 12. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, file)

Senator slams CBP for investigating journalists and demands internal report be turned over to Congress

Jana Winter
·Investigative Correspondent
Sun, December 12, 2021

WASHINGTON — Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is demanding that the Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog turn over its research on employees involved in a leak investigation of a reporter and a congressional staffer.

“The Department of Homeland Security [inspector general] must provide its investigation to Congress immediately,” Wyden said Sunday in a statement to Yahoo News. “If multiple government agencies were aware of this conduct and took no action to stop it, there needs to be serious consequences for every official involved, and DHS and the Justice Department must explain what actions they are taking to prevent this unacceptable conduct in the future.”

Customs and Border Patrol agents. (Eric Gay/AP)

Yahoo News on Saturday published an article revealing that a secretive unit at Customs and Border Protection had started a leak investigation into Ali Watkins, a reporter now at the New York Times, and her then boyfriend, James Wolfe. At the time, Wolfe was the security chief of the Senate select committee on intelligence.

The unit, known as the Counter Network Division, investigated up to 20 journalists, as well as members of Congress and their respective staffs. The investigations involved conducting database searches on their travel and looking at whether they had any connections to the terrorism watchlist, as well as gathering other personal data.

Yahoo News obtained a full copy of the inspector general report, and interviewed Jeffrey Rambo, the CBP official who initiated the leak investigation. Rambo and two other CBP employees were referred for possible prosecution by the inspector general, but no charges were filed.

Sen. Ron Wyden. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images for SEIU)

Wyden is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight of CBP, and he also has long been involved in legislation and debate surrounding government surveillance.

“If the allegations in this story are true, Customs and Border Protection has flagrantly abused government surveillance powers to target journalists and elected officials under the flimsiest of pretenses,” he said in the statement. “This story shows exactly why Americans should fear the expansion of government surveillance.”

“To start, DHS should immediately adopt the Justice Department’s guidelines that limit investigations of journalists and issue public reports with statistics on its searches of reporter records,” he added.

The DHS and CBP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Watchdog: US Federal anti-terror unit investigated journalists

By MARK SHERMAN

  Border Patrol agents hold a news conference prior to a media tour of a new U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary facility near the Donna International Bridge in Donna, Texas, May 2, 2019. A special Customs and Bordg. er Protection unit used sensitive government databases intended to track terrorists to investigate as many as 20 U.S.-based journalists, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter, according to a federal watchdog. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A special Customs and Border Protection unit used sensitive government databases intended to track terrorists to investigate as many as 20 U.S.-based journalists, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press reporter, according to a federal watchdog.

Yahoo News, which published an extensive report on the investigation, also found that the unit, the Counter Network Division, queried records of congressional staffers and perhaps members of Congress.

Jeffrey Rambo, an agent who acknowledged running checks on journalists in 2017, told federal investigators the practice is routine. “When a name comes across your desk you run it through every system you have access too, that’s just status quo, that’s what everyone does,” Rambo was quoted by Yahoo News as saying.

The AP obtained a redacted copy of a more than 500-page report by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general that included the same statement, but with the speaker’s name blacked out. The border protection agency is part of Homeland Security.

The revelations raised alarm in news organizations and prompted a demand for a full explanation.

“We are deeply concerned about this apparent abuse of power,” Lauren Easton, AP’s director of media relations, said in a statement. “This appears to be an example of journalists being targeted for simply doing their jobs, which is a violation of the First Amendment.”

In its own statement, Customs and Border Protection did not specifically address the investigation, but said, “CBP vetting and investigatory operations, including those conducted by the Counter Network Division, are strictly governed by well-established protocols and best practices. CBP does not investigate individuals without a legitimate and legal basis to do so.”

An employee at Storymakers Coffee Roasters, a small storefront shop Rambo owns in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood, said Saturday that Rambo was not immediately available to comment. He lives in San Diego.

The new disclosures are just the latest examples of federal agencies using their power to examine the contacts of journalists and others.

Earlier this year Attorney General Merrick Garland formally prohibited prosecutors from seizing the records of journalists in leak investigations, with limited exceptions, reversing years of department policy. That action came after an outcry over revelations that the Trump Justice Department had obtained records belonging to journalists, as well as Democratic members of Congress and their aides and a former White House counsel, Don McGahn.

During the Obama administration, federal investigators secretly seized phone records for some reporters and editors at the AP. Those seizures involved office and home lines as well as cellphones.

Rambo’s and the unit’s use of the databases was more extensive than previously known. The inspector general referred possible criminal charges for misusing government databases and lying to investigators, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute Rambo and two other Homeland Security employees.

Rambo complained to Yahoo News that Customs and Border Protection has not stood by him and that he has been unfairly portrayed in news reports.

“What none of these articles identify me as, is a law enforcement officer who was cleared of wrongdoing, who actually had a true purpose to be doing what I was doing,” he said, “and CBP refuses to acknowledge that, refuses to admit that, refuses to make that wrong right.”

Rambo had previously been identified as the agent who accessed the travel records of reporter Ali Watkins, then working for Politico, and questioned her about confidential sources. Watkins now writes for The New York Times.

Rambo was assigned to the border agency unit, part of the National Targeting Center in Sterling, Virginia, in 2017. He told investigators he initially approached Watkins as part of a broader effort to get reporters to write about forced labor around the world as a national security issue.

He also described similar efforts with AP reporter Martha Mendoza, according to an unredacted summary obtained by Yahoo News. Rambo’s unit “was able to vet MENDOZA as a reputable reporter,” the summary said, before trying to establish a relationship with her because of her expertise in writing about forced labor. Mendoza won her second Pulitzer Prize in 2016 as part of a team that reported on slave labor in the fishing industry in Southeast Asia.

Dan White, Rambo’s supervisor in Washington, told investigators that his unit ran Mendoza through multiple databases, and “CBP discovered that one of the phone numbers on Mendoza’s phone was connected with a terrorist,” Yahoo News reported. White’s case also was referred for prosecution and declined.

In response, AP’s Easton said, “The Associated Press demands an immediate explanation from U.S. Customs and Border Protection as to why journalists including AP investigative reporter Martha Mendoza were run through databases used to track terrorists and identified as potential confidential informant recruits.”

It was Rambo’s outreach to Watkins that led to the inspector general’s investigation. While he ostensibly sought her out to further his work on forced labor, Rambo quickly turned the focus to a leak investigation. Rambo even gave it a name, “Operation Whistle Pig,” for the brand of whiskey he drank when he met Watkins at a Washington, D.C., bar in June 2017.

The only person charged and convicted stemming from Rambo’s efforts is James Wolfe, a former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee who had a personal relationship with Watkins. Wolfe pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with reporters.

In the course of conversations with FBI agents, Rambo was questioned extensively about his interest in Watkins. He used the travel records to confront her about her relationship with Wolfe, asserting that Wolfe was her source for stories. Watkins acknowledged the relationship, but insisted Wolfe did not provide information for her stories.

Rambo said Watkins was not the only reporter whose records he researched through government databases, though he maintained in his interviews with the FBI that he was looking only at whether Wolfe was providing classified information. Rambo said he “conducted CBP record checks” on “15 to 20 national security reporters,” according to a FBI summary of the questioning that was contained in the inspector general’s report.

New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades-Ha said new details about the investigation of Watkins raised fresh concerns.

“We are deeply troubled to learn how U.S. Customs and Border Protection ran this investigation into a journalist’s sources. As the attorney general has said clearly, the government needs to stop using leak investigations as an excuse to interfere with journalism. It is time for Customs and Border Protection to make public a full record of what happened in this investigation so this sort of improper conduct is not repeated.”

Watkins said she, too, was “deeply troubled at the lengths CBP and DHS personnel apparently went to try and identify journalistic sources and dig into my personal life. It was chilling then, and it remains chilling now.”

——

Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

40% OF THE WORLD IS UNDER 30
Pharrell to college grads: ‘We are the emerging majority’
December 11, 2021

NSU graduates cheer for Pharrell Williams who gave the class's commencement speech Saturday, Dec.11, 2021 in Norfolk, Va. (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)


NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Grammy-winning musician Pharrell Williams on Saturday told the newest graduates of a historically Black university in Virginia to act like “the emerging majority” and help develop the area’s businesses and culture.

Williams gave the fall commencement speech at Norfolk State University, not far from where the producer and rapper grew up in adjoining Virginia Beach.

“I didn’t attend Norfolk State, but I was always present,” Williams said. “I am honored to have made this part of my work, my story and still today, I can’t wait to see how far you amazing, impressive graduates of Norfolk State ... how far you’ll go.”

Williams received an honorary doctorate from the school and was also named an honorary member of Norfolk State’s marching band — which brought him to tears, The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk reported.

Before the presentation, Willams said he remembered the band as a child and wondered why the band at his Virginia Beach high school lacked the same “cadence” as Norfolk State.

“I wanted to be able to make people feel the way Norfolk State’s band made me feel,” he said.

Williams said the city of Norfolk will thrive because it recognizes how important it is to acknowledge past and local heroes: “Norfolk will not be the city that limits its peoples’ own potential, but instead, it will feed it.”

He told listeners to do their part by spending money at local businesses that care, and by changing outdated language, like the word “minorities.”

“We are the emerging majority,” he said. “Don’t wait until Election Day. Vote with your wallets today, tomorrow and the next day.”

Williams has had a fraught relationship with the city of Virginia Beach recently. He criticized the city months ago for its response to the death of his cousin, who was shot by a police officer in March at the city’s oceanfront. Two weeks ago, it was announced that a grand jury determined the officer was justified in the fatal shooting.

Williams wrote city officials last month saying he won’t bring his Something in the Water music festival back to the city’s oceanfront, partly because of how the city handled the investigation.

Banksy creates T-shirt to help statue-toppling defendants
December 11, 2021

1 of 4

A person inside Rough Trade in Bristol, England, Saturday Dec. 11, 2021, holds up a T-shirt designed by street artist Banksy, being sold to support four people facing trial accused of criminal damage in relation to the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston. The anonymous artist posted on Instagram pictures of limited edition grey souvenir T-shirts which will go on sale on Saturday in Bristol. The shirts have a picture of Colston's empty plinth with a rope hanging off, with debris and a discarded sign nearby. (Jacob King/PA via AP)


LONDON (AP) — Hundreds of people lined up Saturday in the English city of Bristol to get the latest work by elusive street artist Banksy — a T-shirt created to help four defendants charged over the toppling of a local statue of a slave trader.

The gray shirt features the word Bristol above the empty plinth on which the statue of 17th-century slave merchant Edward Colston long stood, with a rope hanging from it and debris scattered around.

Anti-racism demonstrators pulled down the statue and and dumped it in Bristol harbor in June 2020 amid global protests sparked by the police killing of a Black American man, George Floyd.

Four people have been charged with criminal damage over the statue’s felling and are going on trial next week.

“I’ve made some souvenir shirts to mark the occasion,” Banksy said on social media Friday. “Available from various outlets in the city from tomorrow. All proceeds to the defendants so they can go for a pint.”

Banksy said the T-shirts cost 25 pounds ($33) and are limited to one per customer.

Banksy’s identity has never been confirmed, but he began his career spray-painting walls and bridges in Bristol, a port city in southwest England. Some of his works have sold for millions of dollars at auction.

Colston made a fortune transporting enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas on Bristol-based ships. He was a major benefactor to Bristol, with streets and institutions named for him — some of which have been renamed since the statue-felling sparked a debate about racism and historical commemoration.

City authorities fished the Colston statue out of the harbor and say it will be placed in a museum, along with placards from the Black Lives Matter demonstration.

Four face trial in UK over toppling of slave trader statue


The toppled statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol harbour (AFP/Handout)

Sun, December 12, 2021

Four people were due to go on trial in Britain on Monday in connection with the toppling of a statue of a 17th century slave trader during anti-racism protests.

Demonstrators pulled down the bronze memorial to Edward Colston in Bristol, western England, on June 7 last year, then dragged it to the city's harbour and threw it in the River Avon.

The actions came as part of global Black Lives Matter protests prompted by the killing by a white police officer of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in the United States the previous month.


Four people were arrested following the toppling of the statue of Colston, a leading figure in the Royal Africa Company which forcibly moved large numbers of West Africans.

Their trial on charges of criminal damage to the listed monument is due to start at 1000 GMT at Bristol Crown Court on Monday, according to court documents.

The defendants -- Rhian Graham, 29, Milo Ponsford, 25, Jake Skuse, 36, and Sage Willoughby, 21 -- have pleaded not guilty.

To support them, the artist Banksy, who comes from Bristol, announced he would be selling T-shirts to mark the occasion for £25 ($33, 30 euros).

"All proceeds to the defendants so they can go for a pint," the elusive graffiti artist wrote on his Instagram page.

The limited edition grey souvenir tops have a picture of Colston's empty plinth with a rope hanging off, debris and a discarded sign, as well as the word "BRISTOL" written above.

The Black Lives Matter protests have forced Britain into a reckoning with its colonial past, prompting a reassessment of statues, road names and buildings linked to historical figures associated with slavery.

Several Bristol institutions bearing Colston's name have since changed their name to avoid negative associations with him and the slave trade.

The statue, which had stood in the city since 1895, was recovered from the Avon and put on display with placards from the event, along with explanations of what happened and why.

The empty plinth was temporarily replaced by a statue of a female protester from the day, but it was taken down within 24 hours as it did not have local authority permission.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government is pressing ahead with contentious legislation to toughen jail terms for vandalism of historical artefacts.

During the countrywide protests, a statue of Johnson's hero, Winston Churchill, was defaced near parliament, branding the World War II leader a racist.

High-profile protests have also been held in Oxford, calling for the removal of a statue of the 19th century colonialist Cecil Rhodes.

phz/bp

REST IN POWER

Anne Rice, who breathed new life into vampires, dies at 80
By JAKE COYLEyesterday



 In this April 25, 2006, file photo, writer Anne Rice arrives to the opening night of the new Broadway musical "Lestat," in New York. Rice, the gothic novelist widely known for her bestselling novel "Interview with the Vampire," died late Saturday, Dec. 11, 2021, at the age of 80. Rice died due to complications from a stroke, her son Christopher Rice announced on her Facebook page and his Twitter page. (AP Photo/Dima Gavrysh, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — Anne Rice, the novelist whose lush, best-selling gothic tales, including “Interview With a Vampire,” reinvented the blood-drinking immortals as tragic antiheroes, has died. She was 80.

Rice died late Saturday due to complications from a stroke, her son Christopher Rice announced on her Facebook page and his Twitter page.

“As a writer, she taught me to defy genre boundaries and surrender to my obsessive passions,” Christopher Rice, also an author, wrote. “In her final hours, I sat beside her hospital bed in awe of her accomplishments and her courage.”

Rice’s 1976 novel “Interview With the Vampire” was later adapted, with a script by Rice, into the 1994 movie directed by Neil Jordan and starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. It’s also set to be adapted again in an upcoming TV series on AMC and AMC+ set to premiere next year.

“Interview With the Vampire,” in which reporter Daniel Molloy interviews Louis de Pointe du Lac, was Rice’s first novel but over the next five decades, she would write more than 30 books and sell more than 150 million copies worldwide. Thirteen of those were part of the “Vampire Chronicles” begun with her 1976 debut. Long before “Twilight” or “True Blood,” Rice introduced sumptuous romance, female sexuality and queerness — many took “Interview With the Vampire” as an allegory for homosexuality — to the supernatural genre.

“I wrote novels about people who are shut out life for various reasons,” Rice wrote in her 2008 memoir “Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession.” “This became a great theme of my novels — how one suffers as an outcast, how one is shut out of various levels of meaning and, ultimately, out of human life itself.”

Born Howard Allen Frances O’Brien in 1941, she was raised in New Orleans, where many of her novels were set. Her father worked for the postal service but made sculptures and wrote fiction on the side. Her older sister, Alice Borchardt, also wrote fantasy and horror fiction. Rice’s mother died when Rice was 15.

Raised in an Irish Catholic family, Rice initially imagined herself becoming a priest (before she realized women weren’t allowed) or a nun. Rice often wrote about her fluctuating spiritual journey. In 2010, she announced that she was no longer Christian, saying “I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control.”

“I believed for a long time that the differences, the quarrels among Christians didn’t matter a lot for the individual, that you live your life and stay out of it. But then I began to realize that it wasn’t an easy thing to do,” Rice told The Associated Press then. “I came to the conclusion that if I didn’t make this declaration, I was going to lose my mind.”

Rice married the poet Stan Rice, who died in 2002, in 1961. They lived amid the bohemian scene of Haight-Ashbury in 1960s San Francisco where Rice described herself as “a square,” typing away and studying writing at San Francisco State University while everyone else partied. Together they had two children: Christopher and Michelle, who died of leukemia at 5 in 1972.

It was while grieving Michelle’s death that Rice wrote “Interview With the Vampire,” turning one of her short stories into a book. Rice traced her fascination with vampires back to the 1934 film, “Dracula’s Daughter,” which she saw as a young girl.

“I never forgot that film,” Rice told the Daily Beast in 2016. “That was always my impression of what vampires were: earthlings with heightened sensibility and a doomed appreciation of life.”

Though Rice had initially struggled to get it published, “Interview With a Vampire” was a massive hit, particularly in paperback. She didn’t immediately extend the story, following it up with a pair of historical novels and three erotic novels penned under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure. But in 1985, she published “The Vampire Lestat,” about the “Interview With a Vampire” character she would continually return to, up to 2018′s “Blood Communion: A Tale of Prince Lestat.”

In Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles,” some critics saw only cheap eroticism. But others — including millions of readers — saw the most consequential interpretation of vampires since Bram Stoker.

“Let me suggest one reason why the books found a mass audience. They were written by someone whose auditory and visual experiences shaped the prose,” Rice wrote in her memoir. “I am a terrible reader. But my mind is filled with these auditory and visual lessons and, powered by them, I can write about five times faster than I can read.”

Rice’s longtime editor, Victoria Wilson, recalled her as “a fierce storyteller who wrote large, lived quietly, and imagined worlds on a grand scale.”

“She summoned the feelings of an age long before we knew what they were,” Wilson said in a statement. “As a writer, she was decades ahead of her time.”

Rice will be interred during a private ceremony at a family mausoleum in New Orleans, her family said. A public celebration will also be planned for next year in New Orleans. “Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris,” a novel Rice wrote with her son Christopher, will be published in February.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP