Florida's Ron DeSantis is on the cusp of raising more than any governor — ever

Ben Werschkul

·Washington Correspondent

Sat, September 17, 2022 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis broadcast his national ambitions this week by taking credit for a flight that sent undocumented immigrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, making him the latest conservative lawmaker to protest the rise in illegal immigration by shipping border crossers to a liberal state.

The governor's stunt may have broken the law, and spurred locals to assist the migrants. It’s nonetheless likely to strengthen his position as former president Donald Trump’s most formidable rival in 2024 among Republican primary voters. DeSantis has attracted national attention for championing his state's so-called don't say gay law and for downplaying the risks of COVID-19.

But it's his fundraising prowess that perhaps cements his standing as the primary Trump alternative. After years of diligently gathering checks, the Florida governor is now on the cusp of a major milestone. He is set to soon take the mantle of having raised the most money of any candidate for governor — ever.

That’s according to data from OpenSecrets.org that goes back decades.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks after the primary election for the midterms during a rally in Tampa in August. (REUTERS/Octavio Jones)

“The DeSantis story is more about a politician who's using his state campaign to be a test site for a potential presidential run," Sarah Bryner, the director of research and strategy at OpenSecrets, told Yahoo Finance on Friday.

DeSantis has structured his fundraising in a new way, directing donors both to his campaign committee and his political action committee. The PAC has been successful, Bryner notes, because it has no contribution limits.

The biggest checkbooks on Team DeSantis

Plenty of wealthy donors have taken full advantage of that quirk in campaign finance laws.

A key donor is Citadel CEO Ken Griffin. The hedge funder has backed DeSantis for years, giving $5 million for his current campaign on top of contributing $5.75 million in 2018.

Griffin declined to list DeSantis as his favorite candidate during a May appearance at the Milken Institute Global Conference. However, he conceded that DeSantis “has done a lot of things right” when it comes to preparing for 2024.

Griffin also said at that appearance that he didn’t appreciate the governor's recent campaign against the The Walt Disney Company (DIS) over his opposition to the state's anti-gay law. “It can be portrayed or feel or look like retaliation,” Griffin said.

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin speaks at the 2022 Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California in May. (REUTERS/Mike Blake)

According to the latest data, DeSantis has raised over $174 million since he took office. That's much more than he is likely to need to hold his seat, where he enjoys a polling edge against Democratic rival, Charlie Crist. While this money is ostensibly being raised for the upcoming governor's race, it's clearly aimed at 2024 — and whatever DeSantis doesn't spend can be saved for the future.

The biggest contributor on record is Robert Bigelow. The owner of the Budget Suites hotel chain has written exactly one check so far this election cycle: $10 million to the DeSantis PAC. Bigelow has bestowed his fortune on a range of unlikely causes, from UFO-hunting to "consciousness studies" to inflatable space habitats, according to Forbes.

Another mega-donor is Richard Uihlein and his wife, who have chipped in $1.2 million. Uihlein, worth an estimated $3.9 billion, gave Trump money during the 2020 contest, according to Federal Election Commission data, but hasn't given to the former president since then. Still, he's backed an array of Trump-aligned candidates such as Herschel Walker in Georgia and Blake Masters in Arizona this year.

Plenty of other big names grace the DeSantis donor database. Notable financial figures include Charles B. Johnson of Franklin Resources ($594,919 since 2019); Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus ($500,000), hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones ($400,000), and more.

Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus during a ribbon cutting ceremony in 2005. (Barry Williams/Getty Images)

DeSantis has already set the fundraising record among non-self-financing governors and willI likely soon surpass the totals achieved by Meg Whitman in California and Jay Pritzker in Illinois in recent years. Those two billionaires spent millions of their own money on their respective campaigns

DeSantis and Trump ‘building their war chests’

The Florida governor has also gotten notice, but not yet any money, from another key GOP bankroller. Billionaire Peter Thiel, the key Trump donor in 2016 who sat out the 2020 presidential race, said at a recent conservatism conference that DeSantis is “probably the best of the governors in terms of offering a real alternative to California,” Insider reports.

Neither Trump nor DeSantis has yet declared plans to run for president in 2024, though Bryner notes they're both building their campaign war chests and may end up competing for donors in 2023.

Then-President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis participate in a "COVID-19 Response and Storm Preparedness" event in Belleair, Florida in 2020. (REUTERS/Tom Brenner)

Trump is handily beating DeSantis in nearly every poll, which can be far from a reliable indicator this far ahead of an election. The former president has maintained his usual bravado in the face of the possible challenge.

Asked about potential competition from DeSantis, Trump told Yahoo Finance in an interview last year: “I'd beat him like I would beat everyone else.”

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

Ted Cruz Tells Sean Hannity Transporting Migrants Is Illegal – but Advocates for It Anyway (Video)



Katie Campione
Sat, September 17, 2022

Texas Senator Ted Cruz argued during a Friday appearance on Fox News that transporting migrants across state lines could be illegal — yet still praised the recent actions of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis of sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and advocated for more similar moves.

Cruz, who is a lawyer and graduate of Harvard Law School, was asked by Fox News host Sean Hannity on Friday to weigh in on the situation “from a legal standpoint.”

“Let’s say I went down to the border and I brought a big truck with me, and I picked up a bunch of illegal immigrants, and I started transporting them across the country,” Hannity said. “Would I or would I not likely be arrested for human trafficking and would it be illegal to do that for me, if I did that?”



Cruz was clear in his response: “For you, a citizen, you could easily be arrested. Although, to be honest, Joe Biden’s Justice Department wouldn’t arrest you.”

The senator added that the law “is clear” on the matter, before peculiarly accusing President Biden of being “the biggest human trafficker on the face of the planet.”

Earlier this week, Florida Governor DeSantis took responsibility for two planes from San Antonio, Texas, that were full of migrants, which touched down in Martha’s Vineyard. The move has drawn heavy criticism from late-night hosts like Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert, as well as legal experts and celebrities.

Also Read:
Joy Reid Compares Ron DeSantis’ Immigrant Flights to 1960s Segregationists’ ‘Reverse Freedom Rides’ North and West (Video)

This isn’t the first time a Republican lawmaker has done so. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been busing migrants to Washington, D.C. for months.

According to legal experts who spoke with The Washington Post, the law isn’t quite as clear as Cruz makes it out to be. If the migrants willingly chose to be transported to these cities, then it can’t necessarily be likened to human trafficking.

Border patrol officials are able to transport migrants, noted Bridgette Carr, a law professor at the University of Michigan. She added: “I would be curious if that immunity extends beyond federal officials, since immigration is generally a power the feds regulate exclusively.”

Also Read:
Ron DeSantis Roasted Over Martha’s Vineyard Debacle: ‘The Hypocrisy Is Real’

Local Armenians protest U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan's military forces

Louis Sahagún
Sat, September 17, 202

Demonstrators supporting Armenia protest on Saturday outside the Azerbaijani Consulate on Wilshire Boulevard. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

More than 100 people gathered outside the Azerbaijani Consulate in Los Angeles on Saturday demanding an end to attacks by Azerbaijan forces in a disputed border region with Armenia and Artsakh, where an estimated 200 people were killed in the past week.

The demonstration coincided with a surprise weekend visit to Armenia by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and two Armenian American members of Congress, and the introduction of a resolution in Congress by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) demanding a prohibition on U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan.

The U.S. Embassy said the visit will include a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, according to the Associated Press.

Like many others waving Armenian flags at the event organized by the Armenian Youth Federation, Tenny Alahverdian, 20, said she found herself thinking of relatives "suffering on the front lines.”

“We’re hoping that the United States comes down hard on Azerbaijan,” she said. “For President Biden to be calling for peace while funding Azerbaijan’s military is a crazy — and deadly — double standard.”

The demonstration was part of an effort that has spanned decades of advocacy and activism by Armenians around the world. Much of that movement has been centered in Los Angeles County, home to America’s largest Armenian diaspora community.

The movement was launched in the 1980s, when children of survivors of the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918 established themselves in the U.S. The genocide claimed the lives of more than 1 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which became the modern republic of Turkey.

Over the years, Armenian Americans grew more politically active, contributing to political campaigns and the successful push last year to have Biden officially recognize the genocide.

Bitter memories of the massacre have profoundly shaped Armenian and Armenian American identity. But U.S. presidents had avoided using the term “genocide” so as not to anger the Turkish government, an important ally that disputes that what took place constituted genocide.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan blame each other for instigating the recent bloody clashes.

But demonstrators outside the Wilshire Boulevard consulate on Saturday say the fighting started in 2020 when Azerbaijan, with the help of Turkey, launched a war to remove Armenians living in the disputed border region of Nagorno-Karabakh, referred to as the Republic of Artsakh.

News of Pelosi’s visit to Armenia, combined with Schiff’s proposed resolution, prompted Raffi Haig Hamparian, chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, to urge Congress to "stop shipping U.S. tax dollars to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.”

“A halt to U.S. aid to Azerbaijan,” he said, “would also meaningfully challenge our State Department’s deeply flawed policy of answering every act of Azerbaijani aggression with generic calls upon all parties to refrain from violence.”

The Azerbaijani Consulate, however, said in a statement on its website that the ongoing tensions “arose as a result of large-scale provocations by Armenia, and therefore the responsibility completely falls on ... Armenia.”

Alahverdian, the Los Angeles protest attendee, said: “The situation isn’t looking good anyway you look at it. It’s difficult being a member of the diaspora.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Pelosi condemns Azerbaijan over Armenia attack





U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, center left, and Head of Armenian National Assembly Alen Simonyan, center right, attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the monument to the victims of mass killings by Ottoman Turks during the massacre, in Yerevan, Armenia, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2022. A U.S. congressional delegation headed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has arrived in Armenia. The group landed Saturday amid a cease-fire that has held for three days. Earlier this week, an outburst of fighting with neighboring Azerbaijan killed more than 200 troops from both sides. 

(Hayk Baghdasaryan/Photolure via AP)More


Sun, September 18, 2022 

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — The speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said Sunday that the United States deplores recent attacks by Azerbaijan and called for a negotiated solution to the countries' conflict.

Pelsoi's visit to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, with a congressional delegation came just a few days days after two days of shelling by both sides that killed more than 200 troops. It was the largest outbreak of hostilities in more than two years.

The two ex-Soviet countries have been locked in a decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is part of Azerbaijan but was long under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.

During a six-week war in 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed broad swaths of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories held by Armenian forces. More than 6,700 people died in that fighting.

Armenia and Azerbaijan each blamed the other for starting the shelling attacks last week.

Pelosi on Sunday met with Alen Simonyan, president of Armenia's parliament, and told reporters afterward that “Our meeting again had a particular importance to us because the focus was on security following the illegal and deadly attacks by Azerbaijan on the Armenian territory.

“We strongly condemn those attacks — we in our delegation on behalf of Congress — which threaten prospects for a much-needed peace agreement,” she said. “The United States ... has clearly and has long stated that there can be no military solution to the conflict. We continue to watch the situation closely and we continue supporting a negotiated, comprehensive and sustainable solution to all issues relating to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”

The Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry sharply criticized her comments.

“Pelosi’s baseless and unfair accusations against Azerbaijan are unacceptable," it said in a statement.

“We emphasize with regret that Pelosi, who speaks of justice, has not purposefully shown any position until today regarding the policy of aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan, the occupation of the territory of Azerbaijan for almost 30 years, the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis and other similar grave crimes, for which Armenia is responsible,” the ministry said.

Sandy Hook Family Lawyers Question In Court Whether Alex Jones Is Taking Trial Seriously


Fri, September 16, 2022 

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who is on trial in Connecticut for calling the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre a hoax, continued Friday to describe the proceedings as a “kangaroo court” from his Infowars studio in Texas.

Jones' commentary became a focus of testimony on the fourth day of the trial, with a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families questioning a corporate representative for Jones' Infowars brand about how seriously the company was taking the trial.

The lawyer, Christopher Mattei, showed the jury a photo he said was of an Infowars webpage, depicting the judge in the trial with lasers shooting out of her eyes.

“On a scale of one to 10, how seriously is Infowars taking this trial,” Mattei asked the corporate representative, Brittany Paz.

“10. It's serious to me,” Paz responded.

The exchange occurred as Jones prepares to begin attending the trial in Waterbury next week and the judge, Barbara Bellis, considers a request by the families' lawyers to limit what Jones and his lawyer can say and argue in court. Jones is expected to testify, but it's not clear yet when.

Alex Jones

Jones and his Free Speech Systems company are on trial in a lawsuit brought by an FBI agent who responded to the shooting and relatives of eight of the 20 first-graders and six educators killed in the December 2012 massacre in Newtown. They say Jones inflicted emotional and psychological harm on them, and they have been threatened and harassed by Jones’ followers.

Jones has already been found liable for spreading the myth that the shooting never happened, and the six-member jury will be deciding how much he and his company should pay the plaintiffs in damages.

In a motion filed Thursday, the families' lawyers asked Bellis for several limitations on what Jones and his lawyer, Norman Pattis, can say and argue at the trial, including barring them alleging that holding Jones and Free Speech Systems accountable for their actions offends the First Amendment.

Pattis outlined Jones' defense in a motion filed Friday in response to the families' motion.

“The defendants have argued, and intend to argue, that the plaintiffs have motives, biases and interest in exaggerating their claims against the defendants, to wit: their interest in gun control regulation and their hostility to Mr. Jones,” Pattis wrote.

Pattis also said Jones is challenging the amount of any damages to be awarded and is focusing on the families' motives for “overstating their damages: to wit: their desire to silence Alex Jones not just because he harmed them, but because they find his politics and political affiliations repugnant.”

Pattis added, “Mr. Jones’ conspiracy theory may by offensive to some, and ridiculous to others, but he has not gained millions of listeners by compelling people to tune in. He speaks a language that many Americans seem prepared to accept.”

On his web show on Thursday, Jones once again called the Connecticut proceedings “a show trial.”

The judge “now has to carry out this fraud,” he said. “But across the legal community, people are just saying, ’My God, this is something worthy of Venezuela. This is unbelievable.’ ”

Mattei has showed the jury evidence that Jones' viewership and sales of products such as nutritional supplements and clothing on his web site soared around the times he talked about the Sandy Hook shooting, suggesting Jones was profiting off the shooting.

Pattis countered in court Thursday that the jury should be allowed to hear that Jones believes there is a conspiracy to take guns away and enslave people.

“They have put before this jury the theory that Jones merchandizes fear for the sake of making a buck," Pattis said. "Our claim is that he recognizes the fear of the people and makes a dollar to support that premise.”

Last month, a jury in Texas awarded the parents of one of the slain Sandy Hook children nearly $50 million in a similar lawsuit against Jones and his company over the hoax claims. Jones also faces a third trial in Texas later this year over how much he should pay the parents of another child killed in the shooting.

Alex Jones’s audience and Infowars’ revenue grew as Jones alleged Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax

Associated Press - Saturday



WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — Infowars’ revenues and website viewership spiked as Alex Jones alleged on his show in 2014 that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, according to documents shown to a jury Thursday.

Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, are on trial in Connecticut in a lawsuit brought by an FBI agent who responded to the shooting and relatives of eight of the 20 first graders and six educators killed in the December 2012 massacre in Newtown. They say Jones inflicted emotional and psychological harm on them, and they have been threatened and harassed by Jones’s followers.

Jones has already been found liable for spreading the myth that the shooting never happened and the six-member jury in Waterbury will be deciding how much he and his company should pay the plaintiffs in damages. The trial started Tuesday and is expected to last a month.

Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the families, showed internal Infowars documents detailing the revenue and website-visit spikes around the time of an article on Sept. 24, 2014, on the Infowars website that said no one died at Sandy Hook and Jones discussing the article on his show the next day.

The families’ lawsuit claims that Jones trafficked in lies to increase his audience and sales of the nutritional supplements, clothing and other merchandise he sells on the Infowars website and hawks on his web show. Jones and guests on his show said the shooting was staged with crisis actors as part of gun control efforts.

The discussion of revenue and web viewership came Thursday as Mattei spent a second day questioning Brittany Paz, a Connecticut lawyer hired by Jones to testify about his companies’ operations.

Documents showed daily revenues to the Infowars online store increased from $48,000 on Sept. 24 to more than $230,000 on Sept. 25. Total user sessions on the Infowars website, meanwhile, increased from about 543,000 on Sept. 23 to about 1 million on Sept. 24, the documents showed.

Paz also was asked about Infowars videos that show Jones and guests using lies and misinformation to claiming the massacre was staged. She acknowledged that much of what was said was not true.

In the videos, Jones says the school shooting was a “giant hoax” and “the fakest thing since the $3 bill.” He said there were aerial images of student actors running in circles in and out of the school when the images actually were of a nearby firehouse where people gathered after the shooting. He also claimed CNN was using green screens in fake interviews with people in Sandy Hook.

Mattei later showed an email from a company executive showing internal conflict within Infowars about continuing to discuss conspiracy theories about the school shooting.

“The Sandy Hook stuff is killing us,” Infowars editor Paul Watson wrote, asking why the company was risking its reputation and audience by harassing the parents of dead children.

Last month, a jury in Texas awarded the parents of one of the slain Sandy Hook children nearly $50 million in a similar lawsuit against Jones and his company.

Paz acknowledged that Infowars broadcast misinformation. She also acknowledged that Jones did not check the qualifications of a guest who appeared numerous times on his show — a conspiracy theorist who claimed to be a school-security expert who had investigating the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado — even as Jones boasted of his credentials and Infowars received emails questioning the guest’s credibility.

Paz testified that she believes Jones and his companies have made at least $100 million in the decade since the massacre and Jones is now worth millions of dollars.

Website traffic data reports run by Infowars employees and presented at the trial also show that by 2016, his show aired on 150 affiliate radio stations, and the Infowars website got 40 million page views a month.

Mattei showed Paz internal Infowars emails between employees sharing Google Analytics data. Paz earlier testified that she was told by Infowars employees that they didn’t use Google Analytics regularly to track website viewing data. After showing her the emails, Mattei asked if it was still her testimony that Infowars didn’t regularly use Google Analytics.

“I don’t know at this point,” she said.

Jones now says he believes the shooting happened, but he insists his comments were protected by free speech rights, which he cannot argue at trial because he has already been found liable for damages.

See: Infowars host Alex Jones concedes the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Conn., was not a hoax but ‘100% real’

Also: Alex Jones has created a ‘living hell’ of harassment and death threats, testify Sandy Hook school parents

The families say the emotional and psychological harm to them was profound and persistent. Relatives say they were subjected to social-media harassment, death threats, strangers videotaping them and their children, and the surreal pain of being told that they were faking their loss.

Jones’s lawyer, Norman Pattis, said in his opening statement Tuesday that any damages should be minimal and claimed the families were exaggerating the harm they say they have suffered.

On his Infowars show Thursday, Jones once again called the proceedings in Connecticut “a show trial.”

The judge “now has to carry out this fraud,” he said. “But across the legal community, people are just saying, ‘My God, this is something worthy of Venezuela. This is unbelievable.’ ”

Alex Jones trial: Kyrie Irving posts ‘New World Order’ video as jury sees more Sandy Hook conspiracies (yahoo.com)

Anchorage task force urges city to use Golden Lion Hotel and Dempsey Anderson Ice Arena for emergency homeless shelters


Emily Goodykoontz, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Sun, September 18, 2022 

LONG READ

Sep. 18— Golden Lion Hotel

The community task force called upon by the Anchorage Assembly to quickly draft plans for sheltering hundreds of homeless residents this winter has urged the city to open shelters in two city-owned buildings — the former Golden Lion Hotel in Midtown and the Dempsey Anderson Ice Arena in Spenard.

While all city-owned facilities "present some level of community impact and/or public protest," using the hotel and ice arena would impose the smallest community burden compared to other city properties and they are immediately available, the task force said in its recommendations.

The group made its preliminary recommendations public on Friday. The proposed plan would shelter between 415 and 466 people, adding capacity for about 330 in shelter and 85 to 136 in housing.

The task force is a group of about 30 people with expertise or experience in homelessness and related social services and is led by the Anchorage Coalition to End Homelessness. It includes the coalition's executive director Meg Zaletel, who is also a Midtown Assembly member; Assembly member Felix Rivera; the city's ombudsman, Darrel Hess; Lisa Sauder, CEO of Bean's Cafe; and other members from a wide array of homeless service and community organizations, including United Way, Covenant House, RurAL CAP and the Anchorage Health Department.

Its proposal comes as city officials are scrambling to open enough emergency winter shelter for more than 350 people living unsheltered in Anchorage — and as the Sept. 30 closing date for the city-sanctioned homeless camp at Centennial Park Campground rapidly approaches.

Given the looming deadline and cold weather, the group's recommendations focused on what could be done immediately to provide shelter for the next 90 days. In early to mid-October, the task force will give a broader report and further recommendations for continued emergency sheltering this winter, the group said.

In its preliminary recommendations, the task force said that standing up shelters in city-owned facilities allows for the swiftest possible recourse and would help the city to meet Centennial's scheduled closure date, which Mayor Dave Bronson announced earlier this month. An estimated 200 or more people are living unsheltered in the city campground, where the Bronson administration directed and bused homeless residents as it closed the Sullivan Arena mass shelter in June.

The city also faces a legal deadline to open emergency shelter. Anchorage law requires officials to open emergency shelter once temperatures drop below 45 degrees and "when a lack of available shelter options poses a danger to the life and health of unsheltered people."

The task force's preliminary recommendations say the city should:

—Use the Golden Lion Hotel as a non-congregate emergency shelter. It is city-owned, has 85 hotel rooms that are already furnished, could be activated immediately and is currently unused. This could house 85 to 170 people, depending on how many people share a room, and is the least expensive at about $371,000 for operations from October through December.

[Anchorage's last COVID-era shelter is in a downtown hotel. The clock is ticking on its closure.]

—Open a 240-260 person congregate shelter in the Dempsey Anderson or Ben Boeke Ice Arena. Dempsey is the better option because the other arena is located downtown and is the current home for Wolverines hockey, the task force said. This would cost about $1.372 million for three months.

The Dena'ina or Egan Centers could also be used as shelters but are "less desirable due to their downtown location and the lack of shower facilities," the task force said. Using trailer-mounted showers indoors would be possible.

—Give money to current shelter providers to expand their programs. Covenant House, a shelter for youth, could add 25 beds with an additional $200,000 in funding. Beans Cafe could open beds for 40 people with an additional $306,000. Both are able to quickly increase capacity, but they need funding to do so.

—The Brother Francis Shelter will open another 20 beds starting next month. This is already funded.

The task force also included a list of potential shelter locations that could be used later in the winter, including privately owned buildings and hotels. Then, depending on capacity needs, the ice arena could be phased out.

The need for shelter will likely increase beyond 350 this winter, as the city phases out its shelter at the Aviator hotel, rental assistance ends for some households, and because shelters generally see greater use in the coldest parts of winter, the task force said.

The mayor proposed his own emergency shelter plan earlier this month, but the administration provided only sparse details at the time and the plan drew skepticism from Assembly members. The mayor has since flip-flopped on key aspects of his plan — the mayor announced last week that he would open shelters in two community recreation centers at the end of the month, after first describing them as a last resort option in his plan. Days after that announcement, he reversed course on the rec centers and said he would not use them, following community outcry over the repurposing of critical neighborhood buildings.

Coronavirus, COVID-19, pandemic, Dempsey Anderson Ice Arena

Bronson's plans include lodging residents in 20 portable buildings likely provided by the Anchorage School District, distributing city grants to organizations and churches that stand up their own shelter sites, continuing to shelter people in rooms at the Aviator Hotel downtown and opening a planned East Anchorage shelter and navigation center that is now under construction.

The task force in its recommendations decried the portable building idea for the lack of restrooms and showers in the buildings and for not yet having any feasible locations identified.

In an email to the Daily News, a spokeswoman for the school district said that the buildings are "usable structurally."

The school district has an "excess inventory of relocatable buildings and has had an ongoing need to reduce its surplus because the buildings are not ideal for all-season use," spokeswoman Lisa Miller said. "Most of these buildings have been in ASD's inventory for 30+ years and originated during a prolonged period of growth and construction."

Using the 150-bed shelter and navigation center project under construction at Tudor and Elmore roads, as the mayor proposed, is becoming increasingly unlikely. The project was nearly killed this week by Assembly members, who came close to voting down entirely the $4.9 million needed to continue construction.

[In a switch-up of 3 top city officials, Anchorage Mayor Bronson names new homeless coordinator]

The future of that project, which was spearheaded by the Bronson administration, remains tenuous. It awaits another Assembly vote on the funding in late October. Many Assembly members are skeptical or outright opposed to it, pointing to ballooning costs, a rushed timeline and a lack of critical information from the administration, such as a site study or an operating plan.

Even without the funding delay, it was not projected to be finished until spring, though Bronson officials said it could begin sheltering people at partial capacity in late November or early December.

Some members who belong to the Assembly's moderate-to-liberal majority have indicated their votes on the funding will hinge on Bronson's agreement to use the Golden Lion as an emergency shelter this winter. They also say he must make real efforts to convert the hotel into a substance abuse treatment center long-term. It's a proposed project Bronson has long opposed, and his criticism of the purchase was a fundamental refrain of his campaign for mayor.

Assembly members attached a caveat to millions in funding set aside for the navigation center and shelter, requiring a firm written commitment and good-faith effort from Bronson to convert the former Golden Lion Hotel into a substance misuse treatment center.

Last week, Bronson announced he is not considering a treatment facility in the building because a planned $100 million state transportation project at the Seward Highway and 36th Avenue, which is not yet funded, would affect the property and has a "high likelihood" of a "total take of the property."

However, at an Assembly meeting this week, the mayor indicated he may become more open to finding a use for the property, and said he is "open to meeting with the Anchorage Assembly to discuss what we're going to do in the short and long term."

For now, the Golden Lion sits unused. Broad support for its use as an emergency shelter this winter appears to be growing among Assembly members, including those who are generally more aligned with the conservative Bronson administration.

"As far as the Golden Lion, I just want to say that, listen, if we can use stadiums and we can use existing hotels and we can use campgrounds and we can use temporary structures, I don't know why we can't use the Golden Lion," member Kevin Cross said during Tuesday's Assembly meeting. "I'm not an attorney, and this isn't a Holiday Inn, but it seems to me like, gosh, we own this thing and I'd really like to use it somehow."

WHO SAID IT'S OVER?!

Pandemic homeless hotels close, sending some back to streets


JESSE BEDAYN
Fri, September 16, 2022 

DENVER (AP) — As Charlie Gilmore collected his belongings Friday to leave the Denver hotel that had been a home to him and 137 other previously homeless people during the pandemic, he pondered where he would spend the night.

The 58-year-old is one of thousands of people without homes across the country who found relief in motel rooms during the pandemic, but are now facing uncertainty as the hotels close, special government funding during the pandemic dwindles and leases come to an end.

Cities from Anchorage to New Orleans have ended or are winding down their hotel programs, which offered a good alternative to packed homeless shelters amid the spread of COVID-19.

“Somewhere down the road here there’s a bunch of cedars,” said Gilmore, pointing to nearby trees while sitting atop a neon sleeping bag rated for freezing weather as Denver’s winter looms.

The Quality Inn in Denver where Gilmore lived was leased from the private owner by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. It provided rooms for those over 65-years-old and people at greater risk for severe COVID-19 illness during the pandemic.

Opened in April 2020, FEMA funds directed through Denver to the Coalition helped keep the hotel running over the past 2 1/2 years. But the $9 million total spent on the lease and an additional $5 to $6 million in operational costs became unsustainable, said John Parvensky, president and CEO of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.

“We are kind of in a Catch-22,” said Parvensky, who said case management is still being provided to Quality Inn residents. “It wasn’t designed to be a long-term fix.”

Some leaving the Quality Inn in Denver have found permanent housing, others are moving into shelters, some are back on the street, and a few are moving into temporary hotel rooms paid for by Housekeys Action Network Denver, or HAND, which started a GoFundMe page to buy camping gear and fund hotel stays. The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless is also pitching in.

As of Sept. 12, only 57 of the inn’s 138 residents had some type of temporary or long-term housing lined up, according to a letter from the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. Updated numbers from the organization are not yet available.

Anjanette Gallegos, 54, who sat in front of the beige Quality Inn on Friday in Denver, was waiting for a Lyft ride to move into a new apartment she had secured, but said leaving the community was bittersweet.

Having couch surfed before the pandemic, having her own room was a godsend.

“A home’s not a home unless you can call it your own home,” Gallegos said.

Brett Sterba, another Quality Inn resident, said he didn’t yet know where he would pitch his tent Friday night, but plans to eventually return to a Denver street corner where he twirls a sign with smiley faces for some cash.

“It kind of bums me out,” he said of the hotel’s closure. “I thought it was going really well and it’s too bad they don’t have something more permanent like this.”

Terese Howard, an organizer for the Housekeys Action Network Denver, believes that the hotel’s operations should have been extended.

“If a year or two ago this effort had gone toward finding permanent housing, this could have been avoided,” said Howard.

The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless has purchased a Denver-area hotel and is in the process of acquiring a second for permanent housing as part of a wider trend across the country — spurred by the success of pandemic-era programs — to convert typically tourist lodgings into long-term options.

Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said that while it is sad to see the temporary housing in hotels close, it provided an important blueprint for homeless advocates around the country.

“It really taught us a lesson in how we could really address this problem in a way that is comprehensive and fundamental," he said.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom's “Project Homekey” program grew out of what the state called Project Roomkey — an initiative that housed homeless people in hotels up and down the state. “Project Homekey,” which started in June 2020, is turning vacant motels, hotels and other unused properties into permanent supportive housing. The state buys the properties, coverts them and gives them to local governments that then contract with local providers for needed services.

Newsom last month announced nearly $700 million from the program for 35 new projects. That brings the total to more than 200 projects projected to create more than 12,500 permanent and interim homes.

Newsom said last month that the program “is changing lives across the state” and called it “a model for the nation.”

Whitehead and Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said the main barrier to expanding hotel accommodations for the homeless is funding.

“I would lay the blame at the feet of the federal government,” said Whitehead. "We are back to business as usual, not providing enough resources for the problems.”

Oliva highlighted that the private rooms offered unhoused people security, privacy, and stability, and increased their likelihood of finding permanent housing.

"It's got to be devastating for somebody to have gotten some measure and ability to have stability and some comfort in their lives to be exited from a program like that,” she said. “It’s what we didn’t want to happen.”

___

Associated Press writer Donald Thompson contributed to this article from Sacramento, Calif.

___

Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Bedayn on Twitter: @bedaynjesse

As resistance grows to the fossil fuel regime, laws are springing up everywhere to suppress climate activists

Jeff Sparrow - Yesterday - THE GUARDIAN

The climate crisis accelerates. Anti-protest laws proliferate.


Photograph: Lukas Coch/EPA© Provided by The Guardian

These developments are not unrelated.

You might have seen the new report by the World Meteorological Society, the one warning about humanity entering what UN secretary general António Guterres calls ‘“uncharted territory of destruction”. As emissions exceed pre-pandemic levels, the planet is now as likely as not to face temperatures more than 1.5C above pre-industrial measurements (the limit the UN COP26 summit pledged to avert) within the next five years.

Related:

  Why the collapse of an Atlantic ocean current could mean La Niña becomes the norm | Matthew England, Andréa S. Taschetto and Bryam Orihuela-Pinto for the Conversation

A separate study in Science speculates that key ecological tipping points (including ice sheet collapses and the disruption of a major north Atlantic ocean current) may have already been passed.

Why, despite all the warnings, does the world keep hurtling towards destruction?

Well, the environmental economist Aviel Verbruggen estimates that the fossil fuel industry generated profits of US$2.8bn each and every day for the last 50 years.

The stakes could not be higher for the planet and its people. But they’re also immense for the corporate polluters, with the biggest companies collectively projected to develop new oil and gas fields to the tune of US$932bn by the end of 2030 – and an eye-popping US$1.5tn by 2040.

That’s a lot of incentive to keep emitting, even before the Ukrainian war delivered a fresh bonanza. ExxonMobil recently announced a $17.85bn profit for the second quarter of 2022 (a figure nearly four times greater than it made a year ago); both Chevron and Shell have just shattered their own previous records.

As Verbruggen says, “You can buy every politician, every system with all this money.”

The incredible public subsidies for fossil fuels provide a striking illustration: in 2021, states globally used some $700bn of taxpayer money to prop up gas and oil.

As well as subsidising the polluters, governments are increasingly protecting them against activists.

Related: I’ve had a long battle with climate despair. Now I’m leaving the ‘denial machine’ to their demons | Clive Hamilton

For instance, this year, the UN’s conference of the parties (COP27) meets in Egypt, a country where President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi styles himself a champion of climate justice.

That’s all well and good – but Human Rights Watch says environmentalists in the country struggle to conduct research, let alone campaign, without fear of arrest.

In the United States, a few state legislatures in the mid 2010s began crafting statutes to impose jail terms on activists who interfered with refineries and oil pipelines. The laws drew on the post-9/11 national security code to classify fossil fuel infrastructure as vital to “security, national economic security, national public health or safety”.

In Europe, anti-environmental “lawfare” has also intensified, with climate campaigners in Germany facing huge bills for damages after blockading a coal power plant.



Police officers arrest a climate activist during a roadblock protest action at the Mont-Blanc Bridge in Geneva, Switzerland in April. 

Photograph: Martial Trezzini/EPA© Provided by The Guardian

In Australia, where fossil fuel lobbyists exert tremendous influence over the major political parties, the trend has probably gone further than anywhere else.

Back in 2019, Queensland’s Labor premier Annastacia Palaszczuk posted on Twitter about “new laws to combat extremist protesters” after a series of high-profile Extinction Rebellion stunts. The resulting Summary Offences and Other Legislation Amendment Act means that activists possessing a “locking” device (anything by which they might secure themselves to a building or the pavement) face two years’ jail.

In Victoria, the ALP and the Liberals united to pass anti-protest laws legitimating huge fines and jail terms for environmental demonstrators.

Tasmania enacted similar restrictions around the same time; in New South Wales, the Liberals, with support from Labor, introduced two-year jail terms for “illegal protests” on public road, rail lines, tunnels, bridges and other facilities.

Collectively, the new measures mean that most of the major historical environmental campaigns, from the Franklin Dam protests to the Jabiluka blockade, would, if repeated today, expose activists to serious prison time.

In the past, campaigners could sometimes rely on the social power of trade unions for protection. Famously, the term “green” entered the political lexicon as an emblem of environmentalism after the NSW Builders Laborers Federation used “green bans” to protect remnant bushland and preserve the built environment. Today unions, too, confront unprecedented legislative restrictions, with the International Labour Organisation repeatedly warning that Australian laws breach international labour standards by effectively banning the right to strike.

Related: Climate change’s top five tipping points are out! Tag yourself! I’m Greenland’s melting ice cap | First Dog on the Moon

All of which is to say that, as we face the most significant environmental crisis in human history, the strategies used by campaigners in the past are increasingly being criminalised.

None of this is an accident.

Our leaders might immediately close parliament for a fortnight to mourn the Queen, but they scoff at emergency action to avert environmental catastrophe.

The situation’s under control, they say: why, the climate wars have ended!

They don’t believe it themselves.

The repressive laws springing up everywhere show that governments anticipate a growing resistance to the fossil fuel regime – and they’re setting in place a framework to suppress it.

All over the world, corporations and the politicians who serve them are readying for intensified clashes between the few who benefit from climate change and the vast majority who suffer.

Environmentalists should do likewise.

Breast Implants are Connected to Some

Forms of Cancer, FDA Warns

Lauryn Higgins

Fri, September 16, 2022 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning last week that breast implants may cause certain types of cancer. After extensive research that included fielding dozens of reports from people with the devices, they found certain cancers may develop in scar tissue forming around the implants.

The likelihood of cancer is rare, but there was enough cause for concern. Reports found that malignancies have been linked to all implant types, which include textured and smooth and those filled with saline or silicone. Reported symptoms include swelling, pain, lumps and changes in skin. 

More from SheKnows

• Britney Spears Almost Got Breast Implants After How Badly Her Dad Body-Shamed Her

The agency had already linked a rare form of cancer called anaplastic large cell lymphoma to textured implants, which are known for having a rough exterior that can cause more inflammation than smooth implants. These types of implants made by the company Allergen, were recalled after nearly 600 cases of cancer were linked to the implants and 33 deaths were attributed. 

But the most recent FDA warning comes after linking implants to another rare cancer, called squamous cell carcinoma. While there are few known cases, given the popularity and history of implants the FDA felt a warning was warranted.

Click here to read the full article.

This comes just one year after federal regulators required warnings to be placed on the packaging and to only sell implants to health providers who reviewed the potential risks with patients before surgery. Those risks included a direct link to a cancer of the immune system and a bevy of other chronic medical conditions like muscle aches, chronic fatigue and autoimmune diseases. 

The warning also included a list of patients that would be at a higher risk of illness if they were to receive the implants. The group included breast cancer patients who have had or plan to undergo chemotherapy or radiation treatments. 

In an average year, 400,000 women in the United States get breast implants, with 300,000 doing it for cosmetic reasons and 100,000 for reconstructive purposes, likely after a mastectomy.  The FDA reports that roughly one-third of all women who receive implants will have some form of breast pain or sensitivity and half of all recipients will experience tightening of scar tissue around the implant. Sixty-percent will likely need another operation to resolve issues with the implant.

The most recent link has not created a widespread cause for concern in the medical community, and in their report the FDA said it did not recommend women remove their breast implants because of the new warning. But rather monitor their implants and speak with their health care provider should they have any concerns or abnormal changes with their implants. 

Cheetahs return to India after 70-year absence


Sat, September 17, 2022


By Gloria Dickie and Tanvi Mehta

LONDON/NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Eight radio-collared African cheetahs step out on to the grassland of Kuno National Park in central India, their final destination after a 5,000-mile (8,000 km) journey from Namibia that has drawn criticism from some conservationists.

The arrival of the big cats - the fastest land animal on Earth - coincides with the 72nd birthday of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who released the the first cat into the park on Saturday. It is the culmination of a 13-year effort to restore a species which vanished from India some 70 years ago.

The high-profile project is the first time wild cheetahs have been moved across continents to be released. It has raised questions from scientists who say the government should do more to protect the country's own struggling wildlife.

The cheetahs - five females and three males - arrived after a two-day airplane and helicopter journey from the African savannah, and are expected to spend two to three months in a 6-square-km (2-square-mile) enclosure inside the park in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

If all goes well with their acclimation to Kuno, the cats will be released to run through 5,000 square km (2,000 square miles) of forest and grassland, sharing the landscape with leopards, sloth bears and striped hyenas.

Another 12 cheetahs are expected to join the fledgling Indian population next month from South Africa. And as India gathers more funding for the 910 million rupee ($11.4 million) project, largely financed by the state-owned Indian Oil, it hopes to eventually grow the population to around 40 cats.

SP Yadav of the National Tiger Conservation Authority said the extinction of the cheetah in India in 1952 was the only time the country had lost a large mammal species since independence.

"It is our moral and ethical responsibility to bring it back."

But some Indian conservation experts called the effort a "vanity project" that ignores the fact that the African cheetah — a subspecies similar but separate from the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah now only found in Iran — is not native to the Indian subcontinent.

And with India's 1.4 billion human population jockeying for land, biologists worry cheetahs won't have enough space to roam without being killed by predators or people.

India last year joined a U.N. pledge to conserve 30% of its land and ocean area by 2030, but today less than 6% of the country's territory is protected.

Bringing back the cheetah "is our endeavour towards environment and wildlife conservation," Modi said.

THE SPOTTED ONE

While cheetahs today are most often associated with Africa, the word "cheetah" comes from the Sanskrit word "chitraka", meaning "the spotted one".

At one point, the Asiatic cheetah ranged widely across North Africa, the Middle East and throughout India. During the Mughal Empire era, tamed cheetahs served as royal hunting companions, coursing after prey on behalf of their masters.

But hunters later turned their weapons on the cheetah itself. Today, just 12 remain in the arid regions of Iran.

Project Cheetah, begun in 2009 under former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government, appeared to offer India the chance to right a historic wrong and bolster its environmental reputation.

India's successes in managing the world's largest population of wild tigers proves it has the credentials to bring cheetahs back, said Yadav.

However, even between African countries, "there have been few (relocations) for cheetah into large or unfenced areas that have been successful," said Kim Young-Overton, cheetah program director at Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization.

To set the cheetahs up for success, authorities are relocating villagers from Bagcha near Kuno. Officials have also been vaccinating domestic dogs in the area against diseases that could spread to the cats.

And wildlife officials have audited the park's prey, ensuring enough spotted deer, blue bulls, wild boars and porcupines to sustain the cheetahs' diet.

Indian Oil has pledged more than 500 million rupees ($6.3 million) for the project over the next five years.

CATS DOGGED BY CONTROVERSY

Some Indian scientists say modern India presents challenges not faced by the animals in the past.

A single cheetah needs a lot of space to roam. A 100 square km (38-square-mile) area can support six to 11 tigers, 10 to 40 lions, but only one cheetah.

Once the cheetahs move beyond Kuno's unfenced boundaries, "they'll be knocked out within six months by domestic dogs, by leopards," said wildlife biologist Ullas Karanth, director of the Centre for Wildlife Studies in Bengaluru.

"Or they'll kill a goat, and villagers will poison them" in response.

Poaching fears stymied another project that involved a 2013 Supreme Court order to move some of the world's last surviving Asiatic lions from their only reserve in the western Indian state of Gujarat to Kuno. Now, the cheetahs will take over that space.

"Cheetahs cannot be India's burden," said wildlife biologist Ravi Chellam, a scientific authority on Asiatic lions. "These are African animals found in dozens of locations. The Asiatic lion is a single population. A simple eyeballing of the situation shows which species has to be the priority."

Other conservation experts say the promise of restoring cheetahs to India is worth the challenges.

"Cheetahs play an important role in grassland ecosystems," herding prey through grasslands and preventing overgrazing, said conservation biologist Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund leading the Namibian side of the project.

Marker and her collaborators will help monitor the cats' settlement, hunting and reproduction in coming years.

Modi called for people to be patient as the cats adjust. "For them to be able to make Kuno National Park their home, we'll have to give these Cheetahs a few months' time."

(Reporting by Gloria Dickie in London and Tanvi Mehta in New Delhi; Editing by Katy Daigle, Mike Collett-White and Frank Jack Daniel)

Cheetahs make a comeback in India after 70 years






A cheetah is prepared for translocation at the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) in Otjiwarongo, Namibia, Friday, Sept. 16, 2022. The CCF will travel to India this week to deliver eight wild cheetahs to the Kuno National Park in India. 

(AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)More


ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL and SIBI ARASU
Sat, September 17, 2022 a

NEW DELHI (AP) — Seven decades after cheetahs died out in India, they're back.

Eight big cats from Namibia made the long trek Saturday in a chartered cargo flight to the northern Indian city of Gwalior, part of an ambitious and hotly contested plan to reintroduce cheetahs to the South Asian country.

Then they were moved to their new home: a sprawling national park in the heart of India where scientists hope the world’s fastest land animal will roam again.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the cats into their enclosure Saturday morning. The cats emerged from their cage, tentatively at first while continuously scanning their new surroundings.

“When the cheetah will run again … grasslands will be restored, biodiversity will increase and eco-tourism will get a boost,” said Modi.

Cheetahs were once widespread in India and became extinct in 1952 from hunting and loss of habitat. They remain the first and only predator to die out since India’s independence in 1947. India hopes importing African cheetahs will aid efforts to conserve the country's threatened and largely neglected grasslands.

There are less than 7,000 adult cheetahs left in the wild globally, and they now inhabit less than 9% of their original range. Shrinking habitat, due to the increasing human population and climate change, is a huge threat and India's grasslands and forests could offer “appropriate” homes for the big cat, said Laurie Marker, of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, an advocacy and research group assisting in bringing the cats to India.

“To save cheetahs from extinction, we need to create permanent places for them on earth," she said.

Cheetah populations in most countries are declining. An exception to this is South Africa, where the cats have run out of space. Experts hope that Indian forests could offer these cats space to thrive. There are currently a dozen cheetahs in quarantine in South Africa, and they are expected to arrive at the Kuno National Park soon. Earlier this month, four cheetahs captured at reserves in South Africa were flown to Mozambique, where the cheetah population has drastically declined.

Some experts are more cautious.

There could be “cascading and unintended consequences” when a new animal is brought to the mix, said Mayukh Chatterjee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

For example, a tiger population boom in India has led to more conflict with people sharing the same space. With cheetahs, there are questions about how their presence would affect other carnivores like striped hyenas, or even prey like birds.

“The question remains: How well it's done,” he said.

The initial eight cheetahs from Namibia will be quarantined at a facility in the national park and monitored for a month to make sure they're not carrying pests. Then they will be released into a larger enclosure in the park to help them get used to their new environment. The enclosures contain natural prey — such as spotted deer and antelope, which scientists hope they'll learn to hunt — and are designed to prevent other predators like bears or leopards from getting in.

The cheetahs will be fitted with tracking collars and released into the national park in about two months. Their movements will be tracked routinely, but for the most part, they'll be on their own.

The reserve is big enough to hold 21 cheetahs and if they were to establish territories and breed, they could spread to other interconnected grasslands and forests that can house another dozen cheetahs, according to scientists.

There is only one village with a few hundred families still residing on the fringes of the park. Indian officials said they'd be moved soon, and any livestock loss due to cheetahs will be compensated. The project is estimated to cost $11.5 million over five years, including $6.3 million that will be paid for by state-owned Indian Oil.

The continent-to-continent relocation has been decades in the making. The cats that originally roamed India were Asiatic cheetahs, genetically distinct cousins of those that live in Africa and whose range stretched to Saudi Arabia.

India had hoped to bring in Asiatic cheetahs, but only a few dozen of these survive in Iran and that population is too vulnerable to move.

Many obstacles remain, including the presence of other predators in India like leopards that may compete with cheetahs, said conservation geneticist Pamela Burger of University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna.

“It would be better to conserve them now where they are than to put effort in creating new sites where the outcome is questionable,” she said.

Dr. Adrian Tordiffe, a veterinary wildlife specialist from South Africa associated with the project, said the animals need a helping hand. He added that conservation efforts in many African countries hadn't been as successful, unlike in India where strict conservation laws have preserved big cat populations.

“We cannot sit back and hope that species like the cheetah will survive on their own without our help," he said.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Modi: India PM reintroduces extinct cheetahs on birthday

Sun, September 18, 2022

One of the cheetahs from Namibia released in a national park in India on Saturday

Cheetahs are set to roam in India for the first time since they were declared officially extinct in 1952.

A group of eight cats arrived from Namibia on the occasion of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday on Saturday.

They will undergo a month-long quarantine before being released in a national park in central India.

Cheetahs formerly shared jungles with other big cats like lions and tigers but disappeared 70 years ago.

They are the world's fastest land animals, capable of reaching speeds of 70 miles (113km) an hour.

This is the first time a large carnivore is being moved from one continent to another and being reintroduced in the wild.

The cheetahs were released into the wild by PM Modi

At least 20 cheetahs are coming to India from South Africa and Namibia, home to more than a third of the world's 7,000 cheetahs.

The first batch of eight - five females and three males, aged between two and six years - arrived from Windhoek in Namibia to the Indian city of Gwalior on Saturday.

• Inside India's plan to bring back extinct cheetahs

Wildlife experts, veterinary doctors and three biologists accompanied the animals as they made the transcontinental journey in a modified passenger Boeing 747 plane.

From Gwalior, the cheetahs were transferred by helicopter to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh state, where they were released by a delegation led by Mr Modi.

The cheetahs made the transcontinental journey in a modified Boeing 747 passenger plane

Spread over a 289-square-mile area, the Kuno National Park is a sprawling sanctuary with prey like antelope and wild boars for the wild cats.

An electrified enclosure, with 10 compartments ranging in size, has been built for the animals to quarantine before being released in the wild.

Each cheetah will be given a dedicated team of volunteers, which will monitor it and keep tabs on the animal's movement. Satellite radio collars have been put on each cheetah for their geolocation updates.

The cheetahs were released in the Kuno National Park in central India

Experts say that a combination of hunting, habitat loss and food scarcity had led to the cheetah's disappearance in India.

Studies show that at least 200 cheetahs were killed in India, largely by sheep and goat herders, during the colonial period.

Some of them were eliminated through bounty hunting because the cats would enter villages and kill livestock. The cheetah is the only large mammal to become extinct in the country since its independence from British rule.

India has been making efforts to reintroduce cheetahs since the 1950s. An effort in the 1970s from Iran was unsuccessful after the Shah of Iran was deposed and the negotiations stopped.

Proponents of the project say that the reintroduction of cheetahs will build up local economies and help restore ecosystems that support the big cats.

Cheetahs are the world's fastest land animals, capable of reaching speeds of 70 miles (113km) an hour

But some worry that relocation of animals is always fraught with risks and releasing the cheetahs into a park might put them in harm's way.

Cheetahs are delicate animals who avoid conflict, and are targeted by competing predators. And the Kuno park has a sizeable leopard population which could kill cheetah cubs.

There is also a possibility that the cheetahs can stray outside the boundaries and get killed by people or other animals.

However, officials say the fears are unfounded as cheetahs are highly adaptable animals, and claim that the shortlisted site has been fully examined for habitat, prey and potential for man-animal conflict.

A combination of hunting, habitat loss and food scarcity led to the cheetah's disappearance in India

The first cheetah in the world to be bred in captivity was in India during the rule of Mughal emperor Jahangir.

His father, Akbar, recorded that there were 10,000 cheetahs during his time. He reigned from 1556 to 1605.

Much later, research suggested the number of cheetahs had dropped to a couple of hundred by the 19th Century - and the cat was reportedly sighted for the last time in India 70 years ago.