Sunday, February 05, 2023

Colorado River crisis is so bad, lakes Mead and Powell are unlikely to refill in our lifetimes

Rong-Gong Lin II, Ian James
Sun, February 5, 2023 

Chad Taylor, 44, cools off at a remote beach near the middle of the drought-stricken Lake Mead on July 12, 2022, in Las Vegas. The water levels at Lake Mead are at historic lows.
 (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is the deepest it's been in decades, but those storms that were a boon for Northern California won't make much of a dent in the long-term water shortage for the Colorado River Basin — an essential source of supplies for Southern California.

In fact, the recent storms haven't changed a view shared by many Southern California water managers: Don't expect lakes Mead and Powell, the nation's largest reservoirs, to fill up again anytime soon.

“To think that these things would ever refill requires some kind of leap of faith that I, for one, don't have,” said Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University.

Lake Mead, located on the Arizona-Nevada border and held back by Hoover Dam, filled in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2000, it was nearly full and lapping at the spillway gates. But the megadrought over the last 23 years — the most severe in centuries — has worsened the water deficit and left Lake Mead about 70% empty.

Upstream, Lake Powell has declined to just 23% of full capacity and is approaching a point where Glen Canyon Dam would no longer generate power.

Even with this winter's above-average snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, water officials and scientists say everyone in the Colorado River Basin will need to plan for low reservoir levels for years to come. And some say they think the river's major reservoirs probably won't refill in our lifetimes.

"They're not going to refill. The only reason they filled the first time is because there wasn't demand for the water. In the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, there was no Central Arizona Project, there was no Southern Nevada Water Authority, there was not nearly as much use in the Upper [Colorado River] Basin," said Bill Hasencamp, manager of Colorado River resources for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. "So the water use was low. So that filled up storage."

Demand for Colorado River water picked up in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile-long water delivery system, brings water from the Colorado River to Arizona's most populous counties and wasn't completed until the 1990s. The Southern Nevada Water Authority was created in 1991.

Arizona began starting to take its full apportionment of river water in the late 1990s, and Nevada in the early 2000s. California continues using the single largest share of the river.

"Now the water use is maxed out. Every state is taking too much, and we have to cut back. And so there's just not enough. You would need wet year after wet year, after wet year after wet year, after wet year. Even then, because the demand is so high, it still wouldn't fill," Hasencamp said in an interview.

Climate change has dramatically altered the river. In the last 23 years, as rising temperatures have intensified the drought, the river's flow has declined about 20%.

Scientists have found that roughly half the decline in the river’s flow has been caused by higher temperatures, and that climate change is driving the aridification of the Southwest. With global warming, average temperatures across the upper watershed — where most of the river’s flow originates — have risen about 3 degrees since 1970.

Research has shown that for each additional 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), the river’s average flow is likely to decrease about 9%.

In multiple studies, scientists have estimated that by the middle of this century, the average flow of the river could decline by 30% or 40% below the average during the past century.

“The last 23 years are the best lessons we have right now, and they should scare the pants off of people,” said Udall, who has been a co-author of research showing how warming is sapping the river's flows.

Based on the low levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell, Udall said, he would estimate that refilling the reservoirs would take roughly six consecutive extremely wet years, with water flows similar to those in 2011.

“We'd need six years like that to refill this system, in a row, based on current operating rules,” Udall said. “And I just don't see that even being remotely possible.”

The Colorado River Basin very well could get a few wet years, he said.

“We might even get a wet decade. But, boy, the long-term warming and drying trend seems super clear to me,” Udall said. “And a bet on anything other than that seems like water management malpractice, that we have got to plan for something that looks like a worst-case future.”

The Colorado River supplies water to seven states, tribal nations and Mexico. The states are under pressure from the federal government to agree on cuts to prevent reservoirs from dropping to dangerously low levels.

California and the six other states are at odds over how to make the cuts, and have submitted separate proposals to the federal government, with some disagreements centering on the legal system that governs how the river is managed.

Scientists have warned of a coming crisis for many years.

In a 2008 study, scientists Tim Barnett and David Pierce examined the likely flow declines with climate change and estimated there was a 50% chance the usable water supply in Lake Mead and Lake Powell would be gone by 2021. They titled their study “When Will Lake Mead Go Dry?” In research published in 2009, they wrote that based on projections with climate change or even the long-term average flows, “currently scheduled future water deliveries from the Colorado River are not sustainable.”

“Climate change is reducing the flow into the Colorado River system, so the agreements are divvying up more water than exists,” said Pierce, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “This drop in reservoir levels is happening because we are abiding by agreements that do not account for changes in water inflow into the system due to climate change.”

There is always the chance of a few extremely wet years with the potential to refill reservoirs, Pierce said.

“It's just that in the coming decades that likelihood decreases. Our work has estimated that the chance of the reservoirs refilling decreases from about 75% today to about 10% by 2060 if no changes in [water] delivery schedules are made,” Pierce said. “We should be planning for the situation where the hotter temperatures decrease the river flow in the future.”

The capacity of lakes Mead and Powell is gargantuan compared with the capacity of California's two largest reservoirs, Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville. Lake Mead can store more than 27 million acre-feet of water, and Lake Powell 25 million acre-feet. By contrast, Shasta Lake can hold about 4.6 million acre-feet, and Lake Oroville 3.5 million acre-feet.

The Colorado River supplies, on average, about 25% of the water supplies in coastal Southern California, while the region also gets water from Northern California through the State Water Project, and other sources.

California's Sierra Nevada snowpack is now about 200% of average at this point in the season, while the snowpack in the Upper Colorado River Basin so far stands at about 140% of the median over the last 30 years.

The bigger snowpack could help the Colorado's reservoir levels this year somewhat. How much won't be clear for a few months.

"Absolutely this snow is welcomed. The cold weather is welcome. The real question will be in the spring," Hasencamp said.

In recent years, hot, dry conditions have led to reduced flows in the river. "That's what's been the killer the last few years, is a hot dry spring has taken the snow that's been there, and it doesn't make it to the reservoirs," Hasencamp said.

Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, said an exceptionally wet decade might someday change things.

"But the problem is, it doesn't just have to be wetter than average, it would have to be dramatically wetter than the long-term average," Swain said. And for many years.

Scientists say higher temperatures effectively make the atmosphere "thirstier," causing more moisture to evaporate off the landscape. Vegetation also takes up more water as temperatures rise, leaving less runoff flowing in streams.

“There is no question that there will be an ongoing downward trend in inflows, but extreme high events are also more likely to occur in the context of climate change, according to the U.S. National Climate Assessment,” said Kathy Jacobs, director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions.

Jacobs noted that researchers project atmospheric rivers will become more intense with rising temperatures, and scientists expect more intense extreme storms and periodic flooding.

“I strongly suspect that the dams on the Colorado will be needed for flood control in the future as well as for water supply,” Jacobs said.

As for the future, Jacobs said a great deal depends on whether greenhouse gas emissions are reduced “to net zero in the near term.”

There are workable ways of managing reduced water supplies from the river, she said. "The longer we wait to build more flexible future management schemes, the harder it will be."

LISTEN: Colorado River in Crisis Podcast

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
EU migration impasse leaves many refugees out in the cold


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Two men share a meal in a makeshift tent camp outside the Petit Chateau reception center in Brussels, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023. Many refugees and asylum-seekers are literally left out in the cold for months as the European Union fails to get its migration system working properly. And most talk is about building fences and repatriation instead of working to improve a warm embrace for people fleeing nations like Afghanistan where the Taliban has taken over. 


(AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)

RAF CASERT and AHMAD SEIR
Sun, February 5, 2023 

BRUSSELS (AP) — Some refugees and asylum-seekers in Brussels have been spending months in between the Street of Palaces and the Small Castle — quite literally.

Unfortunately, it's not a dream come true at the end of their fearful flight from halfway across the globe. It's a perpetual nightmare.

Petit Chateau, which means small castle, is a government reception center that often does anything but welcome arrivals. The Rue des Palais — street of palaces — has the city’s worst squat, where the smell of urine and the prevalence of scurvy have come to symbolize how the European Union’s migration policy is failing.

They are only 2½ miles (four kilometers) from the sleek Europa Building where EU leaders will hold a two-day summit starting Thursday to deal with migration issues that have vexed the 27 member nations for more than a decade.

Shinwari, an Afghan army captain who long helped Western powers try to stave off the Taliban, now lives in a makeshift tent camp right on the canal opposite Petit Chateau.

It's a place as desolate as it is hopeless.

"It is very cold. Some guys have different diseases and many of us are suffering from depression, because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” said the 31-year-old, who left behind his wife and four children, convinced that Taliban forces that took over in August 2021 would kill soldiers like him who worked with NATO countries.

“They search houses. No one’s life was safe,” Shinwari said. ”They have already once told my family 'your son has taken refuge in an infidel country.'"

Even now, far from home, he's too scared to be identified beyond his last name and with only the vaguest military details. He doesn't want his face shown in photos or video, for fear the Taliban might hurt his family.

Exacerbating his plight is the reception he's been given in the wealthy EU — largely marked by indifference, sometimes even hostility.

“Unfortunately, no one gets to hear our voices,” he said from his tent, surrounded by a half-dozen ex-members of the Afghan military.

Instead, the vocabulary of EU leaders before the summit is much more about “strengthening external borders,” “border fences” and “return procedures” than it is about immediately making life better for people like Shinwari.

And with 330,000 unauthorized attempts made to enter the EU last year — a six-year record — projecting a warm embrace for refugees doesn't win many elections on the continent these days.

Many Afghans also look with envy at the swift measures that the EU took after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 to grant Ukrainians temporary protection measures such as residency rights, labor market access, medical aid and social welfare assistance — things that all largely pass them by.

“The issue of Afghans and Ukrainians are the same, but they don’t get treated the same way," Shinwari said. "When Ukrainians come here, they are provided with all the facilities ... on the first day of their arrival, but we Afghans who have left our country due to security threats, we don’t get anything.

"It is surprising because human rights are not the same for everyone and that upsets us and makes us feel disappointed and neglected.”

EU leaders have already said that a full breakthrough on their migration policies won't come before bloc-wide elections in June 2024.

Shinwari said he was lucky to puncture the EU's beefed up borders to use his right to asylum after an eight-month trek through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia and eventually Belgium. It included beatings, arrest and escape in Iran, and hunger and fear along much of the trail.

Shinwari made it to Europe alive, “but now that I am here, I am homeless like a nomad” with a flimsy blue tent to keep out Belgium's many rain showers, he said.

Other Afghan former soldiers settled in the Rue des Palais, where their stories of trauma, depression, drugs and violence were just as bleak.

“The situation is not good here. If the Red Cross brings food, we will have something to eat, but if not, then many don't have anything,” said Roz Amin Khan, who fled Laghman province to arrive in Belgium two months ago.

Since arriving four months ago, Shinwari said that he had one interview with asylum processing authorities and has been waiting ever since.

The lack of help for most refugees has been driving nongovernmental organizations and volunteers to despair.

“Between the legal framework and the situation on the ground there is a world of difference,” said Clement Valentin, a legal advocacy officer at the CIRE refugee foundation. “There is this gap and it is tough to understand — for me and for the NGOs.

"But I cannot even begin to comprehend how tough it must be for Afghans here in Belgium, or other European nations, to understand this.”

The legal sloth isn't limited to Belgium. The EU's Agency for Asylum said in its latest trends report of November 2022 that “the gap between applications and decisions had reached the largest extent since 2015,” and was widening still. Overall, it said, more than 920,000 cases were still pending, a 14% annual increase.

Such was the bureaucratic backlog at the Petit Chateau when Shinwari arrived, that would-be asylum-seekers had to wait sometimes for days in the rain and cold just to get in the front door. Citizens living close by brought food and set up fire pits, because the government didn't act.

Even if the situation has improved, the physical and mental scars are easy to see, said Michel Genet, director of Doctors of the World Belgium.

“People have been through big traumas and a very difficult situation and they expect to come here and be taken care of," but they're not, Genet said.

During many sleepless nights in the freezing cold, with the dull buzz of passing cars in the background, Shinwari's thoughts drift back home.

“Sometimes I think about the future, and I think how much longer I have to live on the streets," he said. "My mind is surrounded with problems. I think of the safety of my family and my future.”

___

Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration




Indian police nab over 2,000 men for illegal child marriages






Siddique Ali, 23, in white shirt, looks at his wife Sonali Begum, second right, 17, after he was picked up by the police, outside a police station in Guwahati, India, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023. Indian police have arrested more than 2,000 men in a crackdown on illegal child marriages in involving girls under the age of 18 a northeastern state. Begum is seven months pregnant. (AP Photo)

WASBIR HUSSAIN
Sat, February 4, 2023

GUWAHATI, India (AP) — Indian police have arrested more than 2,000 men in a crackdown on illegal child marriages involving girls under the age of 18 in a northeastern state, officials said Saturday.

Those arrested this week included more than 50 Hindu priests and Muslim clerics for allegedly performing marriages for underage girls in Assam, state police chief Gyanendra Pratap Singh said.

"We have so far arrested 2,169 men based on 4,074 registered police cases involving a total of about 8,000 men,” said Singh.

Many cases of child marriage in Assam, a state of 35 million people, go unreported.

Only 155 cases of child marriages in the state were registered in 2021, and 138 in 2020, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.

In India, the legal marriageable age is 21 for men and 18 for women. Poverty, lack of education, and social norms and practices, particularly in rural areas, are considered reasons for child marriages across the country.

Television images on Friday showed some young women with infants in their arms, crying and protesting the sudden arrests of their husbands.

“We were struggling and somehow making ends meet. But we were happy together. Who will provide for our livelihood now that my husband has been arrested?” asked a young woman.

Singh said child marriages were one reason for the state's high infant mortality and maternal mortality rates.

“I have asked the Assam police to act with a spirit of zero tolerance against the unpardonable and heinous crime on women,” Himanta Biswa Sarma, the state's top elected official, tweeted.

India’s Parliament is considering legislation to raise the age for marriage for women to 21 from 18, to bring it in line with men and promote gender equality.

India’s Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani told Parliament on Friday that the move would enable girls to complete their education and achieve economic independence apart from achieving physical and psychological maturity.
WAIT, WHAT?
Betsy DeVos and former GOP lawmakers who helped construct versions of the legislation Biden is using to cancel student debt just told the Supreme Court his plan 'obviously violates' the law

Ayelet Sheffey
Sun, February 5, 2023 

Betsy DeVos
.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Betsy DeVos, John Boehner, and other former GOP officials and lawmakers filed amicus briefs opposing student-debt relief.

Both briefs criticized the legal path Biden used to cancel student debt, saying relief requires Congressional approval.

The Supreme Court is hearing the two lawsuits challenging Biden's relief on February 28.


Former Republican lawmakers and government officials want the Supreme Court to know why they think student-loan forgiveness is illegal.


Over the past few days, nine conservative groups filed a series of amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court opposing President Joe Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers. One of the briefs was filed on behalf of five former Republican US education secretaries — Betsy DeVos, Margaret Spellings, Roderick Paige, Lamar Alexander, and William Bennett — and another was filed on behalf of former GOP Reps. John Kline, Howard McKeon, and former House Speaker John Boehner.

After two conservative-backed lawsuits late last year paused the implementation of Biden's debt relief, the Supreme Court agreed to take up both of the cases on February 28. Since then, amicus briefs have flooded the court from advocates and scholars supporting the relief to conservative groups opposing it. The latest round of briefs in opposition delved into criticism of the education secretary's authority to enact this broad relief for millions of borrowers.

As one of the briefs noted, Kline and McKeon were both involved in constructing the HEROES Act of 2003 — the law that Biden is using to cancel student debt — which says that the Education Secretary can modify student-loan balances in connection with a national emergency. Per the brief, McKeon was the original author of the HEROES Act of 2001 in response to 9/11, and Kline authored the HEROES Act of 2003.

Their brief said that Biden's plan "obviously violates" provisions in the Act because a "blanket forgiveness policy" isn't limited to those who suffered direct pandemic hardship, cancelling a debt isn't the same as a waiver or modification, and "outright cancellation is hardly 'necessary' to mitigate the harms associated with the pandemic, particularly since no relevant borrower has been required to make a single payment since it began."

"If Congress really meant for the HEROES Act to confer this type of authority on the Secretary, it would have said so," it said.

DeVos' and the other former education secretaries' brief also questioned the authority Biden has to carry out this relief. Represented by the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies — a conservative nonprofit — the former officials argued that "such monumental debt cancellation requires clear and direct Congressional authorization."

"Though concerns about the rising costs of higher education and the amount of outstanding student loan debt have been part of the public discourse for decades (and long before COVID-19), the idea that the Executive Branch could unilaterally cancel student loan debt on a mass basis without Congressional authority was not seriously entertained," the brief continued.

It cited a comment from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made in 2021, in which she said that "people think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress."

Republican lawmakers have firmly opposed Biden's student-debt relief — but current and former Democratic lawmaker have consistently argued the HEROES Act does permit Biden to give debt relief to millions of Americans recovering from the pandemic.
Former Democratic architect of HEROES Act said debt relief falls "exactly" under Biden's authority

As expected, advocates of student-loan forgiveness, alongside Biden's administration, have staunchly vouched for the authority of the president's debt relief plan. So did former Rep. George Miller, a top Democratic lawmaker on the House education committee who helped construct the HEROES Act of 2003.

In an amicus brief Smita Ghosh, Appellate Counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, filed on behalf of Miller in November, it argued that the "contention that the loan forgiveness plan exceeds the Administration's authority is completely without merit."

"As our brief shows, Congress used broad language in the text of the HEROES Act to make clear that the Education Secretary has extensive authority to respond to national emergencies, and the history of the law confirms that it authorizes comprehensive actions when the circumstances call for them," the filing said.

Biden's Justice Department reiterated that argument in its full legal defense it filed in January, and after Biden announced he would end the pandemic's national emergency declaration in May, a White House official said that doesn't change things when it comes to getting millions of borrowers student-debt relief.

"There was a national emergency that impacted millions of student borrowers," the official said. "Many of those borrowers still face risk of default on their student loans due to that emergency. Congress gave the Secretary of Education the authority under the HEROES Act to take steps to prevent that harm, and he is."

171 Republican lawmakers join effort to stop student loan forgiveness program

ARTHUR JONES II
Sun, February 5, 2023 at 11:43 AM MST·5 min rea

GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol, March 09, 2021 in Washington, DC. 
(Win Mcnamee/Getty Images, FILE)  NO RELATION TO RED FOXX
One hundred and twenty-eight House Republicans and nearly all Republican senators on Friday filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court opposing the Biden administration's federal student debt cancellation plan, which has been halted as tens of millions of Americans await the justices' ruling on its legality.

While White House officials have been adamant that the president is within his authority to wipe out hundreds of billions in government-backed loans to provide "breathing room to tens of millions of working families," Republicans challenging it take the opposite view.

The forgiveness plan that could relieve up to $20,000 for eligible loan recipients is an unconstitutional breach of the separation of powers and a violation of the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act), according to the House GOP brief.

MORE: Biden's student loan forgiveness plan on hold after appeals court blocks

"The Biden administration's student loan bailout is a political gambit engineered by special interest groups; abusing the HEROES Act for such a ploy is shameful," House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said in a statement.

The House GOP brief included 25 members on Foxx's committee and roughly 100 other lawmakers. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not sign it, though Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan did.

Separately, 43 Republican senators signed their own brief in support of the challenge to the loan forgiveness program. Led by Tennessee's Marsha Blackburn, they also call the president's plan unlawful and claim it exceeds his office.

GOP U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn speaks in Des Moines, Iowa.
 (Scott Olson/Getty Images, FILE)

The White House has pushed back.


"While opponents of our plan are siding with special interests and trying every which way to keep millions of middle class Americans in debt, the President and his Administration are fighting to lawfully give middle-class families some breathing room as they recover from the pandemic and prepare to resume loan payments in January," spokesman Abdullah Hasan said in October.

However, the House Republicans say they believe Biden is exploiting the language of the HEROES Act, which the administration argues vests the education secretary with expansive authority to alleviate financial hardship for federal student loan recipients as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

MORE: Biden administration scales back student loan forgiveness for some, amid lawsuits

"Indeed, the entire purpose of the HEROES Act is to authorize the Secretary to grant student-loan-related relief to at-risk borrowers because of a national emergency -- precisely what the Secretary did here," Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a Supreme Court filing defending the proposed debt cancellation.

After legal challenges last year saw the forgiveness program halted by lower courts, the Supreme Court announced in December that it will hear oral arguments on the issue at the end of February.

A decision on the program is then expected by June.


PHOTO: FILE - US President Joe Biden speaks about student debt relief at Delaware State University in Dover, Delaware, Oct. 21, 2022. (Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images, FILE)

The moratorium on loan repayments, which was first put in place under President Donald Trump earlier in the pandemic, is now set to expire 60 days after the decision or 60 days after June 30 -- whichever date comes first.

A vocal opponent of Biden's plan, Foxx also accused the administration of "bypassing Congress" to implement loan forgiveness.

"Congress is the only body with the authority to enact sweeping and fundamental changes of this nature, and it is ludicrous for President Biden to assume he can simply bypass the will of the American people," she said in her statement.


Foxx told ABC News in an interview last month that she believes it is an "injustice" for taxpayers to fund the administration's "scheme." The plan would cost $400 billion, according to an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, and its nearly half-a-trillion-dollar price tag worries Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C.

Despite the White House saying the cancellation would give needed economic relief, Duncan said it would be sending the U.S. further into a "debt spiral."

"The Court should invalidate the Secretary of Education's sweeping student loan forgiveness program since it trespasses on Congressional authority and violates the separation of powers," he said.

The U.S. Education Department has said the president's decision to cancel up to $10,000 for some loan recipients -- those who made less than $125,000 on their 2020 or 2021 taxes or $250,000 filing jointly -- or $20,000 for low-income recipients who received Pell grants could impact roughly 43 million Americans who owe $1.6 trillion in student loans.

That was particularly important in light of how COVID-19 upended the economy, according to the White House.


PHOTO: FILE - US President Joe Biden speaks as Miguel Cardona, US secretary of education, listens in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., Oct. 17, 2022. (Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE)

"This is why we took this action -- to make sure that tens of millions of Americans are able to deal with a time that was very difficult, especially in the last couple of years," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told ABC News' Karen Travers last week. "That's been the important priority of the president: to make sure folks … who felt the pinch if you will, who felt the hurt the most these past couple of years due to what COVID did to the economy, got a little extra help."

After the cancellation program launched last year, 26 million people signed up online before it was halted by the courts.

Of that group, 16 million were approved before the department's website stopped accepting applications to let the legal process play out. However, no loan forgiveness has been discharged.

Last month, over a dozen advocacy groups like the NAACP filed briefs in support of the president's plan.

"Student loan borrowers from all walks of life suffered profound financial harms during the pandemic and their continued recovery and successful repayment hinges on the Biden Administration's student debt relief plan," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in response to the coalition of groups joining in support of the plan. "We will continue to defend our legal authority to provide the debt relief working and middle-class families clearly need and deserve."
Europe grapples with raising the retirement age as life expectancy rises and birth rates plummet


Melissa Rossi
·Contributor
Sat, February 4, 2023 

Pensioners march during a general strike called by trade unions in Bilbao, Spain, in January 2020. (Vincent West/Reuters)

BARCELONA, Spain — Chanting “Retirement before arthritis,” more than a million people poured into the streets in cities across France on Tuesday in protest of government plans to boost the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64.

“It’s unfair to make people work until 64 — nobody is going to hire them,” former public transportation director Anne Brunner, 62, told Yahoo News, adding that, in her experience, after age 55 many French workers are shown the door and few are rehired. “Employers think older workers have too much experience, are too critical and too expensive,” she said.

But the volatile issue of raising the retirement age, which a recent poll showed 66% of the French opposed — as well as ageism in the workplace — are Europe-wide problems as governments grapple with how to fund state pensions when people are living far longer. When many of today’s French retirees entered the workforce in 1980, for example, the typical person in France lived to be 74; now they are living a decade longer.


Union leaders leading a demonstration in Paris on Tuesday. (Christophe Ena/AP)

“The majority of European countries have raised retirement ages,” Mika Vidlund, liaison manager at the Finnish Center for Pensions, told Yahoo News, “and many countries are linking that age to life expectancies.” Due to recent changes in pension policies in Europe, “age 67 is the new 65,” he said. “And some countries are going further.”

In 2010, France saw similar protests when it raised the retirement age from 60 to 62. But those changes are minor compared with the increases in several other European countries. Denmark, for instance, instituted a policy that requires the government to raise the retirement age in concert with increases in average life expectancy, and today its retirement age is 68. Other countries, such as the Netherlands, have a different ratio: For each year of increased life expectancy, another eight months is added to the retirement age.

“What they're essentially doing is fixing the number of years people on average can spend in retirement,” Paris-based Wouter De Tavernier, an economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), told Yahoo News.

An elderly barquillero, or wafer seller, waits for customers during the festivities of San Cayetano, the patron saint of labor and bread, in Madrid. 
(Manu Fernandez/AP)

The U.S. Congress is also considering bumping up the age at which one can start receiving Social Security, with some Republican members of Congress debating whether benefits should start at age 70.

But as painful as that could be to many Americans, the situation in Europe is much more extreme due to differences in pension systems. For American retirees, pensions from the government — i.e., Social Security — make up, on average, about 30% of a retiree's income, according to the Social Security Administration. In Europe, however, 401(k)s are not as common and government pensions often provide 80% to 90% of a retiree’s pension payments. In France, Spain, Italy, Austria and Poland, state payments on average make up 100% of received pensions, according to OECD data.

Another factor that weighs heavily on the need to raise the retirement age in Europe: declining birth rates.

“This whole issue of increasing public pension expenditures in Europe is the result, on the one hand, of people living longer, and on the other hand, of fewer people being born,” said De Tavernier. “And what matters for pensions is how many retirees there are compared to people of working age.” According to OECD figures, Italy had 24 retirees per 100 people in the job market in 1990, when the retirement age was 60. Now, with retirement at 67, the figure is nearly 40 retirees to that 100.

And while the U.S. government pays about 7% of GDP for pensions, many European governments pay much more, with 16% of Italy’s GDP, for example, going toward retiree payments.


Italian pensioners in a protest on Dec. 16 in Rome against the government's 2023 draft budget and demanding pension revaluation. 
(Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images)

“There are three things you can do when pension expenditures increase,” said De Tavernier. “The first is to cut the amounts of pensions, which is not popular by any means.” The second option, he said, “is to increase taxes or contributions paid by employers and employees, which means people at working age will not be happy — or to siphon money from other programs to pensions,” but that requires cutting spending elsewhere. “And that leaves the third option, which is to increase the retirement age, which is not popular either.” However, he added, “of all the three options, it may be the least painful."

But simply trying to solve the problem by raising the retirement age faces its own challenges.

“On one hand,” sociologist Moritz Hess, a professor of gerontology at the University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein in Germany, told Yahoo News, “the state is telling the older workers, we need you and you need to work longer, because you need to finance the pensions, and then on the other hand, older workers are still facing a lot of ageism at the workplace. And this is a societal contradiction.”

While some older workers are loudly balking at the prospect of being forced to put in more years before being able to retire with full benefits, some younger workers don’t mind working many more years than their parents or grandparents.

“I think it’s only fair for professionals who start working in their mid- to late 20s to work until they are 70, unless they have serious health issues,” Lucie Astill, 42, an administrative assistant at a law firm in Barcelona, told Yahoo News. “I have a mortgage until I am 70, so I have no plans to retire before then. People are healthier now, and it is just unfair to expect the state to support you financially for 30-plus years if you retire at 60.”


A senior worker adjusts equipment at an electrical dispatching station.
(Getty Images)

Modern European workers also have a plethora of benefits that make the idea of working for five decades far more tolerable. Last year, Astill and her husband both took 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, for instance, and when their child turns 2 and a half, day care in Spain is free of charge. And across most of Europe, workers get four weeks of vacation each year, typically taken in August, compared with just two for the average American. On the downside, Europeans on average pay higher taxes than U.S. citizens.

Astill, for one, questions the model of lumping the majority of a person’s free time at the end of their life, pointing to recently retired relatives who she said are bored out of their minds.

De Tavernier, who is 34, agrees that today’s younger workers in Europe have perks unknown to their parents and grandparents. “One thing that may be overlooked is that we are one of the first generations for whom all kinds of care policies and care-leave schemes, including decent maternity leave, are available,” he said, citing paid time off given workers for child care and even elder care. “Those were not options for previous generations. You could argue that we already are using some [of the retirement] time now, and that we would then have to compensate by working longer.”
Thousands of Danes protest cancelling of public holiday



Protest in front of the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen

Sun, February 5, 2023 
By Johannes Birkebaek

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Thousands of people gathered in Copenhagen on Sunday to protest a bill put forward by the government to scrap a public holiday to help finance increased defence spending.

The demonstration was organised by the country's biggest labour unions which oppose abolishing the Great Prayer Day, a Christian holiday that falls on the fourth Friday after Easter and dates back to 1686.

Unions organising the protest estimated at least 50,000 people took part, which would make it Denmark's biggest demonstration in more than a decade. Local police don't give such crowd estimates.


The holiday abolition was proposed in December to help raise tax revenues for higher defence spending in wake of the Ukraine war, and is part of the newly formed government's sweeping reform programme aimed at overcoming challenges to the country's welfare model.

The government has proposed moving forward by three years to 2030 a goal of meeting a NATO defence spending target of 2% of GDP. It says most of the extra 4.5 billion Danish crowns ($654 million) needed to meet the target could be covered by the higher tax revenues it anticipates from abolishing the holiday.

However, unions, opposition lawmakers and economists have questioned the effect of the proposal. Some economists have said it is unlikely to have long-lasting effects, as workers would find other ways to adjust their working hours.

In the Danish labour market, pay and working hours are primarily regulated by collective agreements between highly-organised worker and employer groups without intervention by the state.

However, the government, which holds a slim majority in parliament, says it intends to push the bill through regardless of any opposition.

"Normally these things are discussed with the working people, and now this model is about to be overruled. We are protesting to hopefully make them listen," said plumber Stig De Blanck, 63, who was demonstrating in front of parliament.

Danes work less hours than most countries in Europe according to OECD data.

(This story has been refiled to remove a superfluous 'a' in paragraph 1)

(Reporting by Johannes Gotfredsen-Birkebek; Additional reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard; Editing by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen and David Holmes)
FOOD NOT FUEL
US, Brazil to Join India’s Global Push to Boost Biofuels Demand



Rakesh Sharma
Sun, February 5, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- The US and Brazil, two of the world’s largest biofuels markets, are joining an India-led initiative that will aim to boost demand for the lower-emissions energy source.

Members of the International Biofuels Alliance will also campaign for nations to do more to use organic waste to produce the fuel, according to the office of India’s oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri. Further details will be outlined during the three-day India Energy Week forum opening Monday in Bengaluru.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is scheduled to address the conference, has backed the use of alternative fuels and in 2021 brought forward a target to have blended gasoline include 20% ethanol by 2025. The strategy is intended to limit air pollution, trim India’s oil import bill and help tackle a domestic surplus of sugar — used in production of the fuel.

India last week earmarked 350 billion rupees ($4.3 billion) in its federal budget to bolster energy security and support efforts to achieve Modi’s goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2070.

India, France, UAE to work on climate change, biodiversity

ASHOK SHARMA
Sat, February 4, 2023

NEW DELHI (AP) — India, France and the United Arab Emirates on Saturday agreed on a trilateral initiative to undertake energy projects with a focus on solar and nuclear sources, fight climate change and protect biodiversity, particularly in the Indian Ocean region.

The countries will organize trilateral events in the framework of the Indian presidency of the Group of 20 rich and developing nations, and the UAE’s hosting of COP28 climate negotiations this year, said a statement by India’s External Affairs Ministry.

The foreign ministers of the three countries through a phone call decided to adopt a roadmap for the implementation of the initiative. The call was a follow-up of their September meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

They will expand their cooperation through initiatives such as the Mangrove Alliance for Climate, led by the UAE, and the Indo-Pacific Parks Partnership led by India and France. It was agreed that the three countries should focus on key issues such as single-use plastic pollution, desertification and food security in the context of the International Year of Millets, the statement said.

They agreed to explore the possibility of working with the Indian Ocean Rim Association to pursue projects on clean energy, the environment and biodiversity.

The association is a regional forum bringing together representatives of government, business and academia from South Africa, India, Mauritius, Australia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Tanzania and some other countries.

They will seek to ensure greater alignment of their respective economic, technological and social policies with the objectives of the 2015 Paris Agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate actions and investments needed for a sustainable low-carbon future, the statement said.

Tens of thousands of Israelis protest against justice reform plans




sraelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new right-wing coalition in Tel Aviv


Sat, February 4, 2023

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of Israelis braved heavy rain on Saturday for a fifth week of protests against judicial reform plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government that critics say threaten democratic checks on ministers by the courts.

The plans, which the government says are needed to curb overreach by judges, have drawn fierce opposition from groups including lawyers, and raised concerns among business leaders, widening already deep political divisions in Israeli society.

"I'm here tonight protesting against the transition of Israel from a democracy to an autocracy," Dov Levenglick, 48, a software engineer told Reuters in Tel Aviv.

"It's a disgrace, it shall not stand."

Netanyahu has dismissed the protests as a refusal by leftist opponents to accept the results of last November's election, which produced one of the most right-wing governments in Israel's history.

The protesters say Israeli democracy would be undermined if the government succeeds in pushing through the plans, which would tighten political control over judicial appointments and limit the Supreme Court's powers to overturn government decisions or Knesset laws.

"They want to tear up the judiciary system of Israel, they want to tear up Israeli democracy, and we are here every week in every weather ... to fight against it and to fight for Israeli democracy," Hadar Segal, 35, told Reuters in Tel Aviv.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid joined demonstrations in the coastal city of Haifa, where he said protesters "came to save their country, and we came to protest with them."

(Reporting by Emily Rose; Editing by Mark Potter)

Outrage over far-right Israeli government has American Jewish leaders stewing

One New York rabbi has forsworn the Prayer for the State of Israel in the Saturday liturgy. Many others have protested through letters and petitions.

Israelis carry torches at a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government that opponents say threaten democracy and freedoms, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023. (AP Photo/ Tsafrir Abayov)

(RNS) — Shortly before Israel’s new right-wing government was sworn in late December, Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky of New York’s Ansche Chesed Synagogue penned a blog post on the congregation’s website.

“This government is beyond awful,” he wrote. “It deserves whatever small protest we can offer from afar.”

He then proposed his own. He would stop saying the Prayer for the State of Israel in the Saturday morning liturgy and replace it with Psalm 122, which includes the phrase, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

Kalmanofsky made clear he was not protesting Zionism, to which he said he is still committed, but Israel’s newly sworn-in coalition government that includes cabinet members whom he described as Jewish supremacists, fascists and racists.

Several, in fact, have criminal convictions and have made plain their desire to restrict the rights of minorities, weaken the judiciary, allow for harsher treatment of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs and expand the settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Photo courtesy Ansche Chesed Synagogue

Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky. Photo courtesy Ansche Chesed Synagogue

Kalmanofsky’s small protest gained headlines in “The Forward” and has since led to the resignation of one of the synagogue’s board members and at least one other synagogue member.

But mostly his 650-family Conservative congregation has welcomed the change. “It’s been overwhelmingly positive,” he said in a phone call.

Many American Jews are outraged by Israel’s new government and its anti-democratic leanings, which run contrary to their liberal Jewish values. In the past month, at least three petitions with hundreds of signatures have emerged, each criticizing the new government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and what many see as its potentially authoritarian bent.

“Even rabbis who don’t usually take risks to speak about Israel, occupation and democracy are taking a few more risks,” noted Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.

In one petition, days after Israel’s government was sworn in, hundreds of rabbis pledged to block the most extreme Israeli cabinet members from speaking in their congregations or organizations.


RELATEDHundreds of US rabbis protest new Israeli government in public letter


Then came a letter from a group of 134 Israeli and U.S. historians castigating the new government, saying Israel has never faced a graver political crisis.

And on Wednesday (Feb. 1), 185 Jewish leaders called on Congress not to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism:

“Our criticisms emanate from a love for Israel and a steadfast support for its security and well-being,” said the statement. “Some will try to dismiss their validity by labeling them antisemitic.” Instead, the statement said, the criticisms “reflect a real concern that the new government’s direction mirrors anti-democratic trends that we see arising elsewhere.”

Among the signers was a wide swath of Conservative and Reform rabbis as well as several retired Jewish institutional leaders. They included Rabbi David Saperstein, former ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom and former Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold.

This round of hand-wringing among Israel’s strong supporters is new. While younger U.S. Jews have steadily grown alienated from Israel, older generations have until recently been more circumspect in their criticism.

But their anxiety is starting to show.

“They’re now forced to make a choice between support for Israel and the liberal principles that underlie their own, and roughly 70% of American Jews’ values and politics,” said Eric Alterman, a historian and the author of “We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel” (2022). “It’s a very difficult choice.”

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield. Courtesy photo

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield. Courtesy photo

For some, it’s still too soon to judge Israel’s government. Especially from far away.

“My experience is that in moments of pain we tend not to make the best decisions,” said Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. “I appreciate the pain people are feeling about the current government if it doesn’t reflect their views. But I know my love for Israel is bigger than any particular outcome.”

There has not been a rush to quit the prayer for Israel, recited alongside “A Prayer for Our Country” after the Torah reading on Shabbat mornings.

Written in 1948 by Israel’s chief rabbi, and perhaps others, the prayer has been a mainstay of Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and many modern Orthodox prayerbooks. (Haredi Jews, some of which are not Zionists, do not recite it.)

But nearly all the liberal Jewish denominations have abridged or revised it in various ways.

For Kalmanofsky, its still troubling, especially two sentences in which Jews pray for Israel’s government: “Guide its leaders and advisors with Your light and Your truth. Help them with Your good counsel.”

“If I was praying God send them light and guidance, that would mean I would mentally reinterpret the prayer to say, ‘May God send you a 100% personality transformation; may you disavow everything you ever said, may you simply be a different person,’” said Kalmanofsky. “I don’t think that’s honest.”

Since the prayer is not required by the various denominational rabbinical assemblies, it’s relatively easy for rabbis and congregational leaders to drop it.

Unlike Christianity, where Jesus commands his followers to “pray for those who persecute you,” Judaism has no equivalent commandment.

Still, few are omitting the prayer for Israel.

“Israel needs our prayers more than ever,” said Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and its Rabbinical Assembly — the denomination to which Kalmanofsky’s congregation belongs. “If people don’t like the traditional prayer for the State of Israel because they feel like it doesn’t speak to the moment, I would encourage them to write a new prayer that speaks to their hearts and expresses their deepest hopes for what the state of Israel should be.”

Kalmanofsky said he’s doing just that. He’s drafting his own prayer for Israel, one that better expresses what kind of society he would like Israel to be. He hopes to introduce it soon.

But in the battle between liberal Jewish values and Israel’s democratic slide, the future appears fraught. That should present a new opportunity for American Jews to forge a new understanding of their faith, its foundation and its future, said Alterman.

“Leaning on Israel for the past five decades has left very little energy for reimagining what it means to be a diaspora Jew, and American Jews haven’t paid attention to it because Israel has been a crutch,” Alterman said. “It’s a challenge to turn this big boat around. But unless that challenge is faced, there will be an enormous diminution in the commitment of American Jews to their Judaism.”


RELATEDReconstructionist Jews call for reparations, embark on racial justice pilgrimages


Israel Braces for the ‘Terrifying’ Crisis Bibi Wanted All Along

Noga Tarnopolsky
Fri, February 3, 2023 

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Reuters

JERUSALEM—In Jerusalem, standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken uncharacteristically minced no words: The United States, he said, wanted to stress “our support for core democratic principles and institutions, including respect for human rights, the equal administration of justice for all, the equal rights of minority groups, the rule of law, free press, a robust civil society.”

It was the sort of cautionary notice Blinken might have issued in authoritarian Turkey or in Poland, but never before heard from a senior American official in Israel. It spotlighted almost all the parts of Israeli governance Netanyahu plans to dismantle as part of a vast judicial blitz which would leave him, as the nation’s chief executive, with almost absolute power.

Then Blinken pulled a final arrow out and—referring to the massive protests that have emerged since Israel’s long-time leader returned to power on Dec. 29—shot it straight at Netanyahu: “And the vibrancy of Israel’s civil society has been on full display of late.”


Netanyahu and his allies, including Yair, his right-wing troll son, slam the protests as “anti-Israeli” subversion funded by “foreign money.”

In addition to street demonstrations, Netanyahu’s radical overhaul has been met with a wall of condemnation from every sector in Israel’s establishment, ranging from the entire judiciary to bank and university presidents, academic leaders, tech titans, business leaders, economists, doctors, teachers, and more than 170 mayors.

Netanyahu’s Right-Wing Blitz Is the ‘Most Corrupt’ Day in Israeli History

Netanyahu’s all-out assault on Israel’s judiciary would neuter the judiciary, void Supreme Court rulings, and accord him almost total authority over the levers of government. Israel does not have a written constitution, and Netanyahu is threatening to revoke some of the “Basic Laws” that guarantee civil rights.

Mordechai Kremnitzer, a renowned Israeli jurist and professor of law at the Hebrew University, told The Daily Beast that Israel is undergoing “an attempted régime change by a political majority, which would transform the country from a liberal democracy to a country with an authoritarian, populist, nationalist and religious system with many characteristics of absolute power for majority, and no mechanism of judicial review.”

Netanyahu’s finance minister, who recently described himself as a “fascist homophobe,” and hopes to impose “the law of the Torah” on Israel, has submitted to parliament a law which would allow faith-based discrimination. Other ministers are acting to usurp the power of parents and regional and municipal authorities over educational programming, to deny the right of traditionally Arab-majority political parties to run for the Knesset—Israel’s parliament—to limit the right to strike, restrict the right of journalists to publish leaks, and entirely do away with Israel’s public broadcaster, Kann News.
‘The Threat From Within’

On the international front, his government has announced plans to, de facto, rescind Israel’s recognition of most Jewish communities in the world as properly Jewish, and to curb Israel’s unique immigration law, which was established 75 years ago so as to guarantee Jews a homeland should they be threatened by antisemitism in the lands of their birth.

And that’s not half of it: Last weekend, an Israeli army incursion into the West Bank city of Jenin resulted in the deaths of nine Palestinians, including at least two innocent bystanders, and triggered a bloody weekend in Jerusalem. Seven Israelis were killed in two terrorist shooting attacks perpetrated by east Jerusalemites: a 21-year-old who was shot dead by Israeli police, and a 13-year-old whose family home has been sealed off under orders of Netanyahu’s Minister for National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir. Ben Gvir, a rabble rouser with dozens of hate crime convictions, led a late night posse chanting “death to the terrorists!” after the first attack.

Danny Yatom, a retired major general and former head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and one of hundreds of former police and military officers who have joined the resistance to Netanyahu’s scheme, told The Daily Beast he considered the number one threat confronting Israel to be “the threat from within: the fissures and cleavages tearing apart Israeli society, which in the past has always evinced solidarity when confronted by danger.”

“The divisiveness weakens Israeli cohesion, and in the eyes of our enemies, the events taking place in the country are a sign of weakness.”

Last week, three tech and financial services companies announced they were withdrawing from Israel, citing rule of law concerns, only to be followed this week by Tom Livne, founder of software giant Verbit—valued at $2 billion—who said he intends to leave Israel in protest.

Netanyahu has lost a top Bank of Israel official and three ambassadors who resigned in protest at his government’s radical policies. He also lost a crucial political ally, Minister of the Interior and Health Minister Aryeh Deri, whom the Supreme Court ruled unfit due to a recent conviction for tax evasion.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Esther Hayut warned Netanyahu of “a fatal blow to Israeli democracy,” and was slammed as an enemy of the state. Two former governors of the Bank of Israel and the current office-holder, Amir Yaron, a Netanyahu appointee, cautioned Netanyahu that erasing checks and balances will negatively affect foreign investment in Israel, a crucial column of Israel’s booming economy.

Netanyahu’s online followers immediately branded Yaron “a leftist.”

On Tuesday, at a public event, Netanyahu himself accused opposition leader Yair Lapid, the immediate former prime minister, of “harming Israel’s economy.”

Netanyahu is barely paying lip service to Israel’s existing laws: his coalition already submitted a bill, popularly called the “Deri Law,” which would override the Supreme Court ruling to reinstate barred ex-convict Deri in Netanyahu’s cabinet and provoke an unprecedented constitutional crisis in Israel.

Netanyahu and his allies have wasted no time in employing methods that, under Israel’s current laws, are brazenly illegal. He continues to invite Deri to cabinet meetings, and his replacements in crucial offices of state have yet to show up for work.
‘The Shock Doctrine’

Netanyahu himself was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in 2019, and remains on trial. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s warning on Thursday—in which he compelled Netanyahu to immediately stop any activity relating to the judiciary while proceedings against him are underway—led Simcha Rothman, a key Netanyahu ally, to threaten to fire her for sedition.

“It is no exaggeration to say that this entire crazy initiative has been engineered by Bibi Netanyahu to escape the legal predicament that still confronts him,” said Yatom. “He wants quite simply the power to influence the selection of judges—the judges who will hear his appeals.”

Israeli journalists reporting on the pandemonium can’t keep up. Orli Barlev, an independent journalist closely linked with the public protest against government corruption, told The Daily Beast that “Netanyahu's media people are on them all the time. A reporter says one thing and is swarmed by spin from Netanyahu’s online army, or even threatened. Journalists haven’t yet assimilated the fact that Netanyahu is a proven liar.”

After a vertiginous month, Israelis can barely catch their breath—which is, according to constitutional law professor Adam Shinar, the whole point.

“It’s the shock doctrine,” he told The Daily Beast. “It’s a hugely important concept in understanding politics.”

The idea, he said, is long used by aspiring authoritarians to flood the public space with so many drastic transformations that “by the time the opposition gets to its feet, it’ll all be over.”

Netanyahu, for example, has not tried to persuade Israelis of the need for any specific, defined reform.

Instead, he is “trying to push through the pipeline many changes at once, each very complicated yet condensed into a few pieces of legislation—each of which merits separate debate. The government is doing this as fast as possible so the opposition time to organize,” Shinar said.

“What are you going to fight first? While you ask yourself that question, they’re five miles down the road with even more radical changes.”

Roee Neuman, a leader of the pro-democracy protest movement, told The Daily Beast he is “getting calls from journalists and lawyers and civil society people who are genuinely afraid of being criminalized and being jailed if this reform/coup is enacted.”

“There will be no reset if this happens,” he said. “It is terrifying.”

Hubble Space Telescope captures chaotic globular cluster near Milky Way's core

Robert Lea
Sat, February 4, 2023 

The globular cluster NGC 6355, located in the inner Milky Way, is densely packed with tens of thousands to millions of stars.

A stunning Hubble Space Telescope image shows the chaotic and densely packed stars of the globular cluster NGC 6355.

The globular cluster is located around 31,000 light-years from Earth in the inner region of the Milky Way — so deep into our galaxy that it is just 4,600 light-years from our galaxy's central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*.

Globular clusters like this one are home to tens of thousands to millions of stars, all tightly bound by mutual gravitational attraction. These dense stellar populations give globular clusters a roughly spherical shape.

Related: Mysterious globular clusters could unlock the secrets of galaxy formation

Globular clusters are found in galaxies of all shapes and sizes and tend to be the oldest structures in their home galaxies. They are packed with older and redder stars than those found in open star clusters, which are smaller than globular clusters.

This image of NGC 6355, which used data from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3, captures the stunning details of a dense and bright heart of stars packed in the center of the globular cluster, according to the European Space Agency (ESA), a partner on the mission. The sparser scattering of stars on the outskirts of the globular cluster are also seen in crystal clarity.

The central red and blue stars of NGC 6355 can be distinguished clearly in the image, demonstrating the tremendous observational power of Hubble, which has revolutionized the study of globular clusters. Hubble is capable of capturing these amazing views because it is positioned around 330 miles (530 kilometers) above our planet's surface. This vantage point frees the telescope from the distorting effects of Earth's atmosphere that make it almost impossible for ground-based telescopes to distinguish the individual stars in globular clusters.

Hubble observations have led to a wealth of information about globular clusters.

In 2006, the telescope made the first direct observations of white dwarfs — faint stellar remnants that form when stars with masses similar to the sun's run out of fuel for nuclear fusion and undergo gravitational collapse — in globular star clusters. These observations gave astronomers a better understanding of the ages and origins of stars in globular clusters and the evolution of those clusters.

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Sparkling Hubble Space Telescope photo shows ancient globular cluster near Milky Way's heart

Hubble Space Telescope photo shows star-studded globular cluster near Milky Way's core

The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

In 2021, Hubble observations allowed astronomers to make the first measurement of black holes in the core-collapsed globular cluster NGC 6397. They were expecting to find an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of this globular cluster, but instead, they discovered a concentration of smaller black holes throughout NGC 6397, which is located around 7,800 light-years from Earth.

Hubble also has produced images of Messier 15, which, at about 12 billion years old, is the most ancient known globular cluster.

You can see more Hubble images of globular clusters on ESA's website.