(date: 2024-12-21 07:05:33)
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
washington — The United States has charged a Russian Israeli dual citizen over alleged involvement with the Lockbit ransomware group, the Justice Department said Friday.
Rostislav Panev, 51, was arrested in Israel in August and is awaiting extradition to the United States, the department said.
Panev was a developer at Lockbit from its inception in 2019 until at least February 2024, during which time the group grew into “what was, at times, the most active and destructive ransomware group in the world,” the department said.
“The Justice Department’s work going after the world’s most dangerous ransomware schemes includes not only dismantling networks but also finding and bringing to justice the individuals responsible for building and running them,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Lockbit and its malware were linked to attacks on more than 2,500 victims in at least 120 countries around the world, according to the department, including small businesses and large multinationals, hospitals, schools, critical infrastructure, government and law enforcement agencies.
Lockbit was discovered in 2020 when its eponymous malicious software was found on Russian-language cybercrime forums.
It operated a ransomware-as-a-service operation, in which a core group of developers and administrators worked with affiliates who carried out attacks. Extortion proceeds were split among the parties involved.
Lockbit and its affiliates extorted at least $500 million in payments from victims, according to the Justice Department, as well as causing significant costs from lost revenue and incident response and recovery.
The arrest followed two guilty pleas in July from a pair of Russian members of the Lockbit gang — Ruslan Astamirov and Mikhail Vasiliev — and the seizure in February of numerous Lockbit websites by Britain’s National Crime Agency, the FBI and other international law enforcement agencies.
Lockbit reappeared online not long after the seizure, defiantly saying: “I cannot be stopped.” But law enforcement officials and experts say the bust helped damage the gang’s standing in the cybercriminal underworld.
Government actions “have proven incredibly effective at dismantling and discrediting” Lockbit as a brand and bringing the group’s volume of attacks down precipitously, said Jeremy Kennelly, a cybersecurity analyst with Google owner Alphabet.
Affiliates and others working with the group may have shifted to collaborating with other gangs, Kennelly said, but the crackdown has been “critical to ensuring that ransomware and extortion are seen as crimes for which there are consequences.”
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — The U.S. flu season is under way, with cases surging across much of the country, health officials said Friday.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted sharp increases in several measures, including lab tests and emergency room visits.
“It’s been increasing at a pretty steady pace now for the past several weeks. So yeah, we are certainly in flu season now,” said the CDC’s Alicia Budd.
Thirteen states reported high or very high levels of flu-like illness last week, about double from the week before. One is Tennessee, where a sickness spike is hitting the Nashville area, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University.
“Flu has been increasing, but just this last week has exploded,” Schaffner said. He noted that in a local clinic that serves as an indicator of illness trends, as many as a quarter of the patients have flu symptoms.
Louisiana is another early hot spot.
“Just this week is really that turning point where people are out because of the flu,” said Dr. Catherine O’Neal, an infectious diseases doctor at the largest private hospital in the state, Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge. “You hear parents saying, ‘I can’t come to work because of the flu’ and ‘Where can I get a flu test?’”
There are a number of bugs that cause fever, cough, sore throat and other flu-like symptoms. One is COVID-19. Another is RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, which is a common cause of cold-like symptoms but can be dangerous for infants and the elderly.
The most recent CDC data show COVID-19 hospitalizations have been declining since summer. COVID-19 activity is moderate nationally, but high in the Midwest, according to CDC wastewater data.
RSV hospitalizations started rising before flu did and now show signs of possibly leveling off, but they remain a little more common than admissions for flu. Overall, RSV activity is low nationally, but high in the South, the wastewater data show.
The CDC called the start of flu season based on several indicators, including lab results for patients in hospitals and doctor’s offices, and the percentage of emergency department visits that had a discharge diagnosis of flu.
No flu strain seems to be dominant, and it’s too early in the season to know how good a match the flu vaccine will be, Budd said.
Last winter’s flu season was considered “moderate” overall, but it was long — 21 weeks — and the CDC estimated there were 28,000 flu-related deaths. It was unusually dangerous for children, with 205 pediatric deaths reported. That was the highest number ever reported for a conventional flu season.
The long season was likely a factor, Budd said. Another factor was a lack of flu vaccinations. Among the children who died who were old enough for flu vaccinations — and for whom their vaccination status was known — 80% were not fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
Vaccination rates for children are even lower this year. As of Dec. 7, about 41% of adults had received a flu vaccination, similar to the rate at the same point last year. The percentage is the same for kids, but for them that’s a drop from a year ago, when 44% were vaccinated against the flu, according to CDC data.
Vaccination rates are lower still against COVID-19, with about 21% of adults and 11% of children up to date.
Flu experts suggest everyone get vaccinated, especially as people prepare to attend holiday gatherings where respiratory viruses can spread widely.
“All those gatherings that are so heartwarming and fun and joyous are also an opportunity for this virus to spread person to person,” Schaffner said. “It’s not too late to get vaccinated.”
date: 2024-12-20, from: The Lever News
The year behind; the year ahead.
https://www.levernews.com/2024-year-end-live-event-replay/
date: 2024-12-20, from: Capital and Main
Servers say the chain forces them to do janitorial work, dishwashing for lower tipped wages and robs them of up to $46.8 million.
The post Waffle House Workers Say Owners Pocket Millions Through Wage Theft appeared first on .
https://capitalandmain.com/waffle-house-workers-say-owners-pocket-millions-through-wage-theft
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
The United States last month formally opened a permanent military base in Poland, part of NATO’s missile defense system amid rising tensions with Russia. The Polish defense minister says the base is a testament to Polish-American cooperation. VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports from Redzikowo, Poland.
date: 2024-12-20, from: Capital and Main
With time running out, the administration is scrambling to secure its legacy ahead of an incoming president who has vowed to shred it all.
The post Biden Works to Trump-Proof His Climate Agenda, but Advocates Want More Action appeared first on .
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
LONDON — It’s a photo that sent a tremor through British politics: Elon Musk flanked by British politician Nigel Farage and a wealthy backer, in front of a gilt-framed painting of a young Donald Trump.
Taken this week at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, the image suggested that Musk, a key player in the incoming U.S. administration, could soon turn his disruptive attention to the U.K.
Farage, Trump’s highest-profile British champion, confirmed talks are under way about Musk making a hefty donation to Farage’s party, Reform U.K. The Times of London reported it could be as much as $100 million, which would be far and away the largest political donation in U.K. history. The reports have sparked calls for Britain’s rules on political donations to be tightened — quickly.
“We did discuss money,” Farage told broadcaster GB News after the meeting with Musk. “That’s a negotiation we will go back and have again. He is not against giving us money. He hasn’t fully decided whether he will.”
Britain has strict limits on how much political parties can spend on elections, but they can accept unlimited donations, as long as the donors are U.K. voters or companies registered in Britain. Musk’s social network X has a British arm, Twitter U.K. Ltd., with a registered address in London.
Critics say that’s a loophole that allows foreign influence in U.K. politics. The voting watchdog, the Electoral Commission, is calling for changes, including limiting the amount a company can donate to how much it earns in Britain.
“It’s crucial that U.K. voters have trust in the financing of our political system,” the commission’s chief executive, Vijay Rangarajan, told The Guardian. “The system needs strengthening, and we have been calling for changes to the law since 2013, to protect the electoral system from foreign interference.”
Britain’s center-left Labour Party pledged during the summer election campaign to tighten the rules on political donations, although legislation is not scheduled in the coming year. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson Dave Pares said Wednesday that work is already under way to “reinforce existing safeguards” against “impermissible proxy donations.”
The Labour government and the right-of-center opposition Conservatives are trying to figure out how to deal with Musk, who has taken a keen interest in the U.K. — and seemingly formed a strong dislike for Starmer.
Musk often posts on X about the U.K., retweeting criticism of Starmer and the hashtag TwoTierKeir — shorthand for an unsubstantiated claim that Britain has “two-tier policing,” with far-right protesters treated more harshly than pro-Palestinian or Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Musk has compared British attempts to weed out online misinformation to the Soviet Union, and during summer anti-immigrant violence across the U.K. tweeted that “civil war is inevitable.”
Farage has echoed some of those themes in his own social media output and his party’s anti-“woke” agenda, which includes pledges to slash immigration, scrap green-energy targets and leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
Founded in 2021, Reform U.K. is the latest in a string of small hard-right parties led by Farage that have had limited electoral success but an outsized influence on British politics. Farage’s opposition to the European Union helped push the country toward voting in 2016 to leave the bloc, a seismic political and economic break with the U.K.’s nearest neighbors.
Reform U.K. won just five of the 650 seats in the House of Commons in July’s election, but it came second in dozens more and secured 14% of the vote. Now it is pushing for fast growth, trying to professionalize its previously ramshackle organization and holding gatherings around the U.K. to recruit new members.
Farage, a strong communicator who has embraced TikTok and other platforms, aims to emulate Trump’s success in using the power of personality and social media to reach the “bro vote” — young men who are traditionally less likely to turn out at election time.
Farage told GB News that Musk has “already given me considerable help – understanding the process from start to finish, reaching disaffected communities who frankly feel there’s no point voting for anybody.”
The electoral power of social media was on show recently in Romania, where far-right candidate Calin Georgescu came from nowhere to win the first round of the presidential election in November, aided in part by a flood of TikTok videos promoting his campaign. Amid allegations that Russia had organized the social media campaign to back Georgescu, Romania’s Constitutional Court canceled the presidential election runoff two days before it was due to take place.
With Britain’s Conservative Party trying to recover from its worst election result since 1832, Farage dreams of making Reform the main opposition — or even the government — after the next election, due by 2029.
That’s a long shot, but Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said a big donation from Musk could have “disruptive potential in all sorts of ways.”
He said Musk’s money would give Reform “the opportunity to try and build up a serious campaign organization, which is something that they have generally lacked.”
“It’s certainly adding a new joker to the pack of cards in British politics,” Ford said. “We’ve had no shortage of surprising developments here in the past few years. And maybe this is the next one.”
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
President-elect Donald Trump has signaled an eagerness to see the conflict in Gaza end quickly, saying, “All hell is going to break out” if Hamas does not release its hostages by Jan. 20, the day he takes office. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at prospects for peace as the outgoing Biden administration pushes for a ceasefire deal. Note: This video includes graphic images some may find disturbing.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-wants-to-quickly-end-gaza-war-can-he-/7908532.html
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
UNITED NATIONS — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $200 million in new humanitarian funding for the Sudanese people at a high-level Sudan meeting he chaired Thursday at the U.N. Security Council, bringing total U.S. support to Sudan to more than $2.3 billion since fighting began among rival generals in April 2023.
U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello spoke to VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer on the sidelines of the council meeting. He said the outgoing administration of U.S. President Joe Biden wants to consolidate humanitarian progress and move toward a ceasefire, even a temporary one, in its remaining weeks.
Once allies in Sudan’s transitional government after a 2021 coup, Sudanese Armed Forces General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Rapid Support Forces General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo have become bitter rivals for power. Fighting erupted between their forces in the capital, Khartoum, last year. It has since spread across Sudan, causing widespread atrocities and killing, and one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
VOA: U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello, thank you for talking to VOA today. You have one month to go for the Biden administration. What do you realistically think you can achieve in the remaining weeks on Sudan?
U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello: Well, one of the things that Secretary Blinken made clear today at the United Nations is that we’re going to use every second we’ve got, and we’ve got some momentum. We’re in the fifth straight month of breaking the largest humanitarian embargo in the world, but we have so much more to do. We’ve seen four times more food and medicine moving into Sudan than we saw just a few months ago, and each one of those is food and medicine reaching a mother or a child that’s been malnourished for months in places like Zamzam camp or Kadugli in South Kordofan. We’re getting the convoys moving, including the first convoy into parts of southern Khartoum since the war began almost two years ago. So, we have got a lock in those humanitarian gains that are saving lives. But ultimately, we’ve got to move towards a ceasefire, even a temporary ceasefire, from the parties, to give some relief to the horrific conditions that millions of Sudanese people are facing.
VOA: And how do you hope to move toward that temporary ceasefire? Might you convene another meeting of the ALPS [Aligned for Advancing Lifesaving and Peace in Sudan] before January 20th?
Perriello: I just came yesterday from Mauritania, where we were meeting with the African Union, the United Nations, the Arab League and others, about how we can move towards expanding both local and national ceasefire efforts. It was a big statement for Secretary Blinken to sit at the council today in the U.N. And you heard from the Algerians and the other African leaders this idea that we’ve got to give more urgency to this ceasefire. … This famine and this war was a war of choice by men who were willing to let the Sudanese people suffer, and those same men can help bring it to an end if we can get the regional actors in Africa and in the Gulf to align on an effort to put a pause in the fighting and restore the civilian transition.
VOA: Would you say the two generals are the biggest obstacle to peace? Is this just about their egos? Or does it go deeper?
Perriello: Well, certainly it was a big part of what started this war. But really, you have to go back a few steps and remember it was Generals Hemeti [Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo] and [Abdel Fattah] al-Burhan joining forces to overthrow the civilian transition that had inspired the world in 2019. And there are many forces behind both of them that want to prevent the people of Sudan from having the power over their future. And we continue to see that with extremist groups and others who want to profit from this war, whether it’s groups like the National Congress party of the former Bashir era, that know the people wouldn’t support them having power, and they’re using this war to come back to power. We see some of the tribal leaders who should be some of the strongest voices for peace, instead of figuring out how to profit off of the famine and off of the war, we see countries that have engaged and are willing to continue to see that suffering of the Sudanese people. But we’ve also seen neighboring countries show the welcomeness … to accept millions of refugees. We’ve seen efforts in the region to work with us on these local ceasefire efforts, including some of these humanitarian corridors. So, it’s important that we not use the level of the crisis as an excuse to do nothing, because when we’ve engaged, we’ve been able to make a difference. And I think that’s what Secretary Blinken was trying to remind the council today.
VOA: What will it take to get the two generals to the negotiating table?
Perriello: Well, first of all, I think we’ll continue to try to push them to the table, but what we showed with the ALPS efforts in Switzerland on humanitarian access is you don’t need a table anymore. We have telephones. We have proximity talks. What we need is the political will, and we appreciate that countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt and others are continuing to try to support these peace efforts. We think the African Union has a role to play. And the American people, in the same way we’ve seen Americans show just so much compassion in crisis after crisis around the world, we need folks to see these young people with the Mutual Aid Sudan and elsewhere that are risking their lives to get food and medicine into their communities. They need that support and attention from us. It’s also something, quite frankly, that has really strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, including from a recent letter this week from both Republican and Democratic senators trying to draw more attention to the crisis in Sudan. So, it needs all of us to pay more attention, but most of all, it needs the people with guns and the people supplying guns to all sides in Sudan, to put those down and become partners in peace.
VOA: You mentioned, and Secretary Blinken mentioned in the council, that there’s a lot of external interference in the war in Sudan. There’s credible evidence the UAE has been fueling the violence and supplying the RSF with arms. Why has the Biden administration been reluctant to really exert significant public pressure on the UAE?
Perriello: Well, you saw some powerful testimony today at the Security Council about this issue, about foreign interference and the role certain countries are playing to fuel this conflict. The Biden administration has really led the way on putting pressure on all of the external actors to stop fueling this war and inviting them to be partners in peace, both ending the famine and trying to end this war. [U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.] Linda Thomas-Greenfield helped push for an extension of the Darfur arms embargo — and also the first sanctions for violating that arms embargo in over 15 years. We are going to continue with our sanctions and with our diplomacy to raise the costs of those that are fueling this conflict, but also to continue to invite in those who want to be partners for not just peace for the Sudanese people, but how we rebuild Sudan and how we restore that civilian transition. Secretary Blinken announced today an additional $30 million with Congress to support civil society, particularly women and youth, who have continued to inspire us in Sudan, to help rebuild that political dialogue and that path — the only real path forward — which is a unified civilian front into peace and democracy.
VOA: There are reports that the State Department is considering a genocide declaration. Why the reluctance to use the “genocide” word?
Perriello: Far from reluctance, the State Department’s really been leading the way. I mean, as someone who was in Darfur more than 20 years ago when the genocide was happening. When I was out of government a year ago, I was proud that the State Department led the way on declaring the acts of ethnic cleansing that we heard about from the Sultan of the Masalit today. Called out the crimes against humanity. We’ll continue to look at where the facts lead in terms of other designations.
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
The National Building Museum has unveiled a new exhibition featuring over 2,500 rare artifacts. It’s called “Visible Vault: Open Collections’ and offers a glimpse into the history of architecture and construction. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar
https://www.voanews.com/a/national-building-museum-in-washington-unveils-new-exhibition/7908396.html
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
For Ukrainian teens displaced by war, adjusting to life in a new country is a complex journey. In New York City, there’s a school helping many of these students find a second home. Johny Fernandez reports from the Big Apple.
https://www.voanews.com/a/finding-home-ukrainian-teens-adjust-to-life-in-new-york/7908409.html
date: 2024-12-20, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Bosnia’s capital of Sarajevo is blanketed in a layer of toxic smog • Temperatures in Perth, in Western Australia, could hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend • It is cloudy in Washington, D.C., where lawmakers are scrambling to prevent a government shutdown.
The weather has gotten so weird that the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is holding internal talks about how to adjust its models to produce more accurate forecasts, the Financial Times reported. Current models are based on temperature swings observed over one part of the Pacific Ocean that have for years correlated consistently with specific weather phenomena across the globe, but climate change seems to be disrupting that cause and effect pattern, making it harder to predict things like La Niña and El Niño. Many forecasters had expected La Niña to appear by now and help cool things down, but that has yet to happen. “It’s concerning when this region we’ve studied and written all these papers on is not related to all the impacts you’d see with [La Niña],” NOAA’s Michelle L’Heureux told the FT. “That’s when you start going ‘uh-oh’ there may be an issue here we need to resolve.”
There is quite a lot of news coming out of the Department of Energy as the year (and the Biden administration) comes to an end. A few recent updates:
Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, does not expect to meet its 2025 or 2030 emissions targets, and is putting the blame on policy, infrastructure, and technology limitations. The company previously pledged to cut its emissions by 35% by next year, and 65% by the end of the decade. Emissions in 2023 were up 4% year-over-year.
Walmart
“While we continue to work toward our aspirational target of zero operational emissions by 2040, progress will not be linear … and depends not only on our own initiatives but also on factors beyond our control,” Walmart’s statement said. “These factors include energy policy and infrastructure in Walmart markets around the world, availability of more cost-effective low-GWP refrigeration and HVAC solutions, and timely emergence of cost-effective technologies for low-carbon heavy tractor transportation (which does not appear likely until the 2030s).”
BlackRock yesterday said it is writing down the value of its Global Renewable Power Fund III following the failure of Northvolt and SolarZero, two companies the fund had invested in. Its net internal rate of return was -0.3% at the end of the third quarter, way down from 11.5% in the second quarter, according to Bloomberg. Sectors like EV charging, transmission, and renewable energy generation and storage have been “particularly challenged,” executives said, and some other renewables companies in the portfolio have yet to get in the black, meaning their valuations may be “more subjective and sensitive to evolving dynamics in the industry.”
Flies may be more vulnerable to climate change than bees are, according to a new study published in the Journal of Melittology. The fly haters among us might shrug at the finding, but the researchers insist flies are essential pollinators that help bolster ecosystem biodiversity and agriculture. “It’s time we gave flies some more recognition for their role as pollinators,” said lead author Margarita López-Uribe, who is the Lorenzo Langstroth Early Career Associate Professor of Entomology at Penn State. The study found bees can tolerate higher temperatures than flies, so flies are at greater risk of decline as global temperatures rise. “In alpine and subarctic environments, flies are the primary pollinator,” López-Uribe said. “This study shows us that we have entire regions that could lose their primary pollinator as the climate warms, which could be catastrophic for those ecosystems.”
“No one goes to the movies because they want to be scolded.” –Heatmap’s Jeva Lange writes about the challenges facing climate cinema, and why 2024 might be the year the climate movie grew up.
https://heatmap.news/climate/noaa-forecast-climate-la-nina
date: 2024-12-20, from: Heatmap News
Climate change is the greatest story of our time — but our time doesn’t seem to invent many great stories about climate change. Maybe it’s due to the enormity and urgency of the subject matter: Climate is “important,” and therefore conscripted to the humorless realms of journalism and documentary. Or maybe it’s because of a misunderstanding on the part of producers and storytellers, rooted in an outdated belief that climate change still needs to be explained to an audience, when in reality they don’t need convincing. Maybe there’s just not a great way to have a character mention climate change and not have it feel super cringe.
Whatever the reason, between 2016 and 2020, less than 3% of film and TV scripts used climate-related keywords during their runtime, according to an analysis by media researchers at the University of Southern California. (The situation isn’t as bad in literature, where cli-fi has been going strong since at least 2013.) At least on the surface, this on-screen avoidance of climate change continued in 2024. One of the biggest movies of the summer, Twisters, had an extreme weather angle sitting right there, but its director, Lee Isaac Chung, went out of his way to ensure the film didn’t have a climate change “message.”
I have a slightly different take on the situation, though — that 2024 was actually full of climate movies, and, I’d argue, that they’re getting much closer to the kinds of stories a climate-concerned individual should want on screen.
That’s because for the most part, when movies and TV shows have tackled the topic of climate change in the past, it’s been with the sort of “simplistic anger-stoking and pathos-wringing” that The New Yorker’s Richard Brody identified in 2022’s Don’t Look Up, the Adam McKay satire that became the primary touchpoint for scripted climate stories. At least it was kind of funny: More overt climate stories like last year’s Foe, starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, and Extrapolations, the Apple TV+ show in which Meryl Streep voices a whale, are so self-righteous as to be unwatchable (not to mention, no fun).
But what if we widened our lens and weren’t so prescriptive? Then maybe Furiosa, this spring’s Mad Max prequel, becomes a climate change movie. The film is set during a “near future” ecological collapse, and it certainly makes you think about water scarcity and our overreliance on a finite extracted resource — but it also makes you think about how badass the Octoboss’ kite is. The same goes for Dune: Part Two, which made over $82 million in its opening weekend and is also a recognizable environmental allegory featuring some cool worms. Even Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a flop that most people have already memory-holed, revisited The Day After Tomorrow’s question of, “What if New York City got really, really, really cold?”
Two 2024 animated films with climate themes could even compete against each other at the Academy Awards next year. Dreamworks Animation’s The Wild Robot, one of the centerpiece films at this fall’s inaugural Climate Film Festival, is set in a world where sea levels have risen to submerge the Golden Gate Bridge, and it impresses on its audience the importance of protecting the natural world. And in Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow, one of my favorite films of the year, a cat must band together with other animals to survive a flood.
Flow also raises the question of whether a project can unintentionally be a climate movie. Zilbalodis told me that making a point about environmental catastrophe wasn’t his intention — “I can’t really start with the message, I have to start with the character,” he said — and to him, the water is a visual metaphor in an allegory about overcoming your fears.
But watching the movie in a year when more than a thousand people worldwide have died in floods, and with images of inundated towns in North Carolina still fresh in mind, it’s actually climate change itself that makes one watch Flow as a movie about climate change. (I’m not the only one with this interpretation, either: Zilbalodis told me he’d been asked by one young audience member if the flood depicted in his film is “the future.”)
Perhaps this is how we should also consider Chung’s comments about Twisters. While nobody in the film says the words “climate change” or “global warming,” the characters note that storms are becoming exceptional — “we’ve never seen tornadoes like this before,” one says. Despite the director’s stated intention not to make the movie “about” climate change, it becomes a climate movie by virtue of what its audiences have experienced in their own lives.
Still, there’s that niggling question: Do movies like these, which approach climate themes slant-wise, really count? To help me decide, I turned to Sam Read, the executive director of the Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, an advocacy consortium that encourages environmental awareness both on set and on screen. He told me that to qualify something as a “climate” movie or TV show, some research groups look to see if climate change exists in the world of the story or whether the characters acknowledge it. Other groups consider climate in tiers, such as whether a project has a climate premise, theme, or simply a moment.
The Sustainable Entertainment Alliance, however, has no hard rules. “We want to make sure that we support creatives in integrating these stories in whatever way works for them,” Read told me.
Read also confirmed my belief that there seemed to be an uptick in movies this year that were “not about climate change but still deal with things that feel very climate-related, like resource extraction.” There was even more progress on this front in television, he pointed out: True Detective: Night Country wove in themes of environmentalism, pollution, mining, and Indigenous stewardship; the Max comedy Hacks featured an episode about climate change this season; and Industry involved a storyline about taking a clean energy company public, with some of the characters even attending COP. Even Doctor Odyssey, a cruise ship medical drama that airs on USA, worked climate change into its script, albeit in ridiculous ways. (Also worth mentioning: The Netflix dating show Love is Blind cast Taylor Krause, who works on decarbonizing heavy industry at RMI.)
We can certainly do more. As many critics before me have written, it’s still important to draw a connection between things like environmental catastrophes and the real-world human causes of global warming. But the difference between something being “a climate movie” and propaganda — however true its message, or however well-intentioned — is thin. Besides, no one goes to the movies because they want to be scolded; we want to be moved and distracted and entertained.
I’ve done my fair share of complaining over the past few years about how climate storytelling needs to grow up. But lately I’ve been coming around to the idea that it’s not the words “climate change” appearing in a script that we need to be so focused on. As 2024’s slate of films has proven to me — or, perhaps, as this year’s extreme weather events have thrown into relief — there are climate movies everywhere.
Keep ’em coming.
https://heatmap.news/culture/2024-climate-change-movies
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
LONDON — Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX and the political ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, on Friday praised the German far-right Alternative for Germany party ahead of the German election scheduled for Feb. 23.
In a post on X, Musk said, “Only the AfD can save Germany.”
A few hours later, the AfD’s Alice Weidel — who is running for German chancellor as co-leader of the party — posted a video on X offering her gratitude to the American billionaire.
“Dear Elon. Thank you so much for your note. The Alternative for Germany, the AfD, is indeed the one and only alternative for our country — our last option, if you ask me,” Weidel said. “I wish you and President Donald Trump all the best for the upcoming tenure.”
German anger
The AfD party is polling in second place, at about 19%. The party’s draft manifesto calls for a crackdown on immigration, a German exit from the European Union and an end to German support for Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders.
In an earlier post on X Friday, Weidel compared the EU to the Soviet Union.
Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has labeled the AfD as a suspected extreme-right organization, which the party rejects.
Lawmakers from across the political spectrum criticized Musk’s intervention on Friday. However, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was part of democracy.
“Freedom of speech also applies to multibillionaires. But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that aren’t right and don’t contain good political advice,” Scholz told reporters Friday during a trip to Estonia.
He also questioned the economic success of X, which Musk bought for $44 billion in 2022.
Musk’s intervention in German politics comes days after he met British lawmaker Nigel Farage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to discuss bankrolling his right-wing populist Reform U.K. party with a reported $100 million donation — although details of any such arrangement have not been confirmed.
Ukraine aid
German mainstream political parties have ruled out entering any coalition with the AfD, making it highly unlikely that Weidel’s party will win power.
However, fringe parties have changed the discourse on support for Ukraine, says analyst Mattia Nelles of the German-Ukrainian Bureau, a consultancy based in Dusseldorf, Germany.
“They have more a negative influence on Germany’s Ukraine policy in the sense that the main parties are less willing or less able to speak out in favor of more aid for Ukraine, given that they are campaigning against it — and they are portraying themselves, together with the Stalinist pro-left of populist Sahra Wagenknecht party, as the ‘peace parties,’” Nelles told VOA.
“So they have a detrimental effect on the discourse by allegedly speaking for peace, but they’re actually in favor of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and of a forced peace in Ukraine — which is not a peace,” he said.
Economic pressures
Germany has given Ukraine about $11 billion in military aid since Russia’s 2022 invasion, second only to the United States.
Economic pressures have put government spending at the forefront of the election campaign. Scholz’s Social Democrats want to raise constitutional limits on government borrowing, partly to finance aid for Ukraine.
Scholz faces a tough battle to remain in power. The Christian Democrats, under party leader Friedrich Merz, are well ahead in the polls. They oppose raising the limits on government borrowing.
“I will not focus our country’s economic policy on new debt, high taxes and a lot of redistribution,” Merz said at a campaign event on Tuesday. “But I will focus our country’s economic policy on performance and competitiveness. We don’t want to distribute the existing small cake in a better way. We want to work together to create a bigger cake for everyone.”
Trump fears
There are fears in Germany that Trump will end U.S. support for Kyiv, leaving Europe to make up the shortfall, according to analyst Nelles.
“Given Trump’s return to the White House, much more German leadership and much more German finances will be required. And without debt financing, I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Nelles told VOA.
“The question is whether Germany can regain its leadership role and lead Europe in an age where Trump is likely to put a lot of pressure on the Ukrainians to start peace negotiations with Russia. At that moment, a lot of German leadership will be required. And right now, there’s an absence of that in Europe, and this vacuum is detrimental to Ukraine and to Europeans at large,” Nelles said.
Trump has repeatedly demanded that NATO allies spend more on defense, which would place additional strains on German finances.
“We’re looking at funding gaps of well above €30 billion [$31.3 billion] annually just to keep the 2% [of GDP] NATO spending goal in 2027 and beyond,” Nelles said. “So, if we’re looking at more defense spending, the question is how that is going to be financed — and at the cost of what.”
date: 2024-12-20, from: The Lever News
Can a comic book icon of military power be used to challenge war propaganda?
https://www.levernews.com/how-marvel-helped-sell-us-forever-wars/
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has signaled eagerness to wrap up the war in Gaza as quickly as possible, even as the outgoing Biden administration continues its last-ditch diplomatic push for a ceasefire deal.
Earlier this week, Trump said if the hostages held by Hamas are not home by Jan. 20, 2025, the date of his inauguration, then “all hell is going to break out.”
The warning is similar to the threat he issued on social media earlier this month, where he said, “There will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity. Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”
It’s not clear what Trump plans to do in Gaza. When asked to clarify the threat, he said, “It means it won’t be pleasant.”
Trump may deploy resources to place military pressure on Hamas, said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. However, it’s unlikely to be “significantly harsher than what the Israelis have brought to bear over the last 14 months.”
“There could be another element — which I hope that’s not the approach — to maybe squeeze some of that humanitarian aid going in,” Alkhatib told VOA.
It’s also possible that Trump’s threats are directed to Hamas members outside of Gaza and the countries that support them, and Trump might move to pressure those nations to cut off financing, Alkhatib added. Hamas is a U.S.-designated terror organization.
Hamas’ external wing may be more receptive to Washington’s pressure, particularly since its patron, Tehran, has been weakened through the loss of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Like Hamas, Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, while the Assad regime was Tehran’s stalwart ally.
Trump’s warnings send “an unmistakable message to the people in the Middle East that the U.S. wants to get this done,” said David Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Project on the Middle East Peace Process.
This leaves Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu navigating between placating the ultraright-wing faction of his coalition — which is pushing for building settlements in and even annexing Gaza — and pleasing Trump, who wants credit for ending the war and potentially expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia, Makovsky told VOA.
The 2020 agreement brokered under the first Trump administration normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, then later with Morocco.
“Trump is not into building more settlements and staying in Gaza. Trump wants, I think, a Nobel Prize for a breakthrough with Saudi Arabia,” Makovsky said. “And I don’t think those things go together.”
Analysts say that even before taking office, Trump is already shaping the calculations of combatants in the Middle East. His pick for national security adviser, Representative Mike Waltz, gave the president-elect credit for last month’s ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, brokered by the U.S. and France.
“Everyone is coming to the table because of President Trump,” Waltz posted on social media. “His resounding victory sent a clear message to the rest of the world that chaos won’t be tolerated.”
US ‘hopeful’ for deal
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has pledged to spend all the time left in its waning days to try to make a deal happen. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday he is “hopeful” an agreement can be reached.
“Gaza has to be translated into something different that ensures that Hamas is not in any way in charge, that Israel doesn’t have to be, and that there’s something coherent that follows that enables the governance, the security, the reconstruction of Gaza,” he said.
That goal is still out of reach, despite Washington’s renewed diplomatic push with Turkey, Egypt and Qatar.
“I don’t see a scenario in which President Biden is going to be able to really fundamentally shift the needle here,” Alkhatib said.
He added that while Hamas may be motivated to secure a deal while Biden is still in office rather than after Jan. 20 when the U.S. is likely to drive a much harder bargain, they know that any assurances provided by the Biden administration may not be fulfilled by the Trump administration.
This despite officials from both the Biden and Trump administrations saying they are working together in handling global conflicts, partly to secure the transition period that may be seen by adversaries as moments of opportunity, said national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
“And so, the imperative on us, both the outgoing Biden administration, the incoming Trump administration, has to be to lash up more tightly than is typical, to spend more time together than is typical, and to try to ensure we are sending a common, clear message to both friends and adversaries in the Middle East.”
The common message from the two leaders is that the U.S. wants the conflict to end. So far, the warring parties are not listening.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-wants-to-quickly-end-gaza-war-can-he-/7908063.html
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
LOS ANGELES — China’s ruling Communist Party used an agent in California to influence state politics, U.S. prosecutors said Thursday as they unveiled criminal charges against a Chinese national.
FBI agents arrested Yaoning “Mike” Sun, 64, at his home in Chino Hills, near Los Angeles, on charges that he acted as an agent for a foreign government while getting involved in local politics.
The complaint claims Sun served as the campaign manager and close confidante for an unnamed politician who was running for local elected office in 2022.
During the campaign, he is alleged to have conspired with Chen Jun – a Chinese national sentenced to prison last month for acting as an illegal agent of Beijing – regarding his efforts to get the politician elected.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Chen discussed with Chinese government officials how they could influence local politicians, particularly on the issue of Taiwan.
China considers the self-ruled island of Taiwan part of its territory.
Beijing – which has said it would never rule out using force to bring Taiwan under its control – has been accused of using local influence campaigns, among other tactics, to sway global opinion on the issue.
Charging documents say after the local politician won office in late 2022, Chen instructed Sun to prepare a report on the election to be sent to Chinese government officials, who expressed their thanks for his work.
“The conduct alleged in this complaint is deeply concerning,” said United States Attorney Martin Estrada.
“We cannot permit hostile foreign powers to meddle in the governance of our country.”
Sun was charged with one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
He also faces one count of conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, which carries a maximum penalty of five years.
Asked about the charges on Friday, Beijing’s foreign ministry said it was “not aware of the details in the case you mentioned.”
But spokesperson Lin Jian said, “China never interferes in the internal affairs of other countries.”
“The international community sees clearly who is actually wantonly interfering in the internal affairs of other countries,” he said during a regular briefing.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-accuses-man-of-being-chinese-agent-/7908166.html
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The United States has removed the $10 million bounty placed on Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the militant fighter who led the rebellion that removed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power earlier this month.
The move to scrap the bounty on Sharaa, leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is a “policy decision” made as Washington begins its engagement with the rebel group, said Barbara A. Leaf, assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, in a virtual briefing to reporters Friday.
Leaf said Sharaa had committed to Washington’s request that “terrorist groups cannot pose a threat inside of Syria or externally, including to the U.S. and our partners in the region.”
“So based on our discussion, I told him we would not be pursuing the Rewards for Justice reward offer that has been in effect for some years,” said the top U.S. diplomat on Middle Eastern affairs.
Leaf and two other U.S. officials, Senior Adviser Daniel Rubinstein, who is now tasked with leading the department’s Syria engagement, and Roger Carstens, presidential envoy for hostage affairs, met in Damascus on Friday with Sharaa and other representatives of post-Assad Syria, including civil society activists.
The engagements followed a meeting last weekend in Aqaba, Jordan, where American, Arab and Turkish officials agreed on a set of “transition principles” for Syria.
“We welcome positive messages, and we will be looking for progress on these principles and actions, not just words,” Leaf said. “We fully support a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process that results in an inclusive and representative government, which respects the rights of all Syrians, including women and Syria’s diverse ethnic and religious communities.”
The Damascus meeting comes as Western governments including Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland gradually establish channels with the new Syrian authorities under caretaker Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir. Qatar and Turkey are in the process of reopening their embassies in Syria.
Since 1979, the U.S. has designated Syria as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. Washington’s recognition of a new government in Damascus could lead to the lifting of wide-ranging sanctions that have crippled the Syrian economy.
Leaf declined to elaborate on discussions on lifting sanctions, saying only that Sharaa’s priorities are “very much rooted in getting Syria on the road to economic recovery.” As of today, HTS remains a U.S. designated foreign terrorist group.
She underscored that “Iran will have no role whatsoever,” after the fall of Assad, who was once a stalwart ally of Tehran. Iranian presence during the Syrian civil war was “most predatory and destructive,” she said.
Ensuring that Syria does not fall into chaos and become a breeding ground for terror is a key concern for the White House. Days after Assad’s ouster, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered more than 70 air strikes on Islamic State targets in the country.
US engagement
While the Biden administration has moved quickly to approach the new stakeholders in Syria, it remains to be seen how intensively the U.S. would remain engaged after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
Trump has signaled he wants the U.S. to stay out of the Syrian conflict. “This is not our fight,” Trump said on social media. “Let it play out. Do not get involved!”
Earlier this week Trump said that Assad’s ouster was an “unfriendly takeover” done “without a lot of lives being lost,” by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He praised Ankara as a “major military force.”
“Those people that went in are controlled by Turkey,” he said in his first press conference since winning the presidential election in November. “And that’s OK, that’s another way to fight.”
Ankara has denied it was behind Assad’s ouster.
Trump’s assessment of Ankara’s role in the overthrow is “exaggerated,” said Natasha Hall, senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Nevertheless, his incoming administration may “want to be involved as little as possible,” she told VOA.
“We will be watching for how he handles Turkey, Israel, aid funding and terrorism designations and sanctions,” Hall said. “He could easily create a crisis by simply not moving fast enough or engaging constructively enough on these issues.”
Despite Trump’s noninterventionist public declaration, it’s not clear how disengaged the U.S. can be.
Israel, a U.S. ally, has launched hundreds of strikes on military targets in Syria to further weaken what remains of Assad’s military and keep weapons from falling into extremists’ hands. On Thursday, Pentagon officials acknowledged that there have been roughly 2,000 soldiers stationed in Syria for months — more than twice the number of American troops widely known to be stationed in the country before Assad’s ouster.
Washington also backs the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Syrian Kurdish rebel group in the north of the country. SDF is seen by Ankara as allies of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has engaged in decades of armed insurgency on Turkish soil.
A State Department spokesperson said Tuesday that the ceasefire deal brokered by Washington after fighting broke out between SDF and rebel groups supported by Turkey last week has been extended until the end of this week.
A Turkish official denied a deal has been achieved, saying it is “out of the question for us to have talks with any terrorist organization.”
While in Syria, the U.S. officials also tried to uncover information about the fate of American journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped while reporting on the civil war there in 2012, and other missing Americans believed to be the country.
Farhad Pouladi contributed to this report.
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
A hastily negotiated bill to keep the government open failed Thursday, after Democrats and some Republicans objected to a deal to extend the debt ceiling through 2027. The changes came after President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk rejected a bipartisan agreement to fund the government through next March. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
The U.S. Defense Department’s annual report on China’s military power, released this week, says the PLA is accelerating modernization, but it still faces several operational challenges in executing a rapid and decisive invasion of Taiwan.
Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
During his first press conference as president-elect, Donald Trump mentioned U.S.-China relations, stating, “China and the United States can together solve all of the problems of the world.” The remark quickly trended on Weibo, sparking discussions among Chinese netizens.
Click here for the full story in Mandarin.
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
According to a recent report, Miami is among the 10 cities in the United States with the highest cost of living. The expenses that most affect family budgets are mortgages or rent, and vehicle financing.
Click here for the full story in Spanish.
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
As new potential threats from Chinese hackers were identified this week, the federal government issued one of its strongest warnings to date about the need for Americans — and in particular government officials and other “highly targeted” individuals — to secure their communications against eavesdropping and interception.
The warning came as news was breaking about a Commerce Department investigation into the possibility that computer network routers manufactured by the Chinese firm TP-Link may pose a threat to the millions of U.S. businesses, households and government agencies that use them.
Also on Wednesday, Congress took long-awaited steps toward funding a program that will purge other Chinese technology from U.S. telecommunications systems. The so-called rip-and-replace program targets gear manufactured by Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE.
Too far behind
While experts said the recent actions are a step in the right direction, they warned that U.S. policymakers have been extremely slow to react to a mountain of evidence that Chinese hackers have long been targeting essential communications and infrastructure systems in the U.S.
The lack of action has persisted despite law enforcement and intelligence agencies repeatedly sounding alarms.
In January, while testifying before the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “There has been far too little public focus on the fact that [People’s Republic of China] hackers are targeting our critical infrastructure — our water treatment plants, our electrical grid, our oil and natural gas pipelines, our transportation systems. And the risk that poses to every American requires our attention now.”
A year previously, Wray had warned lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee that his investigators were badly outnumbered.
“To give you a sense of what we’re up against, if each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intel analysts focused exclusively on the China threat, Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI Cyber personnel by at least 50-to-1,” Wray said.
Decades of complexity
Part of the problem, experts said, is that it is difficult for policymakers to summon the political will to make changes that could be disruptive to the lives and livelihoods of U.S. citizens in the absence of public concern about the problem.
“It still remains very, very difficult to impress upon average, typical everyday citizens the gravity of Chinese espionage, or the extent of it,” said Bill Drexel, a fellow with the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
He contrasted the relatively muted public response to the recent revelation of a Chinese hacking operation known as Salt Typhoon, which compromised mobile telephone networks throughout the country, with the uproar that accompanied the far less serious appearance of a Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. mainland in 2023.
“That just goes to show this … problem where really grave issues that are intangible — that are just in cyberspace — are really hard to wrap our minds around,” Drexel told VOA.
“For four decades, we intertwined our supply chains very deeply with China, and our digital systems became more and more complex, allowing more and more compounding ways to be hacked, to be compromised,” Drexel said.
“We’ve just started to try to change course on this stuff,” he added. “But there’s so much momentum for so long on these issues, and they continue to compound in complexity, such that it’s just really hard to catch up.”
Warning ‘highly targeted’ Americans
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued guidance on Wednesday, reporting that it “has identified cyber espionage activity by People’s Republic of China (PRC) government-affiliated threat actors targeting commercial telecommunications infrastructure.”
It continued, “This activity enabled the theft of customer call records and the compromise of private communications for a limited number of highly targeted individuals.”
The warning appeared to be related to the Salt Typhoon hack that, according to government investigators, compromised all the major mobile phone carriers in the U.S., giving the Chinese government extraordinary access to the communications among millions of Americans.
The five-page CISA document outlines steps that the agency advises all Americans, but particularly those most likely to be targeted, to take immediately.
The first is to immediately curtail use of standard mobile communications platforms, such as voice calls and Short Message Service (SMS) texting. Instead, the agency advises Americans to restrict their communications to free messaging platforms that offer end-to-end encryption, such as Signal, which support one-on-one and group chats, as well as voice and video calls. Data sent with end-to-end encryption is extremely difficult to decrypt, even if a malicious actor is able to intercept it during transmission.
Among the other advice CISA offered was to avoid using SMS messages for multifactor authentication by switching to apps that provide authenticator codes or, where possible, adopting hardware-based security keys for highly sensitive accounts. Other recommendations included the use of complex and random passwords stored in password manager software, as well as platform-specific suggestions for iPhone and Android users.
TP-Link concerns
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported, and other outlets subsequently confirmed, that the Commerce Department, as well as the Justice and Defense departments, are investigating reports that computer routers manufactured by the Shenzhen-based TP-Link are one vector of attack for Chinese hackers.
TP-Link currently dominates the market for computer routers in the U.S., with nearly two-thirds of total market share. In October, a report from Microsoft revealed that one Chinese hacking operation it identified as CovertNetwork-1658 has compromised thousands of TP-Link routers to create a network that is used by “multiple Chinese threat actors” to gain illicit access to computer networks around the world.
The Journal’s reporting also revealed that the Commerce Department is considering a ban on the sale of TP-Link routers in the U.S. next year, an action that could significantly disrupt the U.S. market for networking hardware.
Rip and replace
Congress on Wednesday took long-delayed action to address a different potential threat from China, allocating $3 billion to a program that will remove telecommunications equipment manufactured by Huawei and ZTE from rural telecommunications networks in the U.S.
Funding for the rip-and-replace program arrives years after the U.S. identified the two companies as posing a potential threat.
Beginning in the first Trump administration and continuing during Joe Biden’s time in office, the U.S. pressured allies around the world to block the installation of Huawei and ZTE 5G cellular communications equipment from their networks, in some cases threatening to stop sharing sensitive intelligence with allies that failed to comply.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-slow-to-react-to-pervasive-chinese-hacking-experts-say/7908035.html
date: 2024-12-20, from: VOA News USA
washington — A spending bill backed by Donald Trump failed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday as dozens of Republicans defied the president-elect, leaving Congress with no clear plan to avert a fast-approaching government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel.
The vote laid bare fault lines in Trump’s Republican Party that could surface again next year when they control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Trump had pressured lawmakers to tie up loose ends before he takes office on Jan. 20, but members of the party’s right flank refused to support a package that would increase spending and clear the way for a plan that would add trillions more to the federal government’s $36 trillion in debt.
“I am absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go to the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible,” said Republican Representative Chip Roy, one of 38 Republicans who voted against the bill.
The package failed by a vote of 174-235 just hours after it was hastily assembled by Republican leaders seeking to comply with Trump’s demands. A prior bipartisan deal was scuttled after Trump and the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, came out against it Wednesday.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson provided no details when reporters asked him about next steps after the failed vote.
“We will come up with another solution,” he said.
Government funding is due to expire at midnight on Friday. If lawmakers fail to extend that deadline, the U.S. government will begin a partial shutdown that would interrupt funding for everything from border enforcement to national parks and cut off paychecks for more than 2 million federal workers. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration warned that travelers during the busy holiday season could face long lines at airports.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social hours after the bill failed.
Thursday’s unsuccessful bill largely resembled the earlier version that Musk and Trump had blasted as a wasteful giveaway to Democrats. It would have extended government funding into March and provided $100 billion in disaster relief and suspended the debt ceiling. Republicans dropped other elements that had been included in the original package, such as a pay raise for lawmakers and new rules for pharmacy benefit managers.
At Trump’s urging, the new version also would have suspended limits on the national debt for two years – a maneuver that would make it easier to pass the dramatic tax cuts he has promised.
Johnson before the vote told reporters that the package would avoid disruption, tie up loose ends and make it easier for lawmakers to cut spending by hundreds of billions of dollars when Trump takes office next year.
“Government is too big, it does too many things, and it does few things well,” he said.
Teeing up tax cut
Democrats blasted the bill as a cover for a budget-busting tax cut that would largely benefit wealthy backers such as Musk, the world’s richest person, while saddling the country with trillions of dollars in additional debt.
“How dare you lecture America about fiscal responsibility, ever?” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during floor debate.
Even if the bill had passed the House, it would have faced long odds in the Senate, which is currently controlled by Democrats. The White House said Democratic President Joe Biden did not support it.
Previous fights over the debt ceiling have spooked financial markets, as a U.S. government default would send credit shocks around the world. The limit has been suspended under an agreement that technically expires on Jan. 1, though lawmakers likely will not have to tackle the issue before the spring.
When he returns to office, Trump aims to enact tax cuts that could reduce revenues by $8 trillion over 10 years, which would drive the debt higher without offsetting spending cuts. He has vowed not to reduce retirement and health benefits for seniors that make up a vast chunk of the budget and are projected to grow dramatically in the years to come.
The last government shutdown took place in December 2018 and January 2019 during Trump’s first White House term.
The unrest also threatened to topple Johnson, a mild-mannered Louisianan who was thrust unexpectedly into the speaker’s office last year after the party’s right flank voted out then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy over a government funding bill. Johnson has repeatedly had to turn to Democrats for help in passing legislation when he has been unable to deliver the votes from his own party.
He tried the same maneuver on Thursday, but this time fell short.
Several Republicans said they would not vote for Johnson as speaker when Congress returns in January, potentially setting up another tumultuous leadership battle in the weeks before Trump takes office.
date: 2024-12-19, from: Heatmap News
Permitting reform is dead in the 118th Congress.
It died earlier this week, although you could be forgiven for missing it. On Tuesday, bipartisan talks among lawmakers fell apart over a bid to rewrite parts of the National Environmental Policy Act. The changes — pushed for by Representative Bruce Westerman, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee — would have made it harder for outside groups to sue to block energy projects under NEPA, a 1970 law that governs the country’s process for environmental decisionmaking.
When those talks died, they also killed a separate deal over permitting struck earlier this year between Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming. That deal, as I detailed last week, would have loosened some federal rules around oil and gas drilling in exchange for a new, quasi-mandatory scheme to build huge amounts of long-distance transmission.
Rest in peace, I suppose. Even if lawmakers could not agree on NEPA changes, I think Republicans made a mistake by not moving forward with the Manchin-Barrasso deal. (I still believe that the standalone deal could have passed the Senate and the House if put to a vote.) At this point, I do not think we will see another shot at bipartisan permitting reform until at least late 2026, when the federal highway law will need fresh funding.
But it is difficult to get too upset about this failure because larger mistakes have since compounded the initial one. On Wednesday, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson’s bipartisan deal to fund the government — which is, after all, a much more fundamental task of governance than rewriting some federal permitting laws — fell apart, seemingly because Donald Trump and Elon Musk decided they didn’t like it. If I can indulge in the subjunctive for a moment: That breakdown might have likely killed any potential permitting deal, too. So even in a world where lawmakers somehow did strike a deal earlier this week, it might already be dead. (As I write this, the House GOP has reportedly reached a new deal to fund the government through March, which has weakened or removed provisions governing pharmacy benefit managers and limiting American investments in China.)
The facile reading of this situation is that Republicans now hold the advantage. The Trump administration will soon be able to implement some of the fossil fuel provisions in the Manchin-Barrasso deal through the administrative state. Trump will likely expand onshore and offshore drilling, will lease the government’s best acreage to oil and gas companies, and will approve as many liquified natural gas export terminals as possible. His administration will do so, however, without the enhanced legal protection that the deal would have provided — and while those protections are not a must-have, especially with a friendly Supreme Court, their absence will still allow environmental groups to try to run down the clock on some of Trump’s more ambitious initiatives.
Republicans believe that they will be able to get parts of permitting reform done in a partisan reconciliation bill next year. These efforts seem quite likely to run aground, at least as long as something like the current rules governing reconciliation bills hold. I have heard some crazy proposals on this topic — what if skipping a permitting fight somehow became a revenue-raiser for the federal government? — but even they do not touch the deep structure of NEPA in the way a bipartisan compromise could. As Westerman told Politico’s Josh Siegel: “We need 60 votes in the Senate to get real permitting reform … People are just going to have to come to an agreement on what permitting reform is.” In any case, Manchin and the Democrats already tried to reform the permitting system via a partisan reconciliation bill and found it essentially impossible.
Even if reconciliation fails, Republicans say, they will still be in a better negotiating position next year than this year because the party will control a few more Senate votes. But will they? The GOP will just have come off a difficult fight over tax reform. Twelve or 24 months from now, demands on the country’s electricity grid are likely to be higher than they are today, and the risk of blackouts will be higher than before. The lack of a robust transmission network will hinder the ability to build a massive new AI infrastructure, as some of Trump’s tech industry backers hope. But 12 or 24 months from now, too, Democrats — furious at Trump — are not going to be in a dealmaking mood, and Republicans have relatively few ways to bring them to the table.
In any case, savvy Republicans should have realized that it is important to get supply-side economic reforms done as early in a president’s four-year term as possible. Such changes take time to filter through the system and turn into real projects and real economic activity; passing the law as early as possible means that the president’s party can enjoy them and campaign on them.
All of it starts to seem more and more familiar. When Manchin and Barrasso unveiled their compromise earlier this year, Democrats didn’t act quickly on it. They felt confident that the window for a deal wouldn’t close — and they looked forward to a potential trifecta, when they would be able to get even more done (and reject some of Manchin’s fossil fuel-friendly compromises).
Democrats, I think, wound up regretting the cavalier attitude that they brought to permitting reform before Trump’s win. But now the GOP is acting the same way: It is rejecting compromises, believing that it will be able to strike a better deal on permitting issues during its forthcoming trifecta. That was a mistake when Democrats did it. I think it will be a mistake for Republicans, too.
https://heatmap.news/politics/republicans-permitting-reform
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Immigration has been a defining challenge of the Biden presidency, marked by record numbers of asylum-seekers and other migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. President Joe Biden pledged to modernize the nation’s immigration system and rebuild a refugee resettlement program that had hit historic lows under the previous administration.
But despite issuing a record number of immigration-related executive actions — surpassing the Trump administration — Biden’s efforts drew criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. Critics on the right said the administration was being too lenient, while those on the left said it was too harsh.
The Biden administration inherited a fractured immigration system, including a backlog of asylum cases, a reduction in refugee processing capacity, and policies such as Title 42 that significantly shaped migration patterns.
During a webinar, Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at Migration Policy Institute (MPI), provided an overview of the Biden administration’s record. He noted that Biden’s approach to enforcement away from the border has been seen as largely favorable by experts and immigration advocates.
He said Biden administration officials focused on enforcement guidelines, rather than trying to deport everyone, yet the crisis at the border cast a long shadow over his legacy.
He emphasized the success of legal immigration under Biden, pointing to the high numbers of visas issued, the record number of naturalizations and the resurgence of refugee admissions.
About “3.5 million people were naturalized under the Biden administration, the highest of any one-term presidency,” he said.
However, Chishti said the administration’s handling of border security was less successful. The administration faced overwhelming numbers of migrants, many arriving from countries beyond Mexico and Central America.
“The Biden presidency entered office with a crisis at the border, which was precipitated by the COVID crisis and Title 42,” he said. The administration’s failure to call the situation a crisis, he added, contributed to a perception of mishandling, despite efforts to manage it through new programs like the CBP One app and various parole initiatives.
Handling the border
Marielena Hincapie, a visiting scholar at Cornell Law School who participated in the webinar, praised efforts under the Department of Homeland Security’s leadership to increase naturalization rates, expedite work permit processing, and implement innovative policies such as deferred action for undocumented workers who had experienced labor disputes.
These measures, she said, benefited not only immigrants but also the broader U.S. workforce and economy.
Hincapie also criticized the administration’s handling of border issues, calling it mismanagement.
She highlighted the role of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in exacerbating the crisis by busing and flying thousands of migrants to New York, Chicago and elsewhere.
Hincapie also pointed to additional involvement at the state level, saying, “There’s not only the busing and flying of migrants, which DeSantis did, but also litigation.”
“And I really see this as the Biden’s inner circle, his political and communications folks, failed to understand that this was a narrative war and the fact that they refused to call it a crisis when that is what voters were seeing. … They fell silent and decided not to prioritize immigration, and by doing so, they ceded the narrative,” she said.
Migration shifts
The Biden administration also faced shifts in migration patterns.
Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, associate policy analyst at MPI, said the reality at the U.S.-Mexico border shifted once again during Biden’s term with migrants arriving in large numbers from across the Western Hemisphere and from countries around the world.
The demographics of migrants also changed, she said, from single adults to families, and many were seeking asylum, further complicating border processing.
U.S. law offers asylum to people facing persecution in their home countries on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular group.
Though there are two kinds of asylum, affirmative and defensive, not all asylum claims come from migrants arriving at the border. Immigrants may claim affirmative asylum within one year of their latest arrival in the United States or request a defensive asylum while fighting an order of deportation.
“All this resulted in a high number of migrants released into the interior of the U.S.,” Putzel-Kavanaugh said.
This brought the border crisis into the interior of the nation, with large numbers of newly arrived migrants heavily concentrated in cities like New York, Chicago and Denver — cities already facing housing shortages.
Putzel-Kavanaugh also praised the Biden administration’s work to pair increased enforcement with options for safe and orderly legal migration.
“We saw the introduction of programs like CBP One app, which allowed migrants to make appointments at ports of entry along the border, and the parole program for nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela,” she said.
Despite these efforts, Putzel-Kavanaugh said many saw the measures as “too little, too late.”
But that shift in migrant arrivals from irregular crossings to legally arriving at ports of entry has been one of the few success stories of Biden’s border management strategies.
Monthly migrant encounters dropped significantly from the highs of December 2022, with a decrease from more than 300,000 encounters to about 106,000 in October 2024, according to CBP figures.
Issue for years to come
While Biden’s efforts to modernize immigration systems and address asylum claims were significant, experts said the ongoing challenges of irregular migration and border security will remain a focal point in U.S. immigration policy for years to come.
“I do think in summary, we do have two real important crises in our country,” Chishti said. “We do have a labor market crisis across occupations from low, mid to high levels [and a border crisis]. This is why a lot of these people who have come in, even though they came irregularly, have been absorbed.”
Chishti pointed to remarks in 2022 from Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, about the U.S. labor market and its dynamics. Powell said immigration is a key source of labor supply, and the significant decline in immigration levels during the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the labor supply-demand mismatch.
That shortfall in immigration resulted in fewer workers available to fill jobs, particularly in sectors that traditionally rely on immigrant labor, such as health care, hospitality and agriculture. Powell acknowledged that addressing the labor supply constraints, including through immigration policy, could help ease pressure to raise wages and reduce inflation without significant harm to employment levels.
“The reason nothing is happening on changes or reform to our legal immigration system — so we can get more people legally for our labor market needs — is because of the crisis of the border,” Chishti said.
“These are twin crises, but they’re getting interlinked,” he said. “Unless we get the border crisis under control, we won’t be able to address our labor market crisis.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/biden-s-immigration-legacy-is-a-complex-one/7907567.html
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — A senior White House official on Thursday said nuclear-armed Pakistan is developing long-range ballistic missile capabilities that eventually could allow it to strike targets outside of South Asia, including in the United States.
In his stunning revelation about the onetime close U.S. partner, deputy national security adviser Jon Finer said Islamabad’s conduct raised “real questions” about the aims of its ballistic missile program.
“Candidly, it’s hard for us to see Pakistan’s actions as anything other than an emerging threat to the United States,” Finer told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace audience.
“Pakistan has developed increasingly sophisticated missile technology, from long-range ballistic missile systems to equipment that would enable the testing of significantly larger rocket motors,” he said.
If those trends continue, Finer said, “Pakistan will have the capability to strike targets well beyond South Asia, including in the United States.”
His speech came a day after Washington announced a new round of sanctions related to Pakistan’s ballistic missile development program, including on the state-run defense agency that oversees the program.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
The Unforgettable Chorus in New York is using music to help people with memory loss reconnect with family, friends and themselves. Since 2011, the choir has been a beacon of hope, offering a space where those living with dementia can sing, participate and be part of a community. Johny Fernandez reports from New York City.
https://www.voanews.com/a/music-bridges-memory-gaps-for-new-york-alzheimer-s-patients/7907376.html
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday on Iran and Houthi-related entities, according to the Treasury Department website which listed a number of individuals, companies and vessels that had been targeted.
The sanctions target three vessels involved in the trade of Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals, which generates billions of dollars for Iran’s leaders, supporting Tehran’s nuclear program, development of ballistic missiles and financing of proxies including Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, the Treasury said.
“The United States is committed to targeting Iran’s key revenue streams that fund its destabilizing activities,” Bradley Smith, acting under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a release. Smith said Iran relies on a “shadowy network” of vessels, companies, and facilitators for those activities.
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
The vessels targeted were the Djibouti-flagged crude oil tanker MS Enola, owned by Journey Investment company, the San Marino-flagged MS Angia, and the Panama-flagged MS Melenia. The last two tankers are managed and operated by Liberia- and Greece-registered Rose Shipping Limited.
The sanctions block all property and interests in the United States of the designated parties, and U.S. persons and entities dealing with them could be exposed to sanctions or enforcement actions including fines.
The Treasury said it also imposed sanctions on 12 individuals to pressure procurement and financing schemes by the Yemen Houthi group. Those included Hashem Ismail Ali Ahmad al-Madani, the head of the Houthi-aligned central bank in Sanaa, for their alleged roles in trafficking arms, laundering money and shipping illicit Iranian oil for the benefit of the Houthis.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-imposes-sanctions-on-iran-houthi-related-targets/7907399.html
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump says the leaders of Ukraine and Russia should be “prepared to make a deal” to end the brutal conflict that has consumed Ukraine since 2022. He also slammed President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to strike inside Russian territory with U.S.-provided weapons – hinting that when he takes office, he may reverse that move. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from Washington. Iuliia Iarmolenko, Kim Lewis and Kateryna Lisunova contributed.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-pushes-for-conflict-ending-ukraine-russia-deal-/7907384.html
date: 2024-12-19, from: Heatmap News
Heatmap Pro is an insights platform providing actionable intelligence to renewable energy developers, helping them stay informed about community sentiments and regulatory trends. We are seeking a strategic and entrepreneurial VP of Sales to lead our efforts in scaling the business, expanding our revenue base and shaping our go-to-market strategy. Heatmap Pro is a fast growing division of Heatmap News, a successful media and data company covering climate change, clean energy and sustainability for a large, professional audience.
Key Responsibilities
Client Acquisition & Revenue Growth
• Build and manage a pipeline of high-value opportunities within the
renewable energy sector
• Support business development strategy for
expansion in new market segments
• Negotiate and close
enterprise-level contracts to achieve and exceed revenue targets.
Strategic Leadership
• Work closely with leadership to shape Heatmap Pro’s growth strategy
and identify new market opportunities.
• Provide insights on
industry trends and client feedback to guide product development and
market positioning.
• Represent Heatmap Pro at industry events and
conferences to build brand awareness and establish partnerships.
Sales Structure & Process Development
• Design and implement scalable sales processes, including CRM
management, lead qualification, and deal tracking.
• Shorten the
sales cycle and improve conversion rates through effective process
improvements.
Qualifications
Required Experience
• Deep understanding of the renewable energy industry or adjacent
sectors with extensive contacts to match
• 5+ years of experience
in enterprise sales, with a proven track record of meeting or exceeding
revenue targets.
• A proven track record of managing a
high-performing sales team
Skills & Competencies
• Strong strategic thinking and ability to influence company
direction.
• Experience in managing sales pipelines, CRMs, and
metrics-driven sales strategies.
• Excited about working in a
fast-paced, growth-oriented environment.
Bonus Qualifications
• Knowledge of siting and community engagement for the renewable energy
sector.
• Experience scaling sales teams and processes in
early-stage companies
• Experience with business analytics,
insights platforms, or other SaaS products
Above all, candidates should be passionate about Heatmap’s mission and excited about working with a talented team of journalists and business executives dedicated to advancing the energy transition.
The salary minimum is $120,000 and the maximum is $135,000 plus a good commission plan based on revenue performance. Competitive benefits, unlimited paid time off, and a generous equity plan, which gives employees a real stake in the company, are also offered. This position is remote. While candidates from all over the U.S. are encouraged to apply, the VP of Sales is expected to keep East Coast hours.
Interested candidates should send a brief cover letter and resume to business@heatmap.news.
Heatmap News is an Equal Opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, disability, protected Veteran status, age, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.
You can check out Heatmap here and sign up for our newsletter.
https://heatmap.news/heatmap-pro-job-vp-sales
date: 2024-12-19, from: Capital and Main
That disparity is partly due to the county’s community-centered reporting system, LA vs Hate.
The post 2023 Rise in Los Angeles County Hate Crime Reports More Than 20 Times Larger Than Reported National Increase appeared first on .
date: 2024-12-19, from: Capital and Main
A letter signed by a majority of both houses calls on the health care giant to accept proposals from 2,400 striking mental health care workers.
The post California Legislators Weigh in on Kaiser Mental Health Workers Strike appeared first on .
https://capitalandmain.com/california-legislators-weigh-in-on-kaiser-mental-health-workers-strike
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
HANOI, VIETNAM — U.S. weapons manufacturers could work with Vietnamese counterparts to help build Vietnam’s armed forces, the U.S. ambassador to the southeast Asian country said on Thursday.
“Our goal is to ensure that Vietnam has what it needs to defend its interests at sea, in the air, on the ground and in cyberspace,” U.S. Ambassador Marc Knapper said at an international arms expo in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
The expo, held at the Gia Lam airport, brought together 250 exhibitors, including geopolitical rivals such as the United States, China, Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Iran.
U.S. exhibitors included Boeing and Textron Aviation. China was present with Norinco and Gaodu International Trade. Iran’s defense ministry pavilion wasn’t far from booths set up by Israeli companies Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. Several Russian firms also attended, along with Ukraine’s Motor Sich.
Vietnam has been trying to increase its domestic arms manufacturing while reducing its reliance on Russia for weapon imports.
In 2022, Russia made up around 60% of all of Vietnam’s military purchases, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. But Vietnam’s longstanding efforts to diversify its imports have been accelerated by the war in Ukraine. It has also been trying to boost its own capacity to make arms and displayed military equipment it made at the expo.
A key driver for Vietnam is the escalating tensions in the South China Sea, a key trade and security route. It is a flashpoint in Asia and a fault line in the U.S.-China regional rivalry. Vietnam has been critical of China’s increasingly hostile actions in the disputed waters. Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries have overlapping claims in the busy sea passage.
Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh hailed the event as a “message of peace, cooperation and development.” He was later given a tour of a military plane made by U.S. firm Lockheed Martin.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
ATLANTA, Georgia — A state appeals court on Thursday removed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and others but did not dismiss the indictment, leaving the future of the prosecution uncertain.
The case against Trump and more than a dozen others had already been largely stalled for months while the Georgia Court of Appeals considered the pretrial appeal.
The new ruling means it will be up to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to find another prosecutor to take over the case and to decide whether to continue to pursue it, though that could be delayed if Willis decides to appeal to the state Supreme Court.
But whether it is ultimately Willis or another prosecutor in charge, it seems unlikely that a prosecution against Trump could continue while he’s president for the next four years. But there are 14 other defendants who still face charges.
Two federal criminal cases against Trump have already been abandoned after the Republican won the presidency in November. Meanwhile, a judge in New York has refused throw out his hush money conviction from earlier this year, though the future of that case is uncertain.
A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the state. Four of them have since pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
Trump and some of the remaining defendants tried to get Willis and her office removed from the case and to have the case dismissed. They argued that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest and that she made improper public statements about the case.
Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case. Trump and the others appealed that ruling.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
HOLLIDAYSBURG, Pennsylvania — The suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO will return to New York to face murder charges after agreeing to be extradited Thursday during a court appearance in Pennsylvania where he was arrested last week after five days on the run.
Luigi Mangione waived a preliminary hearing on the Pennsylvania charges in exchange for the prosecutor giving him a 20-page investigative report from the Altoona Police Department.
Mangione also waived extradition to New York.
Blair County Judge David Consiglio ordered that Mangione be turned over to the New York Police Department. At least a dozen uniformed NYPD officers were in the courtroom.
The 26-year-old Ivy League graduate is accused of ambushing and shooting Brian Thompson on Dec. 4 outside a Manhattan hotel where the head of the United States’ largest health insurer was walking to an investor conference.
Authorities have said Mangione was carrying the gun used to kill Thompson, a passport, fake IDs and about $10,000 when he was arrested on Dec. 9 while eating breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Mangione, 26, of Towson, Maryland, was arrested on Dec. 9 when police were called to a McDonald’s restaurant on a commercial strip in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after he was reported to match the description of Thompson’s killer.
The shooting of Thompson was captured on security video, but the suspect eluded police before Mangione was captured 446 kilometers west of New York.
Mangione, an Ivy League computer science graduate from a prominent family, was carrying a handwritten letter that called health insurance companies “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed, according to a law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press last week.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
Amazon.com workers at seven U.S. facilities walked off the job early on Thursday during the holiday shopping rush, aiming to pressure the retailer into contract talks with their union.
Warehouse workers in cities including New York, Atlanta and San Francisco are taking part in the “largest” strike against Amazon, said the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents about 10,000 workers at 10 of the firm’s facilities.
The company, however, said it does not expect any effect on its operations during one of the busiest times of the year.
Unions represent only about 1% of the hourly workforce of Amazon, the world’s second-largest private employer after Walmart, and it has multiple locations in many metro areas.
The Teamsters had given Amazon a Dec. 15 deadline to begin negotiations and warehouse workers had recently voted to authorize a strike.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” Teamsters’ General President Sean O’Brien said late on Wednesday.
“We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it. This strike is on them.”
The retailer’s shares were trading 1.5% higher in premarket hours, a sign that investors do not expect a big disruption from the strike.
The Teamsters have “intentionally misled the public” and “threatened, intimidated and attempted to coerce” employees and third-party drivers to join them, an Amazon spokesperson said on Thursday.
Observers said Amazon was unlikely to come to the table to bargain as that could open the door to more union actions.
It employs more than 800,000 people at its U.S. warehouses and has more than 600 fulfillment centers, delivery stations and same-day facilities in the country.
Amazon has responded to recent organization efforts with legal challenges. Amazon has filed objections with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over a 2022 union vote in Staten Island, alleging bias among agency officials.
It also challenged the constitutionality of the NLRB in a September federal lawsuit.
Earlier this year, the company announced a $2.1 billion investment to raise pay for fulfillment and transportation employees in the U.S., increasing base wages for employees by at least $1.50 to around $22 per hour, a roughly 7% increase.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
Islamabad — Pakistan sharply criticized the United States Thursday for imposing new sanctions against the nuclear-armed country’s long-range ballistic missile program, labeling the move as “double standards and discriminatory practices.”
U.S. State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller announced the measures on Wednesday, saying they were imposed under an executive order that “targets proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.”
Miller said the sanctions cover Pakistan’s state-owned National Defense Complex and three entities collaborating with it in the development of long-range ballistic missiles, including the Shaheen services of missiles.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry rejected the move as “unfortunate and biased.” The ministry statement said Islamabad’s defense capabilities are aimed at safeguarding Pakistan’s sovereignty and preserving peace in South Asia.
“The latest installment of sanctions defies the objective of peace and security by aiming to accentuate military asymmetries,” the ministry said, apparently referring to Pakistan’s rivalry with nuclear-armed neighbor India.
“Such policies have dangerous implications for the strategic stability of our region and beyond,” the ministry warned, without elaborating.
The designation of National Defense Complex and other firms freezes all U.S. property they own and bars U.S. citizens from engaging in business transactions with them.
“Pakistan’s strategic program is a sacred trust bestowed by 240 million people upon its leadership. The sanctity of this trust, held in the highest esteem across the entire political spectrum, cannot be compromised,” the foreign ministry stated Thursday in response to the U.S. announcement.
The accompanying U.S. State Department fact sheet said the Islamabad-based National Defense Complex has worked to acquire items “intended to be used as launch support equipment for ballistic missiles and missile testing equipment” to advance the country’s missile development program.
The other companies hit with U.S. sanctions are Affiliates International, Akhtar and Sons Private Ltd., and Rockside Enterprise, all located in Karachi, according to the fact sheet.
“The United States will continue to act against proliferation and associated procurement activities of concern,” Miller said.
Pakistan’s Shaheen surface-to-surface rocket is capable of carrying nuclear warheads to a range of approximately 2,750 kilometers, with experts saying the range enables the solid-fueled, multistage missile to reach targets anywhere in India and parts of the Middle East.
New Delhi and Islamabad conducted their first nuclear weapons tests in May 1998, raising fears another war between the arch-rivals could escalate into a nuclear exchange in South Asia. Both nations have fought three wars, resulting in strained relations and persistent military tensions.
India and Pakistan oppose and refuse to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, an international agreement aimed at curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
“These country-specific U.S. sanctions against a close and longstanding strategic partner like Pakistan are unfortunate, divorced from historical realities, and indicate weaker U.S. commitment towards regional peace, security and strategic stability,” Syed Muhammad Ali, a security expert based in Islamabad, told VOA.
date: 2024-12-19, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Temperatures across western states are between 10 and 20 degrees Fahrenheit above seasonal averages • A temple in Thailand collapsed after unrelenting heavy rain • It’s hot and humid on the remote Caribbean island of Sombrero, where a lizard that was facing extinction six years ago has made a remarkable comeback thanks to conservation efforts.
In one of his last major environmental moves before leaving office, President Biden today announced a new climate plan for the United States that includes tougher emissions targets.
All countries under the Paris Agreement are required to submit updated climate plans – or nationally determined contributions (NDC) – by February of next year. While the new goal is an improvement, it is “at the lower bound of what the science demands and yet it is close to the upper bound of what is realistic if nearly every available policy lever were pulled,” said Debbie Weyle, U.S. acting director of the World Resources Institute. “Assertive action by states and cities will be essential to achieving this goal.” The Climate Action Tracker project calculates that the U.S. must cut total emissions by at least 62% below 2005 levels by 2030 to be compatible with a goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. President-elect Trump is expected to take the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement once again.
The Montana Supreme Court yesterday handed a win to a group of 16 youth climate activists, upholding a lower court’s ruling in the landmark Held V. Montana case that the state was violating residents’ constitutional right to a clean environment by permitting fossil fuel projects without considering the climate consequences. The state had argued that its greenhouse gases were a drop in the bucket compared to global emissions, with negligible effects on the climate, but in a 6-1 ruling, the justices disagreed and affirmed the lower court’s decision. “Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment and environmental life support system includes a stable climate system,” chief justice Mike McGrath wrote.
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The Environmental Protection Agency this week gave the green light for California to enforce its ban on sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035. About a dozen other states, plus some major automakers, adhere to California’s strict vehicle emission standards, so the decision could have broad implications. But it also is likely to be revoked by the incoming Trump administration, and a long court battle could ensue.
A new report from a group of leading climate tech and microgrid development firms examined the feasibility of using off-grid solar and storage to provide clean power for AI data centers. It found solar microgrids would cost nearly the same as using off-grid natural gas turbines, could be built on a shorter timeline as opposed to rolling out new grid connections, and are “enormously scalable.” “We found that there is enough available land in the southwest U.S. alone that is close to roads and gas pipelines to build 1,200 gigawatts of offgrid solar microgrid data center capacity, far more than will be needed for the foreseeable future,” said Zeke Hausfather, lead climate researcher at Stripe. Here’s a look at the varying “time to operation” estimates from the report:
And speaking of data centers, Oklo, a nuclear startup chaired by Open AI’s Sam Altman, has secured a 20-year agreement to supply power to data center operator Switch Inc. Under the deal, Oklo will build small modular reactors that can supply up to 12 gigawatts of electricity and come online by 2030. Caveat: The Financial Times noted that the deal “is non-binding and the company’s technology is years from production.”
President-elect Trump’s advisers are telling him to let federally funded critical minerals projects go ahead without environmental reviews, Reuters reported. Nixing the review process currently required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) could speed up mining projects and help cut U.S. dependence on China for critical minerals used in clean tech like electric vehicles, but it could also allow developers to ignore climate change and environmental justice considerations.
The invasive “murder hornet” has been eradicated from the U.S.
Karen
Ducey/Getty Images
https://heatmap.news/climate/usa-ndc-emissions-update-biden
date: 2024-12-19, updated: 2024-12-19, from: RAND blog
The effectiveness of body-worn cameras in reducing violence against ambulance staff hinges on supportive environments and additional strategies. A comprehensive approach is vital for improving staff safety and well-being.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/12/can-body-worn-cameras-help-reduce-violence-against.html
date: 2024-12-19, from: The Lever News
The promises of Klarna and other “buy now, pay later” companies are too good to be true.
https://www.levernews.com/buy-now-suffer-later/
date: 2024-12-19, from: Heatmap News
This year has reshaped the political landscape of climate action in ways few could have predicted. From the European Parliament to the US presidency, elections have upended the alliances and leadership structures that have traditionally driven climate progress. A world that as recently as 12 months ago thought it could rely on Europe as the steady hand of global leadership now finds the continent politically fracturing. Across the Atlantic, the United States is once again charting an unpredictable course, although one that will certainly take it further from sensible climate policy, while China continues to lead through industrial dominance rather than diplomatic consensus. It is, to put it mildly, a less-than-ideal setting for tackling the most pressing issue of our time.
Europe’s political shifts may be the most concerning. On the surface it appears the continent’s commitment to climate has held, but underneath tensions are boiling. Once a bastion of ambitious climate policy, the European Union is now grappling with internal instability that risks derailing its leadership.
The EU Commission president’s centrist party remains in power after parliamentary elections, despite rising pressure from the far right and with its commitment to the Green Deal agenda intact. However populist forces — recently represented by farmer backlash to environmental policy — leaves them focused on defending Europe’s existing commitments, rather than driving its next iteration.
In the member states things look more challenging. Italy’s ruling government is openly challenging Europe’s commitment to electric vehicles. In France the spectre of a broad anti climate agenda headlined by once unthinkable notions like a power sector “Frexit” pushed by the country’s right wing was held at bay after parliamentary elections this summer that avoided a far right shift. But a recent no confidence vote on the coalition government’s short-lived prime minister Michel Barnier means that an anti climate agenda from one of the largest and most influential member states is a very real possibility.
And in Germany, the industrial heart of the European Union and its most influential member state, a populist backlash fueled by a stagnating economy included anger over heat pump mandates and has forced the ruling coalition to dissolve and bring elections forward to February. Most observers now believe it’s not a question of whether far-right climate-denying parties will increase in influence, but by how much.
These developments signal that Europe is at a crossroads, and while it may still have a seat on the climate train, it is no longer guaranteed to be in the conductor’s seat.
As Europe falters, attention inevitably shifts to China. The country’s transformation into a clean energy superpower is undeniable — it already dominates solar and battery manufacturing, and has now turned its focus to electric vehicles. Yet China is unlikely to fill Europe’s diplomatic void. Its approach to climate leadership is less about setting global standards and more about demonstrating what’s possible. This isn’t a case of “do as I say” but rather “do as I do.” While this may lead to trade wars and industrial rivalries, it could also send a powerful signal to the rest of the world: Clean energy isn’t just the future — it’s worth fighting for.
Ultimately, the geopolitical shifts of 2024 are a wake-up call for the climate community. What appeared to be lasting policy breakthroughs decades in the making now feel more tenuous. Populist backlash opens hard questions about how climate action can find a broader, more durable base of support. More existentially, the community is left wondering how we build those conditions on a vanishingly short time frame amidst the uncertainty political changes are unleashing.
What is clear is that the playbook that worked in the past will not suffice in this fractured, volatile world. Climate policy simply must become more resilient to political swings by broadening its base of support across the political spectrum in Europe and beyond. That not only makes policy more durable, it also isolates climate denial to the political fringe, and focuses debates on how — not if — we take action.
There is reason to hope such steps are possible. Recent U.S. examples, such as the 18 members of Congress who called for preserving certain investment provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, demonstrate that climate action can find firmer ground even in a hostile environment. That support was driven by economic opportunity that can defy the gravity of political polarization. There are now millions of people across the political spectrum who own a piece of the clean energy transition, be it a solar home system, an electric vehicle, or a job in a clean energy company. Organize that constituency across party lines, and the politics will follow.
At the same time, the clean energy industry must step up. For all its economic success, it remains politically underpowered. Researchers Robert Brulle and Christian Downie found that from 2008 to 2018, trade associations opposed to climate action outspent climate-positive industry groups by a ratio of 27 to 1. This is neither serious nor sustainable. If clean energy is to cement its place as the backbone of the global economy, it must take greater responsibility for its political future. Industries that shape policy don’t wait for others to speak on their behalf — they do it themselves.
And then there’s the culture. As much as policy matters, culture shapes what policies are possible. To win back the narrative, the climate movement must move beyond technical white papers and elite op-eds focused on rational persuasion to cultural elites. Instead, it needs to create stories that resonate deeply with people’s values and aspirations. Whether that’s through TikTok videos, podcasts, or new forms of media, the goal must be to inspire and connect, not just to educate.
Regardless of the strategic pivots we make, the hard truth is that climate politics may get worse before they get better. Feedback loops — both environmental and political — can drive crises in unexpected ways. Populist backlashes and extreme weather could force governments to retreat into short-termism with key elections looming, making it more difficult to focus on the long view. Or they could combine to give the climate conversation a political salience it has never before had to exploit.
The climate movement has faced existential challenges before and emerged stronger. But no outcome is inevitable, making the strategic choices before us now truly pivotal when the stakes couldn’t be higher. Now is the time to make some bold ones, because our future depends on it.
https://heatmap.news/ideas/climate-elections-2024
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — U.S. life expectancy jumped last year, and preliminary data suggests there may be another — much smaller — improvement this year.
Death rates fell last year for almost all leading causes, notably COVID-19, heart disease and drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday. That translated to adding nearly a year the estimated lifespan of Americans.
Experts note it’s part of a bounce-back from the COVID-19 pandemic. But life expectancy has not yet climbed back to prepandemic levels, and the rebound appears to be losing steam.
“What you’re seeing is continued improvement, but slowing improvement,” said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a University Minnesota researcher who studies death trends. “We are sort of converging back to some kind of normal that is worse than it was before the pandemic.”
Last year, nearly 3.1 million U.S. residents died, about 189,000 fewer than the year before. Death rates declined across all racial and ethnic groups, and in both men and women.
Provisional data for the first 10 months of 2024 suggests the country is on track to see even fewer deaths this year, perhaps about 13,000 fewer. But that difference is likely to narrow as more death certificates come in, said the CDC’s Robert Anderson.
That means that life expectancy for 2024 likely will rise — “but probably not by a lot,” said Anderson, who oversees death tracking at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, given death rates at that time. It’s a fundamental measure of a population’s health.
For decades, U.S. life expectancy rose at least a little bit almost every year, thanks to medical advances and public health measures. It peaked in 2014, at nearly 79 years, and then was relatively flat for several years. Then it plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping to just under 76 1/2 years in 2021.
It rebounded to 77 1/2 years in 2022 and, according to the new report, to nearly 78 1/2 last year.
Life expectancy for U.S. women continues to be well above that of men — a little over 81 for women, compared with a little under 76 for men.
In the last five years, more than 1.2 million U.S. deaths have been attributed to COVID-19. But most of them occurred in 2020 and 2021, before vaccination- and infection-induced immunity became widespread.
The coronavirus was once the nation’s third leading cause of death. Last year it was the underlying cause in nearly 50,000 deaths, making it the nation’s No. 10 killer.
Data for 2024 is still coming in, but about 30,000 coronavirus deaths have been reported so far. At that rate, suicide may surpass COVID-19 this year, Anderson said.
Heart disease remains the nation’s leading cause of death. Some underappreciated good news is the heart disease death rate dropped by about 3% in 2023. That’s a much smaller drop than the 73% decline in the COVID-19 death rate, but heart disease affects more people so even small changes can be more impactful, Anderson said.
There’s also good news about overdose deaths, which fell to 105,000 in 2023 among U.S. residents, according to a second report released by CDC on Thursday.
The causes of the overdose decline are still being studied but there is reason to be hopeful such deaths will drop more in the future, experts say. Some pointed to survey results this week that showed teens drug use isn’t rising.
“The earlier you start taking a drug, the greater the risk that you could continue using it and the greater the risk that you will become addicted to it — and have untoward consequences,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the survey study. “If you can reduce the pipeline (of new drug users) … you can prevent overdoses.”
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The Commerce Department’s efforts to curb China’s and Russia’s access to American-made advanced computer chips have been “inadequate” and will need more funding to stymie their ability to manufacture advanced weapons, according to a report published Wednesday by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
The Biden administration imposed export controls to limit the ability of China and Russia to access U.S.-made chips after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
The agency’s Bureau of Industry and Security, according to the report, does not have the resources to enforce export controls and has been too reliant on U.S. chip makers voluntarily complying with the rules.
But the push for bolstering Commerce’s export control enforcement comes as the incoming Trump administration says it is looking to dramatically reduce the size and scope of federal government. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” to dismantle parts of the federal government.
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
BIS’s budget, about $191 million, has remained essentially flat since 2010 when adjusted for inflation.
“While BIS’ budget has been stagnant for a decade, the bureau works diligently around the clock to meet its mission and safeguard U.S. national security,” Commerce Department spokesperson Charlie Andrews said in a statement in response to the report.
Andrews added that with “necessary resources from Congress” the agency would be “better equipped to address the challenges that come with our evolving national security environment.”
In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, chair of the subcommittee, pointed to news reports of the Russian military continuing to acquire components from Texas Instruments through front companies in Hong Kong to illustrate how the export controls are failing as an effective tool.
Blumenthal in a statement called on “Commerce to take immediate action and crack down on the companies allowing U.S.-made semiconductors to power Russian weapons and Chinese ambition.”
Texas Instruments said it opposes the use of its chips in Russian military equipment and the illicit diversion of its products to Russia.
“It is our policy to comply with export control laws, and any shipments of TI chips into Russia are illicit and unauthorized,” the company said in a statement. “If we find evidence indicating product diversion, we investigate and take action.”
It’s not just Texas Instruments that’s the issue. The subcommittee in September published a report that found aggregated exports from four major U.S. advanced chip manufacturers nearly doubled from 2021 to 2022 to Armenia and Georgia.
Both of those countries are home to front companies known to assist Russia in acquiring advanced chips made in the U.S. despite export controls.
China, meanwhile, has created “vast, barely disguised smuggling networks which enable it to continue to harness U.S. technology,” the subcommittee report asserts.
Washington has been gradually expanding the number of companies affected by such export controls in China, as President Joe Biden’s administration has encouraged an expansion of investments in and manufacturing of chips in the U.S.
But Chinese companies have found ways to evade export controls in part because of a lack of China subject matter experts and Chinese speakers assigned to Commerce’s export control enforcement.
The agency’s current budget limits the number of international end-use checks, or physical verification overseas of distributors or companies receiving American-made chips that are the supposed end users of products. Currently, Commerce has only 11 export control officers spread around the globe to conduct such checks, the report said.
The committee made several recommendations in its report, including Congress allocating more money for hiring additional personnel to enforce export controls, imposing larger fines on companies that violate controls and requiring periodic reviews of advanced chip companies’ export control plans by outside entities.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Lindsey Graham have warned of bipartisan sanctions against Turkey if it rejects a ceasefire proposal from the U.S. and a plan by Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazlum Abdi to establish a demilitarized zone in Kobani. The senators argue that Turkey’s attacks on Kurdish allies in Syria undermine regional stability and efforts to prevent a resurgence by Islamic State.
The proposed initiative, supported by the SDF and under U.S. supervision, aims to address Turkey’s security concerns while maintaining stability in northern Syria. With 900 U.S. troops still deployed in Syria as part of the anti-ISIS coalition, the senators emphasized the importance of Turkey’s cooperation in fostering long-term peace and security in the region.
Click here to see the full report in Kurdish.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
During a visit to Baghdad last week, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to discuss the evolving situation in Syria. Blinken emphasized the need for a Syrian government that respects human rights, safeguards the rights of women and minorities, and protects religious holy sites. He also stressed that Syria must not become a haven for terrorism or a threat to its neighbors. Prime Minister al-Sudani echoed these concerns, highlighting the necessity of a Syrian government that represents all communities to ensure lasting stability, while cautioning that Iraq expects concrete action, not just rhetoric.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, speaking at a meeting of Arab foreign ministers in Jordan, reinforced the link between Syria’s stability and Iraq’s security.
Click here to see the full report in Kurdish.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
The U.N. General Assembly proclaimed Dec. 18 as International Migrants Day in 2020, in order to promote the exchange of experiences and opportunities for collaboration by countries and regions.
Dec. 18 aims to make visible the challenges, difficulties and adversities faced by migrants in the world. It also seeks to reiterate the call to the nations of the world to contribute to making migration a safe, regular and dignified process. This special section contains several stories that explore the situation in Latin America in 2024.
Click here to see the full story in Spanish.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
Last week, the PRESS Act, which aims to protect journalists from unnecessary government surveillance and being forced to reveal sources, failed to pass the U.S. Senate last week after being unanimously passed in the House. VOA Mandarin takes a look into the act, why it is being blocked and a case that highlights its importance.
Click here to see the full story in Mandarin.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
Thousands of Amazon.com workers will walk off the job on Thursday at 6 a.m. EST, in the crucial final days before Christmas, after union officials said the retailer failed to come to the bargaining table.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said unionized workers at facilities in New York City; Skokie, Illinois; Atlanta, San Francisco and southern California will join the picket line to seek contracts guaranteeing better wages and work conditions.
The Teamsters union has said it represents about 10,000 workers at 10 of the company’s U.S. facilities, representing about 1% of Amazon’s hourly workforce.
The strike could disrupt Amazon’s operations as it races to fulfill orders during its busiest season of the year. In the New York City area, however, the company has multiple warehouses, as well as smaller delivery depots for fast same-day delivery.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The union had given Amazon a deadline of Sunday to begin negotiations, and workers voted recently to authorize a possible strike.
Teamsters local unions are also putting up primary picket lines at hundreds of Amazon Fulfillment Centers nationwide, the union said in a statement on Wednesday.
date: 2024-12-19, from: VOA News USA
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday called on U.S. lawmakers to reject a stopgap bill to keep the government funded past Friday, raising the likelihood of a partial shutdown.
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance called on lawmakers to pass a different temporary spending bill than the one unveiled on Tuesday, free from what they called “Democrat giveaways.” Trump also called on lawmakers to use the bill to address the nation’s debt ceiling, injecting a new element of complexity into the process.
That could complicate efforts to avert a shutdown that would disrupt everything from air travel to law enforcement days before the December 25 Christmas holiday. It would be the first government shutdown since one that extended through December 2018 into 2019, during Trump’s first four-year White House term.
Democrats currently control the Senate, and Democratic President Joe Biden remains in power until Trump takes office on January 20.
The current bill would fund government agencies at current levels and provide $100 billion for disaster relief and $10 billion in farm aid. It also includes a wide range of unrelated provisions, such as a pay raise for lawmakers and a crackdown on hidden hotel fees.
Trump and Vance said Congress should limit the bill to temporary spending and disaster relief — and also raise the national debt ceiling, a politically painful task that is scheduled to come to a head next year.
“If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration?” they said in the statement.
Congress’s next steps were unclear. Bipartisan agreement will be needed to pass any spending bill through the House of Representatives, where Republicans have a narrow majority, and the Senate.
The stopgap measure is needed because Congress has failed to pass regular spending legislation for the fiscal year that began on October 1. It does not cover benefit programs like Social Security, which continue automatically.
The U.S. government has spent more money than it has taken in for more than 20 years, as Democrats have expanded health programs and Republicans have cut taxes, and an aging population is projected to push up the cost of retirement and health programs in the years to come. Steadily mounting debt — currently $36 trillion — will force lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling at some point, either now or when borrowing authority runs out next year. Failure to act could shock bond markets with potentially severe economic consequences.
Trump’s comments came after his ally Elon Musk pressured Congress to reject the bill and said those who back it should be voted out of office.
The Tesla chief executive and world’s richest person, who spent more than $250 million to help Trump get elected, has been tasked by Trump to prune the federal budget.
Unless Congress acts, the federal government will run out of money to fund operations on Saturday. Negotiators on Tuesday agreed on a deal to extend funding through March 14.
House Republicans who helped negotiate the bill said Musk’s opposition complicated passage.
“There’s never an easy fix to anything around here,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole.
Democrats said Trump’s statement was a sign of chaos ahead.
“House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government. And hurt the working-class Americans they claim to support. You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on social media.
Many Republicans already object to additional spending and unrelated provisions that have been added to the package.
Trump in the past has sometimes voiced support for government shutdowns, and the 2018-2019 one was the longest in U.S. history, lasting 34 days.
date: 2024-12-18, from: Heatmap News
The Federal Reserve cut interest rates at its third straight meeting — but don’t expect as many cuts next year.
The Fed indicated that it expects only two quarter-point reductions in 2025, down from the four it had forecast in September, when it began its rate-cutting cycle. The news will likely overshadow any relief over lower rates for renewables developers, who have been counting on future cuts to ensure the profitability of their projects.
Since renewables like wind and solar have essentially no “fuel” costs compared to fossil fuel projects like gas-fired power plants, a higher portion of their overall costs must come from borrowed money, not from revenues the project itself produces. This makes the projects much more sensitive to borrowing costs.
The Energy Information Administration has projected that solar capacity will grow by 19.5% in 2025 and that wind capacity will increase by 6%. Wind projects, especially offshore wind projects, could be imperiled by higher interest rates and higher borrowing costs. The energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie has estimated that a 2 percentage point increase in interest rates causes the price of energy produced by renewables to go up 20%.
Further pressure from inflation could also increase the cost of building out renewables. Several major offshore wind projects — such as New Jersey’s Ocean Wind 1 and 2, which were cancelled last year — have had to have their contracts renegotiated or even thrown out due to unexpected cost increases.
And despite the Federal Reserve interest rate cuts in the last quarter of the year, market interest rates have actually been drifting up in the past few months. Trump’s victory supercharged the stock market with promises of deregulation and general euphoria around tech stocks like Nvidia and Tesla (and crypto) and raised the possibility of higher inflation, with a potential combination of tax cuts, some spending increases, and tariffs.
Some analysts thought that even the Fed’s new rate-cutting forecast was too loose considering the economic data that has been arriving in recent months. “We have a hard time squaring them up against the economic forecasts, which show higher near-term growth, higher near-term inflation, and lower near-term unemployment,” Jefferies analyst Thomas Simons wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.
The new rate-cutting forecasts “amount to a message that the FOMC will tolerate above-target inflation for even longer than they previously indicated,” Simons wrote.
But what the market is focused on is that there may be fewer rate cuts than expected, not that there maybe should have been zero.
Over the past three months, the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond, an often-used benchmark for borrowing costs, has risen from around 3.7% to 4.5%, including a substantial jump following the Fed’s Wednesday announcement. Longer-term interest rates have risen “quite a bit since September,” Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said in a press conference Wednesday.
The iShares Global Clean Energy ETF, which tracks a basket of clean energy stocks, fell immediately following the Fed’s rate cut announcement; it fell around 3% today and is down 26% on the year, while broader stock market indices also fell, with the S&P 500 declining just under 3% today
Powell said that both the cut and the new, more restrictive forecast indicate that the Fed is “in a new phase in the process,” and that “from this point forward, it’s appropriate to move cautiously and look for progress on inflation.”
https://heatmap.news/economy/fed-rate-cut-forecast
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — A Manhattan resident has pleaded guilty to helping establish a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government.
Chen Jinping, 60, entered the guilty plea on a single count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday.
Matthew Olsen, an assistant attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department, said Chen admitted in court to his role in “audaciously establishing an undeclared police station” in Manhattan and attempting to conceal the effort when approached by the FBI.
“This illegal police station was not opened in the interest of public safety, but to further the nefarious and repressive aims of the PRC in direct violation of American sovereignty,” he said in statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
Prosecutors say Chen and his co-defendant, Lu Jianwang, opened and operated a local branch of China’s Ministry of Public Security in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood starting in early 2022.
The office, which occupied an entire floor of the building, performed basic services, such as helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese driver’s licenses, but also identified pro-democracy activists living in the U.S., according to federal authorities.
The clandestine Chinese police operation was shuttered in fall 2022 amid an FBI investigation. But in an apparent effort to obstruct the federal probe, Chen and Lu deleted from their phones the communications with a Chinese government official they reported to, prosecutors said.
China is believed to be operating such secretive police outposts in North America, Europe and other places where there are Chinese communities. The country, however, has denied that they are police stations, saying that they exist mainly to provide citizen services such as renewing driver’s licenses.
The arrest of Chen and Lu in April 2023 was part of a series of Justice Department prosecutions aimed at cracking down on “transnational repression,” in which foreign governments such as China work to identify, intimidate and silence dissidents in the U.S.
Lawyers for Chen and Lu didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Wednesday. Chen faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing on May 30.
Lu, who is due back in court in February, had a longstanding relationship with Chinese law enforcement officials, according to prosecutors.
Over the years, they say, the Bronx resident, who was also known as Harry Lu, helped harass and threaten a Chinese fugitive living in the U.S. and also worked to locate a pro-democracy activist in California on behalf of China’s government.
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
STATE DEPARTMENT — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a “substantive” face-to-face meeting Wednesday morning with Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has been selected by President-elect Donald Trump as his nominee for the next U.S. secretary of state. The meeting comes as Trump’s team prepares for the transition process.
“It was a good, constructive and substantive conversation,” State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters during a briefing.
“We continue to stand ready to help support a seamless transition on January 20,” he added.
In August 2020, China sanctioned Rubio, a longtime critic of the government in Beijing, along with others, citing what it described as “egregious behavior” related to “Hong Kong-related issues.” Rubio told VOA earlier in December that he is confident in his ability “to find some solution” to engage with Beijing if confirmed.
When asked if he would maintain his previous stance on foreign policy issues, Rubio said, “The president sets foreign policy, and our job at the State [Department] will be to execute it.”
Here is a look at Rubio’s past legislative actions and public statements on key China-related issues:
Securing US technologies
Rubio has warned that “Communist China is the most powerful adversary the United States has faced in living memory,” in a September report titled “The World China Made.”
The report asserts that the Chinese Communist Party controls the world’s largest industrial base through “market-distorting subsidies” and “rampant theft.” Rubio urged a “whole-of-society effort” by U.S. lawmakers, CEOs, and investors to “rebuild our country, overcome the China challenge, and keep the torch of freedom lit for generations to come.”
Rubio has been a vocal critic of U.S.-China research collaborations, warning that taxpayer funds have unknowingly supported Chinese military-linked experiments in areas like stealth technology, semiconductors, and cybersecurity — potentially giving Beijing a strategic edge.
In July, he introduced a bill to fortify U.S. research, with key provisions including the creation of a “TRUST” database to track high-risk Chinese research entities, stricter grant application transparency, and penalties for undisclosed foreign funding. The bill also enhances visa screening for individuals linked to adversarial foreign research and mandates stronger oversight of U.S.-China research partnerships.
Rubio has advocated for the bipartisan 2021 Secure Equipment Act, a law that prohibits the U.S. government from issuing new equipment licenses to Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE that the United States and other Western countries have deemed a national security risk.
Revoking China’s ‘most favored nation’ status
Rubio is among the Republican lawmakers who proposed a bill to revoke China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations, or PNTR, with the United States.
Commonly known as “most favored nation” status, PNTR means that Chinese goods being imported into the United States are granted the most advantageous terms that the country offers when it applies tariffs and other restrictions.
Introduced in September 2024, the Neither Permanent Nor Normal Trade Relations Act marks a shift toward a more protectionist U.S. trade strategy. The bill aims to impose higher tariffs on Chinese imports, strengthen supply chain resilience, and reduce U.S. dependence on Chinese goods.
One of the key provisions includes the establishment of a trust fund using tariff revenue to compensate U.S. industries harmed by China’s retaliatory trade actions, with priority support for agriculture, semiconductor, and aerospace sectors.
Rubio outlined his position as early as a 2022 speech at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, calling the belief that free trade and globalization would change China “the single biggest geopolitical blunder of the last quarter century.”
“For over two decades, China methodically undermined our economic strength by stealing our critical technology, our manufacturing capacity, and our jobs,” he argued.
Monitoring China’s human rights record
Rubio also chaired the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, CECC, from 2017 to 2019 and continues to serve as a commissioner.
The CECC was established in 2000 in response to concerns that granting PNTR to China would eliminate Congress’s ability to annually review and debate China’s human rights record. The commission monitors China’s compliance with international human rights standards and maintains a list of victims of human rights abuses.
Rubio has criticized China’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, introduced bills to ban imports linked to forced labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and expanded sanctions on Uyghur human rights abusers.
The Florida senator has also supported U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and efforts to enhance its global standing.
He has met with Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists and has been a staunch advocate for their movement. He introduced the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which was signed into law in 2019.
Rubio also headed the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, signed into law in 2020, which imposed sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for human rights abuses in Xinjiang. With the law’s sanctions set to expire in 2025, Rubio introduced the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Reauthorization Act of 2024 in June, sponsored by CECC co-chair Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, to extend key provisions for another five years, ensuring continued U.S. support for the human rights of Uyghurs and other ethnic groups in China.
On April 10, 2024, Rubio and Merkley introduced a resolution reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s vibrant democracy and recognizing the 45th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act – a landmark U.S. public law that has guided U.S.-Taiwan relations since 1979. The TRA, as it is called, outlines U.S. policy to provide Taiwan with defensive arms and commits Washington to provide Taipei with the capacity to resist coercion or force that could threaten its security or economic system.
Rubio has been a vocal critic of China’s increasing economic, military, and political coercion against Taiwan. He has introduced bills aimed at bolstering deterrence in the Taiwan Strait and led legislation to facilitate visits between U.S. and Taiwanese officials, such as the Taiwan Travel Act, which President Trump signed into law in 2018.
The law is considered a substantial upgrade to U.S.-Taiwan relations, as it removed previous restrictions on travel for officials.
The Communist Party-led People’s Republic of China has never governed Taiwan but claims sovereignty over the self-ruled democracy. China has not ruled out the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control.
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday lowered its target interest rate but signaled it might take longer than previously expected to bring inflation down to the central bank’s target rate of 2% per year. That means there will likely be fewer rate reductions in 2025 than had been projected.
The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee lowered the target range of the federal funds rate, a benchmark that is used to set rates for everything from mortgages to credit card loans, by one-quarter of a percentage point to between 4.25% and 4.5%.
The reduction was widely expected, but FOMC members updated their projections for the future, suggesting it might take until 2027 to get interest rates down to 2%. As recently as September, they had projected that they would achieve that goal in 2026.
Also changed was the range of rates that they believe will eventually reflect a “neutral” interest rate stance - that is, one that is designed to be neither restrictive nor stimulative. In September, they projected a long-run neutral rate of between 2.5% and 3.5%. That range ticked up to between 2.8% and 3.6%.
Powell upbeat
Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell said in a press conference Wednesday that the committee was trying to balance its fight against inflation, which it combats by raising interest rates, with its commitment to full employment, which sometimes requires lowering rates.
He said the decision to cut rates was influenced by some “softening” in the job market. However, he said the new target rate was still “meaningfully restrictive,” even though the Fed has cut rates by a total of 1 percentage point since September.
Powell also told reporters that the U.S. economy remained strong, and that he expected it to remain so.
“The U.S. economy is just performing very, very well — substantially better than our global peer group,” he said. “There’s no reason to think a downturn is any more likely than it usually is. So, the outlook is pretty bright for our economy. We have to stay on task, though, and continue to have restricted policy so that we can get inflation down to 2%.”
Trump effect
Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst and Washington bureau chief of BankRate.com, suggested that the slight change in the Fed’s expectations had to do in part with President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory in November.
“There’s heightened uncertainty ahead given the ambitions of the Trump administration aiming to boost economic growth, which performed above the Fed’s expectations and the long-term trend this year,” Hamrick told VOA in an email exchange. “For borrowers, consumers and everyone else, this suggests that rates will remain elevated for longer and won’t return to record-low pre-pandemic levels.”
Trump has signaled a desire to implement some policy changes, in particular tariffs on imports, that economists generally view as inflationary.
“The big news is the change in the survey of economic projections,” agreed Kenneth N. Kuttner, a professor of economics at Williams College and a former assistant vice president of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“The members of the FOMC are seeing inflation running a little bit higher than had been the case back in September,” Kuttner told VOA. “That, plus a reassessment of what ‘neutral’ is for the economy, suggests they’re anticipating cutting the funds rate less next year than they previously thought they were going to.”
Public discontent
The Fed’s announcement came at a time when Americans continue to have a dim view of the state of the economy, despite significant improvements on most standard measures of its performance.
Americans soured on the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, when a combination of worldwide supply chain bottlenecks and generous government stimulus programs combined to drive prices up sharply. Inflation in the U.S. soared to 40-year highs, peaking at an annualized rate of 9.1% in June 2022.
Since then, sharp interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve have forced inflation down below 3% and close to the Fed’s target rate of 2%. The unemployment rate has remained near historic lows. Additionally, wages for American workers have been growing at a rate higher than inflation since December of last year.
Nevertheless, Americans report sharply negative sentiments about the economy. An Associated Press-NORC poll released this week found that two-thirds of U.S. adults described the status of the economy as poor, while a mere 5% characterized it as very good.
Political alignment appears to play a major role in perceptions of the economy. When the responses were broken down by the party respondents identified with, 51% of Democrats described the economy as good or better, compared with only 16% of Republicans and 22% of independents.
However, in the aftermath of Trump’s election victory, 69% of Republicans said they expected 2025 to be a better year for the economy than 2024. By contrast, only 11% of Democrats said 2025 would be the better year, with 59% predicting that it would be worse.
Limits of presidential power
Although the state of the economy appears to have been the most important factor in driving voters’ decisions during November’s presidential elections, both outgoing President Joe Biden and Trump have spoken about the difficulty a president can have in directly influencing it.
In remarks this month at the Brookings Institution, Biden reminded his audience that when he took office in 2021, he inherited an economy shattered by the pandemic, with 3,000 Americans dying of COVID-19 every day and millions out of work. He touted his record of restoring jobs and reducing inflation but admitted that many were still feeling economic pain.
“Too many working- and middle-class families struggle with high prices for housing and groceries and the daily needs of life,” Biden said. He said that many of the investments made in the economy over his four years in office have simply not had time to come into full effect.
“We knew in the beginning this wasn’t going to come to fruition in my … administration. It takes time to get this done, but watch two, four, six, eight, 10 years from now,” Biden said.
On the campaign trail, Trump frequently promised to lower prices at the supermarket, and he continued to do so after his victory, saying in an interview on December 8 with CBS News, “We’re going to bring those prices way down.”
However, that contradicted what he told Time magazine when he was interviewed in connection with being named the publication’s Person of the Year. Asked if his presidency would be “a failure” if he was unable to bring down grocery prices, he said, “I don’t think so. … I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-federal-reserve-cuts-key-loan-rate-by-quarter-point/7906218.html
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. cybersecurity watchdog CISA is telling senior American government officials and politicians to immediately switch to end-to-end encrypted messaging following intrusions at major American telecoms blamed on Chinese hackers.
In written guidance released on Wednesday, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said “individuals who are in senior government or senior political positions” should “immediately review and apply” a series of best practices around the use of mobile devices.
The first recommendation: “Use only end-to-end encrypted communications.”
End-to-end encryption — a data protection technique that aims to make data unreadable by anyone except its sender and its recipient — is baked into various chat apps, including Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp, Apple’s iMessage, and the privacy-focused app Signal. Corporate offerings, which allow end-to-end encryption, also include Microsoft’s Teams and Zoom Communications’ meetings.
CISA’s message is the latest in a series of increasingly stark warnings issued by American officials in the wake of dramatic hacks of U.S. telecom companies by a group dubbed “Salt Typhoon.”
Last week, Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan said, “this attack likely represents the largest telecommunications hack in our nation’s history.”
U.S. officials have blamed China for the hacking. Beijing routinely denies allegations of cyberespionage.
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
GENEVA — International human and animal health experts warn the H5N1 avian influenza is evolving quickly and posing a global health threat as the virus is increasingly crossing species barriers and infecting a wide range of domestic and wild mammals.
“These developments pose significant challenges to animal, human and environmental health,” Dr. Gregorio Torres, veterinarian and head of the science department at the World Organization for Animal Health, told journalists in Geneva Tuesday.
He noted that avian influenza, commonly known as bird flu, has been reported in 108 countries and territories over five continents in the last three years.
“And as of December 2024, the infection has been detected in over 70 species of domestic and wild mammals. This includes the ongoing detection of H5N1 in dairy cattle in the United States,” Torres said.
“So far, the close monitoring of the virus has not found markers that could suggest effective mammalian adaptation, but we know this can change at any time,” he said.
Most human cases in US
The World Health Organization this week reported 76 people were infected with the H5 avian influenza viruses in 2024, most of them among farm workers. Sixty-one of these cases occurred in the United States, which has reported outbreaks in wildlife, poultry and, more recently, dairy cattle.
“This is the first time we have seen the infections from dairy cattle to humans, and so many within the U.S.” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, director of epidemic and pandemic threat management at WHO.
“In the U.S., all but two have direct links with infected animals, whether this was working on farms, whether this was part of culling exercises,” she said. “We have not seen any detection of human-to-human transmission among these cases.”
While much attention on the bird flu situation has focused on the United States this year, Van Kerkhove noted that Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China and Vietnam also reported outbreaks.
Based on available information, she said that the H5N1 viruses have remained avian viruses and have not adapted to spread among people, stressing that follow-up epidemiologic, virologic and serologic investigations “so far have not reported or identified human-to-human transmission.”
“However, this can change quickly as the virus is evolving, which is why we are actively assessing the situation and why surveillance is so critical,” she said.
300 million birds dead
Although the WHO assesses the current risk of infection for the public as low, it considers the public health risk for farm workers and others exposed to infected animals to be low-to-moderate. The WHO advises exposed groups to use personal protective equipment such as coveralls, respirator masks, eye protection, gloves and boots to minimize the risk.
Since October 2021, H5N1 has caused the deaths of more than 300 million birds worldwide, affecting the livelihood of millions of people.
“In addition to the direct impact on livelihoods, the economic burden on farmers can lead to reduced investments in biosecurity measures,” said Madhur Dhingra, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s senior infectious diseases animal health officer.
“This increases the risk and leads to a dangerous cycle of risk, vulnerability, and loss. … In regions heavily reliant on poultry as a primary protein source, HPAI [highly pathogenic avian influenza] poses a serious threat to food and nutrition security,” she said.
“The impacts of HPAI have spilled over into wildlife, with more than 500 bird species and over 70 mammalian species affected, including endangered animals like the California condor and polar bears,” she said. “The biodiversity impacts, particularly among seabirds and marine mammals, and disruption of fragile ecosystems, such as the Antarctic region, are concerning.”
Health experts agree that increased surveillance and close monitoring of the evolution of the H5N1 virus are essential to prevent the disease from spreading widely around the world.
“We are in an interpandemic period right now where we have a number of different zoonotic viruses, with avian influenza, H5N1 one of several,” Van Kerkhove said.
“While we are operating in a state of readiness, I think the world is not ready for another infectious disease, massive outbreak or pandemic because we have lived through COVID and it was incredibly traumatic, and it is still ongoing.
“We are recommending to our member states and national authorities to increase surveillance and vigilance in human populations, especially those who are occupationally exposed, for the possibility for infection, and, of course, doing thorough investigations around each and every human case,” she said.
In the meantime, she advised people to minimize their risk of becoming sick from bird flu by carefully watching what they eat and drink.
“Cows infected with the H5N1 virus have been reported to have high viral loads in their milk,” she said, so, it is advisable that people “consume pasteurized milk.”
“If pasteurized milk is not available, heating milk until it boils also makes it safe for consumption. Similarly, we recommend thoroughly cooking meat and eggs when in areas affected by avian flu outbreaks,” she said.
date: 2024-12-18, from: Capital and Main
Incoming Attorney General Dave Sunday didn’t mention climate change on the campaign trail, but fossil fuel donations tell a different story.
The post As States Line Up to Battle Trump Over Climate, Pennsylvania Could Be on the Sidelines appeared first on .
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Wednesday to hear a bid by TikTok and its China-based parent company, ByteDance, to block a law intended to force the sale of the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban on national security grounds.
The justices did not immediately act on an emergency request by TikTok and ByteDance, as well as by some of its users who post content on the social media platform, for an injunction to halt the looming ban, opting instead to hear arguments on the matter on January 10.
The challengers are appealing a lower court’s ruling that upheld the law. TikTok is used by about 170 million Americans.
Congress passed the measure in April and President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed it into law. The Justice Department had said that as a Chinese company, TikTok poses “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale” because of its access to vast amounts of data on American users, from locations to private messages, and its ability to secretly manipulate content that Americans view on the app. TikTok has said it poses no imminent threat to U.S. security.
TikTok and ByteDance asked the Supreme Court on December 16 to pause the law, which they said violates free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
TikTok on Wednesday said it was pleased the court will take up the issue. “We believe the court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights,” the company said.
The companies said that being shuttered for even one month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its U.S. users and undermine its ability to attract advertisers and recruit content creators and employee talent.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington on December 6 rejected the First Amendment arguments by the companies.
In their filing to the Supreme Court, TikTok and ByteDance said that “if Americans, duly informed of the alleged risks of ‘covert’ content manipulation, choose to continue viewing content on TikTok with their eyes wide open, the First Amendment entrusts them with making that choice, free from the government’s censorship.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday, in a brief filed with the Supreme Court, urged the court to reject any delay, comparing TikTok to a hardened criminal.
A U.S. ban on TikTok would make the company far less valuable to ByteDance and its investors, and hurt businesses that depend on TikTok to drive their sales.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in the White House in 2020, has reversed his stance and promised during the presidential race this year that he would try to save TikTok. Trump said on Dec. 16 that he has “a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” and that he would “take a look” at the matter.
Trump takes office on January 20, the day after the TikTok deadline under the law.
In its decision, the D.C. Circuit wrote, “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”
TikTok has denied it has or ever would share U.S. user data, accusing U.S. lawmakers in the lawsuit of advancing speculative concerns. It has characterized the ban as a “radical departure from this country’s tradition of championing an open Internet.”
The dispute comes at a time of growing trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies after the Biden administration placed new restrictions on the Chinese chip industry and China responded with a ban on exports of gallium, germanium and antimony, metals which are used in making high-tech microchips, to the United States.
The U.S. law would bar providing certain services to TikTok and other foreign adversary-controlled apps including offering it through app stores such as Apple and Alphabet’s Google, effectively preventing TikTok’s continued U.S. use unless ByteDance divests TikTok by the deadline.
An unimpeded ban could open the door to a future crackdown on other foreign-owned apps. In 2020, Trump had also tried to ban WeChat, owned by Chinese company Tencent, but was blocked by the courts.
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The United States has transferred two Malaysian detainees at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military prison to their home country after they pleaded guilty to charges related to deadly 2002 bombings in Bali and agreed to testify against the alleged ringleader of that and other attacks, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
Prosecutors say Mohammed Farik bin Amin and Mohammed Nazir bin Lep worked for years with Encep Nurjaman, known as Hambali, an Indonesian leader of al-Qaida affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah. That includes helping Nurjaman escape after bombings on Oct. 12, 2002, killed 202 people at two nightspots in Bali, U.S. officials said.
The two men entered guilty pleas to conspiracy and other charges in January. Their transfer comes after they provided testimony that prosecutors plan to use against Nurjaman, the alleged mastermind, the Pentagon said in a statement.
Nurjaman is in custody in Guantanamo awaiting resumption of pretrial hearings in January involving the Bali bombings and other attacks.
The two Malaysian men’s transfers leave 27 detainees in custody at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay. Then-President George W. Bush set up a military tribunal and prison after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks on the United States.
At its peak, Guantanamo detained hundreds of men, most of them Muslim, in the U.S.-led global war on terrorism after the attacks.
Just two of the men at Guantanamo are serving sentences. U.S. prosecution of seven others currently facing charges has been slowed by legal obstacles — including those presented by the torture of the men in their first years under CIA custody — and logistical difficulties.
Kenyan held 17 years
On Tuesday, U.S. authorities repatriated a Kenyan man, Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, after 17 years at Guantanamo without charge.
His release leaves 15 other never-charged men awaiting release. The U.S. is searching for suitable and stable countries willing to take them. Many are from Yemen, a country split by war and dominated by an Iranian-allied militant group.
Amnesty International urged President Joe Biden to end the detention of those never-charged men before he leaves office. If not, the rights group said in a statement, “he will continue to bear responsibility for the abhorrent practice of indefinite detention without charge or trial by the U.S. government.”
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
With the incoming Trump administration’s pledge to begin mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in the United States, some mayors in Democratic states are taking steps to prepare for the new policies. Aron Ranen reports from New York City.
date: 2024-12-18, updated: 2024-12-18, from: RAND blog
Information asymmetry allows sellers to exploit buyers, evident in both used car sales and cryptocurrencies. While transparency has improved for cars, the crypto market remains opaque, risking consumer protections and raising questions about the true value of digital currencies.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/12/crypto-the-new-market-for-lemons.html
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
A bipartisan effort to protect children from the harms of social media is running out of time in this session of the U.S. Congress. If passed, the Kids Online Safety Act would institute safeguards for minors’ personal data online. But free speech advocates and some Republicans are concerned the bill could lead to censorship. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more. Kim Lewis contributed to this story.
https://www.voanews.com/a/senators-urge-us-house-to-pass-kids-online-safety-act/7905596.html
date: 2024-12-18, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: Very windy conditions in the UK have sent wind power generation soaring but electricity prices plummeting • Strong storms are expected to bring heavy rain and possibly tornadoes to Nashville, Tennessee • It’s cloudy in Tokyo, where Nissan shares were up on the news that the automaker is in merger talks with Honda.
Greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. federal lands peaked in 2009 and have been mostly falling ever since, according to a report from the U.S. Geological Survey. Federal lands make up nearly 30% of all the nation’s land. In 2009, annual emissions from fossil fuel extraction and use on these lands reached 1,430.9 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, but had fallen to 1,118.9 million metric tons in 2022. Emissions saw a particularly steep drop in 2020, likely linked to the pandemic, and have been rising, but it’s not clear if the upward trend will continue. Wyoming is a major emitter: Its federal land CO2 emissions in 2022 made up 41% of the national total.
USGS
The same report also found that natural ecosystems (like soil, vegetation, and deadwood) on federal lands are offsetting just 1.4% of the annual emissions, and that “climate conditions” like drought and wildfire have “resulted in a decline in the sink strength of ecosystems on federal lands.” For context, total greenhouse gas emissions for the U.S. have been falling – in 2022 they were down 3% from 1990 levels. Carbon dioxide emissions from federal lands make up about 22% of the U.S. total.
The Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office closed a loan yesterday to fund EV battery plants in Kokomo, Indiana. The $7.54 billion goes to StarPlus Energy – a joint venture between Samsung and Stellantis – and was approved as a conditional loan in early December. At the time it wasn’t clear whether the LPO would be able to finalize it before the Trump administration takes over. The DOE estimates the Indiana projects will create 3,200 construction jobs and 2,800 operations jobs, and the finished plants will produce 67 GWh of batteries, “enough to supply approximately 670,000 vehicles annually.”
DOE/LPO
The Department of Energy on Tuesday published the results of its analysis of the economic and environmental implications of expanding U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas. Among its key findings:
The main takeaway, according to an accompanying letter penned by the Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, is that “a business-as-usual approach is neither sustainable nor advisable.” In a call on Tuesday, Granholm acknowledged that the future is in the next administration’s hands. “We hope that they’ll take these facts into account to determine whether additional LNG exports are truly in the best interest of the American people and economy,” she said.
Global coal demand is set to rise to a new record this year and remain steady through 2027, according to the International Energy Agency. While the rapid rollout of renewables is encroaching on coal’s “century-long supremacy in electricity generation,” soaring power demand is counterbalancing this trend and giving coal a boost, the IEA said in its Coal 2024 report. The future of coal will depend largely on what happens in China, the largest consumer of the world’s dirtiest fuel. This year China, India, and countries in Southeast Asia are projected to account for 75% of global coal demand.
IEA
A new analysis from hundreds of researchers across the world recommends that we stop treating our most pressing global problems as being separate from one another, and instead acknowledge they’re all connected. Solving them will require a holistic approach. Climate change, biodiversity loss, water shortages, food insecurity, and health risks are all interlinked, the assessment says, and decisions to address these challenges should be coordinated to “maximize synergies and minimize trade-offs.” Right now, humanity is looking at these issues in isolation, “resulting in potential misalignment, unplanned trade-offs, and/or unintended consequences.”
Last month some of the leading voices on global climate science and policy penned an open letter calling for negotiators at future COP climate summits to consider the interconnected issues of nature loss, inequality, and poverty to ensure meaningful solutions. The new report was published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Virginia will become home to the world’s first commercial fusion power plant. The facility will be operated by Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and is expected to produce enough energy to power about 150,000 homes sometime in the early 2030s.
https://heatmap.news/climate/the-world-just-cant-seem-to-quit-coal
date: 2024-12-18, from: Heatmap News
Five years ago this month, the novel coronavirus that would eventually become known as Covid-19 began to spread in Wuhan, China, kicking off a sequence of events that quite literally changed the world as we know it, the global climate not excepted.
The most dramatic effect of Covid on climate change wasn’t the 8% drop in annual greenhouse gas emissions caused by lockdowns and border closures in 2020, however. It wasn’t the crash in oil prices, which briefly went negative in April 2020. It wasn’t the delay of COP26 and of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report. And it wasn’t, sadly, a legacy of green stimulus measures (some good efforts notwithstanding).
Rather, it was in the way the world’s governments (especially the largest and most powerful) responded to the virus, which undermined the very idea of multilateralism, climate action included. This took place along three main vectors: inertia on global financial rules, even as long-acknowledged failings turned catastrophic; a renaissance in industrial policy that may prove transformative for domestic fiscal policy; and, at the intersection of both, deterioration of what we might call geopolitics or “global solidarity.”
Evidence of this phenomenon can be found in nearly every aspect of the global order. The World Bank in October pointed to Covid as chief among a “polycrisis” of “multiple and interconnected crises occurring simultaneously, where their interactions amplify the overall impact.” Development gains have almost slowed to a halt. Extreme poverty has increased overall in low-income countries since 2014, after decades of improvement, according to the World Bank’s analysis.
None of this, however, was an inevitable effect of Covid. Poor countries got poorer, for the most part, because of norms and hard rules in global finance that they have little control over — what a group of researchers last year termed “financial subordination.”
To understand why, a brief history: Developing countries during the 2010s were seeking new avenues of finance as traditional sources like multilateral development bank loans, official development assistance, and commercial bank loans waned. Many turned to the U.S. dollar sovereign bond markets, and also to China; a few countries also turned to commodity traders like Glencore and Trafigura, taking on opaque debts to be repaid with their own oil and other commodities.
When the pandemic response shut down many kinds of economic activity in 2020, what World Bank researchers called a “fourth wave” of debt followed. After a continuous series of debt surges from 1970 to 1989, 1990 to 2001, and 2002 to 2009, global debt markets had been relatively stable for the preceding decade. What was different about this fourth wave was that it was largely in developing countries.
With Covid, the fourth wave turned into a tsunami. Countries everywhere were paralysed by the pandemic, but the poorest ones lost critical revenue from tourism, remittances, and some exports. On top of that, they suffered the same lockdowns and illness that depressed local economic activity and drained government budgets in many countries. Unlike rich countries, developing countries had limited ability to dip into reserves or raise money from the bond markets to keep their citizens safe and tide over those who lost work.
Wealthy countries and lenders did little to ameliorate this stress. A “Debt Servicing Suspension Initiative” facilitated by the G20 provided some relief for 46 countries; China participated, too, granting deferrals to some of its debtor countries. But private bondholders (who were earning returns as high as 9%) and multilateral banks did not. The debts still had to be paid, and by 2023, aggregate net capital flows were negative for developing countries — that is, more money flowed from poorer countries to richer ones than the other way around.
Numerous governments defaulted on their debts in the wake of Covid, including Ghana, Sri Lanka, Zambia, Ethiopia, and Suriname. But perhaps just as bad, many, many more countries continued to pay their debts by slashing their health and social welfare budgets just as they were needed most. Low- and middle-income countries spent more on debt servicing in 2022 than they spent on health in 2020, during the height of the pandemic.
Tensions between the U.S. and China, meanwhile, became even more overt around Covid, helped in part by accusations and recriminations over the source of the disease. The two great powers were themselves deeply changed. China emerged from its Covid Zero measures with public discontent at a nearly unprecedented pitch and its engines of economic growth — domestic infrastructure and residential property — faltering as vast local government debts became unmanageable. The country’s central government renewed its focus on an export-led growth model, but this time instead of cheap, low-tech consumer goods, it was semiconductors, solar panels, and electric vehicles.
It quickly became clear that the Biden administration would not be much less hawkish towards China than Trump’s was. It largely focused inwards, on tackling the disenfranchisement of formerly solid Democratic working class constituencies that Trump had exploited and Covid deepened. These were largely seen as an outcome of untrammelled free trade — especially with China. But Covid lockdowns and the rush to regain normalcy in the re-opening choked complex supply chains and logistics networks, driving up prices around the world and helping to spark a global inflation crisis that has yet to meaningfully abate in many parts of the world.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, energy prices shot up, particularly in those countries reliant on imported oil and natural gas. This shook the global fossil energy economy. Exports of liquified natural gas by the United States to Europe skyrocketed, as European countries desperately sought alternatives to Russian piped gas. Those same desperate Europeans also bought LNG shipments that had been bound for countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan, outbidding the poorer countries which then endured blackouts and further hits to their financial reserves as they struggled to match the new EU price.
Global energy price rises compounded the Covid supply-chain pressures and monetary policymakers decided hiking interest rates was unavoidable. While Russian troops tried to capture Kyiv in March of 2022, the U.S. Federal Reserve — perhaps the most powerful U.S. entity for the rest of the world — began hiking interest rates, taking them from just a quarter of a percent before the invasion to more than 5% by mid-2023. This strengthened the U.S. dollar, heaping more pressure on developing countries trying to pay dollar-denominated debts. Meanwhile, in rich and poor countries alike, the jump in living costs has helped drive backlashes against incumbents, and a surge in far-right populism.
Perhaps years ago, if we’d known that we’d see a spike in temperatures, droughts, and storms alongside a flood of cheap solar panels and EVs, technological breakthroughs in batteries, and a renewed interest in industrial policy, it might have seemed that more urgent climate action was assured. Instead, divisions have worsened. The agreement text from this year’s United Nations climate conference is actually slightly watered down from the last year’s statement on fossil fuel phaseout. A special conference on biodiversity Cali, Colombia, finished last month only when delegates had to catch flights home, and a desertification conference hosted by Saudi Arabia finished this month with no group statement.
Rachel Kyte, the UK special envoy for climate change, told an event hosted by the Overseas Development Institute think tank that even as it approached its 10-year anniversary, the 2015 Paris Agreement was more fragile than it had ever been. Countries like the UK, she said, had been inflicting “paper cuts” on developing countries for so long that the ill will was becoming impossible to wave away.
“[W]e’ve also cherry-picked which international laws we want to stand behind and then, which conflicts we believe the international law is important for and not,” she added. “And you sit in the climate negotiations and they know that you know that they know that you know.”
And yet a hopeful note sounding out of all of this has been the central role of clean energy in many countries’ responses to the increasingly fractious global landscape. Responses to Covid, as chaotic as they were, demonstrated that governments can take decisive action. Although the vast majority of Covid stimulus was climate-neutral at best; about a trillion dollars’ worth of investments really were green. Efforts to boost cycling gained ground in some cities, including in Paris, where bike trips now outnumber car trips in and around the city center.
Renewed interest in energy security sparked by the Ukraine invasion has been largely supportive of clean energy. Europe’s combined wind and solar generation rose 10% in the first year after the invasion as the bloc made its emissions reduction target more ambitious. Green industrial policy introduced by the Biden administration has encouraged other countries to see decarbonization as a competitive opportunity rather than an obligation. And China’s doubling down on its manufacturing of the “new three” — batteries, EVs, and solar panels — has created an oversupply that spurred rapid uptake of clean energy in many countries.
Fractures, however, are rife. Too many countries have steep tariffs on clean energy imports preventing them from taking advantage of cheap Chinese components, adding to other barriers to clean energy generation, such as the restrictive planning rules in Japan, where renewable energy generation lags; even wind power, where the country has ample potential, was virtually flat for the decade to 2022. Tariffs on imports to the U.S., while helping to build a domestic industry, also slow the rate of deployment. Globalized supply chains tend to be cheaper; a study in Nature estimated that they saved the U.S. up to $31 billion in the 12 years leading up to 2020, while China saved up to $45 billion, compared to a scenario in which domestic suppliers were prioritized. Even with its rapid expansion in clean tech manufacturing thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, it will take years for the U.S. to catch up to China’s capabilities, while in the meantime, tariffs will slow down installations.
For those in wealthier and more powerful countries, there’s at least a chance of political shift. For countries under financial subordination, there are hard limits to what can be achieved.
Geopolitical alignment is an increasingly sensitive question for countries trying to avoid the pitfalls of appearing to be too close to either China or the U.S. Auto manufacturing has become the site of intense competition and tension, with the U.S. and EU putting punitive tariffs on Chinese EV imports to compensate for “state subsidies.” The introduction of the European carbon border adjustment mechanism this year, which penalizes high-carbon imports so they don’t undermine the continent’s carbon pricing regime, has introduced a new source of tension around trade, particularly for African countries that rely on exports to Europe and are nowhere near having their own carbon accounting scheme that is a prerequisite to avoiding the surcharges.
We may only know in retrospect, but the supply bottlenecks and inflationary surges associated with the Covid lockdowns and reopenings may have been a kind of masked transition phase into a new, more permanently supply-constrained world. Researchers at Potsdam Institute and the European Central Bank published new research in March showing that climate change impacts will raise general inflation by more than a percentage point by 2035.
The damage could be seen in the recent COP29 in Azerbaijan. Trust was close to an all-time low over negotiations for a new target for finance flows from wealthy to poor countries. After it ended with a controversially low $300 billion target, Fiona Harvey of the Guardian called it the second worst COP of the 18 she’s attended, surpassed only by the disastrous 2009 COP15 in Copenhagen, which ended with no agreement at all. It can also be seen in the rebound in emissions since 2021.
While some hopeful shifts have emerged from the Covid era, the increasingly febrile global atmosphere risks endangering our already slim chances of protecting the habitable atmosphere. As climate impacts worsen, pushing back on that axiom will be more difficult, but more urgent. Combating climate change is such a monumental undertaking that collaboration – in technology, manufacturing, knowledge, and diplomacy – will be vital.
https://heatmap.news/ideas/how-covid-shaped-climate-policy
date: 2024-12-18, from: The Lever News
“Uber for nurses” is extracting profits and hurting health care, all to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
https://www.levernews.com/the-dangerous-lie-behind-on-demand-nursing/
date: 2024-12-18, from: Heatmap News
Jennifer Granholm has long been one of the most interesting figures in the Democratic Party. A former federal prosecutor, she was the governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011, leading the state during the Great Recession and subsequent auto bailout. Since 2021, she has been the 16th U.S. Secretary of Energy. While there, she has overseen the department’s transformation from an R&D-focused agency to an aspiring engine of industrial strategy.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob sits down with Secretary Granholm in person in New York to conduct an exit interview, of sorts. What climate policies is she most proud of — and what does she hope Democrats do better next time? What does she wish that Democrats understood about fossil fuels? And what does she think the outlook for clean energy is in the years to come?
Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University. Jesse is off this week.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.
Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Robinson Meyer: And so one big question I have is like, are we going to learn in the next few years whether these are actual concerns to these folks and they want to preserve these programs? Because it turns out, this is how you would try to create an EV industry in the U.S. Or do they really just care about oil and gas and their concerns with supply chains, with mineral supply chains, are just kind of a tissue to cover up larger oil and gas concerns?
Jennifer Granholm: I mean, obviously they’re very pro fossil fuels. We know that. But I will say all of the rhetoric has been about all of the above, an all of the above strategy. I mean everybody from Doug Burgum — I mean, all of these Republicans on the Energy Committee, they’ve all said that. So it just would be strange to turn your back on everything that you have said all of this time.
And I don’t even think, honestly, I can — This is what I would say: I think that the Trump administration, it seems, what do I know? I haven’t talked to them personally, but I, it seems from all I can, they want to reshore manufacturing. So if it’s not, if you eliminate the Inflation Reduction Act, you got to replace it with something that’s going to attract all of that investment. There has to be some industrial strategy. Otherwise you’re just ceding the territory to China, which is the thing you’re complaining about. So if you don’t like an incentive-based strategy, which is really what the Inflation Reduction Act is, I see he wants to put in a tariff-based strategy, if you just want to do all sticks. I’m not sure that’s good for the economy overall, but a blend of carrots and sticks, I’m sure most people would say are important. And so, you know, maybe you call it something else, but you got to get in a game, because otherwise our economic competitors are only too happy to see that happen. Can I tell you a quick story?
Meyer: Yes, we have a little bit of time. This is what this is for.
Granholm: So when I was finished being governor, I went to China to see what China was doing in this clean energy space, because they were cornering the market on a lot of these technologies, solar in particular. At the time, I went with Securing America’s Future Energy, an organization that is focused on competitiveness in this clean space. And we went to a presentation by a bunch of mayors in China, mayors of provinces. And as we were standing there watching the presentation, one of the mayors stands next to me, and he says, “So when do you think the United States is going to get a national clean energy strategy?” And I said, “Oh, I don’t know … Congress …” And he looks at me, and he gets a big grin on his face, and he says, “Take your time.”
Because of course, they see our passivity as their opportunity, right? So this is why what we’ve done, what these laws have done, what the president has done, is so amazing. So I get that you may have to put a different spin on whatever the new administration wants to do, but ultimately, you have to have policies like these if we’re going to be successful in reshoring manufacturing.
You can find a full transcript of the episode here.
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https://heatmap.news/podcast/shift-key-s2-e18-jennifer-granholm
date: 2024-12-18, from: Heatmap News
Robinson Meyer: Secretary Granholm, welcome to Shift Key.
Jennifer Granholm: Thank you. Glad to be on.
Meyer: So let’s start here. Can you just start by setting the scene for us for what the Department of Energy has done over the past few years, and what it has become? Because as I think about it, and as we think about Trump again, I remember back in 2017 when, I believe your direct predecessor, Secretary Perry, took over the office, and he was very excited to talk about energy and to talk about fossil fuels and to evangelize oil and gas. And then he had to learn that at the time, DOE was really more of a national-labs-and-nuclear-weapons type of agency. I feel like that’s less true today. So can you just set the scene for us on how far we’ve come?
Granholm: I mean, I can talk about the department, yeah. But I’d love to also, at some point, talk about the outcomes.
Meyer: Let’s talk about outcomes first, and then let’s talk about the department.
Granholm: Great, great. So just at a level, I hope — I know your listeners are savvy in this space, but just to put it in perspective: It is astonishing what the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have been able to do to build out clean energy in the United States. It is mind-blowing. If you had told me — I’m a former governor of Michigan, and when I was governor, we saw all these jobs leave, all this manufacturing gone. It was just — and the federal government just sat on its hands and did nothing, although when the Obama-Biden administration came in, they saved the auto industry. But every supply chain, every — and they were all going to Mexico, or China, or whatever.
And so the hollowing out of much of the middle class and the manufacturing, and I think this is one of the things that Trump really picked up on. But across the nation, in industrial communities, small towns that had a factory that left … So the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have caused now, as of today — and this is so far, since the Inflation Reduction Act was only passed a couple years ago — over 950 factories to come to America or expand in America, building these products for this clean energy transition. That is just mind-blowing to me. And those announcements are announcements. Then there’s the groundbreakings, and then there’s the ribbon cuttings. And so there’s been some groundbreakings and some ribbon cuttings, but all of those are going to bear fruit over the next few years.
Meyer: So during the Trump administration.
Granholm: Exactly. And that’s, I mean, regardless of who’s in the White House, this is really great for America, that we have, now, industrial strategy that has reversed that track, that tide. So that’s, in terms of outcomes, that is a huge outcome.
The second outcome that I think is really important is how much clean generation that has happened. So this year, we will add 60 gigawatts of clean electricity to the grid. That is more than double what we have ever done — 30 Hoover Dams’ worth, is what I like for everyday folks to understand the magnitude of what we are adding. And that trajectory is going to continue as long as those incentives are in place, and it’s going to be higher next year and next year. And so the goal that the President came in with, with 100% clean electricity on the grid by 2035, and to get to net zero by 2050, by 2030 we will have — just because of these two laws, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act — we will have 80% clean electricity on the grid by 2030, and we will have reduced GHG emissions by 40%. Now that doesn’t speak to … the reduction in GHG doesn’t even speak to what the cities and states and private sector is doing. So we’re hopeful that we can get to the half, 50% reduction by 2030.
Meyer: Do you think those trends will continue through and despite Trump?
Granholm: Yeah, this is the question of the hour. Here’s —
Meyer: And we can get more into this later, I just wanted to stress test that.
Granholm: I’ll just say, I have hope that this will continue, and I don’t think it’s irrational exuberance because of the fact that those 950 factories, 85% are in red counties, red districts. And because, you know, governors and members of Congress and, you know, President-elect Trump will be able to oversee the fruition of people hiring, steel going in the ground in these factories, it really would be political malpractice to undo those incentives when it’s creating everything that both parties have asked for, which is to reshore supply chains, critical minerals for electric vehicles and other products. It’s just, it’s doing the thing that America should do.
And so I am, I’m hopeful because of that, and I’m hopeful because of the technologies that there’s bipartisan support for. So we know there’s bipartisan support for nuclear, for example. We know there’s bipartisan support for geothermal. We know there’s bipartisan support for hydroelectric power. We know there’s bipartisan support for getting critical minerals reshored, or at least the extraction and responsible extraction and processing of them. So there’s a lot of areas that I think there’s bipartisan support for, and therefore it will be difficult for Congress to overturn or yank back from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Meyer: Let’s talk about the office. In addition to accomplishing those things — I remember in 2021, looking at the changes that were being made the Department of Energy, some of the changes that were in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and thinking, DOE is going to be a totally different agency by the end of this term, or even just in a few years, than it was a few years ago. Can you talk about how the office has changed under your leadership?
Granholm: This is one of the reasons we’ve been able to achieve those outcomes, is because we restructured the department. We still have our national security mission, of course, and that’s very important. And we still have the mission to clean up the legacy waste sites from the Manhattan Project, as well. But we have completely restructured to deploy, deploy, deploy.
We still have the labs, of course, doing all of the work that leads up to deploying on the technologies that really are significant, and those missions still occur. But we were given over $100 billion through these acts, 60 new programs to restructure and focus the Department of Energy on this clean energy transition, and that has utterly changed — we’ve hired almost 1,000 people to be able to do that. We’ve created a whole new vertical, a whole new Under Secretary for Infrastructure, which is all about the infrastructure of this clean energy economy. So that change, I think, has been significant.
We hired a bunch of people from the private sector to come in to understand how technology — we don’t want to take a risk. For example, through the Loan Programs Office, which I know you’re well familiar with. You know Jigar Shah, who runs that, he doesn’t take a risk, they don’t take a risk on the technology working. You know, the physics are going to work, the chemistry is going to work. The niche that they provide is great technology, do they have a business plan that is going to ensure that they’re successful in the market? So we’ve hired a number of people from the private sector to be the Sherpas on that and make it work. And the results have been really quite astounding.
Meyer: It’s really become more of an industrial policy department, in some ways, which is something that a lot of other countries have. In fact, it’s something that most developed countries have, or many of them have. Japan has one. Germany has one. But it’s something the U.S. has historically not necessarily pursued in a civilian agency. At least we have, we do DoD industrial policy forever.
Granholm: Yes, this is what’s so incredibly great about this. You know, again, I say this with my hat as former governor of Michigan: When we used to, you know, we were competing as states. States had their own economic development agencies, but we didn’t have a federal partner on any of it. It was like bringing a knife to a gunfight, and we would see, you know, we can’t compete with the industrial policy of China as a state, right? So the fact that we now have a federal strategy that enables states to enhance, but that there is a federal decision that we are going to get in the game. We’re not going to be passive and allow other countries to eat us for lunch.
Meyer: So how do we think that … how do you think that these programs will fare under the next president?
Granholm: Well, I do think because — I think they are durable, first of all, because one, we’re going to commit a huge amount of the money we were given — 98% of the programs we were given, 60 new programs under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. We will have at least on one round of funding, 98% of them, and we will have gotten commitments for all of these selections by January 20. So there may be a couple that we’re not able to do because they’re multi-year programs, etc., but we want that commitment. So that creates one layer of durability.
And of course, the second layer of durability is that they, these programs, are all going to stuff that Republicans have been calling for, too. So for example, there’s been a lot of curious complaints about the EV strategy of the administration because, it is said, all of the critical minerals, and China produces the batteries and the critical minerals. And that’s true. China has — but that’s why this strategy is reversing that trend. You know, China’s cornered the market on batteries, and now we’re make … I mean, of the 950 companies that I talked about, over 400 of them are batteries or electric vehicle companies that we’re building in the United States, you know, the anode, the cathode, the separator material, the electrolyte, the critical minerals, the processing of those minerals. That’s all coming back.
Meyer: Well, and there is something … So have you talked to Doug Burgum or Chris Wright? Yeah.
Granholm: Well, I hope I get a chance to talk to Chris Wright. I’ve definitely talked to Doug Burgum in my role, and in his role as governor. And he’s been an all-of-the-above guy.
Meyer: I think it’s interesting because one of the big questions I have going into the Trump administration — in addition, I should say, that there’s like, two buckets of questions, right? There’s the, as you were saying, there’s a lot of durability, if you were to look at conventional ways of assessing durability, in the department’s programs, right? A lot of these programs are bipartisan.
Something we saw during the Trump administration was that the Office of Management and Budget from the White House would publish these extremely drastic budget cuts when they proposed a budget to Congress, and there’d be all these news stories about how they wanted to cut the EPA budget by half, and they wanted to cut the DOE budget, and they wanted to cut NASA’s budget. And all these news stories would come out, and then six months later, the Republican majorities in Congress would pass a budget, and it would lightly top off all of the budgets, and all the funding would go up, because it turns out the government largely does things that Congress wants it to do, and there’s a lot of support in Congress.
That being said, it also seems like this administration is going to test the limits of impoundment and what the president might be able to stop. But once you put aside that bucket, when you hear Doug Burgum talk about what his complaints with the Biden administration’s policies are, many of them are not grounded in factual inaccuracy. I would say they’re … for instance, the big point he made during the Republican primary debate was about, if we switch to EVs, we’re going to make China more important. We’re switching from OPEC to Sinopec, is, I think, his line. That is exactly what the suite of policies that have been advanced in this bill are supposed to do.
And so one big question I have is like, are we going to learn in the next few years whether these are actual concerns to these folks and they want to preserve these programs? Because it turns out, this is how you would try to create an EV industry in the U.S. Or do they really just care about oil and gas and their concerns with supply chains, with mineral supply chains, are just kind of a tissue to cover up larger oil and gas concerns?
Granholm: I mean, obviously they’re very pro fossil fuels. We know that. But I will say all of the rhetoric has been about all of the above, an all of the above strategy. I mean everybody from Doug Burgum — I mean, all of these Republicans on the Energy Committee, they’ve all said that. So it just would be strange to turn your back on everything that you have said all of this time.
And I don’t even think, honestly, I can — This is what I would say: I think that the Trump administration, it seems, what do I know? I haven’t talked to them personally, but I, it seems from all I can, they want to reshore manufacturing. So if it’s not, if you eliminate the Inflation Reduction Act, you got to replace it with something that’s going to attract all of that investment. There has to be some industrial strategy. Otherwise you’re just ceding the territory to China, which is the thing you’re complaining about. So if you don’t like an incentive-based strategy, which is really what the Inflation Reduction Act is, I see he wants to put in a tariff-based strategy, if you just want to do all sticks. I’m not sure that’s good for the economy overall, but a blend of carrots and sticks, I’m sure most people would say are important. And so, you know, maybe you call it something else, but you got to get in a game, because otherwise our economic competitors are only too happy to see that happen. Can I tell you a quick story?
Meyer: Yes, we have a little bit of time. This is what this is for.
Granholm: So when I was finished being governor, I went to China to see what China was doing in this clean energy space, because they were cornering the market on a lot of these technologies, solar in particular. At the time, I went with Securing America’s Future Energy, an organization that is focused on competitiveness in this clean space. And we went to a presentation by a bunch of mayors in China, mayors of provinces. And as we were standing there watching the presentation, one of the mayors stands next to me, and he says, “So when do you think the United States is going to get a national clean energy strategy?” And I said, “Oh, I don’t know … Congress …” And he looks at me, and he gets a big grin on his face, and he says, “Take your time.”
Because of course, they see our passivity as their opportunity, right? So this is why what we’ve done, what these laws have done, what the president has done, is so amazing. So I get that you may have to put a different spin on whatever the new administration wants to do, but ultimately, you have to have policies like these if we’re going to be successful in reshoring manufacturing.
Meyer: What do you think is the trajectory — you mentioned 60 gigawatts of clean generation coming online. What do you think is the trajectory of clean energy under Trump?
Granholm: Well it, you know, if the Inflation Reduction Act holds, those incentives don’t go away. The developers are going to take advantage of it. I think it is inexorable that you will see continued climb of clean energy generation. I, you know, I know there’s a lot of talk about drill, baby, drill, etc. I mean, they have been drilling, baby, drilling. There hasn’t been limits on that. They may want to open up more auctions and more leases, but the private sector has to be willing to actually put the capital investment into going into those spaces. And the market is a global market, and they’re going to respond to what is happening globally. So I think clean energy … I believe strongly that if the Inflation Reduction Act stays, the clean energy investments will continue to go on that upward trajectory in a way that is astounding.
Meyer: Let’s talk about fossil fuels for a minute. As of when we’re recording this, the LNG study is not yet out. Can you give us a sense of what we might hear when that study comes out, and what the department has aimed to do with it.
Granholm: Well, I’ll just say this. I’m going to wait for the study to come out to speak to what its conclusions are, but know that for everybody listening, we were looking at what the greenhouse gas impacts are of all of the additional authorization that has been, and the current authorization that has already been approved for export. We have, we’re looking at what the impacts are from local communities who bear both the economic, the jobs, as well as the adverse impacts to that. We’re looking at what the global trajectory is of demand, and what our allies might be needing in terms of liquefied natural gas. And importantly, we’re looking at the impacts back home on the costs of natural gas. We, you know, if we are producing little over 100 bcf a day of natural gas, and you take a good chunk of that and export it, what does that do to the prices at home for those who use it? And so we’re looking at the costs at home.
So the study will come out soon. There will be a 60-day comment period, so it will run into the next administration, obviously, but I think it’s important to lay out what the study finds. Just the facts. These are, this is done by our labs. These are just facts. And I think it’s important for those commenters to comment on it so we have it for the record, and potentially a future administration could make policy based upon what the study reveals.
Meyer: LNG has been such a big hot-button issue in this administration, and to some degree it has dominated some of the discourse around these questions. Have you been surprised by the degree to which it’s dominated discourse, or surprised by the degree of the backlash?
Granholm: Yeah, a bit, because of the amount that we have already authorized for export. I mean, the pause on additional authorizations does not impact in any way, shape, or form the amount of exports we are doing. We have already built up and are exporting … we’re the largest exporter in the world, 13 bcf, you know, billion cubic feet per day. We are a powerhouse in exporting LNG, and we’ve authorized a whole bunch more that is either under construction or seeking final investment decisions, etc.
The amount we have approved is massive. And this is … this study was a pause on even more, you know. So we’ve approved an amount that is almost equivalent to what the U.S. the demand will be, you know. So it doesn’t affect any of that. We didn’t pause any exports at all. So have I been surprised? Yes, because of — But I understand politically that some things aren’t necessarily based on the actual facts. But people are afraid, maybe, that there will, that portends some callback in existing authorizations or something, which it does not.
Meyer: So often when you go back, and I’ve been going back in and looking at the climate policy and energy policy from the administration, and what the coverage of it has been at the time. And what’s been striking — and I remember observing this when I was covering these issues, but it has been really striking to go back and see it in retrospect — is that the Biden administration was doing a lot at the same time, right? It was trying to stabilize the fossil fuel industry coming out of the Ukraine energy crisis. It was trying to help clean energy. It was trying to reduce emissions. But there’d be this pattern of, the Biden administration would pass the IRA, and a lot of the coverage on the IRA focused on the fossil fuel leasing provisions in the IRA, to the degree that I was like, did they read the law? You know, are they aware of what the policies are in this law? And then Biden would approve the Willow Project, or there’d be the fight over the LNG, and that would dominate attention. That would get a lot of coverage, and it would drive a lot of attention from climate activists, too.
Did what Biden was trying to do during this administration break through? Did what this administration was trying to do, did it break through with the people who needed to hear it? Meaning on the renewable side, on both sides, on the climate side and the fossil fuel side.
Granholm: I would say no, it definitely didn’t break through. But that’s more of a comment about our media environment, right? I mean, for media, with all due respect …
Meyer: This is an interesting question. Yeah, I mean, it ties into, like, what can the government do in terms of policy? How much do people notice what’s happening in terms of policy?
Granholm: I mean, unless there’s a massive controversy, people are looking at, you know, TikTok and Instagram, and so the things that get the big, you know, generate the most clicks are the ones that have some backlash, right? So those are the things that people notice. Do they notice the good news? No. Do people know, they have any idea about the amount of factories that are coming to America, or expanding in America? No clue. No clue. So that’s a question about, how do you do that? How do you get the word out? I’ve been across the country and almost every state you know, trumpeting this, but it still doesn’t rise to the level of consciousness.
And maybe it’s because people aren’t so interested in it, but I think that people want to see — I mean, the economy was the number one issue, and if you’ve got a factory coming to your area, that should be a positive, positive thing. But people don’t attribute it necessarily to the Biden administration. Is that a failure on our part of not yelling loud enough, etc.? Or is it a failure of the atomized media that we have? It’s just it’s hard to know going forward.
Meyer: Well, I think if it is a failure of the atomized media, it is a rather ominous sign for politics that tries to build things in the future. You’re the governor — you were the governor of a state that had ties to the fossil fuel industry, not in that it was extracting fossil fuels, but in that the main export, it uses them, right? What do you think Democrats should understand about the fossil fuel industry? And like, not only Democrats in government, but rank and file Democrats?
Granholm: Well I think, first of all, I think it’s important to understand the word transition. You know that we are in a transition from a molecule-based fuel system to an electron-based fuel system, to electrify. And that electrification, obviously, is so much more healthy for the planet, and it creates huge job opportunities. But the transition period, you know, we have 26 years between now and 2050, when we need to get to net zero — and notice it says ‘net zero.’ The fossil fuel industry is going to continue to exist. The net means that we have to find the technologies that reduce, obviously, greenhouse gas emissions from that fossil fuel industry.
People, also Democrats, understand, if they live in one of these states, that the fossil fuel industry provides a huge number of jobs, good paying jobs, and so you can’t just come along and say, get rid of all of that, because you’re talking about people and people’s economies and communities and towns. So it, there has to be a vision of build, build, build on the clean, and that market will expand, so that you can have a reduction on the fossil side. But I don’t think that we’re going to be fully rid of all fossil because I, and I think the technology will allow for us to clean up the fossil fuel side of things.
Meyer: Do you think that the voters, that rank and file Democrats — even beyond Democrats, just the type of voters the Democrats want to talk to — do you think they see this link between fossil fuels and their livelihoods and their economies? A link that Republicans are very eager to point to, but that I think Democrats sometimes avoid. Do you think that people see fossil fuels and associate their economic well-being with it?
Granholm: No, I don’t think they ,,, unless they live in one of those communities, right? I don’t think they necessarily link … I think people are really interested in reliable power, yeah, and they’re interested in how much that reliable power costs. That’s, for most people, they’re not looking, when they flip on the light switch, is it something that’s coming from natural gas-powered? Or is it something that’s coming from solar? People like the idea — and I can say this as a former governor, communities love the idea of creating jobs that are future-facing, that their kids will stay for. And the next generation, the Gen Y, Gen Z, they’re, you know, they don’t want to work in an industry that is polluting the planet. Many of them, I mean, some of them — of course, I don’t want to generalize. But for the most part, communities embrace these industries of the future. And so I think that is something that people listen to, and they understand that this transition is happening, and it is not just like flipping a light switch, that there has to be a glide path so that the communities that have powered us for the past 100 years can be part of powering us for the next 100 years, but using clean. But that transition period has to be one where you are sensitive to the fact that these many rural places feel very threatened.
Meyer: Democrats did a lot to help the fossil fuel industry during this administration, to stabilize it — after the pandemic, to stabilize it, after Ukraine, there was a Defense Production Act in the beginning to help the fracking industry. There was the use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to stabilize gas prices and oil prices. After Ukraine, the response they got from the fossil fuel industry was nothing but vitriol, nothing but, Biden doesn’t want us to drill. We hate the tone coming out of this administration. We’re not happy with this at all. Did Democrats do too much for the industry? Should they not have done what they did?
Granholm: Well, I don’t think Democrats … I don’t think we did it for the industry. We did it for the people. So for example, on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, you know, gas prices were bumping up to $5 a gallon because of the dearth of supply globally as a result of Russia’s fuel not being on the market. So we wanted to make sure that people in the United States and around the world, but people in the United States in particular, weren’t paying for Putin’s war, and so releasing more supply obviously brought that down. I mean, today we’re $2 under what it was during that height. So it worked. And we have replenished the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a price that was much more favorable to taxpayers. So it wasn’t, that wasn’t about saving the industry. That was about saving people’s pocketbooks.
We did help our allies on liquified natural gas exports, and they were reeling as a result, a couple of years ago, as you know, as a result of the war and Putin weaponizing natural gas. So that had an impact on the industry. It helped the industry. But our the strategy really is what’s going to help people here in the United States.
Meyer: There’s two different attitudes toward the fossil fuel industry, as — I’m going to generalize a little bit, but when I look at climate folks, folks who work in this professionally, who think about these issues day to day, whether they’re activists or engineers, I think people’s attitudes break down into two camps. And one of those camps is that the fossil fuel industry is a big enemy. They’re a big enemy of the transition. They’re going to fight the transition at all costs. They’re going to do everything they can to preserve fossil fuels. And just look at their support of Donald Trump, right? What they want from the Trump administration is shoring up demand because they want to lock people into fossil fuels.
And there’s another point of view that says, Well, you know, it’s not great, but the obstacles to the transition are more along the lines of technology development and deployment. And the fossil fuel industry, in the meantime, actually does provide a lot of energy for people, and you can’t ignore that. Where do you come down between those two camps?
Granholm: Well, I definitely think that industries tend to preserve their self-interest, right? And so the fossil fuel industry is all about fossil fuels. And so if they view another type of energy, cleaner energy, as a challenge, then they’re going to do everything, which — I mean, that has proven throughout history to have been the case.
I will say there are a couple of actors, several of the majors, who maybe have a little more of the luxury of being able to do investments in technologies that allow for a clean energy transition. That’s encouraging. I mean, when I … there’s a big oil and gas conference in Houston every year. And the first year I went, I was like, you guys, you should transition to be diversified energy companies, not just oil and gas. You guys have all of the resources. You’re the richest companies around. Why don’t you being … why aren’t you investing more in geothermal, for example, because you have the skill set. You’ve got, you use rigs, you go, you understand about extracting energy from beneath the surface. You’re experts in the subsurface. You got skill set. This began the big blowback. How dare you come and tell us what we should be doing? But it’s just realistic, and to be fair, some have, a lot have not.
Meyer: Some that got into it have now backed off of it, too, is the other thing, too. Because they’re just, the business is so … like, even if some leaders in the company are like, well, electricity looks like the future, we should get into it, the profit pattern’s totally different. The margins are totally different. So they then wind up getting back out, because fossil fuels just can be very profitable.
Granholm: This is why, to me, this transition, we have to almost overbuild on the renewable side, so that it is, so that it were, we just have so much momentum there. And the cost, when you overbuild, you’re scaling, your costs come down, and it becomes a game of cost, right? Our natural gas is so cheap, and so that’s why it’s a difficult thing.
Meyer: Right. This is like, in some ways, the good and the bad, right? Is that we have all this cheap natural gas, which means we’ve had fairly cheap electricity, right? And that means we attract a lot of industry that is not going to Europe. For instance, China also has cheap electricity because they subsidize it. They burn a lot of coal at state subsidy. They do a lot of generation. I know it’s just a tricky … it is tricky.
Granholm: The whole thing. It’s complicated. It’s not binary. I mean, really, we have to think about it: Where do we want to be in 2050? We want to be at net zero. How do we get there? How do we back into that? And I think the electricity grid side of things will come along very, very quickly. You know, it’s going to be difficult to decarbonize heavy industry, and we’re working on strategies to do that. You know, the building sector — really, really important to be able to address that. So, bottom line is, it’s complicated.
Meyer: Clean energy and electricity, let’s move on. So I think, as recently as 18 months ago, the word on electricity demand, on electricity markets, and what was happening in electricity in the U.S. was, yes, these AI companies are going to come along. They’re building a lot of data centers, but they’re not going to slow down the transition. I think that might have changed a little bit, that consensus might have changed a little bit since then, or I think it’s a little less clear, let’s say. What’s your view?
Granholm: I think first of all, we know the demand is going up, and data centers are a part of that. So is electrification of transportation. So are all these 900 factories coming on. So there are a number of reasons —
Meyer: Right, AI remains a relatively small percentage …
Granholm: — at the moment. But it’s, but there is no doubt that it’s a growing part of it. We have managed increases in demand in the past, and we will continue to do that going forward by adding all of this additional power, which is why, you know, we just need to continue to build generation. But what our conversations with the hyperscalers on these data centers — first of all, we believe that it’s really important to have these data centers, the AI data centers, in the United States, for national security reasons. We need to hold on to that. And if that’s true, and they build out these data centers, and they need another, whatever, 20 gigawatts of power for the data centers — bring your own power. BYOP. So bring your own clean power. Your shareholders and your commitments to clean energy, all of them have commitments like that.
So this is why you’re seeing these really interesting announcements coming from Google and Meta and Amazon, etc., partnering with geothermal companies like Sage and Fervo, partnering with small modular reactor companies like Kairos, are turning on power. So it’s, to me, very exciting that, not only that there may be, there’s an additive component to this. And there’s a willingness on the part of the data centers to actually pay a green premium for those, that addition, those additional electrons.
Meyer: Do you hear that they are willing to … is the willingness to pay that green premium durable? Because I do hear concerns that basically, once Trump comes in, or in a year from now, these companies are going to want to keep building AI data centers. They’re going to be starved for power, and they’re just going to build natural gas because it’s not coal, and they need the energy.
Granholm: I think that there will be some temptation to do that. And I think that while nuclear reactors, for example, are being built, they may rely, there may be some reliance on natural gas to be able to power — natural gas combined, perhaps with CCS, for example, carbon capture …
Meyer: Yeah, Exxon just made this announcement. It’s going to try to get into that.
Granholm: Yes, exactly. But these companies themselves have made commitments. I mean, Amazon’s commitment to clean has been part of their ethos. So they can’t just rely upon that. They have got to bring their own.
And let me just say one other thing, is that bringing their own and paying a green premium for that, they recognize the backlash of adding demand on a grid that is socialized across the rate base. They recognize, they do not want to have protests because people’s rates are going up because of this data center. And data centers, of course, they are fantastic for construction jobs, but they don’t employ a huge number of people. There are ripple effects, of course, in an industrial cluster, but they’re worried about the backlash — as they should be, and therefore bringing their own power and paying for it is a part of the strategy.
Meyer: Thinking more broadly, the Biden administration came in, and you came in with an interest in fixing issues in the U.S. innovation and deployment chain, let’s say, and in the chain of innovations, or the chain of scientific research, as it goes from the lab and the national labs to eventually the marketplace. And one big criticism, including from one thing that Jigar talks about the Loan Programs Office is trying to do, is make sure that when we invent technologies here, they don’t get then exported abroad, sold abroad, and then made somewhere else and commercialized somewhere else. Today, in 2024, is that chain working? And what are the biggest problems with that chain as you see them?
Granholm: Well, there’s so many, there’s so many opportunities for solving the biggest problem. So for example, we launched eight Earthshots to be able to reduce the price for this next-generation technologies like enhanced geothermal or floating offshore wind platforms or clean hydrogen. If we can reduce the cost of those technologies by 90% — and that’s what a lot of the labs are working on — that makes them irresistible.
And that’s, making these advanced technologies irresistible is part of the strategy. And that includes, you know, nuclear reactors. So we have a whole office of technology transitions led by Vanessa Chan, who came in from outside, and she has overseen all these liftoff reports for these clean technologies that have, really, industry benchmarks about where we should be and when we should be there. We feel really good about the trajectory of these technologies as a result of that work, and the work that’s being done by the labs.
There are a number of knotty problems, though, that are beyond those particular technologies. One of the knottiest problems, honestly — and I mean knotty, K-N-O-T-T-Y — is the grid getting the connection through. And I think that that is a problem that we’re working on, using AI to solve. But there needs to be a much greater emphasis on how to get the RTOs and the ISOs to get more power online.
Meyer: What technology in the clean energy … actually, let me just ask one follow up, which is, do you think that those Earthshot programs will be sustained through the next administration?
Granholm: I do because, I mean, if there’s a big support for hydrogen, for example. So how do we get the cost of hydrogen down? I think you can cherry pick, I suppose. But you know, carbon management is one of the Earthshots. So how do you reduce the cost of that so a lot of the technologies have support?
Meyer: Thinking across the full spectrum, full portfolio of technologies that the DOE has supported or gotten engaged on in the past four years, what technology are you most excited about?
Granholm: Well, I’m certainly super excited about the deployment of solar that has just been, just a rocket ship, which is very, very cool. I personally love, and would love to see a greater investment by the next — we would have done this if we had the opportunity to serve — I think, a greater investment in geothermal, enhanced geothermal. I think that has huge promise, to be able to do that. And I would also want to see a greater investment, a consistent investment in the grid. So we got, there’s $70 billion that is focused on the grid through these laws. And we were able to do spot efforts, to do reconductoring and get more power across existing lines, to do grid-enhancing technologies, to do undergrounding, all of that. But a consistent investment in the grid, kind of like what we have for the Highway Trust Fund. If we had a, we have a national grid, it’s, you know, the transmission and distribution miles, 7 million miles, and 75% of the grid is over 25 years old. We need a consistent investment for both to deal with these extreme weather events, cyber, and make, just making sure that we are upgrading the poles on which this electricity is carried.
Meyer: It is so different, and it’s interesting compared to highways. Because highways, it is a form of transmit, right? I mean, yeah, we move energy around on the highways. Highways are this big national system. The highways are also publicly owned. The grid is not. Do you think that’s an issue?
Granholm: Well, some of the grid, I mean, you know, it depends, right? I think that we just need to think about it differently. Electricity is just a fundamental human need, like transportation on a road, or even more importantly. So I just think we have to think differently about how we support the grid and this scattershot … and I know it’s, obviously it’s a federalism issue, as well. But we have a system like that for the roads, and we should take a look at that. There’s state roads, and the money goes to the states and they do it, and then there’s federal roads, you know, federal highways. I think we can borrow lessons, I’ll just say that, from what we have done with other infrastructure to support the grid.
Meyer: Looking back, I think one of the big promises, one of the big claims that Biden made coming into office was that government was going to do big things again. It was going to intervene and help the economy in big, strategic, supply-and-demand-oriented ways, right? It was going to bring back factories. It was going to bring back jobs. It could, government could be a major force for good in people’s lives, and that this would not only be good for the country in a kind of broad way, but also help defeat Trumpism.
Obviously, Donald Trump is about to be president again. But I also think the Biden administration did go much further in its economic policy than maybe the Obama administration did outside of healthcare. What did you learn from this go around? What did you learn from this outing at trying to do economic and industrial policy at the federal level, and trying to do big things with the government’s power?
Granholm: You know, when I was done being governor, I wrote a book about this. It’s called The Governor’s Story, where I was lamenting the fact that we didn’t have national strategy to be able to create jobs in our states. And the fact that the troika of laws — I would include the CHIPS and Science Act, as well — but there are three basic laws that are the basis for this table of industrial strategy, and that it has worked so well.
I feel like, you know, all of the folks who have in the past been total free market, “free market” players, government shouldn’t be involved, we shouldn’t be picking, “winners or losers,” or all of that, and allowing all these other countries to take our jobs. I think people have now seen this play out, the fact that you don’t have any hands on and other countries are playing. And I have, I have learned, and I hope others see that had, the government can play an enabling role for actually creating jobs in this country and making us competitive. Who knew policy actually works?
Meyer: I hear that …
Granholm: I hear a “but” coming.
Meyer: Kamala Harris, still, though, did not win the presidential election. So I think, to some degree, the Biden administration has proved you can do these things, and that they elicit a response. I think, unfortunately, what it’s also demonstrated is that this might be somewhat disconnected from political outcomes. So what lesson do you learn from that?
Granholm: I mean, yeah. Lesson A: It works, yeah. Lesson B: How do you, how do you communicate that in a way that people understand that it’s working? How do we, yeah, how does that happen? It’s that. It’s back to the question we started to talk about at the front end. I wish I was a great communications guru and I could tell you how to do it. It’s one of those things that you almost have to, because it was so soon, in the results-bearing part of this strategy, meaning that you haven’t, people haven’t been hired for all those factories yet because they’re still under construction, or they’re still being contracts.
I still feel like it’s not over yet. The story’s not over yet. In the immediate, yes, there was a communications gap because people didn’t believe it. And I think people are angry, and they don’t trust government to begin with. And so if you’re coming in as a candidate saying that your government’s bad and they don’t believe you, and I’m going to fight for you, that’s a more compelling message than, yeah, we we have all these factories that are just starting. You need to wait a few years, but it’s gonna happen, I swear. So how do we communicate that? You’re in the communications business — tell me.
Meyer: Well, do you think it was a mistake to communicate so many of these changes, so many of these policies were communicated through manufacturing — I mean, it’s what we’re doing right now. Not many voters actually work in manufacturing. We have a largely services-dominated economy. Was that a mistake?
Granholm: I’m sort of manufacturing-centric.
Meyer: I was gonna say, in some ways, because of governor of Michigan, you have an anomalous …
Granholm: Totally. This, yeah, it’s not, it’s not how everybody else sees it, for sure. And I totally, I totally hear you on this. So here’s, you know, here’s another data point, is that — or factor: Part of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was to give people the ability to weatherize their homes, to have rebates for appliances that made them pay less on their bills. The cool thing about this was that, is that 49 out of the 50 states have said, yes, I want that program, and they’re applying for the funding to make that happen. But it’s just happening now.
Meyer: I was going to say, I remember looking at the timelines for this and being like, they’re not going to get that out by the election.
Granholm: Yeah, I mean, it’s just, the four-year period of time is just such a speck on the timeline that’s necessary to actually see it to fruition.
Meyer: What do Democrats need the government to do that it cannot do, or that it has not been able to do?
Granholm: Besides communicating these, the successes, and making sure that we can move more quickly on …
Meyer: Communicating, or, yeah, maybe it’s that these were great rebate programs, and also, the law passed in August 2022, and we’re just getting them out now, right? Like, it took two years to get through that whole process.
Granholm: Yeah, and that is a, that’s an issue, I think, that government has to deal with. In general, when you have a new program, you’ve got — rightfully so — all of the oversight, and making sure. And then the states have — if you push something through to the states, this is the same thing with the NEVI program, the vehicle program went to the states.
We have oversight on the federal level. States have oversight on the state level. It’s a new program. So, for example, for electric vehicle chargers, the NEVI program was to get these chargers to the hardest spaces, the spaces where no private sector entity would go, where there was no electricity. So the contracts took a while to figure out, and how to get them, and the states had to figure out their own processes. So they’re starting, we have 24,000 coming online from the NEVI program. But again, they will come online over the next couple of years — years. So the slowness of the systems, that is an inherent challenge.
If you move too fast, though, then you end up making mistakes. You don’t want to see some wrongful spending. So it is, I mean, government takes, the government, wheels of government, eventually they’ll get it right. There’s a lot of oversight. You want to make sure there’s no waste, fraud, and abuse, but it may not happen on the convenient timelines of a four-year term.
Meyer: I understand how, you go slow, and it avoids mistakes, and you get your one shot to do things, I will say, looking back, the times when the government has been able to pass policies that resulted in political wins — and specifically, when Democrats were able to expand the government’s powers in ways that result in political wins, to build things, do big things, they did them pretty fast. The 1930s, like, the New Deal was a program, right? Yeah, all the LBJ programs were relatively fast.
Granholm: Yes, I totally agree. And in history, there was less concern about a lot of the stuff that, yeah, that there have been embedded processes. I mean, it’s, I think, immediately, of the DOGE efforts to try to reduce bureaucracy. And honestly, there is truth to that. There should be some reduction of the steps it takes to get something accomplished. And there needs to be sort of a value-stream mapping of the bureaucratic systems. This is true.
We need to speed up permitting. We know we need to do that. And you know, the friction, the litigation, the NIMBY issues, in addition to the the government’s internal processes, it’s just too much. So can there be streamlining to make things move more quickly? There can be, and I think that should be a focus, as well, for Democrats, not just Republicans.
Meyer: After four years at the nerve center of decarbonization in the government, what do you think is the biggest obstacle to decarbonization, and to doing the energy transition?
Granholm: I think right now, I mean, I would say the most immediate big obstacle is that we have 3.7 terawatts of clean energy waiting to get into the queue, to be, build out that generation from the transmission point of view. If I could tackle one thing, one thing quickly, it would be the interconnection queues.
Meyer: Wow. And so you would be willing to pay, you would be willing to make other concessions to handle transmission?
Granholm: I would be. And then the, I would, there’s one other thing I would say, is, I would want to invest much more in baseload power, baseload clean power. So bigger investment in geothermal, bigger investment in hydroelectric — even distributed hydroelectric, you know, making dams where they don’t already exist, stuff like that that really are … you know, I believe nuclear is a really important part of the clean energy future. And those nuclear reactors, small modular reactors, I think are really important. I’d continue to invest in them. I would also continue to invest in fusion.
Meyer: There’s a big tradeoff that the administration has kept dealing with, I think, or that it has kept running up against during the past four years, and to some degree, is really inherent in the design of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is, when you decarbonize, when you seek to make this transition happen, do you optimize for deployment and commercialization, or do you optimize for reducing emissions?
I think the clearest version of this tradeoff is with the hydrogen tax credit, where there is a tradeoff between getting as many electrolyzers out there as possible, trying to build as much electrolyte electrolysis capacity on the grid as you can, versus making sure that those electrolyzers don’t indirectly increase emissions across the national economy. In that case, but even more broadly, how do you come down? If there’s a tradeoff between deployment and reducing emissions, where do you come down?
Granholm: I don’t like the binary choice. I will say this: I’m very big on actual deployment, knowing that there will be continuous improvement on the technologies that are being deployed, including GHG emissions. I just think that people need to get used to, I mean, you know, when you put out a product for the first time, there’s always going to be things that you want to improve on, and because the overall goal is to reduce emissions, that’s got to be a primary thing of the product that is being put to market. So I think both have to happen, but the deployment is is utterly priority for me. Get it out, and then improve.
Meyer: Do you think … are the technologies ready, at this point, to think about reducing emissions? Or do we just need to deploy a lot?
Granholm: Well, if you’re talking about electrolyzers, we still have to get these hubs up and running. And this is another thing, waiting for guidance on the tax credit associated with hydrogen is, is a whole ’nother thing. But, but the bottom line is, once they’re, I mean, the whole point about doing hubs, for example, in hydrogen, and using fuels that are either renewable or natural gas with carbon capture or nuclear — the bottom line is, we’ve got to get these hubs, are the places where we’re going to experiment about what works and what doesn’t work. We’ve got to get the products in the hands of those who are going to be using them so that we can learn from them. New technology requires deployment in order to learn, in order to improve.
Meyer: Looking back on the IRA — and to some degree, this troika of laws, but really the IRA — what is your biggest regret about how they played out?
Granholm: My biggest regret is that there wasn’t, we weren’t able to get consistent investment in the grid through the IRA.
Meyer: From the, from the point of view of the law being designed …
Granholm: Yeah, from the design of it. That could be something that that is worked on in the years to come.
Meyer: What’s your biggest regret on implementation of the law? Speed, clearly,
Granholm: Speed, yeah. Trying to get through all of the hoops that you need to get through to do it, right? Why was it so slow? Again, because of all of — let me just say, I’m super proud of the work that our team has done, and the fact that we will have 98% of the funding out from these rounds of funding. That is amazing.
Meyer: I’m going to ask you what you’re proudest of.
Granholm: But it is, I regret we weren’t given the opportunity to serve in a second term to make sure that we were able to carry this forward, and that people can see that the benefits of these laws actually create an industrial strategy that reshores manufacturing, and it generates clean electricity and creates opportunity for communities all across the country.
Meyer: Ultimately, the IRA did a ton of industrial policy through the tax code, and then it did a ton of grants and loans through DOE. And I think there could be criticisms of the speed of DOE getting loans out, let’s say.
I mean, something I’ve heard from companies is like, look, LPO is — $400 billion of loan authority, they only got out $54 billion. That number might go up a little bit in the next few days. But I’ve also heard criticism that we tried to do all this stuff through the tax code, and it just took a long time to get that tax guidance out, and we were trying to jam a lot through a relatively small tax policy office. What would you change … if there were to be another attempt at industrial policy, be it on climate or anything else, right? Because we want to do … like, Democrats do want to have goals for other sectors of the economy. What would you change about that implementation, or that way of writing the law, to make sure that industrial policy is effective in the U.S. government as it exists?
Granholm: It’s hard for me to sa,y this is a process that I would remove from the system, because it, we have so many technologies, so many agencies involved, and I think that there needs to be a comprehensive look at it. I do think that in a next iteration, incentivizing or removing waste streams from permitting has got to be a priority to get this stuff deployed. As I say, incentivizing investment in the grid has got to be a priority. Incentivizing investment, specifically, in baseload clean technologies.
Meyer: How would you incentivize those things without just winding up in another slow process.
Granholm: So tax code’s a little more efficient, yeah. So the tax code, I think, gets the private sector to sit up and take notice, and move, yeah. And so doing it through the tax code, as opposed to grants or loans, that happens, assuming that folks are but the guidance —
Meyer: This time it did take long, a long time for the guidance to come.
Granholm: Yeah, for some. I mean, for like, solar stuff that we’ve, you were used to, instead of being incentivized in the tax code, that all obviously went very quickly and will continue to move. But it’s just, it’s the startup of these things where we haven’t written guidance before, where it’s a technology that has subsets of supply chains, what’s involved that, you know, and you have a small office. So I’d invest in the office to be able to expand the ability to get these through a little more quickly. But I think that ultimately, even though it takes a little bit of time, it works, and it will work, and we will see the benefits of this over the next few years, and I hope people recognize the incredible courage that it took for Joe Biden to act, create industrial policy in America where we had not done it before.
Meyer: What are you proudest of?
Granholm: I’m proud to work for this administration, for this president. And I’m really proud of our team, that we have been able to do so much in so short of amount of time, with all new programs. It is an amazing, amazing thing to have been in this position at this time. I feel so utterly lucky, and I hope the next guy sees it for the jewel that it is.
Meyer: I think you’re in this role for another 35, 36 days.
Granholm: I think it’s like 26 working days.
Meyer: After that, what sort of problems are you thinking of next?
Granholm: Oh, I’m still thinking of all of these problems. I’ll still be active in this space in some way, shape, or form.
Meyer: Is there a particular set of problems you’re eager to tackle?
Granholm: I don’t know what’s going to … I have no idea what I’m going to be doing next, but it’s got to be in this basic work. In the clean space is where I will be.
Meyer: So at the end of every episode, we ask — Jesse and I, my co-host, do an upshift or a downshift. You just pick one. And an upshift, you pick something from the news or something that you’ve encountered recently that either is making you feel more upbeat about the energy transition, or more downbeat about the energy transition, about our ability to make it happen, about its ability to, our ability to decarbonize the economy. And so to conclude, I wanted to ask you, do you have an upshift or a downshift to share with us?
Granholm: My upshift is that I am optimistic about the durability of these programs that I think, regardless of who’s in the White House, it is inexorable, this clean energy transition — because, because the Inflation Reduction Act has made investing in America irresistible, because there’s bipartisan support, and because of all of the mayors and the governors and the members of the, members of the private sector who have raised their hand and said, We got this. We’re taking the baton.
Meyer: Secretary Granholm, thank you so much for joining us today.
Granholm: I appreciate it. Thank you, Rob.
https://heatmap.news/podcast/shift-key-s2-e18-jennifer-granholm-transcript
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
MADISON, Wis. — Community members in Wisconsin continued to wrestle with grief and called for change in the aftermath of a school shooting that killed a teacher and a student and wounded six others.
Several hundred people gathered outside the Wisconsin State Capitol for a vigil Tuesday night to honor those slain at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison the day before, with some passing candles to each other and standing close against the winter chill.
Among those in attendance was Naomi Allen, 16, who was in a nearby classroom Monday when a 15-year-old girl attacked people in a study hall before fatally shooting herself.
“It’s doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, something like this could happen. There’s nothing that is going to exempt someone,” Allen said at the vigil.
Allen’s father, Jay Allen, reflected on the dangers students face these days.
“When I was in school these things never happened,” he said. “This country at some point needs to take mental health seriously and we need to pour resources into it. We really need some changes in the way we handle that issue.”
The motive for the shooting appears to be a “combination of factors,” Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said Tuesday as he appealed to the public to call in to a tip line and share what they might know about the shooter.
He offered no details about what that motive might be, though he said bullying at Abundant Life Christian School would be investigated. He also said police are investigating writings that may have been penned by the shooter, Natalie Rupnow, and could shed light on her actions.
“Identifying a motive is our top priority, but at this time it appears that the motive is a combination of factors,” Barnes told reporters.
Two students among the six people wounded Monday remain in critical condition. Officials have declined to disclose the names of the victims.
“Leave them alone,” Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said.
The school shooting was the latest among dozens across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas.
The shootings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to doing active shooter drills in their classrooms. But school shootings have done little to move the needle on national gun laws.
School shootings by teenage females have been extremely rare in U.S. history, with males in their teens and 20s carrying out the majority of them, said David Riedman, founder of the K-12 School Shooting Database.
Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school — prekindergarten through high school — with approximately 420 students. Barbara Wiers, the school’s director of elementary and school relations, said the school does not have metal detectors but uses cameras and other security measures.
Barnes said police were talking with the shooter’s father and other family members, who were cooperating, and searching the shooter’s home.
The shooter’s parents, who are divorced, jointly shared custody of their child, but the shooter primarily lived with her 42-year-old father, according to court documents.
Investigators believe the shooter used a 9mm pistol, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Madison resident Cristian Cuahutepitzi said he attended Tuesday’s vigil to let the families of the victims know “we’re thinking of them.” He said his uncle’s two daughters go to the school.
“They’re still a little bit shook,” he said.
Joe Gothard, the superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District, said at the vigil that the tragedy happened less than two blocks away from his childhood home. He said it wasn’t enough to say the district would work on safety.
“We need to connect like we are tonight, each and every day and make a commitment that we know we’re there for one another, hopefully to avoid preventable tragedies like yesterday,” he said.
A prayer service was also held Tuesday night at City Church Madison, which is affiliated with the school.
Several teachers from the school prayed aloud one by one during the service, speaking into a microphone and standing in a line. One middle school teacher asked for courage, while another sought help quieting her own soul.
“God, this isn’t a Abundant Life Christian School tragedy,” said Derrick Wright, the youth pastor at the church. “This is a community tragedy. This is a nation tragedy.”
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
CAPE CANAVERAL, florida — NASA’s two stuck astronauts just got their space mission extended again. That means they won’t be back on Earth until spring, 10 months after rocketing into orbit on Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
NASA on Tuesday announced the latest delay in the homecoming for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
The two test pilots planned on being away just a week or so when they blasted off June 5 on Boeing’s first astronaut flight to the International Space Station. Their mission grew from eight days to eight months after NASA decided to send the company’s problem-plagued Starliner capsule back empty in September.
Now the pair won’t return until the end of March or even April because of a delay in launching their replacements, according to NASA.
A fresh crew needs to launch before Wilmore and Williams can return, and the next mission has been bumped more than a month, according to the space agency.
NASA’s next crew of four was supposed to launch in February, followed by Wilmore’s and Williams’ return home by the end of that month alongside two other astronauts. But SpaceX needs more time to prepare the new capsule for liftoff. That launch is now scheduled for no earlier than late March.
NASA said it considered using a different SpaceX capsule to fly up the replacement crew in order to keep the flights on schedule. But it decided the best option was to wait for the new capsule to transport the next crew.
NASA prefers to have overlapping crews at the space station for a smoother transition, according to officials.
Most space station missions last six months, with a few reaching a full year.
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
Police in Madison, Wisconsin, said Tuesday that they were working to establish a motive for the shooting at a small, private Christian school that killed a teacher and a student and wounded six other people.
“Identifying a motive is our top priority,” Police Chief Shon Barnes said of the shooting Monday that he called a “hurting and haunting situation.”
Police were trying to verify a document posted online by the 15-year-old shooter, who apparently died of a self-inflicted wound.
Authorities said the shooter, Natalie Rupnow, was a student at the Abundant Life Christian School, which has an enrollment of just over 400 students from kindergarten to high school. She opened fire in a study hall late Monday morning.
“We don’t know nearly enough yet,” Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway told reporters Tuesday about the shooting.
Rhodes-Conway also said it was too early to determine whether the shooter’s parents, who were cooperating with the police investigation, would face criminal charges.
“We have to allow law enforcement the time and space for a careful and methodical examination,” she said.
Barnes said Tuesday that several schools across the Madison metropolitan area “were targeted by false threats, often known as swatting.” He said police and the school district were working together to determine who initiated the scheme.
The mayor lashed out at reporters’ requests Tuesday for more information about the victims.
“I’m going to say this and then we’re done,” she said. “It is absolutely none of y’all’s business who was harmed in this incident. Please have some human decency and respect for the people who have lost loved ones or were injured themselves or whose children were injured. Just have some human decency, folks.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, speaking in Maryland, said, “Our nation mourns for those who were killed, and we pray for the recovery of those who were injured.”
The vice president said stronger gun controls were needed.
“Solutions are in hand,” she said, “but we need elected leaders to have the courage to step up and do the right thing.”
President Joe Biden said in a statement Monday that the shooting was “shocking and unconscionable.”
“Every child deserves to feel safe in their classroom,” he said. “Students across our country should be learning how to read and write, not having to learn how to duck and cover.”
Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers ordered flags to be flown at half-staff to honor the shooting victims.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
https://www.voanews.com/a/police-look-for-motive-in-latest-us-school-shooting/7905275.html
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The 2025 defense spending authorization bill is coming up to a final vote in the U.S. Senate. As the American Northeast buzzes with drone sightings and fears of foreign surveillance, the bill moves to ban products from the world’s largest drone-maker: China.
In a procedural vote on Monday, senators voted 83-12 in favor of moving to a full vote on the National Defense Authorization Act, a massive piece of annual legislation that sets priorities and authorizes funding for the U.S. Department of Defense.
A provision within the 2025 NDAA aims to create mechanisms for further oversight and prohibition of the use of Chinese drones while working to increase drone supply chain resilience within the U.S. and partner countries.
The bill mandates an investigation into two Chinese drone manufacturers, DJI and Autel Robotics, with the aim of placing them on the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) “Covered List.” This would prevent their use in telecommunications industries. Another section calls for the Department of Defense to regularly disassemble and analyze the components of DJI drones.
The provision on drones draws in part from earlier anti-Chinese drone legislation introduced by Republican Representative Elise Stefanik and Senator Rick Scott. These bills received bipartisan support, showing how concerns over the risk that Chinese drones pose to U.S. national security have united a politically divided Congress.
“DJI drones pose the national security threat of TikTok, but with wings,” Stefanik said. “This Chinese-controlled company cannot be allowed to continue to operate in the U.S.”
During an interview on Fox News, Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi described how he collaborated with Stefanik to draft legislation on Chinese drones to be included in the NDAA.
“These Chinese-manufactured drones allow for the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, to access data in a backdoor manner and ultimately surveil Americans,” Krishnamoorthi said.
China’s DJI dominates the production and sale of household drones, with 2021 estimates suggesting that the company accounts for 76% of the worldwide consumer market and about 90% of the U.S. market. While more companies have emerged in past years, DJI still controls the largest share of the market.
This gives the U.S. an increased imperative to diversify the domestic drone economy, Carlos Gimenez, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Transportation and Maritime Security Subcommittee, told VOA.
“We have to go a little cold turkey on this one. To say, ‘No, we can’t buy that anymore,’” Gimenez said. “You have to look for other suppliers, which then will slowly incentivize American companies to start building them.”
While the Chinese drone ban has bipartisan support within Congress, it faces pushback from drone enthusiasts and nongovernmental organizations that oppose a blanket ban on Chinese drone products.
Brandon Karr, spokesperson for the nonprofit Law Enforcement Drone Association (LEDA), supports the development of stricter and more rigorous data security regulations for drones rather than an all-out ban, which could pose problems for American law enforcement and safety agencies.
Karr has written to Congress, advocating for agencies to develop their own protocol and oversight for drone data security and to maintain their right to use Chinese drones while minimizing their risk.
LEDA leads training on drone operation and best practices for public safety and law enforcement. All 30 of the drones the group uses for training are made by Chinese companies.
“Generally speaking, over 90% of public safety agencies in the nation and worldwide today are utilizing Chinese aircraft,” Karr said. “So in the event that a bill like this would go fully through and would potentially ban the use of Chinese drones for public safety, it’d be catastrophic for the public safety drone industry.”
The biggest advantage of Chinese drones is their low cost, especially when compared with American models. Karr told VOA that he’d rather use American products, but that domestically produced drones were double the price of those made in China and included more maintenance fees.
“There’s not a law enforcement entity across the United States that would rather fly a Chinese aircraft over an American if they were competitively priced,” he said.
In addition to LEDA, the California Fire Chiefs Association, the Air Public Safety Association and other groups have written to Congress saying the bill will harm them, with most citing concerns over cost.
In an interview with VOA in August, Republican Senator Marco Rubio called Chinese drones “a huge vulnerability,” and said that data security regulations would not address the security risks of Chinese drones given their frequent software updates.
People “just want drones, and these are the cheapest ones they can find,” said Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state in the next administration. “We need to help incentivize the development of alternative manufacturers that are cost effective for law enforcement, for utility companies, for others.”
DJI has not yet responded to VOA’s request for comment on the latest version of the NDAA, which could ban the company’s drones.
However, when votes were taken to include a ban of DJI drones in the NDAA in the House of Representatives earlier this year, DJI representatives told VOA that the moves “suggest protectionism and undermine the principles of fair competition and an open market.”
“Our drones have enabled the growth of entire industries, empowering small businesses in sectors such as agriculture, real estate, and transportation. These businesses depend on the accessibility of DJI’s drone technology to thrive. We believe that innovation, security, and privacy can coexist and are essential to advancing the drone industry and the interests of all stakeholders,” wrote DJI representatives.
DJI has consistently denied claims that it sends drone data to the Chinese government.
Katherine Michaelson contributed to this report.
date: 2024-12-18, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Top Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress unveiled a stopgap measure on Tuesday to keep federal agencies funded through March 14, which would avert a partial government shutdown that would otherwise begin Saturday.
The measure would likely keep the roughly $6.2 trillion federal budget running at its current level, funding such programs and activities as military operations, air traffic controllers, and federal regulators for areas ranging from drug safety to securities markets.
Rank-and-file members of Congress will now review the measure’s details, with some hard-line Republicans in the House of Representatives already signaling opposition to some elements, meaning that some Democratic votes will likely be necessary for passage.
It was unclear when the Republican-controlled House would vote, but if successful, the Democratic-majority Senate would aim to take up the legislation before Friday’s midnight deadline and send it to President Joe Biden to sign it into law.
The package includes $100.4 billion in new emergency funding to help states including North Carolina and Florida recover from devastating hurricanes, as well as Western wildfires and other recent disasters.
That money would include $29 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund; $21 billion for aid to farmers hit by flooding and other losses; and $10 billion in economic assistance for them, according to the legislative text.
State and local communities would receive $12 billion in block grants, and $8 billion would be earmarked for the Transportation Department’s highway and road disaster relief.
Nearly $5.7 billion in new funding would go to the Pentagon’s Virginia-class submarine building by General Dynamics Corp. and Huntington Ingalls Industries, and about $2.9 billion would go to the Columbia-class model.
The spending package would include more than $2 billion to help small businesses bounce back after natural disasters, and approximately $740 million to repair National Aeronautics and Space Administration facilities after recent hurricanes.
Also tucked into the legislation is a green light for year-round sales of gasoline with a higher ethanol blend, known as E15, and more than $13 million for security for U.S. Supreme Court justices at their residences.
Should lawmakers fail to act in time, federal agencies would enter a partial shutdown beginning Saturday.
House Speaker Mike Johnson leads a narrow and restive 219-211 Republican majority and has repeatedly over the past year had to rely on Democratic support to pass major legislation.
Representative Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement she supported the “responsible and necessary” spending package.
Rising debt
The stopgap measure is needed because Congress failed to pass its one dozen annual appropriations bills in time for the current fiscal year, which began October 1. The government’s “mandatory” programs, which include Social Security and Medicare retirement and health care benefits and represent about two-thirds of the budget, renew automatically.
That has contributed to the rising federal debt, which exceeds $36 trillion. Congress will have to address that again early next year, when a 2023 deal to extend the nation’s debt ceiling expires. Failure could shock bond markets with potentially severe economic consequences.
Democrats had pushed for a longer bill funding the government through the end of its current fiscal year ending September 30, but Republicans wanted to wait for final agreement until after President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in on January 20 and their party takes its majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Trump and congressional Republicans campaigned all year on a promise of significantly cutting the number of federal workers and proposing deep cuts to many of the government’s programs.
Trump has created an advisory committee called the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Tesla founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, and former presidential candidate and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Neither has any government experience.
Riding along in this spending bill is a one-year extension of federal farm programs, including commodity subsidies and food and nutrition benefits for low-income people. Without such an extension, prices for milk, cheese and other dairy products would skyrocket after December 31.
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
Ruling parties often have an advantage in elections. But in history’s biggest election year so far, incumbents of all political stripes found that presiding over a period of economic inflation carries a heavy price at the ballot box.
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday proposed three bills aimed at cracking down on China’s role in the U.S. fentanyl crisis, with measures that would set up a U.S. task force to disrupt narcotics trafficking and pave the way for sanctions on Chinese entities.
China is the dominant source of chemical precursors used by Mexican cartels to produce fentanyl, while Chinese money launderers have become key players in the international drug trade, U.S. authorities say.
The proposed legislation would help hold China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP) accountable for “directly fueling the fentanyl crisis through its state subsidies of precursors,” said the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on China, on which all of the sponsors of the bills sit.
One bill, The CCP Fentanyl Sanctions Act, introduced by Democratic Representative Jake Auchincloss, would codify authorities for the U.S. to cut off Chinese companies from the U.S. banking system, including vessels, ports and online marketplaces that “knowingly or recklessly” facilitate shipment of illicit synthetic narcotics.
“This is state-sponsored poisoning of the American people,” Auchincloss said at an event introducing the legislation. “The genesis of this is squarely on the mainland of the People’s Republic of China.”
Two other bills would create a task force of U.S. agencies to conduct joint operations to disrupt trafficking networks and allow for the imposition of civil penalties on Chinese entities that fail to properly manifest or follow formal entry channels when shipping precursors to the U.S., the committee said.
There is growing consensus in Republican circles close to President-elect Donald Trump that Beijing has exploited, even engineered, the synthetic opioid epidemic to harm Americans, something Beijing denies.
China says it has some of the strictest drug laws in the world, and that the U.S. needs to curb narcotics demand at home.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bills.
With little time remaining in the current congressional term, the bills would likely need to be reintroduced next year after the new Congress is sworn in on January 3.
Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the committee, wrote in an article this month that it was “time to get tough” on Beijing over fentanyl.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-lawmakers-propose-bills-to-hit-china-over-fentanyl-trade-/7904949.html
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
President-elect Donald Trump sued the Des Moines Register and its pollster for “brazen election interference” in publishing a survey the weekend before the election that showed Democrat Kamala Harris with a surprising lead of 3 percentage points in the state.
The Register’s parent Gannett Co. on Tuesday dismissed the lawsuit as meritless and said it would vigorously defend its First Amendment rights.
The lawsuit continues the president-elect’s campaign against media outlets he feels have wronged him. ABC this past weekend agreed to pay $15 million toward a Trump presidential library in order to settle a defamation lawsuit against George Stephanopoulos for inaccurately saying Trump had been found civilly liable for rape.
The Des Moines survey, done by since-retired pollster J. Ann Selzer, was considered shocking for indicating that an earlier Trump lead in the Republican-leaning Midwestern state had been erased. In the actual election, Trump won Iowa by more than 13 percentage points.
“There was a perfectly good reason nobody saw this coming: because a three-point lead for Harris in deep-red Iowa was not reality,” the lawsuit said. “It was election-interfering fiction.”
The poll increased enthusiasm among Democrats, compelled Republicans to divert campaign time and money to areas in which they were ahead, and deceived the public into thinking Democrats were doing better than they actually were, Trump charged.
The lawsuit was filed late Monday in Polk County district court in Iowa. It cites Iowa consumer fraud law, and doesn’t ask for specific monetary damages, but rather wants a trial jury to award triple the amount of what it determines actual damages to be.
Whatever happens legally, the case could have a chilling effect beyond Iowa. Trump said in legal papers that he wanted it to deter “radicals from continuing to act with corrupt intent in releasing polls manufactured for the purpose of skewing election results in favor of Democrats.”
Lark-Marie Anton, Des Moines Register spokeswoman, said the newspaper acknowledged the pre-election poll did not reflect actual results and released technical information to explain the data and what went wrong.
“We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit,” she said.
Selzer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. But she told PBS in Iowa last week that “it’s not my ethic” to set up a poll to deliver a specific response. She said she was mystified about what motivation people would think she had.
“To suggest without a single shred of evidence that I was in cahoots with somebody, I was being paid by somebody, it’s all just kind of, it’s hard to pay too much attention to it except that they are accusing me of a crime,” she said.
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
Washington — In a rare joint statement, the archivist and deputy archivist of the United States said Tuesday that the 1970s-era Equal Rights Amendment cannot be certified without further action by Congress or the courts, as Democrats press President Joe Biden to act unilaterally on its ratification before he leaves office next month.
The five-decade push to amend the Constitution to prohibit discrimination based on sex remains stalled. Congress sent the amendment, which guarantees men and women equal rights under the law, to the states in 1972 and gave states seven years to ratify it, later extending the deadline to 1982. But the amendment wasn’t ratified by the required three-quarters of states before the deadline.
Four years ago, however, Virginia lawmakers voted to ratify the amendment, becoming the 38th and final state needed — albeit nearly four decades after the congressionally mandated deadline for ratification.
More than 120 House Democrats, led by Representatives Cori Bush and Ayanna Pressley, called on Biden on Sunday to direct the archivist to certify and publish the amendment despite the missed deadline.
“Solidifying your legacy on equal rights with a final action on the ERA would be a defining moment for the historic Biden-Harris administration and your presidency,” they wrote to Biden.
But the archivist, Colleen Shogan, and her deputy, William J. Bosanko, who are responsible for certifying and publishing new amendments once they meet the required ratification threshold, say neither they nor Biden can act without Congress or the courts lifting the deadline.
“In 2020 and again in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice affirmed that the ratification deadline established by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable,” they said in a joint statement. “The OLC concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts. Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid.”
They added: “Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As the leaders of the National Archives, we will abide by these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we operate.”
Congress tried last year in the latest push to lift the deadline to allow for the amendment’s ratification, but the measure didn’t reach the required 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who is leading the effort among Democrats in the Senate, insisted in a statement that the archivist’s analysis was flawed and said she was “wrongfully inserting herself into a clear constitutional process, despite the fact that her role is purely ministerial.”
She encouraged Biden to ignore the OLC memo and certify the ERA anyway. “OLC memos are advisory in nature and can easily be disregarded by the current administration,” she said.
The Biden White House has been discussing the possibility with lawmakers and in internal meetings, according to a person familiar with the matter, but believes the best path forward is for Congress to lift the deadline and thereby eliminate the risk of a legal challenge to the amendment.
White House spokesperson Kelly Scully said: “President Biden has been clear that he wants to see the Equal Rights Amendment definitively enshrined in the Constitution.”
“Senior administration officials have and will continue to engage with key Congressional leaders and other stakeholders on this issue in the weeks ahead,” she added. “It is long past time that we recognize the clear will of the American people.”
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him to a New York court from a Pennsylvania jail.
Luigi Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson, but the terror allegation is new.
Under New York law, such a charge can be brought when an alleged crime is “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”
Mangione’s New York lawyer has not commented on the case.
Thompson, 50, was shot dead as he walked to a Manhattan hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare — the United States’ biggest medical insurer — was holding an investor conference.
“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said at a news conference Tuesday. “It occurred in one of the most bustling parts of our city, threatened the safety of local residents and tourists alike, commuters and businesspeople just starting out on their day.”
After days of intense police searches and publicity, Mangione was spotted at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and arrested. New York police officials have said Mangione was carrying the gun used to kill Thompson, a passport and various fake IDs, including one that the suspected shooter presented to check into a New York hostel.
The 26-year-old was charged with Pennsylvania gun and forgery offenses and locked up there without bail. His Pennsylvania lawyer has questioned the evidence for the forgery charge and the legal grounding for the gun charge. The attorney also has said Mangione would fight extradition to New York.
Mangione has two court hearings scheduled for Thursday in Pennsylvania, including an extradition hearing, Bragg said.
Hours after his arrest, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed paperwork charging him with murder and other offenses. The indictment builds on that paperwork.
Investigators’ working theory is that Mangione, an Ivy League computer science grad from a prominent Maryland family, was propelled by anger at the U.S. health care system. A law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press said that when arrested, he was carrying a handwritten letter that called health insurance companies “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed.
Mangione repeatedly posted on social media about how spinal surgery last year had eased his chronic back pain, encouraging people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves if told they just had to live with it.
In a Reddit post in late April, he advised someone with a back problem to seek additional opinions from surgeons and, if necessary, say the pain made it impossible to work.
“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”
He was never a UnitedHealthcare client, according to the insurer.
Mangione apparently cut himself off from his family and close friends in recent months. His family reported him missing to San Francisco authorities in November.
Thompson, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, was trained as an accountant. A married father of two high-schoolers, he had worked at the giant UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm in 2021.
His killing kindled a fiery outpouring of resentment toward U.S. health insurance companies, as Americans swapped stories online and elsewhere of being denied coverage, left in limbo as doctors and insurers disagreed, and stuck with sizeable bills.
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
The outgoing administration of U.S. President Joe Biden plans in its final weeks to “continue tightening the noose” around Russia’s key energy exports with new sanctions to deprive Moscow of revenue for its war on Ukraine, according to Assistant Secretary of State Geoffrey Pyatt.
Pyatt over the past two weeks has traveled in Europe and Asia to discuss energy security with allies and the G7+Ukraine energy resilience group.
In an interview with VOA Ukrainian’s Oksana Bedratenko, Pyatt said Europe should use the Dec. 31 expiration of a gas transit contract between Ukraine and Russia to decisively end its dependency on Russian energy.
He said he is encouraged that Europe sees American liquid natural gas (LNG) as part of its energy solution, noting that countries in Europe and even Japan — which imports 10% of its gas from Russia — understand the need to find alternative energy suppliers.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
VOA: Over recent weeks Russia staged several massive attacks on the Ukrainian energy sector. With all of the preparations, with all of the help from Ukraine’s allies before winter, what is your assessment of Ukrainian energy sector resilience?
Assistant Secretary of State Geoffrey Pyatt: We knew coming into this winter that this was going to be a very fragile period, but I think the good news is support for Ukraine, support for Ukrainian energy workers, is as strong as it’s ever been. We saw another brutal attack on Friday, especially in western Ukraine, in Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk. … And this is the bitterest part of the winter. So we know we need to continue to work together. I’ve just returned from two weeks of travel. I was in Tokyo and before that I was in Paris and London. The message I heard consistently from all of our G7 partners was a very clear focus on doing everything we can to help ensure that Russia’s attempt to weaponize the winter is a failure.
VOA: The gas transit contract between Russia and Ukraine expires at the end of this year. Do you think Europe is ready for it? There has already been some pressure on Ukraine to continue the gas transit. Do you think this will actually be the end of Europe’s dependency on Russian gas?
Pyatt: I certainly hope so. And importantly, the pressure that I see is only coming from one or two countries. I was very glad to see the statements over the weekend from the new [EU] Energy Commissioner [Dan] Jorgensen making very clear the need to make progress on gas phaseout, on nuclear, on all forms of dependency on Russian energy, in line with the EU goal of getting to zero by 2027. Obviously, Brussels and Kyiv need to make some decisions in the next couple of weeks. But I think long-term it is very clear that the energy and gas trade in particular has been the principal vector of Russian influence on the Ukrainian economy since independence. So why on earth would anybody be interested in extending that relationship?
VOA: Europe has been buying more LNG from Russia. Are there any plans to have more sanctions on Russian LNG projects?
Pyatt: We welcome Europe’s steps. Just today [Dec. 15], the 15th sanctions package, which is quite substantial. I have said publicly on a couple of occasions recently that there will be more coming from the Biden administration. I’m very confident of that. And we’re working very hard to maintain alignment between Washington, Brussels, London. That’s part of what I was doing in Europe two weeks ago. Everybody’s pace of operations is slightly different. … I was glad to see Commissioner Jorgensen also talk about the important role of American LNG as part of Europe’s energy solution. So, I’m very confident that we are going to continue to tighten the noose. We’re going to do everything that we can to drive down [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s energy revenues, which go to pay for the North Korean missiles and the Russian drones that are destroying Ukrainian civilian infrastructure every day of the week.
VOA: When we look into the next year, the U.S. support for Ukraine might go down. Do you think that Europe and other allies are ready to step up and continue supporting Ukrainian energy?
Pyatt: Everybody is already stepping up. As I think you saw Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken just signed with [Ukrainian] Foreign Minister [Andrii] Sybiha a second energy [Memorandum of Understanding]. This is for the implementation of $825 million in additional energy sector assistance just from the United States. … That very high level of U.S. assistance is exceeded by the assistance that has come from the other G7-plus partners. This is a really important point that it’s not just the United States that’s providing this assistance, and in fact, the majority of assistance in the energy sector has come from the other G7-plus countries.
VOA: In the MOU there’s a lot of attention going to the protection of Ukrainian companies from political influence. How important are reforms in Ukraine even during the war?
Pyatt: Well, as you know, I’ve been working on these reform issues for 10 years now. So I can appreciate the progress that has been achieved, and that progress is real. Look for instance at the improved production numbers at Naftogaz. Maybe that improved production is because of better management; maybe it’s because production that was previously skimmed off is now being declared transparently. But either way, it’s a positive outcome. There’s more that needs to be done. … Ukraine will not become a member of the European Union in one day, but I think fulfilling the aspirations that the Ukrainian people expressed during the revolution of dignity, when I was ambassador in Kyiv, is as important today as it’s ever been, and aligning Ukraine’s energy sector with the highest European and OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) standards is very much part and parcel of that larger process of becoming a member of the EU.
date: 2024-12-17, from: Capital and Main
Gloria Arellanes became famous for her Brown Beret portrait, but she also led a free clinic. In East Los Angeles, a new generation is working to improve diets to prevent chronic illnesses.
The post Her Face Inspired a Movement That Continues Today appeared first on .
https://capitalandmain.com/her-face-inspired-a-movement-that-continues-today
date: 2024-12-17, from: Heatmap News
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the buzziest and most well-funded company in the increasingly buzzy and well-funded fusion sector, announced today that it will build a commercial fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia — a first for both the company and the world. CFS will independently finance, build, own, and operate the 400-megawatt plant, which will produce enough energy to power about 150,000 homes sometime “in the early 2030s.”
All this will happen in collaboration with Dominion Energy Virginia, which serves electricity to more than 2.7 million homes and businesses. While Dominion isn’t contributing monetarily, it is providing CFS with the leasing rights for the proposed site, which it owns, as well as development and technical expertise. The plant itself will cost billions to develop and build.
“While a utility partnership is not a requirement for this type of project, we ultimately see utilities playing a critical role as key customers and future owners of fusion power plants,” a CFS spokesperson told me via email. “Collaborating and sharing expertise allows CFS to accelerate its development efforts while equipping Dominion with valuable insights to inform future commercial decisions and strategies.”
The company told me that after a global search, the decision to site the plant in Virginia came down to factors such as access to infrastructure, site readiness, the local workforce, potential partnerships, state support for the clean energy transition, and customer interest. Virginia is also the world’s biggest market for data centers, a booming industry in dire need of clean, firm energy to power it given the growing energy demands of artificial intelligence. The spokesperson wrote, however, that data center power demand was “only a part of the decision criteria for CFS.”
Commonwealth Fusion Systems has raised over $2 billion in funding to date, including a historically huge $1.8 billion Series B in 2021, which cemented the company as the industry leader in the race to commercialize fusion. The spokesperson told me that construction of the grid-connected commercial plant, known as ARC (an acronym for “affordable, robust, compact”), isn’t expected to begin until the “late 2020s,” once the necessary permits are in place. Prior to building and operating ARC, CFS will demonstrate the technology’s potential via a smaller, noncommercial pilot plant known as SPARC (“smallest possible ARC”), which is scheduled to be turned on in 2026 and to produce more energy than it consumes, a.k.a. demonstrate net energy gain, in 2027. (SPARC will be built at the company’s headquarters outside Boston, Massachusetts.)
Of course, producing electricity from a first-of-its-kind fusion plant will not come cheap, though the company assured me that Virginia customers will not see this higher price reflected in their utility bills. That’s because while CFS plans to sell the electricity ARC generates into the wholesale energy market, the company is also in discussions with large corporate buyers interested in procuring the environmental benefits of this clean energy via long-term, virtual power purchase agreements. That means that while these potential customers wouldn’t receive the literal fusion electrons themselves, they would earn renewable energy credits by essentially covering the cost of the more expensive fusion power. “The intention is that these customers will pay for the power such that other Virginia customers will not be impacted,” the spokesperson told me.
CFS claims that when the time comes, connecting a fusion power plant to the grid should be relatively straightforward. “From the perspective of grid operators, it will operate similarly to natural gas power plants already integrated into the grid today,” the spokesperson wrote. That sets fusion apart from other clean energy sources such as solar and wind, which often languish in seemingly endless interconnection queues as they await the buildout of expensive and contentious transmission infrastructure.
Naturally, CFS is not the only player in the increasingly crowded fusion space aiming to commercialize as soon as possible. If fusion is to play a significant role in the future energy mix, as many experts think it will, there will almost certainly be multiple companies with a variety of technical approaches getting grid-connected. But there’s got to be a first. As Ally Yost, senior vice president of corporate development at CFS, put it to me when I interviewed her this summer, “One of the things that’s most exciting about working here and working in this space is that we are simultaneously building an industry while building a company.”
https://heatmap.news/technology/commonwealth-fusion-virginia
date: 2024-12-17, from: Heatmap News
The Department of Energy on Tuesday published the results of its long-awaited analysis of the economic and environmental implications of expanding U.S. exports of liquified natural gas. The study was the culmination of a year-long process after President Biden paused approvals of new LNG export terminals in January so that the agency could update the underlying assumptions it uses to determine whether new facilities are in the “public interest.”
Though the resulting assessment stops short of advising against approving new projects, it finds that additional U.S. LNG export terminals beyond what has already been approved would likely raise natural gas prices for U.S. consumers and increase global greenhouse gas emissions.
The main takeaway, according to an accompanying letter penned by the Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, is that “a business-as-usual approach is neither sustainable nor advisable.”
Among its other key findings:
Environmental groups celebrated the outcome. “DOE’s analysis confirms the facts we’ve known for years,” Moneen Nasmith, a senior attorney at Earthjustice said in a statement. “Rampant LNG exports drive up energy prices, contribute to the catastrophic effects of climate change, and delay the global transition to truly clean energy.”
But the gas industry was quick to criticize the findings. In a statement, Karen Harbert, the president and CEO of the American Gas Association, accused the Biden administration of attempting to “justify” the president’s earlier pause on approvals. “The contribution of U.S. natural gas to driving down emissions in this country and the potential for lowering global emissions is unquestioned,” she said.
The transition from coal-fired power plants to natural gas was a major driver of emission reductions in the United States over the last decade. But renewable energy is increasingly a competitive alternative. An analysis of the climate impacts from expanding LNG exports must look not just at whether the fuel would displace dirtier options like coal and Russian natural gas, but also at whether it would displace cleaner options like renewables. The answer depends on which countries end up buying it, and how their climate commitments evolve.
As such, any estimation of greenhouse gas emissions from LNG exports is based on assumptions. Under the Department of Energy’s “defined policies” scenario, it found that additional U.S. LNG exports could end up displacing more renewable energy in other countries than coal, without even factoring in countries’ stated commitments to decarbonize. Overall in this scenario, additional exports would lead to an increase of 711 million metric tons of carbon dioxide between now and 2050.
The rapid acceleration of U.S. LNG exports has not had a discernible effect on U.S. natural gas prices to date. But the Department of Energy finds that “unfettered” LNG exports in the future would put upward pressure on domestic natural gas prices and potentially increase energy costs for U.S. consumers by more than $100 per year by 2050.
Biden’s pause on new LNG approvals was technically overturned in July, when a federal judge found that the administration had overstepped its authority. But two major projects still hang in the balance, the Calcasieu Pass 2 LNG Terminal and the Commonwealth LNG Terminal, both of which would be built in coastal Louisiana. Both projects require approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission before the Department of Energy can issue a public interest determination.
Although the report published Tuesday is “final,” the administration is opening it up for public comment for 60 days, starting today, to ensure that alternative analyses are captured in the public record and can inform decisionmaking going forward.
In that, the gas industry sees an opening. “We look forward to working with the incoming administration to rectify the glaring issues with this study during the public comment period,” Harbert said in her statement.
During the call on Tuesday, Granholm acknowledged that the future is in the next administration’s hands. “We hope that they’ll take these facts into account to determine whether additional LNG exports are truly in the best interest of the American people and economy,” she said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect more
information from the finished report as well as the DOE’s Tuesday call
with reporters.
https://heatmap.news/climate/lng-study
date: 2024-12-17, updated: 2024-12-17, from: RAND blog
The UK’s Fleet Air Arm faces challenges in carrier strike capabilities due to evolving defense needs. Its future will depend on its ability to innovate and showcase its expertise in surveillance, electronic warfare, and logistics within naval aviation.
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA — A San Francisco jury on Tuesday found a tech consultant guilty of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Cash App founder Bob Lee, which carries a sentence of 16 years to life.
Jurors took seven days to deliver their verdict against Nima Momeni in the April 4, 2023, death of Lee, a beloved tech mogul who was found staggering on a deserted downtown street, dripping a trail of blood and calling for help. Lee, 43, later died at a hospital.
“We think justice was done here today,” the victim’s brother, Tim Oliver Lee, told reporters. “What matters today is that we had a guilty verdict and Nima Momeni is going away for a very long time.”
Prosecutors said Momeni planned the attack on Lee, driving him to an isolated spot under the Bay Bridge and stabbing him three times with a knife he took from his sister’s kitchen. They say Momeni was angry with Lee for introducing his younger sister to a drug dealer she says gave her GHB and other drugs and then sexually assaulted her.
But Momeni testified on the stand that Lee was the one who attacked him with a knife, angry after the tech consultant chided him about spending more time with his family instead of searching for a strip club that night. Momeni, who studies martial arts, claimed self-defense and said he didn’t realize he had fatally wounded Lee or that Lee was even hurt.
The case has drawn national attention, partly given Lee’s status in the tech world.
Momeni, 40, has been in custody since his arrest in April 2023, when he was charged with murder in the first degree. Jurors received the case, which started Oct. 14, on Dec. 4.
Lee had created mobile payment service Cash App and was the chief product officer of the cryptocurrency MobileCoin when he died. He had moved to Miami from the San Francisco Bay Area, where his ex-wife Krista Lee lives with their two children.
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a strong push to project Turkey’s influence internationally in 2024. He scored foreign policy successes with the ouster of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and Turkey’s growing ties to nations in Africa. Still, tensions remain between his country and the West over Israel and his strong relations with Russia. As Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul, Erdogan has positioned himself for a bigger role internationally in 2025 and for a good working relationship with the incoming U.S. administration.
https://www.voanews.com/a/turkey-positions-itself-for-bigger-role-as-broker-in-2025/7904617.html
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The United States on Tuesday imposed sanctions on two people and one entity based in the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of being involved in a network that launders millions of dollars generated by IT workers and cybercrimes to support the North Korean government.
The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that the two people hit with sanctions worked through a UAE-based front company to facilitate money laundering and cryptocurrency conversion services that funneled the illicit proceeds back to Pyongyang.
North Korea’s mission to the United Nations didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.
Tuesday’s action comes as Washington seeks to cut off funding for North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, the Treasury said.
“As the DPRK continues to use complex criminal schemes to fund its WMD and ballistic missile programs — including through the exploitation of digital assets — Treasury remains focused on disrupting the networks that facilitate this flow of funds to the regime,” Treasury Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith said in the statement.
Tuesday’s move targeted UAE-based Chinese nationals Lu Huaying and Zhang Jian as well as UAE-based Green Alpine Trading LLC. It freezes any of their U.S. assets and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. Those that engage in certain transactions with them also risk being hit with sanctions.
The Emirati embassy in Washington didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment. Reuters could not immediately locate contact details for Green Alpine Trading, Lu or Zhang.
date: 2024-12-17, from: Heatmap News
Here’s something to chew on over the holiday break: The top of a car is wasted space. Sure, you can put a sunroof there to let in a little light and breeze or install a roof rack to take your surfboard to the beach. But for the most part, the roof is just a field of metal to keep the elements out of the cabin.
In an electric vehicle, that square footage could have a job. What if solar panels embedded in the roof generated juice to recharge the battery as the car flies down the highway or sits in the middle of a parking lot, blasted by the summertime sun? It’s an idea that’s starting to get more traction. It’s about time.
The idea of a car slathered in solar panels is well-worn territory. For decades, engineers have staged solar car races such as the World Solar Challenge, contested by vehicles running solely on sun power. It takes a lot of real estate to generate enough solar energy to move something as heavy as a car, though. That is why solar challenge competitors are often stripped-down, super-lightweight pods.
The question for a commercial car is, can embedded solar produce enough energy to make it worth the trouble and expense? A few, like the Lightyear One concept vehicle, have dared to try. Aptera keeps trying to sell the solar car. Among real production EVs, the doomed Fisker Ocean offered a solar roof on its most expensive version. Toyota’s Prius Prime plug-in hybrid offers a solar roof as an add-on. In some places around the world, the popular Hyundai Ioniq 5 comes with enough solar capability to add 3 miles of range per day.
EV solar hasn’t caught on in the mainstream, however. The world’s top EV maker, Tesla, has long been standoffish about the idea. When CEO Elon Musk is asked about EVs with solar, as he was on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2023, he typically dismisses the idea. After Rogan pressed him, Musk estimated that a square meter of PV would be exposed to just 1 kilowatt of energy and could probably only harvest 25% of that, a tiny contribution that’s nowhere near what you’d need to push a Tesla down the road. (Modern DC fast-chargers discharge energy in the hundreds of kilowatts.)
In other words, what solar panels on a car could harvest amounts to a drop in the bucket. But if you leave out enough buckets for long enough, those drops eventually add up to something. For example: At the same time he was pooh-poohing car solar, Musk acknowledged the promise of a kind of fold-out system, something that unfurled like a satellite to expose a large surface area of PV. Imagine those backcountry panels you can fold out at a campsite to harvest solar power for charging your phone, scaled up.
Los Angeles-based DartSolar is trying to sell just that. The startup has begun offering a package of solar panels that can sit on the roof of an EV just like that big Thule roof box riding on the top racks of so many Subarus. When closed, just two of the six available solar panels are exposed, gathering up to 320 watts of energy as the car drives or sits in an outdoor parking stall. Find yourself at a campground, the beach, or anywhere else there’s room for the package to expand, then all six panels can start generating electricity at a maximum of 960 watts, or nearly a kilowatt.
The company claims that you could add 10 to 20 miles of driving range per day this way, which is nothing to sneeze at. It’s like a green range extender that just lives on top of your car and, at 87 pounds, doesn’t weigh so much that it’s killing your mileage. But it’s not exactly cheap: DartSolar says the package will ultimately cost around $3,500, meaning it would take quite a while to recoup the upfront from free solar energy, even if the system does qualify for some incentives.
Another startup, GoSun, offers a slightly different take on the same idea. Instead of expanding into a flat plane of PV, its panels cascade from the roof down the front and back to gather up to 30 miles of range per day. GoSun promises to deliver in 2025 for about $3,000.
Of course, the smartest way to power your EV with solar is to put PV on the roof of your home, a place with much fewer square footage and weight constraints than the surface of a vehicle. But as solar continues to get more efficient, it will make less and less sense to ignore the real estate on a car. After all, every watt of extra energy from the sun is one you don’t have to get somewhere else.
https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/ev-solar-panels-dartsolar-gosun
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — An Alabama woman is recovering well after a pig kidney transplant last month that freed her from eight years of dialysis, the latest effort to save human lives with animal organs.
Towana Looney is the fifth American given a gene-edited pig organ — and notably, she isn’t as sick as prior recipients who died within two months of receiving a pig kidney or heart.
“It’s like a new beginning,” Looney, 53, told The Associated Press. Right away, “the energy I had was amazing. To have a working kidney — and to feel it — is unbelievable.”
Looney’s surgery marks an important step as scientists get ready for formal studies of xenotransplantation expected to begin next year, said Dr. Robert Montgomery of NYU Langone Health, who led the highly experimental procedure.
Looney is recuperating well after her transplant, which was announced Tuesday. She was discharged from the hospital 11 days after surgery to continue recovery in a nearby apartment although temporarily readmitted this week while her medications are adjusted. Doctors expect her to return home to Alabama in three months. If the pig kidney were to fail, she could begin dialysis again.
“To see hope restored to her and her family is extraordinary,” said Dr. Jayme Locke, Looney’s original surgeon who secured Food and Drug Administration permission for the Nov. 25 transplant.
More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, most who need a kidney. Thousands die waiting and many more who need a transplant never qualify. Now, searching for an alternate supply, scientists are genetically altering pigs so their organs are more humanlike.
Looney donated a kidney to her mother in 1999. Later a complication during pregnancy caused high blood pressure that damaged her remaining kidney, which eventually failed. It’s incredibly rare for living donors to develop kidney failure although those who do are given extra priority on the transplant list.
But Looney couldn’t get a match — she had developed antibodies abnormally primed to attack another human kidney. Tests showed she’d reject every kidney donors have offered.
Then Looney heard about pig kidney research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and told Locke, at the time a UAB transplant surgeon, she’d like to try one. In April 2023, Locke filed an FDA application seeking an emergency experiment, under rules for people like Looney who are out of options.
The FDA didn’t agree right away. Instead, the world’s first gene-edited pig kidney transplants went to two sicker patients last spring, at Massachusetts General Hospital and NYU. Both also had serious heart disease. The Boston patient recovered enough to spend about a month at home before dying of sudden cardiac arrest deemed unrelated to the pig kidney. NYU’s patient had heart complications that damaged her pig kidney, forcing its removal, and she later died.
Those disappointing outcomes didn’t dissuade Looney, who was starting to feel worse on dialysis but, Locke said, hadn’t developed heart disease or other complications. The FDA eventually allowed her transplant at NYU, where Locke collaborated with Montgomery.
Even if her new organ fails, doctors can learn from it, Looney told the AP: “You don’t know if it’s going to work or not until you try.”
Blacksburg, Virginia-based Revivicor provided Looney’s new kidney from a pig with 10 gene alterations. Moments after Montgomery sewed it into place, the kidney turned a healthy pink and began producing urine.
Looney was initially discharged on Dec. 6, wearing monitors to track her blood pressure, heart rate and other bodily functions and returning to the hospital for daily checkups before her medication readmission. Doctors scrutinize her bloodwork and other tests, comparing them to prior research in animals and a few humans in hopes of spotting an early warning if problems crop up.
“A lot of what we’re seeing, we’re seeing for the first time,” Montgomery said.
During a visit last week with Locke, who now works for the federal government, Looney hugged her longtime doctor, saying, “Thank you for not giving up on me.”
“Never,” Locke responded.
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg to be his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, where Trump has promised to bring a quick end to the war. VOA’s Tatiana Vorozhko looks into Kellogg’s career, his vision for ending the war, and the challenges he might face in his new mission. Rafael Saakov and Andriy Borys contributed.VOA footage by Oleksii Osyka. Video editor: Alexey Zonov.
date: 2024-12-17, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: A 7.3-magnitude earthquake caused major damage on the Pacific island of Vanuatu • Oil from damaged tankers is washing up on Russian beaches after a storm in the Black Sea • Hot, dry, and windy weather returns to parched Southern California.
The Department of Energy’s study on liquefied natural gas exports could drop as soon as today, but we might already know what’s in it thanks to an accompanying letter written by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and obtained by The New York Times. The key takeaways:
The study reportedly stops short of saying that more LNG shipments are not in the public’s best interest and therefore should be banned. President Biden halted new LNG export licenses in January until the DOE could complete its analysis. President-elect Trump has promised to resume export terminal approvals.
More from the DOE: The Loan Programs Office this morning announced a conditional loan commitment of up to $15 billion for Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s Project Polaris. The project “will support a portfolio of projects to expand hydropower generation and battery storage, upgrade transmission capacity through reconductoring and grid enhancing technologies, and enable virtual power plants throughout PG&E’s service area,” the DOE said. This is the largest loan in the history of the LPO, and the office plans to finalize it before the end of President Biden’s term, according to The Wall Street Journal.
DOE
Permitting reform is officially off the table. Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso had hoped some version of their bipartisan bill to help speed new energy infrastructure would be included in Congress’ must-pass final agenda items for the year, but alas, it won’t. Politico’s Joshua Siegel reported that Manchin “conceded” yesterday on the issue after tense partisan disagreements – over things like who should be able to take advantage of loosened rules, and how local environments and communities would be protected – proved too difficult to overcome. “It’s a shame that our country is losing this monumental opportunity to advance commonsense, bipartisan permitting reform,” Manchin said in a statement.
Somewhat relatedly, the DOE narrowed (from 10 down to three) its list of potential “National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors,” or regions especially in need of energy transmission upgrades. They are:
A NEITC designation would allow the government to speed up grid expansion projects in these regions and provide federal funding. “A lack of transmission infrastructure can directly contribute to higher electricity prices, more frequent power outages from extreme weather, and longer outages as the grid struggles to come back online,” the Department explained in its announcement. A comment period on the three suggested corridors will now begin and extend into the next administration.
The Supreme Court yesterday dismissed a constitutional challenge from 17 Republican-led states against California’s long standing right to make its own clean air rules. The state has had a waiver since the 1960s to set its own vehicle emission standards, so long as they meet or go beyond the national standards. And its rules have been really effective at reducing pollution from cars in the Los Angeles area. Ohio and 16 other states were petitioning the Court, arguing that California was being treated differently than other states and that “the Golden State is not a golden child.” The dismissal “closes the door on a constitutional challenge to California’s anti-pollution standards,” the Los Angeles Times explained, but other challengers – including the oil and gas industry – are exploring other legal routes.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz yesterday lost a confidence vote in parliament, triggering snap elections to be held in February. The turmoil will have ramifications for energy and climate policy in Europe’s largest economy. Sholz’s coalition government “made significant progress in key policy areas, such as renewables expansion,” reported Clean Energy Wire. It also committed Germany to emissions reductions in line with the Paris Agreement. But a new government will have other things on its mind, especially as unemployment is high, energy prices remain elevated, and struggling industry heavyweights like Volkswagen and auto parts supplier Bosch are resorting to massive layoffs. Meanwhile, a scramble is also underway in France to form a government after the previous one failed a no-confidence vote two weeks ago. “The EU as a whole is affected” by these political instabilities, reported the BBC, and everything from global climate policy to the war in Ukraine could feel the impacts.
A rapid study from Imperial College London finds that human-caused climate change intensified Tropical Cyclone Chido from a Category 3 storm to a Category 4 storm. The cyclone devastated the French territory of Mayotte over the weekend.
https://heatmap.news/climate/pge-california-loan-lng-doe
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
Washington — The United States hit North Korea and Russia on Monday with new sanctions targeting Pyongyang’s financial and military support to Moscow as well as its ballistic missile program.
The sanctions, which list North Korean banks, generals and other officials, as well as Russian oil shipping companies, are the latest U.S. measure aimed at disrupting North Korea’s support to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The North Korean banks targeted include Golden Triangle Bank, one of the biggest banks in the northeastern Rason Special Economic Zone, and Pyongyang-based Korea Mandal Credit Bank, which has representatives throughout China, the Treasury Department said in a statement.
South Korea’s foreign ministry separately said on Tuesday that it has blacklisted 11 individuals and 15 entities linked to illicit military cooperation between North Korea and Russia.
The responses came as 10 countries, including the U.S., South Korea, Australia, Britain, France and Japan, as well as the European Union, issued a joint statement on Tuesday condemning Pyongyang and Moscow’s military ties “in the strongest possible terms.”
The statement said North Korea’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine was a “dangerous expansion of the conflict” and a “flagrant violation” of United Nations’ sanctions. It urged the country to withdraw its troops from Russia.
Pyongyang and Moscow have ramped up diplomatic and economic ties in recent years, culminating in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to North Korea in June when the countries’ leaders agreed a mutual defense pact.
Military cooperation between the two countries has been met by international alarm, with Washington, Kyiv and Seoul condemning North Korea for sending military equipment and more than 10,000 troops to support Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
North Korea’s actions, including its most recent test of a long-range ballistic missile and its deepening military support to Russia, undermine the stability of the region and sustain Putin’s war in Ukraine, said Bradley Smith, acting Under Secretary of the U.S. Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.
“The United States remains committed to disrupting the illicit procurement and facilitation networks that enable these destabilizing activities,” he said.
The officials sanctioned by both Washington and Seoul include North Korean generals leading tens of thousands of North Korean troops in Russia, including Kim Yong Bok, who has appeared at seven events with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year, including special forces exercises.
South Korea separately blacklisted the North’s special forces unit known as the Storm Corps, also in Russia fighting against Ukraine, and its chief, Ri Pong Chun.
Ukraine said on Monday that at least 30 North Korean soldiers had been killed or injured in combat in Russia’s Kursk region over the weekend.
It said that Moscow began deploying them in the southern region in significant numbers last week to conduct assaults on Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine launched a cross-border incursion into Kursk in August.
Kyiv estimates there are 11,000 North Koreans in total, adding to a force of tens of thousands of Russians.
Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Koreans on its side.
Oil and gas to the North
The Treasury sanctions freeze the U.S. assets of the designated entities, ban their trade with Americans, and block them from transactions with the U.S. financial system.
The Treasury blacklisted Russia-based foreign trade companies that it said were shipping oil and gas to North Korea. The companies include Vostok Trading, DV Ink, and Novosibirskoblgaz. Treasury said they began shipping “thousands of tons of oil and gas” to North Korea beginning in 2022 and continuing through at least April 2024.
North Korea has likely received more than 1 million barrels of oil from Russia over an eight-month period this year in breach of U.N. sanctions, according to an analysis of satellite imagery published in November by the British-based Open Source Centre and the BBC.
North Korean oil tankers have made more than 40 visits to Russia’s Far Eastern port of Vostochny since March, the report on the research group Open Source Centre’s website said.
The sanctions also targeted Sibregiongaz, AO, the Russia-based parent company and 100% owner of Novosibirskoblgaz. They also hit Okryu Trading Company, or Okryu, a North Korea-based foreign trade company that Treasury said has received thousands of tons of oil shipments from Russia.
date: 2024-12-17, updated: 2024-12-17, from: RAND blog
RAND president and CEO Jason Matheny reflects on the many ways RAND is helping leaders of all stripes better understand and address humanity’s greatest challenges.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/12/looking-back-on-the-big-policy-stories-of-2024.html
date: 2024-12-17, from: The Lever News
Failure to block the insurance giant’s market consolidation, including by a judge with a potential conflict of interest, has led to worse care, higher prices, and a mounting human toll.
https://www.levernews.com/the-deadly-consequences-of-unitedhealths-unchecked-growth/
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
NEW YORK — A judge Monday rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s bid to have his hush money conviction dismissed because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. But the case’s overall future remains unclear.
Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan’s decision eliminates one potential off-ramp from the case ahead of Trump’s return to office next month. His lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal, however.
Prosecutors have said there should be some accommodation for his upcoming presidency, but they insist the conviction should stand.
Trump’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A jury convicted Trump in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump denies wrongdoing.
The allegations involved a scheme to hide the payout to Daniels during the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to keep her from publicizing — and keep voters from hearing — her claim of a sexual encounter with the married then-businessman years earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them.
A month after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that ex-presidents can’t be prosecuted for official acts — things they did in the course of running the country — and that prosecutors can’t cite those actions to bolster a case centered on purely personal, unofficial conduct.
Trump’s lawyers then cited the Supreme Court opinion to argue that the hush money jury got some improper evidence, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office.
In Monday’s ruling, Merchan denied the bulk of Trump’s claims that some of prosecutors’ evidence related to official acts and implicated immunity protections.
The judge said that even if he found that some evidence related to official conduct, he’d still find that prosecutors’ decision to use “these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”
Even if prosecutors had erroneously introduced evidence that could be challenged under an immunity claim, Merchan continued, “such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.”
Prosecutors had said the evidence in question was only “a sliver” of their case.
Trump communications director Steven Cheung on Monday called Merchan’s decision a “direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity, and other longstanding jurisprudence.”
“This lawless case should have never been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed,” Cheung said in a statement.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.
Trump takes office January 20.
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
In a joint appearance Monday morning, President-elect Donald Trump and Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of the Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank Group, announced that the company would invest $100 billion in U.S. companies over the coming four years, saying that the infusion of cash would create 100,000 jobs in fields such as artificial intelligence.
Son attributed the decision to make the investment directly to Trump’s win in last month’s presidential election.
“I would really like to celebrate the great victory of President Trump,” Son said. “My confidence level [in] the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory. So, because of that, I’m now excited to commit this 100 billion dollars and 100,000 jobs into the United States.”
In introducing Son, Trump pointed out that eight years ago, after Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, SoftBank had made a similar pledge, promising $50 billion in U.S. investments and 50,000 new jobs.
“And they did,” Trump said. “They kept that promise in every way, shape and form.”
The president-elect then went on to press Son to double his pledge, saying “I’m going to ask him right now. Would you make it $200 billion?”
Son reiterated his promise of $100 billion, but said he would “try” to get to $200 billion.
“All right. $200 billion,” Trump said.
Son burst into laughter, telling the crowd Trump is “a great negotiator.”
‘Trump effect’
After the announcement Monday, Trump’s rapid response director, Jake Schneider, sent media outlets an email attributing the announcement to what he called the “Trump Effect.”
“President Trump is already delivering on his commitment to re-make America into the world’s manufacturing superpower once again — and he hasn’t even taken office yet,” Schneider wrote. “It’s all centered around his Made in America agenda, which incentivizes companies that make their products in America with American workers.”
He added, “In January, President Trump will immediately begin implementing bold reforms to restore the nation to full prosperity and make sure AI, emerging technologies, and the other industries of tomorrow are created, built, and grown in the United States.”
Hits and misses
Since founding SoftBank in 1981 at age 24, Son has become one of the most storied — and controversial — technology investors in the world. The company has several investment funds and owns significant shares of hundreds of companies across multiple fields, including telecommunication, robotics, internet services, e-commerce, artificial intelligence and much more.
Throughout his decades-long career, Son has made headlines for spectacular victories as well as disastrous failures. For a time, at the beginning of 2000, he claimed to be the world’s richest man, with a fortune worth an estimated $78 billion amassed by buying up internet startups. However, the collapse of the dotcom bubble just months later wiped out more than 90% of his wealth.
Son started rebuilding his business that same year, and a $20 million investment that bought SoftBank a 34% ownership share in a little-known Chinese e-commerce startup known as Alibaba would prove key to his fortunes. In 2014, Alibaba went public at a price that valued SoftBank’s shares at $58 billion, some 2,900 times its initial investment.
Along the way, Son successfully managed to merge mobile telecommunications firms T-Mobile and Sprint, creating one of the largest U.S. service providers in 2020. Just two years later, though, SoftBank suffered disastrous losses with the collapse of the office-sharing startup WeWork, in which it had invested heavily, as well as other failed investments by in-house venture and hedge funds.
At the time, Son announced that he was retiring from public life. However, by 2023, he was back in the headlines when ARM Holdings, a British computer chip design firm that SoftBank bought at a valuation of $30.8 billion in 2016, went public in the U.S. at a valuation of $54.5 billion.
Choosing the West over China
Lionel Barber, the former editor-in-chief of the Financial Times, told VOA that he believes Son’s appearance at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort Monday signals more than just an international investor seeking to get on the good side of an incoming U.S. president.
Barber is the author of Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Masayoshi Son, the first biography of the investor by a Western author, which will be published in the U.S. next month. He said that when Son made his pledge of $50 billion in 2016, he and Trump had clearly aligned interests.
“Trump wanted a big signal about business confidence in the Trump agenda and Masayoshi Son and SoftBank wanted to get in with the new Republican administration with an eye to getting [a] blessing for his big project, which was Sprint merging with T-Mobile,” Barber told VOA by phone.
Now, though, he sees something larger at play.
“Obviously, the world looks very different. Eight years on, we’ve got wars around the world, and we’ve also got de-risking and decoupling between China and the West,” Barber said.
In his last interview with him, Barber told VOA, Son said that he had realized that it was necessary for SoftBank to make a choice between China and the West.
Paraphrasing Son, Barber said, “He basically said, ‘We understand the world’s changed. We’ve been a global investor. We’ve been the biggest investor in China and the biggest investor in America. But now we have to choose. We’ve chosen the West.’”
“So, I see his getting into Mar-a-Lago as [saying], ‘I’ve chosen the West. I’ve chosen America, and I’m going with Trump.’”
Investment details unclear
The announcement at Mar-a-Lago did not include any details about specific investments that SoftBank intends to make, and not all foreign investments touted by Trump over the years have come to pass.
Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn in 2017 promised a $10 billion investment in a manufacturing facility in Wisconsin that was later dramatically scaled back.
Even SoftBank’s 2016 pledge is difficult to consider truly fulfilled unless the more than $20 billion the company poured into Sprint in 2013 — three years before making the pledge — is included in the total.
Barber, Son’s biographer, said he has some doubts about SoftBank’s ability to identify $100 billion in U.S. investments over the course of four years.
“I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I haven’t figured out how he gets to 100 billion, yet,” Barber said.
However, he said, it’s also important not to underestimate Son’s ability to achieve unexpected successes.
“You can’t write him off,” Barber said. “That’s what he does. He’s a bloody genius in that respect.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-softbank-ceo-announce-100-billion-investment-in-us-/7903846.html
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — The mother of American journalist Austin Tice, who has been detained in Syria for more than 12 years, reiterated her call Monday for the Israeli military to pause strikes in a part of Syria where her son may be held.
“I think it would be polite, to say the least, that perhaps they’re not bombing while people are trying to clear the prisons,” Debra Tice told reporters Monday afternoon outside the Syrian Embassy in Washington.
That call comes days after she made the same appeal in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a letter dated Dec. 14, Debra Tice told the Israeli leader her family has “credible information” that her son may be held in a prison outside the Syrian capital, Damascus, and urged the Israeli military to pause strikes in the area to allow rescuers to search the site.
“We are aware that your military has an active campaign in the area, preventing rescuers from approaching and accessing the prison facility,” she wrote in the letter, which The New York Times published Monday.
The Israeli military has been bombing weapons depots and air defenses in Syria. Israel says it wants to keep military equipment away from extremists.
In the letter, Debra Tice said her son may be held in a prison under a Syrian military museum in the mountainous Mount Qasioun area. The prison was connected by a tunnel to a neighborhood and a government palace, she added in the letter.
“We have no way of knowing if the prisoners there have food and water. We urgently request you pause strikes on this area and deploy Israeli assets to search for Austin Tice and other prisoners. Time is of the essence,” she said.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to VOA’s email requesting comment.
But Gal Hirsch, the Israeli government’s lead envoy for hostage affairs, told The Times that he had received the letter and was coordinating with U.S. officials.
“We will do everything possible in assisting the United States of America to bring the hostages and missing persons back home,” Hirsch said.
A Texas native and former U.S. Marine, Austin Tice has been held in Syria since 2012, when he was detained at a checkpoint in Damascus. Aside from a brief video after his capture, little has been heard or seen of him since.
Earlier in December, before the Bashar al-Assad government fell, the Tice family revealed it had obtained information vetted by the U.S. government that confirmed Austin Tice was still alive and detained in the Damascus area.
Since Syrian rebels, led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took Damascus and toppled Assad’s government on December 8, thousands of prisoners have been released from prisons run by the now-deposed government.
The release of those prisoners has raised hope in the Tice family that Austin will be among them.
“I feel like we’re standing in line, and we’re not the only ones that are still standing in line,” Debra Tice told reporters Monday. “It’s going to take a while.”
Austin Tice is an award-winning freelance journalist and photographer who works for outlets that include The Washington Post, CBS and McClatchy. He is the longest-held American journalist abroad.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Monday that the
United States has communicated with HTS on the importance of locating Austin Tice, but that there are no U.S. government personnel on the ground in Syria looking for the journalist.
“We have a number of people engaged on trying to find Austin Tice and bring him home, and we communicated directly to HTS that anything that they could do to help us find him, we would greatly appreciate,” Miller said.
Syria’s transitional government said last week that the search for Austin Tice is ongoing, and that it would cooperate with the U.S. government in finding Americans who were disappeared by the former Assad government.
Outside the Syrian Embassy in Washington, which the U.S. government forced to close in 2014 but may now reopen soon, Debra Tice told reporters she has never lost hope that her son will return home.
“I’ve always had hope. I’ve never had even a millisecond of hopelessness,” she said. “We just need to get all those prisons opened, get all those families reunited, including us.”
date: 2024-12-17, from: VOA News USA
Los Angeles — A California man was sentenced Monday to nearly 3½ years in prison for running an extensive business that helped pregnant Chinese women travel to the United States to deliver babies who would automatically have American citizenship.
U.S. authorities had sought a more than five-year prison term for Michael Wei Yueh Liu, 59, who was convicted in September of conspiracy and money laundering for running a company known as USA Happy Baby. Phoebe Dong, Liu’s wife — though the couple have since separated — was also convicted in connection with the scheme and is expected to be sentenced early next year.
After receiving a 41-month sentence, Liu was led out of the courtroom by authorities and taken into custody. He gave his attorney his belt and a folder and held Dong’s hand briefly while she sobbed.
In court, Liu had pleaded for leniency to care for his elderly parents and 13-year-old son, all of whom depend on him, while about a dozen supporters, many from his church, attended to provide moral support. Liu said his family has suffered deeply for nearly a decade since a 2015 raid on his business.
“My intent was always to uphold the values of integrity and responsibility, so I regret any actions or decisions that may have brought us to this moment of judgment,” Liu told the court during his sentencing hearing. “I have tried my best to remain a source of stability for my family, but my incarceration will place them in a more vulnerable position.”
“I am not here to deflect responsibility, but to seek mercy,” he said.
U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner said defendants’ family members are often the ones who suffer, but it is the defendant’s actions, not the court’s, that caused the harm. Nevertheless, Klausner said he was reducing the sentence due to Liu’s family situation.
“These are choices you make, not that the court makes,” Klausner said.
U.S. authorities said USA Happy Baby helped several hundred women travel from China to give birth to U.S.-citizen babies between 2012 and 2015. The tourists paid as much as $40,000 for services including apartment rentals during their stays in Southern California and worked with overseas entities that coached women on what to say during visa interviews and upon arriving in U.S. airports, advising them to wear loose clothing to hide their pregnancies.
“For tens of thousands of dollars each, [the] defendant helped his numerous customers deceive U.S. authorities and buy U.S. citizenship for their children,” federal prosecutors wrote in court papers. “This criminal conduct is serious and requires a meaningful sentence to promote respect for the law and hold [the] defendant accountable.”
Prosecutors declined to comment immediately after the sentencing.
Kevin Cole, Liu’s attorney, had asked that his client face no more than 26 months and requested he be allowed to serve his sentence from home. On Monday, Cole asked the judge to consider his client’s critical role as the caretaker for his 95-year-old father and 82-year-old mother, shuttling them to medical appointments, bathing them and cooking their food, and his otherwise upstanding life growing up in Taiwan — serving in its military and attending to his family.
“He’s somebody that has lived an honorable life,” Cole told the court. “There’d be no benefit to him or the public for an extensive prison sentence in this case.”
The case against Liu and Dong dates back years. Federal authorities searched more than a dozen homes across Southern California in a 2015 crackdown on operators of businesses catering to Chinese women seeking to deliver their babies in the United States and four years later charged the pair and more than a dozen others, including a woman who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 months in prison for running a company known as You Win USA.
Such businesses have long operated in California and other states and have catered to people not only from China, but also from Russia, Nigeria and elsewhere. It isn’t illegal to visit the United States while pregnant but lying to U.S. consular and immigration officials about the reasons for travel on government documents is not permitted.
The key draw for travelers has been that the United States has birthright citizenship, which many believe could help their children secure a U.S. college education and provide a sort of future insurance policy — especially since the tourists themselves can apply for permanent residency once their American child turns 21.
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to end birthright citizenship once in office, but any such effort would face steep legal hurdles.
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
What is going on in the skies of the eastern United States? In recent weeks, countless drones have been spotted — and everyone from residents to the incoming president has questions. Anita Powell reports from Washington.
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
The U.S. Census Bureau is changing how it counts immigrants in annual estimates by including more people who were admitted for humanitarian, and often temporary, reasons.
The change is being made in an effort to better reflect population shifts this decade, officials said Monday. Population estimates, including immigration, are due to be released Thursday showing how the populations of the United States and the 50 states changed this year. However, the new approach to counting immigrants will only be reflected nationally.
The percentage of U.S. residents who were foreign born rose to its highest level in more than a century in 2023. It could be even higher under the new methodology. Census Bureau officials wouldn’t say Monday how much larger they expected the immigration figures to be in Thursday’s release because of the change.
Capturing the number of new immigrants is the most difficult part of the annual U.S. population estimates. Although the newly announced change in methodology is unrelated, the timing comes a month before a return to the White House of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised mass deportations of people in the United States illegally.
“We feel confident that this was a good approach in order to make our estimates more current and reflect recent trends that we’ve seen,” said Eric Jensen, a senior research scientist at the Census Bureau.
The bureau’s annual calculation of how many migrants entered the United States in the 2020s has been much lower than the numbers cited by other federal agencies, such as the Congressional Budget Office. The Census Bureau estimated 1.1 million immigrants entered the United States in 2023, while the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate was 3.3 million people.
The group of people being included in the international migration estimates are those who enter the country through humanitarian parole, which has been granted for seven decades by Republican and Democratic presidential administrations to people unable to use standard immigration routes because of time pressure or their government’s poor relations with the U.S. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based research organization, said last week that more than 5.8 million people were admitted under various humanitarian policies from 2021 to 2024.
Trump appears certain to dismantle humanitarian parole, saying during his campaign that he would end the “outrageous abuse of parole.” The annual population estimates released by the Census Bureau each year are calculated from births, deaths, migration to the United States and migration between states. The population estimates provide the official population counts each year between the once-a-decade census for the United States, the 50 states, counties and metro areas. The figures are used for distributing trillions of dollars in federal funding.
https://www.voanews.com/a/us-census-bureau-adding-refugees-to-immigrant-count/7903554.html
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump contended Monday that the country’s military “for some reason” was keeping details secret about unexplained drones flying across the nighttime skies above the eastern United States, but the White House later minimized the drone sightings.
“Our military knows … something strange is going on,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in his first wide-ranging news conference since his election to a new four-year term in the White House starting next month.
For weeks now, residents in the state of New Jersey, which borders New York City, and other states to the north and south along the Atlantic Ocean coastline have reported seeing more than 5,000 supposed drones, a figure U.S. officials have concluded is wildly inflated.
They say that most of the alleged unmanned drones are manned aircraft, and that fewer than 100 of the sightings need to be investigated further.
All manner of conspiracy theories has been offered for the unexplained sightings, including the dispatching of drones by foreign countries and the deployment of Iran-launched drones from a mothership positioned off U.S. eastern coastal waters.
At the White House, National Security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters, “Our assessment at this stage is that the activity represents commercial, hobbyist, law enforcement drones, all operating legally and lawfully, and/or civilian aviation aircraft.”
At a Pentagon briefing before Trump’s news conference began, Air Force Major General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, told reporters there was “no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat, or have a foreign nexus.”
Ryder added, “We are sensitive to the fact that there are public concerns and many questions. … We are also committed to providing as much information as possible as quickly as possible on this.”
The military has a rationale for not shooting them down, Ryder said, offering a “loose analogy” to unexplained cars traveling near military bases.
“On any given day, an unauthorized car or truck may approach one of the base gates, usually on accident,” Ryder said, and “99% of the time those cars are turned away without incident.”
“The point being is that flying drones is not illegal,” Ryder said. “There are thousands of drones flown around the U.S. on a daily basis. It’s not that unusual to see drones in the sky, nor is it an indication of malicious activity or any public safety threat.”
In recent days, Republican and Democratic officials alike have called on officials in the administration of President Joe Biden to be more forthcoming in saying what they know about the drones.
Republican Representative Michael Waltz of Florida, who is set to become Trump’s national security adviser when he takes office January 20, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “We need to get to the bottom of it.”
In his hourlong news conference, Trump touched on a wide range of topics five weeks before assuming power again and becoming the second president after Grover Cleveland in the 1890s to take over the White House for a second nonconsecutive term.
He said his reception from world leaders this time is sharply more favorable than it was in 2017 after his first presidential victory.
“It’s really the opposite of hostile. They’re calling me,” he said. “I’ve spoken to over 100 countries.”
Trump said he would not end the use of the long-accepted polio vaccine in the U.S. but questioned the mandates in many U.S. states for a range of childhood vaccines.
“I’m not really a big mandate guy,” he said, and asked rhetorically, “Why is the autism rate so high” in the United States, although any link between autism and vaccines has long been scientifically debunked.
He also questioned why Americans “are paying so much more than people in other countries” for medicines.
Trump said that he was doing his best to stop Russia’s nearly three-year war on Ukraine, and that he would have ongoing conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about a halt to the fighting.
He called much of Ukraine “a demolition site” because of Russian attacks. “People can’t go back there.”
Trump called the U.S. media “very corrupt” after winning a $15 million defamation settlement against ABC News over the weekend. He said he is planning lawsuits against other news outlets and individual journalists for what he considers to be false reporting, even as he lost other media-related suits.
The president-elect reiterated his plan to impose tariffs against imports from some of the U.S.’ biggest trading partners.
“Tariffs will make our country rich,” he contended, although individual importers pay the fees and often pass on their costs to customers buying the goods.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-pentagon-spar-over-drone-secrecy/7903491.html
date: 2024-12-16, from: Heatmap News
The transition to clean energy is largely a shift from molecules to electrons — gasoline in the tank is out, electricity stored in a battery cell is in. It follows, then, that as the transition progresses, the balance of power in the energy industry will shift from oil and gas production to electricity generation.
We may look back on 2024 as the year the scales tipped. Among the top 260 publicly listed energy companies, utilities’ capital expenditures around the globe were slightly higher this year than oil and gas spending, according to a recent analysis from Boston Consulting Group, and the authors expect the trend to grow through the end of the decade. But it wasn’t a sudden spike in EV adoption or home electrification or some other climate solution that put utility spending in the lead. It was the rise in data centers.
“When we went through all the data, all the 260 companies, it was the data centers that were having the biggest impact, most definitely,” Rebecca Fitz, a partner and director at Boston Consulting Group and lead author of the report, told me. “I’ve been in this sector for a long time, and to have such a rapid change in demand outlook, coupled with quick changes to capex, is a big story.”
Boston
Consulting Group Center For Energy Impact
The finding was the surprise headline of an annual report that Fitz’ group has completed for the past three years called “Follow the Capital,” an analysis of what’s driving changes in capital supply and demand in the energy sector using data culled from publicly available sources. Data for prior years comes from regulatory and investor fillings. Future years are modeled using public announcements, plans filed with regulators, and a few conservative assumptions, Fitz told me.
Surging demand for electricity from data centers was perhaps the biggest energy story of 2024, and the trend seemed to accelerate as the year went on. In just the past few months, almost every major tech company has signed an agreement to buy power from a nuclear plant, either reviving formerly shuttered reactors or helping to build new ones. GE Vernova, which manufactures energy generation equipment, reported last week that it had secured contracts for 9 gigawatts’ worth of new gas turbines since its previous quarterly report in October, “tied to both load growth in the U.S and … serving the hyperscaler demand associated with AI.” As the “Follow the Capital” authors were wrapping up this year’s edition in November, they found that U.S. utilities had added $50 billion in planned capex during the third quarter alone, mostly due to data center demand growth.
Data center demand isn’t the only factor playing into the above chart. Though utility spending is definitely up, oil and gas companies are also reining in capex growth in favor of shareholder returns, Fitz told me. But oil and gas also sees the winds changing and is making moves to get into the power business. Two weeks ago, during a panel hosted by the Atlantic Council, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said the company was “looking at possible solutions to build large-scale power generation” that would serve data centers directly, rather than feed into the grid, so that regular electricity ratepayers would not shoulder the costs. “There’s sensitivity to increasing electricity rates for the average person just for the benefit of a few of these tech companies,” he said.
Beating Chevron to the punch, last week ExxonMobil announced that it was “moving fast” on this exact type of project, designing a natural gas plant that would “use carbon capture to remove more than 90% of the associated CO2 emissions” and directly power data centers without connecting to the grid.
“I have no doubt that most of the oil and gas sector is looking at opportunities in this area,” said Fitz.
Though the report covers global companies and spending, the data center demand signal is hyperlocal. Among the 30 largest North American utilities, 65% of demand growth is concentrated within just six of them, the report says. Though the report does not name the companies, Fitz told me that Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio were seeing the most aggressive plans.
Artificial intelligence boosters often argue that this demand pull is a boon for the energy transition. By ushering in the age of electrons, the logic goes, tech companies with deep pockets can drive the first deployments of new clean energy technologies like advanced nuclear and geothermal power plants. These early deployments would then help lower costs and give rise to cheaper, cleaner electricity for the rest of us average energy consumers and our future electric cars, stoves, and water heaters.
But that’s not the only potential outcome. “Follow the Capital” found that when the six utilities most affected by demand growth recently revised their integrated resource plans, they increased the amount of natural gas generation they planned to add from 26% of total new generation to 31%. As GE Vernova reported, orders for gas generators are skyrocketing. “I can’t think of a time that the gas business has had more fun than they’re having right now,” the company’s CEO Scott Strazik said during a recent investor update.
As my colleague Matthew Zeitlin reported, the industry is turning to natural gas plants because they can run 24/7 and they are not as dependent on transmission lines as renewables are, so they can be built faster and more cheaply. Renewables paired with energy storage are only competitive with gas if there’s infrastructure to support it, sources told him.
The age of electrons may be nigh, but whether it helps to stop climate change is a separate question altogether.
https://heatmap.news/economy/utility-spending-oil-and-gas
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
PENTAGON — The United States is moving to fill the power vacuum in central Syria, worried the Islamic State terror group is looking to exploit the victory of Syrian rebels over forces loyal to former President Bashar al-Assad.
U.S. warplanes Monday targeted IS camps and operatives in central Syria, marking at least the second time the U.S. has hit the terror group in areas formerly patrolled by Assad’s forces that had backing from Russian troops and airpower.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, said the latest round of airstrikes targeted leaders, operatives and camps “in former regime and Russian-controlled areas.”
The goal, CENTCOM said, is to ensure “pressure is maintained” against IS.
CENTCOM and Pentagon officials said Monday initial assessments indicated the strikes killed12 IS members and that no civilians were killed or wounded.
Neither CENTCOM nor the Pentagon offered additional details about the targets of Monday’s airstrikes or their operational value.
The new strikes come just over a week after CENTCOM launched more than a dozen strikes against 75 IS targets in five locations across central Syria.
Officials at the time said the targets included “a significant gathering of ISIS fighters and leaders.”
Pentagon officials on Monday said the U.S. would carry out additional strikes as needed.
“In as much as CENTCOM sees a potential threat posed by ISIS, and to mitigate their ability to be able to resurge, you’re going to see these strikes,” said Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder, using another acronym for the terror group.
Until the collapse of the Assad regime, however, much of central Syria was a no-go zone for U.S. forces and their Syrian allies.
“One of the big factors that has changed in Syria is the airspace,” Ryder told reporters Monday. “It previously had Syrian regime and Russian air defenses, which would preclude in many cases our ability to or desirability to go into those areas.”
U.S. officials and independent analysts have long warned of a growing IS threat in areas of Syria under Assad’s control.
A United Nations report issued earlier this year, based on intelligence from member states, warned the central Syria desert had become “a logistics and operations hub with 500 to 600 fighters.”
More recently, U.S. officials warned that IS had been exploiting the lack of pressure from Syrian and Russian forces to plan attacks across the West.
IS has “used a base of operations in central Syria to drive external plotting, turning this desert location into the current locus of plotting against the West, including the United States,” Brett Holmgren, acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said last month.
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
LOS ANGELES — A former FBI informant pleaded guilty Monday to lying about a phony bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.
Alexander Smirnov entered his plea to a felony charge in connection with the bogus story, along with a tax evasion charge stemming from a separate indictment accusing him of concealing millions of dollars of income.
An attorney for Smirnov declined to comment after the hearing in Los Angeles federal court.
Prosecutors and the defense have agreed to recommend a sentence of between four and six years in prison when he’s sentenced next month.
Smirnov will get credit for the time he has served since his February arrest on charges that he told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each around 2015.
Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said.
But Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017, according to court documents. An FBI field office investigated the allegations and recommended the case be closed in August 2020, according to charging documents.
No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes as president or in his previous office as vice president.
While Smirnov’s identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, his claims played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Before Smirnov’s arrest, Republicans had demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.
During a September 2023 conversation with investigators, Smirnov also claimed the Russians probably had recordings of Hunter Biden because a hotel in Ukraine’s capital where he had stayed was “wired” and under their control — information he said was passed along to him by four high-level Russian officials.
But Hunter Biden had never traveled to Ukraine, according to Smirnov’s indictment.
Smirnov claimed to have contacts with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials, and told authorities after his arrest this year that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.
The case against Smirnov was brought by special counsel David Weiss, who also prosecuted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges. Hunter Biden was supposed to be sentenced this month after being convicted at a trial in the gun case and pleading guilty to federal charges in the tax case. But he was pardoned this month by his father, who said he believed “raw politics has infected this process, and it led to a miscarriage of justice.”
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
A teenage student opened fire with a handgun Monday at a Christian school in Wisconsin, killing a teacher and another teenager during the final week before Christmas break. The shooter also died, police said.
The shooter also wounded six others at Abundant Life Christian School, including two students, who were in critical condition, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said. A teacher and three students were taken to a hospital with less serious injuries, and two of them had been released by Monday evening.
“Every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever. … We need to figure out and try to piece together what exactly happened,” Barnes said.
Barbara Wiers, director of elementary and school relations for Abundant Life Christian School, said students “handled themselves magnificently.”
She said when the school practices safety routines, which it had done just before the school year, leaders always announce that it is a drill. That didn’t happen Monday.
“When they heard, ‘Lockdown, lockdown,’ they knew it was real,” she said.
The shooter was a 17-year-old female student, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity.
Police said the shooter was dead by apparent suicide when officers arrived. Barnes declined to give details about the shooter, partly out of respect for the family. With a few rare exceptions, a 17-year-old can’t legally possess a gun in Wisconsin.
Barnes said investigators might have enough information to release more details about the shooter in another press conference later Monday.
He also warned people against sharing unconfirmed reports on social media about the shooter’s identity.
“What that does is it helps erode the trust in this process,” he said.
Abundant Life is a nondenominational Christian school — prekindergarten through high school — with approximately 420 students in Madison, the state capital.
Wiers said the school does not have metal detectors but uses other security measures, including cameras.
Children and families were reunited at a medical building about a mile away from the school. Parents pressed children against their chests while others squeezed hands and shoulders as they walked side by side. One girl was comforted with an adult-size coat around her shoulders as she moved to a parking lot teeming with police vehicles.
A motive for the shooting was not immediately known, but Barnes said officials were talking with the parents of the suspected shooter and they were cooperating. He also said he didn’t know if the people shot had been targeted.
“I don’t know why, and I feel like if we did know why, we could stop these things from happening,” he told reporters.
A search warrant was issued Monday to a Madison home, he said.
Rapid response
Someone from the school called 911 to report an active shooter shortly before 11 a.m. First responders who were in training just 3 miles (5 kilometers) away dashed to the school for an actual emergency, Barnes said. They arrived 3 minutes after the initial call and went into the building immediately.
Classes had been taking place when the shooting happened, Barnes said. He declined to say where exactly in the school it happened.
Investigators believe the shooter used a 9 mm pistol, a law enforcement official told the AP on the condition of anonymity.
Police blocked off roads around the school, and federal agents were at the scene to assist local law enforcement. No shots were fired by police.
Abundant Life asked for prayers in a brief Facebook post.
Wiers said the school’s goal is to have staff get together early in the week and have community opportunities for students to reconnect before the winter break, but it’s still to be decided whether they will resume classes this week.
Bethany Highman, the mother of a student, rushed to the school and learned over FaceTime that her daughter was OK.
“As soon as it happened, your world stops for a minute. Nothing else matters,” Highman said. “There’s nobody around you. You just bolt for the door and try to do everything you can as a parent to be with your kids.”
In a statement, President Joe Biden cited the tragedy in calling on Congress to pass universal background checks, a national red flag law and certain gun restrictions.
“We can never accept senseless violence that traumatizes children, their families, and tears entire communities apart,” Biden said.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers said it’s “unthinkable” that a child or teacher would go to school and never return home.
The school shooting was the latest among dozens across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas.
The shootings have set off fervent debates about gun control and frayed the nerves of parents whose children are growing up accustomed to doing active shooter drills in their classrooms. But school shootings have done little to move the needle on national gun laws.
Firearms were the leading cause of death among children in 2020 and 2021, according to KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the country needs to do more to prevent gun violence.
“I hoped that this day would never come to Madison,” she said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/dead-in-shooting-at-private-christian-school-in-wisconsin/7903242.html
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
On the U.S. West Coast, conservationists for the world’s largest dam-removal project are both celebrating initial successes and encountering short-term obstacles. VOA’s Matt Dibble has our story from the Klamath River on the border between California and Oregon.
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
In the Pacific Northwest, the world’s largest river restoration project has removed hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River to help migrating salmon. The project emptied a lake beloved to its surrounding community. VOA’s Matt Dibble went to the former Copco Lake to see how residents are adjusting.
https://www.voanews.com/a/after-losing-beloved-lake-a-community-navigates-its-future-/7902930.html
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
U.S. farmers hope President-elect Donald Trump’s selection to head the U.S. Department of Agriculture will understand their concerns while guiding trade policy and farm legislation. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more from Chicago.
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
Taipei, Taiwan — Taiwan has received 38 advanced Abrams battle tanks from the United States, the defense ministry said Monday, reportedly the island’s first new tanks in 30 years.
Washington has long been Taipei’s most important ally and biggest arms supplier — angering Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of its own territory.
The M1A2 tanks — the first batch of 108 ordered in 2019 — arrived in Taiwan late Sunday and were transferred to an army training base in Hsinchu, south of the capital Taipei, the defense ministry said.
The M1A2s are the first new tanks to be delivered to Taiwan in 30 years, the semi-official Central News Agency said.
Taiwan’s current tank force consists of around 1,000 Taiwan-made CM 11 Brave Tiger and U.S.-made M60A3 tanks, technology that is increasingly obsolete.
Abrams tanks, which are among the heaviest in the world, are a mainstay of the U.S. military.
Taiwan faces the constant threat of an invasion by China, which has refused to rule out using force to bring the self-ruled island under its control.
China’s foreign ministry on Monday urged the United States to “stop arming Taiwan… and supporting Taiwan independence forces.”
“The Taiwan authorities’ attempt to seek independence through force and foreign help is doomed to fail,” ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.
“China will firmly defend its national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.”
While it has a home-grown defense industry and has been upgrading its equipment, Taiwan relies heavily on U.S. arms sales to bolster its security capabilities.
Taiwan requested the state-of-the-art M1A2 tanks in 2019, allocating the equivalent of more than $1.2 billion for them. The rest of the order is expected to be delivered in 2025 and 2026, an army official told AFP.
While U.S. arms supplies to Taiwan are enshrined into law, a massive backlog caused by Covid-19 supply chain disruptions and U.S. weapons shipments to Ukraine and Israel have slowed deliveries to Taiwan.
The backlog now exceeds $21 billion, according to Washington think tank Cato Institute.
Taiwan would be massively outgunned in terms of troop numbers and firepower in any war with China and in recent years has increased spending on its military.
Taipei allocated a record $19 billion for 2024 and next year’s budget is set to hit a new high as it seeks to bolster its defense approach.
China has increased military pressure on Taiwan in recent years, regularly deploying fighter jets and warships around the island.
Taiwanese authorities said last week that China had held its biggest maritime drills in years, with around 90 ships deployed from near the southern islands of Japan to the South China Sea.
The vessels simulated attacks on foreign ships and practiced blockading sea routes, a Taiwan security official said previously.
Beijing did not confirm the drills and its defense ministry did not say whether the maneuvers had taken place when asked at a press conference on Friday.
https://www.voanews.com/a/taiwan-receives-first-batch-of-us-made-abrams-tanks/7902881.html
date: 2024-12-16, from: Heatmap News
Current conditions: A rare tornado caused damage in Northern California over the weekend • Severe flooding continues in southern Thailand • It is chilly and cloudy in Washington, D.C., where lawmakers have reportedly decided not to include permitting reform in the year-end spending package after a weekend of tense talks.
Thousands of people could be dead in the small island region of Mayotte after Tropical Cyclone Chido swept through on Saturday. The islands, home to some 300,000, are French territory but located in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and the east coast of Africa. Sources have reported apocalyptic scenes of destruction, with entire neighborhoods gone and essential infrastructure wiped out. “There is nothing left,” a local hotel owner told CNN. “It’s as if an atomic bomb fell.” The cyclone struck as a Category 4 storm, with 136-mph winds, making it the strongest storm to hit the islands in nearly 100 years. So far 14 people are confirmed to have perished, but that death toll is expected to rise. According to CNN, the worst damage is in slum regions where thousands of undocumented migrants reside.
With the end of President Biden’s term rapidly approaching, his administration is racing to finalize some key environmental decisions and finance deals. For example, the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office has a handful of “conditional” commitments for clean tech (like a $6.6 billion loan to Rivian, and a $7.5 billion loan for a battery plant built by the Stellantis and Samsung joint venture) that are in limbo and could be nixed by the Trump administration. Officials are “working hard to make the loan guarantees and loan agreements as airtight as possible,” a former policy adviser for the LPO told Bloomberg. Here are a few other decisions to look out for in the coming weeks:
Relatedly, President-elect Trump’s transition team is recommending he “cut off support for electric vehicles and charging stations and to strengthen measures blocking cars, components, and battery materials from China,” Reuters reported, citing a transition document seen by the outlet. Funds for the EV transition would be redirected toward national defense. Such recommendations wouldn’t be entirely surprising, though the team is also suggesting Trump bring in tariffs on all imported battery materials. The $7,500 EV tax credit is also on the chopping block, as are the Biden administration’s tailpipe emissions standards.
The UN COP16 summit on addressing desertification and land degradation concluded over the weekend without producing an agreement on how nations should respond to drought. Representatives from nearly 200 countries attended the two-week-long gathering in Saudi Arabia. Poorer countries had hoped the summit would result in a legally-binding agreement that would require wealthier nations to fund drought resilience in developing countries. “I fear the UNCCD COP16 has suffered the same fate as the biodiversity and climate COPs this year,” Jes Weigelt of European climate think-tank TMG Research told The Associated Press. “It failed to deliver.” The next round of these talks will be held in Mongolia in 2026.
Many condos along Miami’s beachfront are sinking at “unexpected” rates, according to a new study published in the journal Earth and Space Science. Between 2016 and 2023, some 35 buildings – including Trump Tower III and Trump International Beach Resorts – subsided by up to three inches. “Almost all the buildings at the coast itself, they’re subsiding,” Falk Amelung, a geophysicist at the University of Miami and an author on the study, told the Miami Herald. There are several factors contributing to the sinking, but experts told the Herald that one could be rising sea levels, which are speeding up the region’s coastal erosion. “The study underscores the need for ongoing monitoring and a deeper understanding of the long-term implications for these structures,” said Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani, the study’s lead author.
“The man who once had the key insight that the way to fight climate change was to make EVs cool now thinks nothing is cooler than getting retweets and likes from the right-wing trolls who consider him their king.” –Paul Waldman writing for Heatmap about how Elon Musk broke bad on climate
https://heatmap.news/climate/mayotte-tropical-cyclone-chido-damage
date: 2024-12-16, from: Heatmap News
Donald Trump hasn’t taken office yet, but the quarter of a billion dollars Elon Musk invested in Trump’s victory is already paying off in ways large and small. On Friday, Reuters reported that the Trump transition team is looking to scrap a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash-reporting requirement, “a move that could cripple the government’s ability to investigate and regulate the safety of vehicles with automated-driving systems.” Tesla finds this requirement irksome, and lo, it may soon disappear.
In the scope of Musk’s emerging sway over the Trump administration and the course of federal policy in the coming years, it’s a relatively minor story of potentially corrupt influence and the subversion of the public interest. But an even more disturbing picture of Musk’s full priority set is coming into focus.
Musk, the richest human being in history (his net worth now tops $400 billion), may soon exercise a control over government policy unprecedented for a private citizen, which as recently as a year or so ago might have seemed like a net positive for the fight against climate change. Until the relatively immediate present, Musk was rightly counted as a hero of that battle. Whether or not you accept his claim that “I’ve done more for the environment than any single human on Earth,” Musk has certainly done more than anyone to promote the adoption of electric vehicles. And no public figure could — if he wanted — have more ability to convince conservatives in general, and Donald Trump in particular, to accept the reality of climate change and commit to doing something about it than he does.
But that is not what Elon Musk wants. It is becoming clear that in pursuit of his own objectives — money, power, domination over others, personal aggrandizement, and the realization of his dream of making humanity a “multi-planet species” — Musk is content not just to set aside the fight against climate change, but to actively undermine it.
While Musk has not made any grand announcement declaring that he no longer cares about climate, there is considerable evidence to suggest he does not. In a rambling interview with Trump this August, Musk said that his views on the fossil fuel industry are “probably different from what most people would assume.” He explained that “I don’t think we should vilify the oil and gas industry,” and although over time we should move toward sustainable energy, “we still have quite a bit of time … we don’t need to rush and we don’t need to stop farmers from farming or prevent people from having steaks.”
Which is almost exactly what any fossil fuel CEO would say.
It certainly marks a rhetorical shift for someone who once advocated a “popular uprising” against fossil fuel companies. One might object that whatever he says in interviews, he’s still the CEO of America’s largest EV manufacturer. And Tesla no doubt remains a company filled with people committed to combating climate change who see their work as a key part of that effort. The third iteration of the company’s “Master Plan,” released last year, describes what it believes is necessary to “fully electrify the economy and eliminate fossil fuel use.”
But that doesn’t seem to reflect the CEO’s own thinking. The Washington Post reported that earlier this year, Musk killed plans to create an affordable Tesla that could have greatly expanded the reach of EVs in the U.S., opting instead to make further investments in luxury cars and artificial intelligence. (To add insult to injury, Reuters first reported in April that the car had been canceled, but Musk said that the outlet was “lying.”) “The internal deliberations over the so-called Tesla Model 2,” said the Post, “reflect what sources close to Musk describe as a significant shift in the billionaire’s attitude toward climate change.”
That’s apparent in what may be the single most important decision Trump and congressional Republicans will have to make with regard to EVs: whether to kill the $7,500 EV subsidy revived and expanded by the Inflation Reduction Act. If Musk wanted to, he could almost certainly convince Trump that the subsidies ought to remain in place. But he doesn’t; this summer he said on an earnings call that while eliminating the subsidies might cost Tesla some sales, “long term, it probably actually helps” because it would be “devastating for our competitors.” Or as he said in a tweet, “Take away the subsidies. It will only help Tesla.”
In other words, Musk favors a policy change that will reduce overall adoption of EVs, because it will hurt his competition, perhaps driving some of his competitors out of the EV market entirely. Bad for the climate, but good for Elon Musk.
Then we have the rest of the Trump administration’s agenda to roll back climate progress. To date there is zero evidence that Musk has suggested that Trump dial back his “drill, baby, drill” agenda or appoint administration figures who are anything less than fossil fuel enthusiasts. Quite the opposite: When Trump posted on Truth Social that “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals,” Musk responded by tweeting, “This is awesome.”
That it isn’t in Trump’s power to single-handedly waive “all Environmental approvals” isn’t the point, so much as the fact that Musk thrills to the idea of the government no longer bothering to enforce environmental laws. While the “Department of Government Efficiency” Trump has tasked Musk with creating is neither a department, nor part of the government, nor devoted to efficiency, it nonetheless stands as a symbol of Musk’s close relationship with Trump and his ability to influence Trump’s decisions, particularly given how little Trump actually cares about policy areas other than immigration and foreign trade. It has become hard to envision Musk acting as anything other than an accelerant on Trump’s worst environmental instincts.
Musk’s shift to the right will continue to have serious national consequences in both government policy and public debate. He bought Twitter in 2022 with the stated intention of removing much of its content moderation in the name of “free speech,” with the predictable result that the renamed X quickly became a sewer of far-right extremism and misinformation of all kinds. As multiple analyses have shown, climate denialism and deceit have proliferated on X, making it one of the premier vectors of influence for those who would thwart efforts to address the climate crisis.
There is no reason to believe that this concerns Musk in any way. The man who once had the key insight that the way to fight climate change was to make EVs cool now thinks nothing is cooler than getting retweets and likes from the right-wing trolls who consider him their king.
At this point, one might even question whether Musk ever cared about climate change, or if concern about warming was just an engine that he realized could make him rich and feed his grandiose dreams of world domination. The answer to that question is: It doesn’t matter. Whatever he might once have thought, Musk has been transformed. He is no longer a force for good in the climate fight; instead, he’ll be one more obstacle to ensuring the future of the planet. If only he didn’t have the ability to do so much damage.
https://heatmap.news/politics/elon-musk-climate-enemy
date: 2024-12-16, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday thanked deep-pocketed Democratic donors who raised record sums in last month’s election loss to President-elect Donald Trump and urged them not to lose hope and to remain politically engaged.
Biden and Harris, along with their spouses, in remarks at the Democratic National Committee holiday reception sought to buck up key donors who the Democratic Party needs to stay committed as it tries to pick up the pieces. Republicans scored a decisive victory taking the White House and Senate while maintaining control of the House in an election where donors of all political stripes spent about $4.7 billion.
“We all get knocked down. My dad would say when you get knocked down, you just got to get up,” Biden said. “The measure of a person or a party is how fast they get back up.”
Harris, who stepped in as the party’s presidential nominee after Biden ended his campaign in July following his disastrous debate performance, praised donors for putting their time — and checkbooks — into backing her and Democrats that they believed in.
Democrats, their allied super PACs and other groups raised about $2.9 billion, compared to about $1.8 billion for the Republicans. Harris noted that Democrats raised a whopping $700 million over just 700 events organized by the Democratic finance committee.
“You rallied, you opened your homes, you reached out to your friends and your family,” said Harris, who will soon begin weighing in earnest her own future and whether to make another White House run. “You put your personal capital — and by that I mean your relationships — at stake to talk with people because you care so deeply, and you connected with people and took the time to remind them of what is at stake and what was at stake.”
While Biden acknowledged the sting that Democrats continue to feel about last month’s loss, he said they should take pride in what they accomplished.
The administration’s signature achievements include a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S., and a surge in federal environmental spending through the Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed into law in 2022 after it cleared Congress solely with Democratic votes.
“We could never have gotten as much done as we did without you,” Biden said. “You not only contributed to the campaign, but you did something, I think, even more important. You were willing to lend your names, your reputation, your character to the effort.”
Biden said that he intended to remain engaged with party politics once he leaves office on Jan. 20. He also predicted that he expected Harris would remain a central character in the party’s future.
“You’re not going anywhere kid. We aren’t letting you,” Biden said to Harris.
date: 2024-12-15, from: VOA News USA
Omaha, Nebraska — A tornado near a mall in central California swept up cars, uprooted trees and sent several people to the hospital. In San Francisco, authorities issued the first-ever tornado warning.
Elsewhere, inclement weather plagued areas of the U.S., with dangerous conditions including heavy snow in upstate New York, a major ice storm in Midwest states and severe weather warnings around Lake Tahoe.
The ice storm beginning Friday evening created treacherous driving conditions across Iowa and eastern Nebraska Friday and into Saturday and prompted temporary closures of Interstate 80 after numerous cars and trucks slid off the road. In upstate New York, more than 33 inches (84 centimeters) was reported near Orchard Park, which is often a landing point for lake-effect snow.
On Saturday, a tornado touched down near a shopping mall in Scotts Valley, California, about 110 kilometers south of San Francisco, around 1:40 p.m. The tornado overturned cars and toppled trees and utility poles, the National Weather Service said. The Scotts Valley Police Department said several people were injured and taken to hospitals.
In San Francisco, some trees toppled onto cars and streets and damaged roofs. The
damage was due to 129-kph straight-line winds, not a tornado, weather
service meteorologist Dalton Behringer said Sunday.
Roger Gass, a meteorologist in the weather service’s office in Monterey, California, said the warning of a possible tornado in San Francisco was a first for the city, noting an advanced alert did not go out before the last tornado struck nearly 20 years ago.
“I would guess there wasn’t a clear signature on radar for a warning in 2005,” said Gass, who was not there at the time.
The fast-moving storm prompted warnings for residents to take shelter, but few people have basements in the area.
More than 30 centimeters of snow fell at some Lake Tahoe ski resorts, and 181-kph gust of wind was recorded at the Mammoth Mountain resort south of Yosemite National Park, according to the weather service’s office in Reno, Nevada. Up to 90 centimeters of snow was forecast for the Sierra Nevada mountaintops.
The weekend Tahoe Live music festival at Palisades Tahoe ski resort in California went ahead as planned in spite of a snowstorm Saturday. Lil Wayne and Diplo were scheduled to perform Sunday, the festival’s website said. An avalanche warning was in effect at least until Monday morning in the area.
Interstate 80 was closed along a 130-kilometer stretch from Applegate, California, to the Nevada line just west of Reno on Saturday. The California Highway Patrol reopened the road in the afternoon for passenger vehicles with chains or four-wheel drive and snow tires.
The severe weather in the Midwest resulted in at least one death. The Washington County Sheriff’s office in Nebraska said a 57-year-old woman died after she lost control of her pickup on Highway 30 near Arlington and hit an oncoming truck. The other driver sustained minor injuries.
Businesses announced plans to open late Saturday as temperatures rose high enough in the afternoon to melt the ice in most places.
“Luckily some warmer air is moving in behind this to make it temporary,” said Dave Cousins, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Davenport, Iowa.
Tens of thousands of people in western Washington state lost electricity Saturday as the system delivered rain and gusty winds, local news outlets reported.
date: 2024-12-15, from: VOA News USA
Denver, Colorado — Dozens of kids cheered on a festively decked-out plane in Denver on Saturday when the pilot announced their destination for the day: the North Pole.
More than 100 children, some of whom have serious health issues, were then taken on a roughly 45-minute flight near the city before landing back at Denver International Airport and being towed to a hangar transformed by United Airlines employees and volunteers into the North Pole.
Streamers, paper snowflakes and tufts of cotton resembling feathery snow dotted the plane and seats. Flight personnel paraded a bubble machine up and down the aisle to shouts of “bubbles, bubbles, bubbles” from the excited children. Holiday songs played in the background and there were apple snacks and juice for all.
Before landing, the children were asked to close their window shades. When they opened, the kids were met by the sight of a waiting Santa and Mrs. Claus and a host of elves. An ice cream truck was on hand and the children received gifts.
Bryce Bosley, 6, was tickled to see Santa and all the North Pole had to offer.
“The North Pole is fun because there’s games, food, and all the activities are really fun,” he said.
United Capt. Bob Zimmermann, the holiday flight’s pilot, was struck by the joy and wonder of the youngsters.
“Throughout the year I’ll think of the fantasy flight,” he said. “When life seems to get tough or I want to complain about something, I remember these kids and the joy and the love and what this feels like, and it just keeps my life in perspective.”
United partnered with Make-A-Wish Colorado, Girls Inc., Children’s Hospital Colorado and Rocky Mountain Down Syndrome Association to invite Denver-area kids ages 3 to 10 years on the flight.
For more than 30 years, United has staged its annual “fantasy flights” to fictional North Poles at airports around the world to bring holiday cheer to children and their families.
This year they took place in 13 cities, starting Dec. 5 in Honolulu and then in Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, London, Chicago, San Francisco, Tokyo, Cleveland and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and on the island of Guam. Newark, New Jersey, also had a flight Saturday.
Jonna McGrath, United’s vice president for operations at its Denver hub, has participated in 29 flights and said it is one of her favorite days of the year.
“It gives them a day where they are away from some of the challenges they face in their day-to-day life,” said McGrath, who was dressed as an elf. “Bringing a little magic and some gifts to their holiday season is something they’ll never forget.”
date: 2024-12-15, from: VOA News USA
It’s been a very long time since vendors sold the American chestnut on city sidewalks. It’s no longer the variety whose smell some people associate with Christmastime as it wafts from street carts. Because it’s virtually extinct.
But memories of the American chestnut’s legacy keep resurfacing for the researchers who want to bring it back. They describe its wood that paneled the homes and schoolrooms of their grandparents, or the photographs of men on the street corners of old Baltimore, with hot bags of nuts cooked on charcoal.
“You can feel that connection to a place, and that connection to utility, and the connection to the importance that this tree played in virtually every aspect of the lives of people,” said Sara Fern Fitzsimmons, chief conservation officer with The American Chestnut Foundation, which is working to restore the tree to flourish as it once did.
Fitzsimmons said that will likely take a lot longer than many chestnut enthusiasts had hoped. Researchers have hit roadblocks with attempts to breed or genetically modify a version that can withstand the invasive blight that has hammered the species since the early 1900s. If and when they do find the right variety, they’ll need to figure out how to plant it and help it thrive in forests that are under pressure from climate change, globalization and development.
Once a hallmark of forests from Georgia to New England, American chestnuts now exist mostly as a vast network of root systems underground, sending up shoots. They grow for a time, but the fungal blight takes hold when the trees start maturing. East Asian varieties, like those that introduced the blight in the first place, are immune to the blight, and produce most of the edible chestnuts for fall and winter snacking.
Still, American chestnut trees are better-suited for timber, they’re culturally loved by people all over North America and they used to be an important species for the ecological health of forests, providing a reliable source of nutritious food and shelter for wildlife and humans alike. “It was really a pretty significant species to lose,” said Amy Brunner, an associate professor at Virginia Tech who works on the tree’s genetics. “The more diversity you lose, the less resilient that forest ecosystem is.”
The American Chestnut Foundation, among others, has been trying for decades to breed a hybrid that is mostly American in genetics but with the fungus-fighting traits of the Chinese type. Fitzsimmons said breeders have learned just how difficult that is — blight resistance involves several different genes, and it has proven hard to separate them from the traits that distinguish Chinese chestnuts.
To speed the process, some scientists have been working on genetically modifying American chestnuts to see if they can boost their immunity that way instead. But progress was delayed by a recent mix-up involving two versions of a genetically modified American chestnut that scientists at State University of New York had hoped could get through the regulatory process as soon as this year.
“It kind of stinks that it happened because now it’s taking a little bit longer than we had hoped,” said Linda McGuigan, a research support specialist at the university. But scientists there and elsewhere are continuing to pursue many avenues.
“I don’t think you will get there, to all you desire, without both,” Brunner said, referring to the two main methods of breeding and genetic modification. Breeding is vital for achieving enough genetic diversity for trees to adapt to a changing world, she said, but added that she thinks some genetic manipulation will be needed to get to enough blight resistance for American chestnuts to stand a chance.
Meanwhile, other scientists are working on projects to tackle another big challenge ahead for chestnuts: where to plant them. If a successful tree is cobbled together with genes taken from trees from Tennessee to New York, where would it have the best chance at surviving, given how a warming planet is changing habitat around the world?
A team at Virginia Tech published a paper this summer to try to answer that question. They looked at 32 climate variables and compared them to projected future climates, then calculated the shortest distance that regionally specific American chestnuts would have to move to offset warming. The idea was to one day help them survive a new climate while keeping them as close as possible to where they once thrived.
“I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to say it’s revolutionary” for teams at The American Chestnut Foundation, said Fitzsimmons, who contributed data to the project. She said the project will help them better figure out where to collect genes from the immature trees that remain across the country.
Tom Kimmerer, a forest scientist who taught at the University of Kentucky, is working on a book about trees including the American chestnut. Kimmerer, who was not involved in the research, called it “robust and well supported” and “critically important to the success of the chestnut.”
Stacy Clark, a research forester at the U.S. Forest Service, said the findings are useful, but added that they need to be backed up with real-world experiments. “I think with advancements in genetics, they can probably get pretty fast data off of those field trials. But still, all of that takes time and effort, right?”
For now, forest scientists know their work might not pay off in their lifetimes. It’s a lesson that became clear for the community when pioneering chestnut restoration experts Bill Powell and Chuck Maynard both died in the past 13 months. McGuigan supported both of their research for years as lab manager at SUNY’s college of environmental science and forestry.
“The project moves on, lives on. And we honor their memory,” McGuigan said. “I want to do something good for the future, for my children.”
date: 2024-12-15, from: VOA News USA
The Spider-Man spinoff “Kraven the Hunter” got off to a disastrous start in North American theaters this weekend.
The movie starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson earned only $11 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, making it one of the worst openings for a Marvel-adjacent property. Its box office take was even less than the film “Madame Web.”
The weekend’s other major studio release was Warner Bros.’ animated “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” which made $4.6 million. Made for about $30 million, the movie is set 183 years before the events of “The Lord of the Rings” films and was fast-tracked to ensure New Line did not lose the rights to Tolkien’s novels. Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens have been working on future live-action films for the franchise.
Meanwhile, the top of the charts again belonged to “Moana 2” and “Wicked.”
“Moana” added $26.6 million to its domestic total in its third weekend and $57.2 million internationally, bringing its global tally to $717 million. It’s now the fourth highest grossing film of the year, surpassing “Dune: Part Two.”
“Wicked,” which is in its fourth weekend, brought in another $22.5 million to take second place. The Universal musical has made over $359 million domestically and over $500 million worldwide.
“Gladiator II” also made $7.8 million, bringing its domestic total to $145.9 million in four weeks.
“Kraven the Hunter” is the latest misfire from Sony in its attempt to mine the Spider-Man universe for spin-off franchises without the lucrative web slinger himself. “Kraven” joins “Madame Web” and “Morbius” in franchise additions that fell flat with both audiences and critics. The one exception on this rollercoaster journey has been the “Venom” trilogy, which has made over $1.8 billion worldwide.
The R-rated “Kraven the Hunter” was directed by J.C. Chandor and faced a number of delays, partly due to the Hollywood strikes. It was shot nearly three years ago and originally slated to hit theaters in January 2023. The film cost a reported $110 million to produce and was co-financed by TSG. Internationally, it made $15 million, but its potential for longevity appears limited: It currently carries a 15% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and got a C grade on CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences.
“It’s not always a guarantee that you’ll be able to connect with audiences when you have a spinoff character,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “General audiences seem to want to know exactly what they’re getting.”
Several awards contenders opened in limited release over the weekend, including Paramount’s “September 5” about ABC’s coverage of the Munich Olympics hostage crisis. Amazon MGM and Orion’s “Nickel Boys,” based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winner about an abusive reform school in Florida, opened in two theaters in New York. It averaged $30,422 per screen and will be expanding to Los Angeles before going nationwide in the coming weeks.
Some big hitters are on the way in the home stretch of the 2024 box office. “Mufasa” and “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” will hit in the coming weeks along with a bevy of arthouse and adult releases like “Babygirl,” “Nosferatu” and “A Complete Unknown.”
The box office has seen a dramatic recovery since June, when it was down nearly 28% from the previous year. The deficit now stands at 4.8%.
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
“Moana 2,” $26.6 million.
“Wicked,” $22.5 million.
“Kraven the Hunter,” $11 million.
“Gladiator II,” $7.8 million.
“Red One,” $4.6 million.
“Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” $4.5 million.
“Interstellar” (rerelease), $3.3 million.
“Pushpa: The Rule — Part 2,” $1.6 million.
“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $1.4 million.
“Queer,” $790,954.
date: 2024-12-15, from: VOA News USA
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser says it’s time to figure out where dozens of unexplained drones flying over eastern U.S. states are coming from and whether any ill intent is involved.
Republican Representative Michael Waltz, from Florida and set to join Trump’s White House team when the president-elect takes office January 20, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, “We need to get to the bottom of it.”
For weeks now, residents in the state of New Jersey, which borders New York City, and other states to the north and south along the Atlantic Ocean coastline have reported seeing more than 5,000 supposed drones, a figure U.S. officials have concluded is wildly inflated.
All manner of conspiracy theories has been offered for the unexplained sightings, including U.S. government spying and the deployment of Iran-launched drones from a mothership off U.S. eastern coastal waters.
Waltz called them “long-loitering, could-be dangerous” drones. He credited the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden for trying to allay fears and resolve any mystery about the drones but offered no explanation himself.
“We need more transparency,” Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, told the CBS show. “This can’t be the future.”
On Saturday, officials from the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation stressed that most of the recent purported drone sightings in New Jersey — the state with the most reports — and elsewhere have been manned aircraft and posed no national security threat.
An FBI official told reporters that the agency was working with 50 local, state and federal partners and had determined that fewer than 100 of the more than 5,000 reported sightings had turned out to merit further investigation.
“The combination of efforts so far … to include technical equipment, tip line information and noted consults has … not found any evidence to support large-scale [unmanned aerial system] activities,” the official said, adding that many of the sightings occurred along regular flight paths.
The official said more investigations are under way to look at the remaining cases, including analysis of radar and intelligence.
“We can’t ignore the sightings that have been there,” the official said. “We’re doing our best to find the origin of those drone activities, but I think there has been a slight over-reaction” in the number of claimed drone sightings.
U.S. officials say they have confirmed drone sightings over military bases in New Jersey, including Picatinny Arsenal, but found no evidence that a foreign government had launched the drones. National security officials, however, have not been able to figure out who has been operating the unexplained drones.
State and local officials in eastern seaboard states have expressed concern. Larry Hogan, a former Maryland governor, posted on social media Friday that he had seen “what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky” above his residence in the state. “The public is growing increasingly concerned and frustrated with the complete lack of transparency and the dismissive attitude of the federal government.”
President-elect Trump suggested Saturday that the Biden administration was withholding information about the drone sightings and that the devices should be shot down. Republican Representative Christopher Smith of New Jersey said Friday in a statement that the White House’s attitude toward the sightings had been “dismissive.”
U.S. officials said Saturday the administration had sent New Jersey officials radar technology with an “electro-optical infrared camera system” to track the devices.
Last week, White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby said an investigation of the drone sightings had not turned up any illegal activity.
“To the contrary, upon review of available imagery, it appears that many of the reported sightings are actually manned aircraft that are being operated lawfully,” Kirby said.
date: 2024-12-15, from: VOA News USA
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates communications in the United States. Carr, an FCC commissioner since 2017, has taken aim at big tech and China’s influence on U.S. communications. VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports.
https://www.voanews.com/a/incoming-fcc-chair-is-big-tech-critic-who-worries-about-china/7902069.html
date: 2024-12-15, from: VOA News USA
A large number of mysterious drones have been reported flying over parts of New Jersey and the East Coast in recent weeks, sparking speculation and concern over who sent them and why.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy wrote to President Joe Biden asking for answers. New Jersey’s new senator, Andy Kim, spent Thursday night on a drone hunt in rural northern New Jersey, and posted about it on X.
Murphy and law enforcement officials have stressed that the drones don’t appear to be a threat to public safety, but many state and municipal lawmakers have nonetheless called for stricter rules about who can fly the unmanned aircraft.
The FBI is among several agencies investigating and has asked residents to share videos, photos and other information they may have about the drones.
What’s the deal with the drones in New Jersey?
Dozens of witnesses have reported seeing them in the state starting in November.
At first they were spotted flying along the scenic Raritan River, which feeds the Round Valley Reservoir, the state’s largest aquifer, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of New York City.
But soon sightings were reported statewide, including near the Picatinny Arsenal, a military research and manufacturing facility, and over President-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster.
The aircraft have also recently been spotted in coastal areas.
Republican U.S. Rep. Chris Smith said a Coast Guard commanding officer told him a dozen drones closely followed a Guard lifeboat near Barnegat Light and Island Beach State Park in Ocean County over the weekend.
Federal officials offer assurances that drones don’t pose a threat
The growing anxiety among some residents is not lost on the Biden administration, which has faced criticism from Trump for not dealing with the matter more aggressively.
In a call with reporters Saturday that was organized by the White House, senior officials from the FBI, Pentagon, FAA and other agencies sought to assure people that the drones are not a national security or public safety threat or the handywork of a malicious foreign actor.
An FBI official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said the public concern is understandable but added, “I think there has been a slight overreaction.”
Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday that the military’s initial assessment after consulting with the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Council — that the drones are not of foreign origin — remained unchanged.
New Jersey congressman wants the military to take action
A New Jersey congressman has urged the Pentagon to authorize the use of force to bring down one or more drones to try to figure out who deployed them.
The objects could be downed over the ocean or in an unpopulated area on land, Smith said Saturday at a news conference.
“Why can’t we bag at least one of these drones and get to the bottom of it?” Smith said.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, another Republican Jersey Shore-area congressman, has also called for the military to shoot down the drones.
Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden said people should not take it into their own hands to shoot down drones, which would break state and federal laws.
Drones have been spotted over New York City
Drone sightings have now been reported in New York, where a permit is required, and Mayor Eric Adams said the city was investigating and collaborating with New Jersey and federal officials.
The runways at Stewart International Airport — about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of the city — were shut down for about one hour Friday night because of drone activity in the airspace, Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
“This has gone too far,” she said in a statement.
The governor called on Congress to strengthen the FAA’s oversight of drones and give more investigative authority to state and local law enforcement.
“Extending these powers to New York State and our peers is essential,” she said. “Until those powers are granted to state and local officials, the Biden administration must step in by directing additional federal law enforcement to New York and the surrounding region to ensure the safety of our critical infrastructure and our people.”
Are these drones dangerous?
The White House has said that a review of the reported sightings shows that many of them are actually manned aircraft being flown lawfully, echoing the opinion of officials and drone experts.
The federal Homeland Security Department and FBI also said in a joint statement they have no evidence that the sightings pose “a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus.”
Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia, who was briefed by the Department of Homeland Security, said the reported drones have been up to 6 feet (1.8 meters) in diameter and sometimes travel with their lights switched off. This is much larger than those typically flown by drone hobbyists, and she said they appear to avoid detection by traditional methods such as helicopter and radio.
Who sent the drones?
Authorities say they do not know.
The FBI, Homeland Security and state police are investigating the sightings. Authorities say they don’t know if it is one drone that has been spotted many times or if there are multiple aircraft being flown in a coordinated effort.
Speculation has raged online, with some expressing concerns that the drone or drones could be part of a nefarious plot by foreign agents.
Officials stress that ongoing state and federal investigations have found no evidence to support those concerns, but Rep. Smith on Saturday echoed such speculation.
“The elusive maneuvering of these drones suggests a major military power sophistication that begs the question whether they have been deployed to test our defense capabilities — or worse — by violent dictatorships, perhaps maybe Russia, or China, or Iran, or North Korea,” he said.
Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Wednesday that the aircraft are not U.S. military drones.
What have officials said about the sightings?
Trump has said he believes the government knows more than it’s saying. “Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!” he posted on his social media site.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said Thursday that the drones should be “shot down, if necessary.”
“We should be doing some very urgent intelligence analysis and take them out of the skies, especially if they’re flying over airports or military bases,” Blumenthal said.
Experts, however, warn not to shoot at anything in the sky.
Trisha Bushey, 48, of Lebanon Township, New Jersey, lives near Round Valley Reservoir where there have been numerous sightings and said she doesn’t believe the assertion that the drones aren’t a risk to public safety.
“How can you say it’s not posing a threat if you don’t know what it is?” she said. “I think that’s why so many people are uneasy.”
Are drones allowed in New Jersey?
The flying of drones for recreational and commercial use is legal in the state, but it is subject to local and Federal Aviation Administration regulations and flight restrictions.
In New York City, a permit is required to take off or land an unmanned aircraft.
Operators must be FAA-certified.
Have drones been spotted anywhere else?
Sightings also have been reported in Virginia and elsewhere.
Two people said they spotted an aircraft Thursday night near Virginia Beach that was unlike any other they’ve seen.
The object was over the ocean, and they watched as it slowly moved over an Army National Guard facility, John Knight told The Virginian-Pilot.
“It was definitely different,” said Knight, who took videos of what he thinks was a drone the size of a small truck.
“It flew like a helicopter but made no noise,” he added.
The Virginia National Guard did not have any aircraft operating in the area Thursday night, according to spokesperson A.A. “Cotton” Puryear. Its leadership is aware of the incident and it’s under investigation.
Another military installation in the area is Naval Air Station Oceana Dam Neck Annex. NAS Oceana, the East Coast master jet base in Virginia Beach, is aware of recent reports of sightings in the area and is coordinating with federal and state agencies to ensure the safety of its personnel and operations, Katie Hewett, public affairs officer, said Friday by email.
Knight submitted the videos Thursday night to the FBI tip line.
In Massachusetts, 10 to 15 drones were reported hovering over a home Thursday night in Harwich on Cape Cod. A resident told police they were bright and she observed them for more than an hour.
Earlier that evening, an off-duty police officer in the same town noticed similar activity near a public safety complex, police said. The information was forwarded to the FBI and Massachusetts State Police.
Drones were also spotted last month in the U.K. The U.S. Air Force said several small unmanned aircraft were detected near four military bases in England that are used by American forces.
date: 2024-12-15, from: The Lever News
The democracy crisis led to these primal screams of outrage over health care.
https://www.levernews.com/murder-by-spreadsheet/
date: 2024-12-15, from: The Lever News
What it will take for Americans to finally demand change?
https://www.levernews.com/the-health-care-crisis-is-the-democracy-crisis/
date: 2024-12-15, from: VOA News USA
Hundreds of thousands of Rhode Island residents’ personal and bank information, including Social Security numbers, were likely hacked by an international cybercriminal group asking for a ransom, state officials said on Saturday.
In what Rhode Island officials described as extortion, the hackers threatened to release the stolen information unless they were paid an undisclosed amount of money.
The breached data affects people who use the state’s government assistance programs and includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and healthcare purchased through the state’s HealthSource RI, Governor Dan McKee announced on Friday.
Hackers gained access to RIBridges, the state’s online portal for obtaining social services earlier this month, the governor’s office said in a statement, but the breach was not confirmed by its vendor, Deloitte, until Friday.
“Deloitte confirmed that there is a high probability that a cybercriminal has obtained files with personally identifiable information from RIBridges,” the governor’s office said in a statement on Saturday.
A representative from McKee’s office was not immediately available to Reuters for comment.
Anyone who has applied for or received benefits through those programs since 2016 could be affected.
The state directed Deloitte to shut down RIBridges to remediate the threat, and for the time being, anyone applying for new benefits will have to do so on paper applications until the system is back up.
Households believed to have been affected will receive a letter from the state notifying them of the problem and explaining steps to be taken to help protect their data and bank accounts.
https://www.voanews.com/a/hackers-demand-ransom-from-rhode-islanders-after-data-breach/7901811.html
date: 2024-12-15, from: VOA News USA
OMAHA, NEBRASKA — A major ice storm created treacherous driving conditions across Iowa and eastern Nebraska this weekend and prompted temporary closures of Interstate 80 after numerous cars and trucks slid off the road.
Many events were canceled across the region when the storm hit Friday evening, and businesses announced plans to open late Saturday as officials urged people to stay home if possible. Temperatures rose high enough in the afternoon to melt the ice in most places, however.
“Luckily some warmer air is moving in behind this to make it temporary,” said Dave Cousins, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s office in Davenport, Iowa.
At least one person died in a crash caused by the icy roads in eastern Nebraska. The Washington County Sheriff’s office said a 57-year-old woman died after she lost control of her pickup on Highway 30 near Arlington and hit an oncoming truck. The other driver sustained minor injuries.
Trees topple
Elsewhere a storm and wind gusts of up to 96 kilometers per hour prompted the first tornado warning in San Francisco, California, and caused some damage. Parts of neighboring San Mateo County were also included in the warning, which went out at 5:51 a.m. to about 1 million people in the area. It was lifted by 6:15 a.m.
The storm toppled trees onto cars and streets and damaged some roofs in San Francisco, which has not seen a tornado since 2005, according to the Weather Service. The damage was being assessed to determine if there was indeed a tornado.
“This was the first-ever warning for a possible tornado in San Francisco. I would guess there wasn’t a clear signature on radar for a warning in 2005,” said Roger Gass, a meteorologist in the Weather Service’s Monterey, California. He said he was not there in 2005.
The fast-moving storm prompted warnings for residents to take shelter, but few people have basements in the area.
“The biggest thing that we tell people in the city is to put as many walls between you and the outside as possible,” meteorologist Dalton Behringer said.
Snow falls at ski resorts
In upstate New York, people were digging out after heavy snow fell. More than 84 centimeters was reported near Orchard Park, where residents are used to dealing with lake-effect snow this time of year.
And in Nevada, up to 91 centimeters of snow was forecast for Sierra Nevada mountaintops, with a winter storm warning in effect through 10 p.m. More than one-third of a meter fell at some Lake Tahoe ski resorts, according to the National Weather Service’s Reno office.
Interstate 80 was closed for about an 130-kilometer stretch from Applegate, California, to the Nevada state line just west of Reno, where rain was falling and a winter weather advisory remained in effect through the afternoon.
In western Washington, tens of thousands of people lost electricity Saturday, local news outlets reported, amid a system that brought rain and gusty winds.
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
ABC News has agreed to give $15 million to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a lawsuit over comments that anchor George Stephanopoulos made on air involving the civil case brought against Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll, a court document filed on Saturday showed.
The lawsuit, filed on March 19 in U.S. District Court in Southern Florida, accused Stephanopoulos of making the statements with malice and a disregard for the truth. It said the statements were distributed widely to third parties and repeated.
“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” an ABC News spokesperson said in a statement.
The lawsuit cites a March 10 interview with U.S. Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican who has spoken publicly about being raped as a teenager. During the interview, Stephanopoulos said Trump was found liable for rape and asked her how she could endorse the candidate.
According to the settlement, ABC News must publish by Sunday a statement at the bottom of a March 10 online article that accompanied the interview.
“ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Representative Nancy Mace on ABC’s”This Week on March 10, 2024,” the statement must say, according to the court document.
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
New York — Officials from the White House, FBI and DHS on Saturday stressed that most of the recently reported drone sightings in New Jersey and nearby states involved manned aircraft, and there was no evidence of any national security threat.
An FBI official told reporters during an impromptu briefing that the agency was working with 50 local, state and federal partners to look into increased reports. The official said less than 100 of the over 5,000 reported sightings had turned out to merit further investigation, and all of the large fixed-wing reported sightings so far involved manned aircraft.
“The combination of efforts so far … to include technical equipment, tip line information and noted consults has … not found any evidence to support large-scale [unmanned aerial systems] activities,” the official said, adding that many of the sightings occurred along regular flight paths.
Extensive efforts were underway to investigate the remaining cases, using interviews and analysis of radar and intelligence, the official added.
“We can’t ignore the sightings that have been there,” the official said. “We’re doing our best to find the origin of those drone activities, but I think there has been a slight over-reaction.”
A spate of reported drone sightings that began in New Jersey in mid-November spread in recent days to include Maryland, Massachusetts and other states. The sightings have garnered media attention and prompted creation of a Facebook page called “New Jersey Mystery Drones — let’s solve it” with 56,000 online members.
U.S. President Joe Biden is receiving regular updates on the issue, a White House official said.
On Cape Cod in Massachusetts, residents and a police officer in Harwich reported seeing 10-15 drones flying in the Friday night sky, the Boston Herald reported.
Police relayed the information to the Boston FBI and Massachusetts State Police.
Governor Maura Healey said on Facebook that she is also “aware of a growing number of drone sightings across Massachusetts and we’re monitoring the situation closely.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Saturday called for a boost in federal law enforcement efforts after the runways at a local airport in the Hudson Valley were shut down for one hour due to drone activity on Friday.
“This has gone too far,” Hochul said in a statement on the social media network X, urging the Biden administration to boost law enforcement in New York and other areas, and calling on Congress to pass drone reform legislation.
An official with the Federal Aviation Administration said a temporary ban on drone activity had been put in place over Picatinny Arsenal, a military base in Wharton, New Jersey, that was due to expire on December 26 and could be made permanent.
There had been drone sightings over Picatinny and another naval weapons station in December, a military official told reporters, but there was no intelligence or observation that they were linked to a foreign actor or had malicious intent. Drone operations over military installations are generally banned, but occur from time to time, the official added.
A second ban was put in place over Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that was due to expire on December 20, but could be extended, the FAA official said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/mystery-drones-still-causing-concern-over-us-northeast-/7901613.html
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday named his social media platform CEO Devin Nunes to lead an intelligence advisory panel and said his former intelligence chief Richard Grenell would run “special missions” in places such as U.S. adversaries Venezuela and North Korea.
“Ric will work in some of the hottest spots around the World, including Venezuela and North Korea,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Ric will continue to fight for Peace through Strength, and always put AMERICA FIRST.”
Trump did not name any other specific countries such as Iran in his post naming Grenell as the “Presidential Envoy for Special Missions.”
Grenell previously served as acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s 2017-21 term and was Trump’s ambassador to Germany and a special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations.
Nunes, a former U.S. lawmaker who runs Trump’s Truth Social platform, will serve as chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which offers independent assessments of intelligence agencies’ effectiveness and planning.
A longtime Trump defender who led the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee during part of Trump’s first White House term, Nunes will remain CEO while also serving on the White House panel, Trump said in a separate post on Truth Social, which is part of Trump Media & Technology Group.
As committee chair, Nunes alleged that the FBI had conspired against Trump during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections in which Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Devin will draw on his experience as former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, served as an aide to Nunes in the U.S. House of Representatives.
A 2017 U.S. intelligence report said Russian President Vladimir Putin had directed a sophisticated influence campaign to denigrate Clinton and support Trump in the 2016 election campaign. The Kremlin denied meddling and Trump denied any collusion with Russia.
Trump has vowed to pursue political adversaries and officials who investigated him when he begins his second term on January 20.
Trump on Saturday also named IBM executive and former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official Troy Edgar to serve as the department’s deputy secretary. He also said he would nominate businessmen Bill White and Edward Walsh to serve as U.S. ambassadors to Belgium and Ireland, respectively.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-taps-truth-social-ceo-nunes-to-lead-intelligence-board-/7901587.html
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had hip replacement surgery Saturday at a U.S. military hospital in Germany after falling while at an event in Luxembourg with other members of Congress.
Pelosi, 84, “is well on the mend,” said Ian Krager, a Pelosi spokesperson.
Krager, said in a statement that she is “currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals” and is unable to attend the remainder of events on her trip.
He did not describe the nature of her injury or give any additional details, but a person familiar with the incident said Pelosi tripped and fell while at an event with the other members of Congress. Another person familiar with the situation said she injured her hip. The people requested anonymity to discuss the fall because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly.
Pelosi thanked the staff at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and the hospital in Luxembourg, where she was also treated, for “their excellent care and kindness.”
She was in Europe with a bipartisan congressional delegation to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II.
Among those on the trip was Representative Michael McCaul, who posted on social media Friday that he was “praying for a speedy recovery” for Pelosi. The two lawmakers were captured holding hands in a group photo that day at the U.S. Embassy in Luxembourg.
Pelosi was first elected in 1987 and served as speaker twice. She stepped down from her leadership post two years ago but remained in Congress and was reelected to represent her San Francisco district in November.
https://www.voanews.com/a/pelosi-gets-hip-replaced-at-us-military-hospital-in-germany-/7901563.html
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
AQABA, JORDAN — American officials have been in direct contact with the terrorist-designated rebel group that led the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday.
Blinken, speaking at a news conference in Jordan, was the first U.S. official to publicly confirm contacts between the Biden administration and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which led a coalition of armed opposition groups that drove Assad from power and into asylum in Russia last weekend.
Along with counterparts from eight Arab nations and Turkey and senior officials from the European Union and United Nations, Blinken signed off on a set of principles meant to guide Syria’s transition to a peaceful, nonsectarian and inclusive country.
Blinken would not discuss details of the contacts but said it was important for the U.S. to convey messages to the group about its conduct and how it intends to govern in a transition period.
“Yes, we have been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken said in the port city of Aqaba. He added that “our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed and we’re prepared to help them do so.”
Blinken also stressed that “the success that we’ve had in ending the territorial caliphate” of the Islamic State group remains “a critical mission.” And citing the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish fighters who in recent years drove IS out of large areas of Syria, he said it was “very important at this moment that they continue that role because this is a moment of instability” in which IS “will seek to regroup and take advantage of.”
HTS, which was once an affiliate of al-Qaida, has been designed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department since 2018. That designation carries with it severe sanctions, including a ban on the provision of any “material support” to the group or its members. The sanctions do not, however, legally bar U.S. officials from communicating with designated groups.
In an interview Saturday on Syrian television, the group’s leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, did not address any direct contact with the United States, but said the new authorities in Damascus are in touch with Western embassies.
He also said that “we don’t intend to enter any conflict because there is general exhaustion in Syria.”
HTS has worked to establish security and start a political transition after seizing Damascus and has tried to reassure a public both stunned by Assad’s fall and concerned about extremist jihadis among the rebels. Insurgent leaders say the group has broken with its extremist past.
A joint statement after the meeting of foreign ministers urged all parties to cease hostilities in Syria and expressed support for a locally led transitional political process. It called for preventing the reemergence of extremist groups and ensuring the security and safe destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles.
“We don’t want Syria to fall into chaos,” Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told journalists.
A separate statement by Arab foreign ministers called for U.N.-supervised elections based on a new constitution approved by Syrians. Their statement condemned Israel’s incursion into the buffer zone with Syria and adjacent sites over the past week as a “heinous occupation” and demanded the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
U.S. officials say al-Sharaa has been making welcomed comments about protecting minority and women’s rights but they remain skeptical that he will follow through on them in the long run.
On Friday, the rebels and Syria’s unarmed opposition worked to safely turn over to U.S. officials an American man who had been imprisoned by Assad.
U.S. officials are continuing their search for Austin Tice, an American journalist who disappeared 12 years ago near Damascus. “We have impressed upon everyone we’ve been in contact with the importance of helping find Austin Tice and bringing him home,” Blinken said.
In other developments:
—Turkey reopened its embassy in Damascus, becoming the first country to do so since the end of Assad’s rule. The embassy suspended operations 12 years ago due to insecurity during Syria’s civil war.
—Al-Sharaa said in the TV interview that “the pretexts that Israel uses have ended” for its airstrikes that have destroyed much of the Syrian army’s assets in recent days. He said “the Israelis have crossed the rules of engagement” but that the insurgent group is not about to enter a conflict with Israel.
—The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants said the group has lost its military supply line through Syria but that the new authority there might reinstate the route.
—A Syrian war monitor and a citizen journalist said gunmen attacked members of a Syrian insurgent group, Failaq al-Sham, in the country’s coastal region, killing or wounding 15 of them on Saturday. That region is home to many members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
BELGRADE, SERBIA — The United States plans to introduce sanctions against Serbia’s main gas supplier, which is controlled by Russia, Serbia’s president said Saturday.
President Aleksandar Vucic told state RTS broadcaster that Serbia has been officially informed that the decision on sanctions will come into force on January 1 but that he has so far not received any related documents from the U.S.
There has been no comment from U.S. officials.
Serbia almost entirely depends on Russian gas, which it receives through pipelines in neighboring states. The gas is then distributed by Petroleum Industry of Serbia, which is majority-owned by Russia’s state oil monopoly Gazprom Neft.
Vucic said that after receiving the official documents, “we will talk to the Americans first, then we go talk to the Russians” to try to reverse the decision. “At the same time, we will try to preserve our friendly relations with the Russians and not to spoil relations with those who impose sanctions.”
Although formally seeking European Union membership, Serbia has refused to join Western sanctions against Russia over its invasion in Ukraine, in part because of the crucial Russian gas deliveries.
Vucic said that despite the embargo threat, “I’m not ready at this moment to discuss potential sanctions against Moscow.”
Asked if the threat of U.S. sanctions against Serbia could change with the arrival of Donald Trump’s administration in January, Vucic said, “We must first get the [official] documents, and then talk to the current administration, because we are in a hurry.”
The Serbian president is facing one of the biggest threats to more than a decade of his increasingly autocratic rule. Protests have been spreading by university students and others following the collapse last month of a concrete canopy at a railway station in the country’s north that killed 15 people on November 1.
Many in Serbia believe rampant corruption and nepotism among state officials led to sloppy work on the building reconstruction, which was part of a wider railroad project with Chinese state companies.
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
The economy was one of the biggest issues for voters in this year’s U.S. presidential election. As they await Donald Trump’s return to power, many Americans say they expect improving the economy will be one of his first priorities. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns has our story.
https://www.voanews.com/a/trump-promises-lower-prices-more-oil-for-us-economy/7901393.html
date: 2024-12-14, from: The Lever News
Two huge grocery chains can’t merge, a junk-fee loophole gets plugged, crypto fraud goes to trial, and the Supreme Court has a big day off.
https://www.levernews.com/you-love-to-see-it-big-grocerys-merger-diet/
date: 2024-12-14, from: Capital and Main
City officials are proposing stricter enforcement, higher fines and new technology in part to prevent rent-controlled apartments from being listed on Airbnb and Booking.com.
The post As the Olympics Approach, Los Angeles Considers Crackdown on Illegal Vacation Rentals appeared first on .
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
TOKYO — The partial transfer of U.S. Marines from Okinawa to Guam began on Saturday, 12 years after Japan and the United States agreed on their realignment to reduce the heavy burden of American troop presence on the southern Japanese island, officials said.
The relocation started with 100 members of III Marine Expeditionary Force stationed on Okinawa moving to the Pacific island for the initial logistical work, the U.S. Marine Corps and Japan’s Defense Ministry said in a joint statement.
Under the plan agreed between Tokyo and Washington in April 2012, about 9,000 of the 19,000 Marines currently stationed on Okinawa are to be moved out of Okinawa, including about 4,000 of them to be moved to the U.S. territory Guam in phases. Details, including the size and timing of the next transfer, were not immediately released.
The Marine Corps is committed to the defense of Japan and meeting operational requirements to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific, and it will maintain presence in the region “through a combination of stationing and rotating Marines in Japan, Guam and Hawaii,” the joint statement said.
Japan has paid up to $2.8 billion for the building of infrastructure at the U.S. bases on Guam, and the United States will fund the remaining costs. The two governments will continue to cooperate on the development of Camp Blaz, which will serve as the main installation for Marines stationed in Guam.
The Marines and Japan Self Defense Forces will conduct joint training in Guam, the statement said.
Okinawa, which was under U.S. postwar occupation until 1972, is still home to a majority of the more than 50,000 American troops based in Japan under a bilateral security pact, while 70% of U.S. military facilities are on Okinawa, which accounts for only 0.6% of Japanese land.
Many Okinawans have long complained about the heavy U.S. military presence on the island and say Okinawa faces noise, pollution, aircraft accidents and crime related to American troops.
The relocation is likely to be welcomed by residents, but how much improvement they will feel is uncertain because of the rapid Japanese military buildup on Okinawan islands as a deterrence to threats from China.
The start of the Marines relocation comes at a time of growing anti-U.S. military sentiment following a series of sexual assault cases involving American servicemembers.
On Thursday, a senior Air Force servicemember belonging to the Kadena Air Base was convicted of the kidnapping and sexual assault of a teenage girl last year, a case that triggered outrage on the island. The Naha District Court sentenced him to five years in prison.
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
Americans should eat more beans, peas and lentils and cut back on red and processed meats and starchy vegetables, all while continuing to limit added sugars, sodium and saturated fat.
That’s the advice released Tuesday by a panel of nutrition experts charged with counseling the U.S. government about the 2025 edition of the dietary guidelines that will form the cornerstone of federal food programs and policy.
But the 20-member panel didn’t weigh in on the growing role of ultraprocessed foods that have been linked to health problems, saying there’s not enough evidence to tell people to avoid them. And the group steered clear of updating controversial guidance on alcohol consumption, leaving that analysis to two outside reports expected to be released soon.
Overall, the recommendations for the 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines for Americans sound familiar, said Marion Nestle, a food policy expert.
“This looks like every other set of dietary guidelines since 1980: eat your veggies and reduce consumption of foods high in salt, sugar and saturated fat,” Nestle said in an email. “This particular statement says nothing about balancing calories, when overconsumption of calories, especially from ultra-processed foods, is the biggest challenge to the health of Americans.”
What the scientific panel said about healthy diets
The nutrition panel concluded that a healthy diet for people aged 2 years and older is higher in vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, whole grains, fish and vegetable oils that are higher in unsaturated fat.
It is lower in red and processed meats, sugar-sweetened foods and beverages, refined grains and saturated fat. It may also include fat-free or low-fat dairy and foods lower in sodium and may include plant-based foods.
The panel, which met for nearly two years, was the first to focus on the dietary needs of Americans through what they called a “health equity lens,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, a Massachusetts General Hospital obesity expert who was part of the group. That meant considering factors such as household income, race, ethnicity and culture when recommending healthy diets. It will help ensure that the guidance “reflects and includes various population groups,” she said in an email.
The panel didn’t come to conclusions on ultraprocessed foods or alcohol
Ultraprocessed foods include the snacks, sugary cereals and frozen meals that make up about 60% of the American diet.
The panel considered more than 40 studies, including several that showed links between ultraprocessed foods and becoming overweight or developing obesity. But the nutrition experts had concerns with the quality of the research, leaving them to conclude that the evidence was too limited to make recommendations.
That decision is likely to bump up against the views of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee to lead the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, who has questioned potential conflicts of interest among members of the dietary guidelines panel and vowed to crack down on ultraprocessed foods that contribute to chronic disease.
The panel also didn’t revise recommendations that suggest limiting alcohol intake to two drinks or less a day for men and one drink or less a day for women.
In 2020, the last time the guidance was updated, the government rejected the advice of scientific advisers to recommend less alcohol consumption.
Two groups — the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine and a committee of the government agency that oversees substance abuse — are expected to release reports in the coming months on the effects of moderate alcohol use to inform the guidelines.
Do Americans follow dietary guidelines?
The advisory panel acknowledged that the diets of most Americans don’t meet the current guidelines. More than half of all U.S. adults have one or more diet-related chronic health conditions and 18 million U.S. households have insecure sources of food, according to the report.
“Nutrition-related chronic health conditions and their precursors continue to threaten health through the lifespan,” the report concludes. “Which does not bode well for the future of health in the United States.”
What happens next?
The scientific report informs the dietary guidelines, which are updated every five years. Tuesday’s recommendations now go to HHS and the Agriculture Department, where officials will draft the final guidance set for release next year.
Starting Wednesday, the public will have 60 days to comment on the guidance. HHS and USDA officials will hold a public meeting January 16 to discuss the recommendations.
The new guidance, which will be finalized by the incoming Trump administration, is consistent with decades of federal efforts to reduce diet-related disease in the U.S., said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“Broadly, I think these are well-formulated recommendations that the incoming administration would do well to adopt,” Lurie said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/nutrition-experts-weigh-in-on-us-dietary-guidelines/7898473.html
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been hospitalized after she “sustained an injury” during an official engagement in Luxembourg, according to a spokesperson.
Pelosi, 84, was in Europe with a bipartisan congressional delegation to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Her spokesperson, Ian Krager, said in a statement that she is “currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals” and is unable to attend the remainder of events on her trip.
He did not describe the nature of her injury or give any additional details, but a person familiar with the incident said that Pelosi tripped and fell while at an event with the other members of Congress. Another person familiar with the situation said she injured her hip. The people requested anonymity to discuss the fall because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly.
Krager said that Pelosi “looks forward to returning home to the U.S. soon.”
Among the members on the trip was Representative Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas, who posted on social media that he was “praying for a speedy recovery” for Pelosi. The two lawmakers were captured holding hands in a group photo Friday at the U.S. Embassy in Luxembourg.
“I’m disappointed Speaker Emerita Pelosi won’t be able to join the rest of our delegation’s events this weekend as I know how much she looked forward to honoring our veterans,” McCaul wrote on X. “But she is strong, and I am confident she will be back on her feet in no time.”
The former leader’s fall comes two years after her husband, Paul, was attacked by a man with a hammer at their San Francisco home. The man, who was sentenced in October to 30 years in federal prison, broke into their home looking for Pelosi.
Pelosi, who was first elected in 1987 and served as speaker twice, stepped down from her leadership post two years ago but remained in Congress and was re-elected to represent her San Francisco district in November.
She has remained active in the two years since she left the top job, working with Democrats in private and in public and attending official events. Last summer, she was instrumental in her party’s behind the scenes push to urge President Joe Biden to leave the presidential ticket.
She attended the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington last weekend and was on the Senate floor Monday to attend the swearing in of her former Democratic House colleagues, Adam Schiff of California and Andy Kim of New Jersey.
Earlier this week, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, 82, tripped and fell in the Senate, spraining his wrist and cutting his face. McConnell, who is stepping down from his leadership post at the end of the year, missed Senate votes on Thursday after experiencing some stiffness in his leg from the fall, his office said.
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday sued a New York doctor for allegedly providing a Texas woman with abortion pills by telemedicine.
The lawsuit by the Republican attorney general, which appeared to be the first of its kind, could offer a test of conservative states’ power to stop abortion pills from reaching their residents.
New York is among the Democratic-led states that have passed so-called shield laws aiming to protect doctors who provide abortion pills to patients in other states. The law says New York will not cooperate with another state’s effort to prosecute, sue or otherwise penalize a doctor for providing the pills, as long as the doctor complies with New York law.
“As other states move to attack those who provide or obtain abortion care, New York is proud to be a safe haven for abortion access,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job and we will never cower in the face of intimidation or threats.”
In the lawsuit, filed in the District Court of Collin County, Paxton said that New Paltz, New York, Dr. Margaret Carpenter prescribed and provided mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs used in medication abortion, to a Texas woman via telemedicine.
Medication abortion accounts for more than half of U.S. abortions. It has drawn increasing attention since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision allowing states to ban abortion, which more than 20 have done.
The woman went to the hospital after experiencing bleeding as a complication of taking the drugs, which were subsequently discovered by her partner, according to the lawsuit.
Paxton claimed that Carpenter violated Texas’s abortion law and its occupational licensing law by practicing medicine in the state despite not being licensed there. He is seeking an injunction barring her from further violations of Texas’s abortion ban and at least $100,000 in civil penalties for each past violation.
Carpenter is a member of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which supports nationwide access to abortion through telemedicine, and helped start Hey Jane, an online telehealth clinic offering abortion pills, according to the coalition’s website. She could not immediately be reached for comment.
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — After more than two years of separation, Chinese migrant Duan Chunxia, 51, recently met face to face with her husband and daughter at Stewart Detention Center, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia.
“My wife has lost a lot of weight, and her hair turned gray,” her husband, Ni Jinfang, told VOA Mandarin in an emotional video interview. “Our daughter cried so much when she saw her mother. Her tears were all over her face and neck.”
That tearful reunion on December 1 was the latest in an emotional roller-coaster ride for the family as they’ve separately come to the United States seeking political asylum.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a surge in Chinese nationals entering the United States illegally and seeking asylum. Over the past year, those numbers have dwindled, and U.S. authorities are stepping up efforts to send a growing number back to China.
There is also increasing concern among undocumented migrants from China about President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to carry out mass deportations.
Deportation flights
Just days after Duan met with her family, she was scheduled to be sent back to China on a U.S. government-chartered removal flight.
That flight departed Monday, but Duan was not on it. Following a second asylum interview, authorities agreed to give her more time to appeal the deportation order.
The charter flight marked the fourth time in six months that the United States has deported undocumented migrants back to China. Three previous flights in June, October and November carried a total of at least 350 Chinese citizens back to their homeland.
The last previous large-scale repatriation occurred in 2018.
Growing cooperation
In a statement Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the flight “is yet another example of the department’s ongoing cooperation with [China] and other international partners to deter irregular migration.”
It added that DHS and its counterparts in China “also continue joint work to counter the human smuggling networks that facilitate irregular migration.” DHS did not say how many migrants were on the flight.
Chen Chuangchuang, an immigration lawyer in California, told VOA Mandarin that the Chinese and U.S. governments have cooperated more closely on immigration issues this year than previously.
“In the past, China rarely cooperated with the U.S. government in accepting illegal migrants,” Chen told VOA in a December phone interview. “China has recently exchanged prisoners with the U.S. many times and also accepted undocumented people. [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping calls it ‘law enforcement cooperation’ rather than ‘border and immigration issues.’”
How they arrived
Ni, 53, and the couple’s 18-year-old daughter entered the U.S. on tourist visas in 2022. After Duan’s husband and daughter left China, she applied for a tourist visa the following year, but her application was rejected.
More than one year after that, in late September, she illegally entered the U.S., crossing the southern border with Mexico.
Duan made the hazardous journey through Ecuador and then traveled overland through Colombia, Central America and Mexico to the U.S. border.
Both Duan and Ni are from China’s central city of Suzhou, just outside Shanghai. The city is relatively wealthy but human rights violations are not unheard of.
In 2012, Ni lost his house and land following a government-led forced demolition. He tried to sue the local government in 2013 but was not given a chance to file his lawsuit. He continued to petition the government without result. In 2016, Ni was assaulted by local police officers and put in jail for 171 days for the crime of “disturbing public order.”
Ni continued to speak against the Chinese government after coming to the United States and participated in a protest in San Francisco last November, when Xi visited the city for the APEC summit and met with U.S. President Joe Biden.
Panicking
Another Chinese immigrant who entered the United States last year via the same route as Duan and is now living in New York state spoke with VOA on the condition that his name not be used because of his undocumented status.
In a telephone interview, he said that with the recent deportations and Trump’s pledges, many in the Chinese immigrant community are a little panicked.
“After he takes office, everyone will be worried about being deported, not just us illegal immigrants,” he said. “The ones with green cards, aren’t they afraid, too?”
Before entering the United States, this man said he had openly criticized Xi on Chinese social media. He said that if he is deported, he will undoubtedly face a prison sentence in China.
The man, who is in his 30s, has already begun applying for political asylum and is still hopeful.
“Although I don’t like this result [Trump’s victory], this is the choice of the American people, and there is nothing I can do. We are all entering an uncertain era, and everyone’s future is uncertain,” he said.
Immigration lawyer Chen said that Chinese immigrants in the U.S. who have not yet obtained legal status do face a “real threat.”
“The Republicans have already occupied both houses [of Congress], and conservatives also have a clear advantage in the Supreme Court,” he said. “We can say with absolute certainty that the second Trump administration will have way more resources, in terms of manpower, law and finances, to support the implementation of his deportation plan. This is bound to happen.”
However, Chen does not think that all Chinese immigrants who apply for asylum will be unsuccessful.
“For those who have a deportation order, if you have a legal reason to apply to stay in the U.S., there is still a chance for review. It’s not easy though. The standard will be raised,” Chen said, adding that individuals need to prove that they will be persecuted if they return to their home country.
date: 2024-12-14, from: VOA News USA
WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court on Friday rejected an emergency bid by TikTok to temporarily block a law that would require its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest the short-video app by January 19 or face a ban on the app.
TikTok and ByteDance on Monday filed the emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make its case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Friday’s ruling means that TikTok now must quickly move to the Supreme Court in an attempt to halt the pending ban.
The companies had warned that without court action, the law will “shut down TikTok — one of the nation’s most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users.”
“The petitioners have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court,” the D.C. Circuit said.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Under the law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance divests it by January 19. The law also gives the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans’ data.
The U.S. Justice Department argues “continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security.”
TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the social media app’s ties to China, arguing its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the U.S. on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content moderation decisions that affect U.S. users are made in the U.S.
