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TRUMP WAS WORST PRESIDENT EVER ---- VERIFIED
' Trump is accountable ' LOLOL
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Gun violence deaths: How the U.S. compares with the rest of the world
Updated January 24, 2023 3:49 PM ET
Nurith Aizenman
' People kill people not guns ' LOLOLOLOL
Editor's note: This is the latest update of a story that NPR has run on several occasions after mass shooting events in the United States. It was last republished on May 24, 2022
The quick succession of horrific shootings this month in California has once again shone a spotlight on how frequent this type of violence is in the United States compared with other wealthy countries.
The U.S. has the 32nd-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world: 3.96 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019. That was more than eight times as high as the rate in Canada, which had 0.47 deaths per 100,000 people — and nearly 100 times higher than in the United Kingdom, which had 0.04 deaths per 100,000.
On a state-by-state calculation, the rates can be even higher. In the District of Columbia, the rate is 18.5 per 100,000 — the highest in the United States. The second-highest is in Louisiana: 9.34 per 100,000. In Georgia and Colorado — the scenes of the two most recent mass shootings — the rates are a bit closer to the national average: 5.62 per 100,000 in Georgia and 2.27 in Colorado.
The numbers come from a massive database maintained by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which tracks lives lost in every country, in every year, by every possible cause of death.
The 2019 figures paint a fairly rosy picture for much of the world, with deaths due to gun violence rare even in many low-income countries — such as Tajikistan and Gambia, which saw 0.18 deaths and 0.22 deaths, respectively, per 100,000 people.
Prosperous Asian countries such as Singapore (0.01), Japan (0.02) and South Korea (0.02) boast the absolute lowest rates — along with China, also at 0.02.
"It is a little surprising that a country like ours should have this level of gun violence," Ali Mokdad, a professor of global health and epidemiology at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, told NPR. "If you compare us to other well-off countries, we really stand out."
'Go TO THE SOURCE FOR DETAILS AND GRAPHICS':
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/24/980838151/gun-violence-deaths-how-the-u-s-compares-to-the-rest-of-the-world
...
How The U.S. Compares With The Lowest Rates Of Violent Gun Deaths Worldwide
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How The U.S. Compares With The Highest Rates Of Violent Gun Deaths Worldwide
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How The U.S. Compares With The Highest Rates Of Violent Gun Deaths In East, Southeast And South Asia
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How The U.S. Compares With The Highest Rates Of Violent Gun Deaths In North Africa And The Middle East
...
How The U.S. Compares With The Highest Rates Of Violent Gun Deaths In Sub-Saharan Africa
...
======================================================
ALS0
Gun Violence: How The U.S. Compares With Other Countries
October 6, 2017 - 7:00 AM ET
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All Trump, all the time
April 3, 2023 at 9:11 am
By David Horsey
Seattle Times cartoonist
Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News continues to reveal more of the internal messaging that indicates people at President Donald Trump’s favorite cable channel have grown weary of him.
The latest example is a message to Fox News Media Chief Executive Suzanne Scott from the man at the top, Rupert Murdoch, in which he says, “Trump insisting on the election being stolen and convincing 25% of Americans was a huge disservice to the country. Pretty much a crime. Inevitable it blew up on Jan. 6th.”
Sure, prime time host Sean Hannity conducted an obsequious interview with the former president a few days ago, but obsequiousness is Hannity’s natural state when in the same room with any right-wing demigod. More telling are all the private texts and emails from the likes of Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson – as well as Hannity – that show they are all ready to move on from Trump.
The one news channel that clearly is not ready to forget about Trump is MSNBC, strangely enough. Their reliably liberal commentary centers obsessively on the Mar-a-Lago retiree. For the last two weeks, for instance, their earnest crew has spent hour after hour asking each other the same question: When, and in which jurisdiction, will Trump become the first president to be indicted for a crime? It is a question with no definitive answer, but such tedious speculation seems to fill them with glee.
Every once in a while, the MSNBC chatterboxes get drawn off topic by a school shooting or fresh footage from Ukraine, but they quickly slip back to Trump’s latest social media screed, his ongoing threats to democracy or simply more speculation about his legal troubles.
Trump is an attention hog, and it must kill him to think Fox is losing interest. But, if it is attention he wants – even the negative kind – MSNBC offers it up all day, every day.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/msnbc-all-trump-all-the-time/
Trump’s Authoritarian Playbook
The former president and his minions are endangering a judge’s family.
By Tom Nichols
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago on April 4, 2023.
Alex Wong / Getty Images
April 5, 2023, 5:14 PM ET
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
After his arraignment in New York, a weary Donald Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago, where he made a rambling and disjointed statement.
(To call it a “speech” would be too generous.) There was almost nothing notable in it, with one dangerous exception: Trump’s obvious attempt to intimidate the judge presiding over his criminal trial.
But first, here are new stories from The Atlantic.
The Trump indictment is actually quite damning.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/donald-trump-indictment-arraignment-bragg/673621/
A Brazen Move
Lawyers are already arguing about the now-unsealed indictment in the Manhattan case against Donald Trump. As a layman, I thought the indictment documents laid out a clear story about Trump’s behavior. But there’s a long way to go before a judge or a jury resolves any of it.
Trump, for his part, didn’t dwell on the case when he returned to his safe space in Florida. He spoke for only about 25 minutes, which is usually just the amount of time it takes him to clear his throat. But in that short time, he talked about everything—and I mean everything.
There were the usual cries of “Russia Russia Russia” and “Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine,” which Trump now tends to repeat as a kind of ritual invocation without context. He went off about the Georgia investigation involving his call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger looking for more votes in the 2020 election, referring to that call as “even more perfect” than the call to Ukraine that helped get him impeached. He railed against the “lunatic” Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the probes into Trump’s handling of classified documents and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, and called the former investigation the “boxes hoax.” He even went after the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, which he called “a radical-left troublemaking organization.” If you’ve ever wondered why America is in trouble, you need look no further, apparently, than those unruly Trotskyite archivists.
As usual, Trump’s histrionics would be comical if the stakes were not so high. He is the leader not only of the Republican Party but of a cult of personality that we already know will answer his calls for violence, which is why the most dangerous part of Trump’s litany of complaints last night was his effort to intimidate the family of Juan Merchan, the judge who will preside over his case:
Trump charged with 34 felony counts in hush money scheme
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, ERIC TUCKER, JENNIFER PELTZ and WILL WEISSERT 6 minutes ago
NEW YORK (AP) — A stone-faced Donald Trump, making a historically momentous court appearance as the only ex-president to be charged with a crime, was confronted with a 34-count felony indictment Tuesday accusing him in a scheme to bury negative information during his first campaign.
The arraignment in a Manhattan courtroom, though largely procedural in nature, was nonetheless a stunning — and humbling — spectacle for the former president, putting him face-to-face with prosecutors who bluntly accused him of criminal conduct and setting the stage for a possible criminal trial in the city where he decades ago became a celebrity.
More coverage
– Trump's day in court as criminal defendant: What to know
https://apnews.com/article/trump-charged-what-to-know-b633d9ac29fc0ab8144f7e8a9bf65895?utm_source=apnews&utm_medium=relatedcontentmodule
– Live updates: Donald Trump arraigned on 34 felony counts
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-arrest-arraignment-live-updates-c8cd2e608094bfaf98eb2d0718904611?utm_source=apnews&utm_medium=relatedcontentmodule
– Trump's surrender at courthouse creates New York spectacle
https://apnews.com/article/trump-indictment-new-york-arrest-c82a52fbbe41e55f0e34f313b4e19afd?utm_source=apnews&utm_medium=relatedcontentmodule
[ . . . ]
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-arraignment-hush-money-81225510ef7638494852816878f612f0?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
Scheffler, Burns, Day, Niemann, Young 278
Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence on US military sites- NBC News
Story by Reuters • 3h ago
(Reuters) -A Chinese balloon that flew across the United States was able to gather intelligence from several U.S. military sites and transmit it back to Beijing in real time, despite the Biden administration's efforts to prevent it from doing so, NBC News reported on Monday.
FILE PHOTO: A U-2 Pilot flying over the central continental United States looks down on suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
© Thomson Reuters
The high-altitude balloon, controlled by Beijing, was able to make multiple passes over some of the sites before it was shot down on Feb. 4, at times flying in a figure-eight formation, NBC said, citing two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official.
The three officials said it could transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, NBC reported.
"The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images," NBC cited the officials as saying.
White House official John Kirby told reporters on Monday that he could not confirm NBC's report, but said the U.S. limited the balloon's "ability to be able to collect anything additive."
02:44
Related video: Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence from U.S. military sites, senior U.S. officials say (NBC News)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/chinese-spy-balloon-gathered-intelligence-from-us-military-sites-senior-us-officials-say/vi-AA19pAfd?ocid=msedgdhp&t=48
He added that the U.S. government was able to study and analyze the balloon while it was in U.S. airspace, saying "we gained some useful context."
The Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.
At the time, U.S. officials played down the balloon's impact on national security.
The balloon, which Beijing denies was a government spy vessel, spent a week flying over the United States and Canada early in February before the U.S. military shot it down off the Atlantic Coast on President Joe Biden's orders.
The incident prompted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a planned visit to Beijing and further strained relations between Washington and Beijing.
The episode caused an uproar in Washington and led the U.S. military to search the skies for other objects that were not being captured on radar.
The United States said on Feb. 17 it had successfully concluded recovery efforts off South Carolina to collect sensors and other debris from the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon and that investigators would analyze its "guts."
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Juby Babu in Bengaluru, Editing by Louise Heavens, Bernadette Baum and Jonathan Oatis)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/chinese-spy-balloon-gathered-intelligence-on-us-military-sites-nbc-news/ar-AA19qmt0?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=74a641c1efd743fc928c5231db3e4344&ei=14
So, if you ever intended on moving to a country 'greater' than the USA,
what country would that be.....AND WY?
New York, city of Trump’s dreams, delivers his comeuppance
By MATT SEDENSKY
an hour ago
NEW YORK (AP) — His name has been plastered on this city’s tabloids, bolted to its buildings and cemented to a special breed of brash New York confidence.
Now, with Donald Trump due to return to the place that put him on the map, the city he loved is poised to deliver his comeuppance.
Rejected by its voters, ostracized by its protesters and now rebuked by its jurors, the people of New York have one more thing on which to splash Trump’s name: Indictment No. 71543-23.
“He wanted to be in Manhattan. He loved Manhattan. He had a connection to Manhattan,” says Barbara Res, a longtime employee of the former president who was a vice president at the Trump Organization. “I don’t know that he has accepted it and I don’t know that he believes it, but New York turned on him.”
None of Trump’s romances have lasted longer than his courtship of New York. No place else could match his blend of ostentatious and outlandish. His love of the city going unrequited is Shakespearean enough, but Trump took it a step further, rising to the presidency only to become a hometown antihero.
. . .
https://apnews.com/article/trump-indictment-new-york-bb7f0a91c5510d4ca39e32c22be4d284?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
Donald’s Plot Against America
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Ten photographs that made the world wake up to climate change
By Nell Lewis, CNN
Updated 4:43 AM EDT, Thu March 30, 2023
Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
Waterfalls pour off a Nordaustlandet ice cap in Svalbard, Norway, during an unusually warm summer in 2014
CNN
Water cascading from a wall of ice with gray brushstrokes of clouds overhead makes for a beautiful image – but the story behind it is one of destruction; Earth’s glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate due to human-caused climate change.
Canadian photographer Paul Nicklen remembers taking the photograph. It was August 2014, and temperatures in Svalbard, Norway, were unusually warm – hovering above 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius). As he came around the corner of an ice cap on Nordaustlandet island, he saw more than a dozen waterfalls pouring off its face.
“It was the most poetic, beautiful scene I’d ever seen, but it was also haunting and scary,” he recalls. The picture came to symbolize the realities of climate change and became Nicklen’s best-selling fine art image. It appeared multiple times in National Geographic, was used by Al Gore in his climate talks, and graced the cover of Pearl Jam’s 2020 album “Gigaton,” the title of which refers to the unit used to calculate ice mass.
Its beauty is central to its impact, believes Nicklen. “When you take a photograph that is in focus, properly exposed, moody and powerful, it creates a visceral reaction,” he says. “It has to be beautiful and engaging, it has to invite you in … and it has to have a conservation message.”
In 2014, Nicklen, along with his wife Cristina Mittermeier, and later joined by Andy Mann (both also award-winning photographers), co-founded the nonprofit organization SeaLegacy, which uses film and photography to raise awareness of climate issues and help protect the planet.
“Photography is one of the most effective and powerful tools we have to tell complex stories, like the story of climate change,” says Mittermeier.
n emaciated polar bear staggers on the search for food. The photograph, taken in 2017, received widespread attention, sparking a conversation around climate change.
She witnessed this power with one of her own photographs, taken in August 2017, which showed a starving polar bear. After being published in National Geographic, the photo and accompanying video went viral, shared on social media and by news organizations worldwide. It sparked a global conversation on climate change, provoking responses ranging from concern and empathy to climate denial. But there was no denying that it shook the world: “People still remember it and have strong reactions when they see it,” Mittermeier reflects.
As guest editors for CNN’s Call to Earth series, Nicklen and Mittermeier selected these two images, along with eight others, that they believe have alerted the world to the climate crisis.
War photographers
A kangaroo jumps past a burning house in Lake Conjola, Australia in December 2019. That season's bushfires were among the worst the country had ever seen, with nearly three billion animals killed or displaced.
Matthew Abbott/The New York Times
Nicklen compares photographing climate change to photographing conflict. “We’re out there on the front lines of the war being waged against our planet. It’s emotionally draining, exhausting,” he says.
In recent decades, as climate disasters have become more frequent and intense, images have more explicitly captured the urgency of the situation. Six dead giraffes, bodies emaciated from the lack of food and water, photographed by Ed Ram, show the horror of Kenya’s prolonged ongoing drought, which has threatened and displaced animals and humans alike. Photographs of wildfires, like those that ravaged Australia in 2019 and 2020, show the scale of devastation, with homes on fire and wildlife fleeing in despair.
The bodies of six giraffes lie on the outskirts of Eyrib village in Sabuli wildlife conservancy, Kenya, in 2021. A prolonged drought in the northeast of the country and the wider Horn of Africa has created food and water shortages for both animals and local communities.
Ed Ram/Getty Images
“They show that climate change isn’t just happening somewhere else, it’s happening everywhere,” says Mittermeier. “All of a sudden, it will come knocking a lot closer to your own door.”
Mittermeier remembers the work of her friend and one of her great influences, Gary Braasch, who she describes as a “chronicler of climate change.” The photographer, who died in 2016, dedicated the last two decades of his life to documenting how the Earth was changing in response to global warming – from Antarctica, with its melting glaciers, to Bhola Island in Bangladesh, where sea level rise and increasing erosion have turned villages into islands. Braasch’s commitment to the cause blazed the way for Nicklen and Mittermeier’s generation of conservation photographers.
Villagers stand on a remnant of a road in Bhola Island, Bangladesh, in 2005. The area, at the mouth of the Ganges delta, is still suffering from accelerated erosion due to sea level rise.
The slow retreat
These photos, taken in 2007 and 2022, show the retreating Sólheimajökull glacier in Iceland. In the last two decades, the speed of glacier melt is estimated to have doubled due to global warming.
At times however, climate change can be tediously slow to chronicle. Sea levels rise by a matter of millimeters each year – a barely visible increment despite happening at a faster rate than ever before. But such changes add up, and if they are visually documented over years or decades the impact becomes clear.
“It’s like photographing a slow-moving tsunami,” says Mittermeier. “It’s often hard to see in the moment, but when two images are put side-by-side, it’s hard not to see the impact the climate crisis is having.”
Read: Scientists are listening to glaciers to discover the secrets of the oceans
http://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/27/world/glaciers-listening-c2e-spc-intl-climate-scn/index.html
The work of photographer James Balog has been crucial in creating the visual narrative of climate change, she says. Using a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers around the world, his Extreme Ice Survey has demonstrated how glaciers are vanishing over time. The extensive archive of photos of each glacier taken year-round at every daylight hour has also provided a baseline from which future changes can be measured.
“It became just irrefutable proof,” says Mittermeier. “That was a very important moment for climate photography.”
. . .
Coexistence
Polar bears move into an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, Russia. The majestic mammals are at particular risk from climate change, which is melting the Arctic sea ice that they depend on.
Mittermeier and Nicklen also selected images where humans and nature collide. One effect of climate change is a dramatic loss of biodiversity. Since 1970, wildlife populations have plummeted by 69%, due predominantly to land-use change that has fragmented crucial habitats, and also rising temperatures, which have led to mass mortality events,
according to the WWF’s 2022 Living Planet Report. .. https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/#:~:text=Wildlife%20populations%20plummet%20by%2069,in%20species%20populations%20since%201970.
Read: The icy patience of an Arctic photographer
http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/arctic-photography-florian-ledoux-climate-c2e-spc-intl-scn/index.html
With the Arctic warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the globe, the ice that polar bears depend on is melting away. Dmitry Kokh’s photograph “House of Bears,” one of the winners of the 2022 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, shows polar bears roaming an abandoned Soviet settlement on Kolyuchin Island. While the buildings had long been deserted, Mittermeier believes it points to the increasing problem of polar bears – with no ice left to hunt on – encroaching on human spaces and encountering local people, leading to tragic outcomes for both sides.
Alice, Stanley and their child were displaced as floods destroyed their house in Kenya in 2017. They are photographed at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy together in the same frame as Najin, one of the last two northern white rhinos in the world. It's part of photographer Nick Brandt's "The Day May Break" series that portrays people and animals impacted by environmental destruction.
The effects of climate change will – and are already – hitting animals and humans alike. “It’s impossible to deny that we are all in this together,” says Mittermeier. “We are all impacted in devastating ways, and we cannot separate ourselves from the life we share this planet with.”
The series “The Day May Break” from photographer Nick Brandt portrays this by showing people and animals affected by environmental destruction. The photographs, taken in animal sanctuaries around the world, feature people that have been displaced by climate change events such as drought or floods, and animals that have been victims of habitat destruction or wildlife trafficking. Portraying both in the same frame shows how deeply our fates are intertwined.
Hope
A school of bright cardinalfish swerve to make way for a sea lion in the Galápagos. The archipelago off the coast of Ecuador is famous for its vibrant marine life and is one of the largest marine protected areas in the world.
Courtesy of Cristina Mittermeier
Among the images of devastation and displacement, there are also those that signify hope. In Brandt’s work, he points out that the subjects of the images, both people and animals, are survivors – “And therein lies hope and possibility,” he wrote in an email.
Read: The ocean’s ‘blue carbon’ can be our secret weapon in fighting climate change
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/02/opinions/mittermeier-nicklen-oceans-blue-carbon-climate-change-scn-spc-c2e/index.html
For Mittermeier and Nicklen, and SeaLegacy as a whole, striking a message of hope is vital to the wider mission. “Martin Luther King didn’t start his famous speech by reminding us that we live in a nightmare – he told us what the dream is,” says Mittermeier. “You have to point out what it is that we’re aspiring to and show where the hope is.”
The hope, she believes, is in wildlife and the ocean. Humans are just waking up to the role that both play in mitigating climate change, and restoring nature will be crucial in averting the crisis. For Mittermeier, her photograph of a sea lion rising up to the surface in the Galapagos – one of the largest marine protected areas in the world – shows how ocean life can flourish with the right protection. And Nicklen’s photograph of a bowhead whale represents to him one of our greatest allies in decarbonization: not only are whales’ bodies enormous stores of carbon, their feces fuels phytoplankton which soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Bowhead whales, like this one photographed near Baffin Island in Canada, can live to more than 200 years old. Some may have witnessed first-hand the effects of climate change since the Industrial Revolution.
Courtesy of Paul Nicklen
By showing off the beauty of the planet, the couple believe they can show people it is still worth fighting for.
“We’re trying to climb to the tallest mountain and scream from the mountaintops that this planet is dying, and that we are at risk,” says Nicklen.
“But the only emotion greater than fear is hope,” adds Mittermeier. “And the only way you can feel hope is if you take action.”
03:48
PROTECTORS OF THE SEA (at end of article)
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/world/climate-change-photography-paul-nicklen-cristina-mittermeier-c2e-spc-intl-scn-climate/index.html
Ten photographs that made the world wake up to climate change
By Nell Lewis, CNN
Updated 4:43 AM EDT, Thu March 30, 2023
Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.
Waterfalls pour off a Nordaustlandet ice cap in Svalbard, Norway, during an unusually warm summer in 2014
CNN
Water cascading from a wall of ice with gray brushstrokes of clouds overhead makes for a beautiful image – but the story behind it is one of destruction; Earth’s glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate due to human-caused climate change.
Canadian photographer Paul Nicklen remembers taking the photograph. It was August 2014, and temperatures in Svalbard, Norway, were unusually warm – hovering above 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius). As he came around the corner of an ice cap on Nordaustlandet island, he saw more than a dozen waterfalls pouring off its face.
“It was the most poetic, beautiful scene I’d ever seen, but it was also haunting and scary,” he recalls. The picture came to symbolize the realities of climate change and became Nicklen’s best-selling fine art image. It appeared multiple times in National Geographic, was used by Al Gore in his climate talks, and graced the cover of Pearl Jam’s 2020 album “Gigaton,” the title of which refers to the unit used to calculate ice mass.
Its beauty is central to its impact, believes Nicklen. “When you take a photograph that is in focus, properly exposed, moody and powerful, it creates a visceral reaction,” he says. “It has to be beautiful and engaging, it has to invite you in … and it has to have a conservation message.”
In 2014, Nicklen, along with his wife Cristina Mittermeier, and later joined by Andy Mann (both also award-winning photographers), co-founded the nonprofit organization SeaLegacy, which uses film and photography to raise awareness of climate issues and help protect the planet.
“Photography is one of the most effective and powerful tools we have to tell complex stories, like the story of climate change,” says Mittermeier.
n emaciated polar bear staggers on the search for food. The photograph, taken in 2017, received widespread attention, sparking a conversation around climate change.
She witnessed this power with one of her own photographs, taken in August 2017, which showed a starving polar bear. After being published in National Geographic, the photo and accompanying video went viral, shared on social media and by news organizations worldwide. It sparked a global conversation on climate change, provoking responses ranging from concern and empathy to climate denial. But there was no denying that it shook the world: “People still remember it and have strong reactions when they see it,” Mittermeier reflects.
As guest editors for CNN’s Call to Earth series, Nicklen and Mittermeier selected these two images, along with eight others, that they believe have alerted the world to the climate crisis.
War photographers
A kangaroo jumps past a burning house in Lake Conjola, Australia in December 2019. That season's bushfires were among the worst the country had ever seen, with nearly three billion animals killed or displaced.
Matthew Abbott/The New York Times
Nicklen compares photographing climate change to photographing conflict. “We’re out there on the front lines of the war being waged against our planet. It’s emotionally draining, exhausting,” he says.
In recent decades, as climate disasters have become more frequent and intense, images have more explicitly captured the urgency of the situation. Six dead giraffes, bodies emaciated from the lack of food and water, photographed by Ed Ram, show the horror of Kenya’s prolonged ongoing drought, which has threatened and displaced animals and humans alike. Photographs of wildfires, like those that ravaged Australia in 2019 and 2020, show the scale of devastation, with homes on fire and wildlife fleeing in despair.
The bodies of six giraffes lie on the outskirts of Eyrib village in Sabuli wildlife conservancy, Kenya, in 2021. A prolonged drought in the northeast of the country and the wider Horn of Africa has created food and water shortages for both animals and local communities.
Ed Ram/Getty Images
“They show that climate change isn’t just happening somewhere else, it’s happening everywhere,” says Mittermeier. “All of a sudden, it will come knocking a lot closer to your own door.”
Mittermeier remembers the work of her friend and one of her great influences, Gary Braasch, who she describes as a “chronicler of climate change.” The photographer, who died in 2016, dedicated the last two decades of his life to documenting how the Earth was changing in response to global warming – from Antarctica, with its melting glaciers, to Bhola Island in Bangladesh, where sea level rise and increasing erosion have turned villages into islands. Braasch’s commitment to the cause blazed the way for Nicklen and Mittermeier’s generation of conservation photographers.
Villagers stand on a remnant of a road in Bhola Island, Bangladesh, in 2005. The area, at the mouth of the Ganges delta, is still suffering from accelerated erosion due to sea level rise.
The slow retreat
These photos, taken in 2007 and 2022, show the retreating Sólheimajökull glacier in Iceland. In the last two decades, the speed of glacier melt is estimated to have doubled due to global warming.
At times however, climate change can be tediously slow to chronicle. Sea levels rise by a matter of millimeters each year – a barely visible increment despite happening at a faster rate than ever before. But such changes add up, and if they are visually documented over years or decades the impact becomes clear.
“It’s like photographing a slow-moving tsunami,” says Mittermeier. “It’s often hard to see in the moment, but when two images are put side-by-side, it’s hard not to see the impact the climate crisis is having.”
Read: Scientists are listening to glaciers to discover the secrets of the oceans
http://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/27/world/glaciers-listening-c2e-spc-intl-climate-scn/index.html
The work of photographer James Balog has been crucial in creating the visual narrative of climate change, she says. Using a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers around the world, his Extreme Ice Survey has demonstrated how glaciers are vanishing over time. The extensive archive of photos of each glacier taken year-round at every daylight hour has also provided a baseline from which future changes can be measured.
“It became just irrefutable proof,” says Mittermeier. “That was a very important moment for climate photography.”
. . .
Coexistence
Polar bears move into an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, Russia. The majestic mammals are at particular risk from climate change, which is melting the Arctic sea ice that they depend on.
Mittermeier and Nicklen also selected images where humans and nature collide. One effect of climate change is a dramatic loss of biodiversity. Since 1970, wildlife populations have plummeted by 69%, due predominantly to land-use change that has fragmented crucial habitats, and also rising temperatures, which have led to mass mortality events,
according to the WWF’s 2022 Living Planet Report. .. https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-US/#:~:text=Wildlife%20populations%20plummet%20by%2069,in%20species%20populations%20since%201970.
Read: The icy patience of an Arctic photographer
http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/arctic-photography-florian-ledoux-climate-c2e-spc-intl-scn/index.html
With the Arctic warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the globe, the ice that polar bears depend on is melting away. Dmitry Kokh’s photograph “House of Bears,” one of the winners of the 2022 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award, shows polar bears roaming an abandoned Soviet settlement on Kolyuchin Island. While the buildings had long been deserted, Mittermeier believes it points to the increasing problem of polar bears – with no ice left to hunt on – encroaching on human spaces and encountering local people, leading to tragic outcomes for both sides.
Alice, Stanley and their child were displaced as floods destroyed their house in Kenya in 2017. They are photographed at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy together in the same frame as Najin, one of the last two northern white rhinos in the world. It's part of photographer Nick Brandt's "The Day May Break" series that portrays people and animals impacted by environmental destruction.
The effects of climate change will – and are already – hitting animals and humans alike. “It’s impossible to deny that we are all in this together,” says Mittermeier. “We are all impacted in devastating ways, and we cannot separate ourselves from the life we share this planet with.”
The series “The Day May Break” from photographer Nick Brandt portrays this by showing people and animals affected by environmental destruction. The photographs, taken in animal sanctuaries around the world, feature people that have been displaced by climate change events such as drought or floods, and animals that have been victims of habitat destruction or wildlife trafficking. Portraying both in the same frame shows how deeply our fates are intertwined.
Hope
A school of bright cardinalfish swerve to make way for a sea lion in the Galápagos. The archipelago off the coast of Ecuador is famous for its vibrant marine life and is one of the largest marine protected areas in the world.
Courtesy of Cristina Mittermeier
Among the images of devastation and displacement, there are also those that signify hope. In Brandt’s work, he points out that the subjects of the images, both people and animals, are survivors – “And therein lies hope and possibility,” he wrote in an email.
Read: The ocean’s ‘blue carbon’ can be our secret weapon in fighting climate change
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/02/opinions/mittermeier-nicklen-oceans-blue-carbon-climate-change-scn-spc-c2e/index.html
For Mittermeier and Nicklen, and SeaLegacy as a whole, striking a message of hope is vital to the wider mission. “Martin Luther King didn’t start his famous speech by reminding us that we live in a nightmare – he told us what the dream is,” says Mittermeier. “You have to point out what it is that we’re aspiring to and show where the hope is.”
The hope, she believes, is in wildlife and the ocean. Humans are just waking up to the role that both play in mitigating climate change, and restoring nature will be crucial in averting the crisis. For Mittermeier, her photograph of a sea lion rising up to the surface in the Galapagos – one of the largest marine protected areas in the world – shows how ocean life can flourish with the right protection. And Nicklen’s photograph of a bowhead whale represents to him one of our greatest allies in decarbonization: not only are whales’ bodies enormous stores of carbon, their feces fuels phytoplankton which soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Bowhead whales, like this one photographed near Baffin Island in Canada, can live to more than 200 years old. Some may have witnessed first-hand the effects of climate change since the Industrial Revolution.
Courtesy of Paul Nicklen
By showing off the beauty of the planet, the couple believe they can show people it is still worth fighting for.
“We’re trying to climb to the tallest mountain and scream from the mountaintops that this planet is dying, and that we are at risk,” says Nicklen.
“But the only emotion greater than fear is hope,” adds Mittermeier. “And the only way you can feel hope is if you take action.”
03:48
PROTECTORS OF THE SEA (at end of article)
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/29/world/climate-change-photography-paul-nicklen-cristina-mittermeier-c2e-spc-intl-scn-climate/index.html
Among 160 years of presidential scandals, Trump stands alone
YOURS:
By RUSS BYNUM yesterday
Though far from the only U.S. president dogged by legal and ethical scandals, Donald Trump now occupies a unique place in history as the first indicted on criminal charges.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hush-money-new-york-indictment-election-027d0e5ac1881a4c55c6379deae75faa?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
Two others, like Trump, found themselves impeached by Congress — Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with a White House intern, and Andrew Johnson for pushing the limits of his executive authority in a bitter power struggle following the Civil War.
Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace over his role in the infamous Watergate break-in. And Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant both became forever tied to scandals in which close aides got prosecuted, though neither president was ever charged.
Here’s a look at how Trump’s predecessors fared:
BILL CLINTON
Clinton spent more than half his presidency under scrutiny in investigations that ranged from failed real estate deals to the Democratic president’s affair with a White House intern.
Investigators took a lengthy look into Bill and Hillary Clinton’s investments in the troubled Whitewater real estate venture. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, appointed to oversee the investigation in 1994, turned up no evidence of wrongdoing by the Clintons. But two of their close associates, Jim and Susan McDougal, ended up convicted of Whitewater-related charges. So did Jim Guy Tucker, Clinton’s successor as governor of Arkansas.
Starr’s 1998 report packed with lurid details of Clinton’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky proved far more damaging. While being questioned in a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones, Clinton had denied having “sexual relations” with Lewinsky.
Starr concluded that Clinton had lied under oath and obstructed justice. That led to the House voting to impeach Clinton on Dec. 19, 1998. He was acquitted by the Senate, allowing him to remain in office until his term ended in January 2001.
RONALD REAGAN
Reagan never faced impeachment or court charges for the biggest scandal of his presidency. But the arms-for-hostages scheme that became known as the Iran-Contra affair dogged him long after he left the White House.
In 1986, during Reagan’s second term, the public learned that his administration had authorized secret arms sales to Iran while seeking Iranian aid in freeing American hostages held in Lebanon. As much as $30 million from the arms sales was diverted, in violation of U.S. law, to aid rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua.
Reagan’s national security adviser, John Poindexter, resigned and an aide, Lt. Col. Oliver North, was fired. Both were also convicted of crimes stemming from efforts to deceive and obstruct Congress. Their convictions were later overturned. President George H.W. Bush, Reagan’s successor, pardoned six others involved.
Reagan insisted money from the arms sales was funneled to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels without his knowledge.
RICHARD NIXON
Nixon resigned from office in August 1974 rather than face impeachment for his administration’s cover-up of its involvement in a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington
The bungled burglary at the Watergate office building resulted in the indictment of seven men, including two former White House aides. Five of the Watergate defendants pleaded guilty; two were convicted in criminal trials.
Intrigue over the 1972 Watergate break-in didn’t stop Nixon from cruising to reelection a few months later. He endured the storm until the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 approved three articles of impeachment accusing him of obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress.
Before the full House could vote, a bombshell tape recording was released in which Nixon could be heard approving a plan to pressure the FBI to drop its Watergate investigation. Nixon resigned after losing support from key congressional Republicans.
His vice president, Gerald Ford, became president and pardoned Nixon a month later.
ULYSSES S. GRANT
While never personally charged with crimes or formally accused of wrongdoing, Grant as president torpedoed a corruption case prosecuted by his own administration. The man on trial was Grant’s personal secretary in the White House.
In 1875, an investigation launched by Treasury Secretary Benjamin H. Bristow resulted in hundreds of arrests in a scheme known as the Whiskey Ring, in which distillers, revenue agents and fellow conspirators diverted millions of dollars in liquor taxes to themselves.
The Civil War general-turned-president found himself at odds with the crackdown when Gen. Orville E. Babcock ended up charged as a conspirator. Not only was Babcock the president’s personal secretary, but he and Grant had also been friends since the war.
Prosecutors said they had uncovered telegrams Babcock sent to ringleaders to assist their scheme. Regardless, Grant insisted on testifying in his aide’s defense.
To avoid the spectacle of the president appearing at Babcock’s trial, attorneys questioned Grant under oath at the White House on Feb. 12, 1876. A transcript of his testimony was later read in court in St. Louis. The jury acquitted Babcock, a decision largely credited to Grant’s unwavering defense.
ANDREW JOHNSON
The first American president to have his legacy tarnished by impeachment, Andrew Johnson’s woes arose from his intense feuding with Congress over Reconstruction following the Civil War.
The Tennessee Democrat had been elected vice president in 1864 as part of a unity ticket with Abraham Lincoln, and Johnson assumed the presidency after Lincoln’s 1865 assassination. From the White House, Johnson called for pardoning Confederate leaders and opposed extending voting rights to freed Blacks, infuriating congressional Republicans.
It was Johnson’s firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Lincoln appointee who favored tougher policies toward the defeated South, that prompted the House to pass articles of impeachment that accused the president of ousting and replacing Stanton illegally.
Johnson’s impeachment trial began in the Senate on March 5, 1868. It ended more than two months later, with senators just one vote short of removing Johnson from office. He served the remainder of his final year, but fellow Democrats denied him their nomination to run again.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-indictment-past-presidential-scandals-6fe9d423c42ea7fd945befcb4dd83704?utm_source=ForYou&utm_medium=HomePage&utm_id=Taboola
Right On ---- " Tuck is really Frumped "
MORE-- https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=image+of+trump+in+orange+prison+suit&tbm=isch&source=univ&fir=xjY0EbG8UzoRoM%252CzDALordldgAH9M%252C_%253BVNhDuUn34ie9sM%252CqY5HuV3vIUyTlM%252C_%253B8d6L85eeji1inM%252C3PiFtlHoU7NaFM%252C_%253B1sK2cTTNze6YkM%252CS-4gWlQaddlLdM%252C_%253BP6WqiwWrnewMaM%252CS-4gWlQaddlLdM%252C_%253BLCz7ENivfRNzgM%252CyiHmCwjjT_xqNM%252C_%253BE7KDAjqFMfOaxM%252CzDALordldgAH9M%252C_%253BVN92CILnwMdh9M%252CP37bDDacP-bsCM%252C_%253BhMr5rq9Hblq9eM%252Cemgr0OGjseEA-M%252C_%253BMozejJh_bJoZ5M%252CFhY6eRs9oIWW1M%252C_&usg=AI4_-kTonoJsjTVVUeRt306VMAeLnmVzEQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-sc2B3oT-AhV6l2oFHRMZALwQ420oAHoECCMQCg&biw=1407&bih=744&dpr=1.05
Donald Trump indicted; 1st ex-president charged with crime
By MICHAEL R. SISAK, ERIC TUCKER, COLLEEN LONG and JENNIFER PELTZ
14 minutes ago
NEW YORK (AP) — A Manhattan grand jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on charges involving payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign to silence claims of an extramarital sexual encounter, the first ever criminal case against a former U.S. president and a jolt to Trump’s bid to retake the White House in 2024.
The indictment, confirmed Thursday by Joe Tacopina, a lawyer for Trump, and other people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss sealed criminal charges, is an extraordinary development after years of investigations into his business, political and personal dealings. It is likely to galvanize critics who say Trump lied and cheated his way to the top and embolden supporters who feel the Republican is being unfairly targeted by a Democratic prosecutor.
Tacopina said in a statement: “He did not commit any crime. We will vigorously fight this political prosecution in court.”
The district attorney’s investigation centered on money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, whom he feared would go public with claims that they had extramarital sexual encounters with him.
In bringing the charges, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is embracing an unusual case that had been investigated by two previous sets of prosecutors, both of which declined to take the politically explosive step of seeking Trump’s indictment.
In the weeks leading up to the indictment, Trump railed about the investigation on social media and urged supporters to protest on his behalf, prompting tighter security around the Manhattan criminal courthouse.
Trump faces other potential legal perils as he seeks to reassert control of the Republican Party and stave off a slew of one-time allies who are seeking or are likely to oppose him for the presidential nomination.
The district attorney in Atlanta has for two years been investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to meddle in Georgia’s 2020 vote count. And a U.S. Justice Department special counsel is investigating Trump’s storage of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and his efforts to reverse his election loss.
The fate of the hush-money investigation seemed uncertain until word got out in early March that Bragg had invited Trump to testify before a grand jury, a signal that prosecutors were close to bringing charges.
Trump’s attorneys declined the invitation, but a lawyer closely allied with the former president briefly testified in an effort to undercut the credibility of Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen.
Late in the 2016 presidential campaign, Cohen paid Daniels $130,000 to keep her silent about what she says was a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament.
Cohen was then reimbursed by Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, which also rewarded the lawyer with bonuses and extra payments logged internally as legal expenses. Over several months, Cohen said, the company paid him $420,000.
Earlier in 2016, Cohen had also arranged for the publisher of the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer to pay Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 to squelch her story of a Trump affair in a journalistically dubious practice known as “catch-and-kill.”
The payments to the women were intended to buy secrecy, but they backfired almost immediately as details of the arrangements leaked to the news media.
Federal prosecutors in New York ultimately charged Cohen in 2018 with violating federal campaign finance laws, arguing that the payments amounted to impermissible help to Trump’s presidential campaign. Cohen pleaded guilty to those charges and unrelated tax evasion counts and served time in federal prison.
Trump was implicated in court filings as having knowledge of the arrangements, but U.S. prosecutors at the time balked at bringing charges against him. The Justice Department has a longtime policy that it is likely unconstitutional to prosecute a sitting president in federal court.
Bragg’s predecessor as district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., then took up the investigation in 2019. While that probe initially focused on the hush money payments, Vance’s prosecutors moved on to other matters, including an examination of Trump’s business dealings and tax strategies.
Vance ultimately charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer with tax fraud related to fringe benefits paid to some of the company’s top executives.
The hush money matter became known around the D.A.’s office as the “zombie case,” with prosecutors revisiting it periodically but never opting to bring charges.
Bragg saw it differently. After the Trump Organization was convicted on the tax fraud charges in December, he brought fresh eyes to the well-worn case, hiring longtime white-collar prosecutor Matthew Colangelo to oversee the probe and convening a new grand jury.
Cohen became a key witness, meeting with prosecutors nearly two-dozen times, turning over emails, recordings and other evidence and testifying before the grand jury.
Trump has long decried the Manhattan investigation as “the greatest witch hunt in history.” He has also lashed out at Bragg, calling the prosecutor, who is Black, racist against white people.
The criminal charges in New York are the latest salvo in a profound schism between Trump and his hometown — a reckoning for a one-time favorite son who grew rich and famous building skyscrapers, hobnobbing with celebrities and gracing the pages of the city’s gossip press.
Trump, who famously riffed in 2016 that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and “wouldn’t lose voters,” now faces a threat to his liberty or at least his reputation in a borough where more than 75% of voters — many of them potential jurors — went against him in the last election.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-hush-money-new-york-indictment-election-027d0e5ac1881a4c55c6379deae75faa?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
Christie: GOP needs someone who can quickly take down Trump
By HOLLY RAMER today
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that Republicans need a candidate who can take out Donald Trump in a single, brutal swipe like the one Christie delivered to a different rival in 2016.
Speaking in New Hampshire, Christie recalled a favorite moment from his failed presidential campaign: embarrassing Marco Rubio on a debate stage three days before the first-in-the-nation primary. After Christie challenged Rubio’s lack of experience, the senator from Florida repeated himself twice in a cringe-worthy moment capped off by Christie saying: “There it is. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.”
Trump will never step aside quietly, said Christie, who is mulling another run himself.
“You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco, because that’s the only thing that’s gonna defeat Donald Trump,” he said at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. “And that means you have to be fearless, because he will come back, and right at you.”
Voters need to think about who has the skills and guts to do that, Christie warned.
“Because it’s not going to end nicely, no matter what, his end will not be a calm and quiet conclusion,” he said.
While that debate moment was a high point for Christie, he dropped out less than a week later after finishing a dismal sixth in the New Hampshire Republican primary that year. He quickly endorsed Trump and was a close on-and-off adviser to Trump during his time in the White House, but broke with the former president after Trump refused to accept his loss of the 2020 election.
Christie has since emerged as one of the few prominent Trump critics in his party and has used his position as an ABC political analyst to argue that Trump is a far weaker today than he was in the past. On Monday, he accused Trump of leading Republicans down a “sinkhole of anger and retribution.”
“Donald Trump said a couple of weeks ago, ‘I am your retribution.’ Guess what everybody? No thanks. No dice,” Christie said Monday. “He doesn’t want to be my retribution. That’s baloney. The only person he cares about is him.”
Saul Shriber, 67, of Chester, said he voted for Christie in 2016 even though he wasn’t happy with the answer he got when he asked Christie, “When are you going to take down Trump?”
“I have my timetable,” Christie said at the time.
“I thought, if there’s anybody on the stage who could go after Trump, it would be him, the smash-mouth New Jersey guy,” Shriber said.
Reminded of their encounter Monday, Christie said he and the other candidates made a “strategic error” in thinking they’d get a chance to take on Trump one-on-one. Instead, their campaigns folded quickly.
Shriber found that answer satisfactory and said he would support Christie again.
“If he chose to talk to me truthfully, I’m all in favor,” he said. “I’m willing to forgive.”
New Hampshire was the linchpin of Christie’s 2016 campaign. The then-governor camped out in the state for months, holding dozens of town halls — a format he became famous for in New Jersey, as his colorful commentary and spirited clashes with critics frequently went viral.
Christie said earlier this month that he expects to make a decision in the next 45 to 60 days.
https://apnews.com/article/christie-2024-president-new-hampshire-trump-5ff8b0ca2553ea3800c92826088a40de?utm_source=ForYou&utm_medium=HomePage&utm_id=Taboola
Climate change impacts
NOA -- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce
. . .
Our changing climate
We see climate change affecting our planet from pole to pole. NOAA monitors global climate data and here are some of the changes NOAA has recorded.
You can explore more at the Global Climate Dashboard.
* Global temperatures rose about 1.8°F (1°C) from 1901 to 2020.
* Sea level rise has accelerated from 1.7 mm/year throughout most of the twentieth century to 3.2 mm/year since 1993.
* Glaciers are shrinking: average thickness of 30 well-studied glaciers has decreased more than 60 feet since 1980.
* The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic at the end of summer has shrunk by about 40% since 1979.
* The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 25% since 1958, and by about 40% since the Industrial Revolution.
* Snow is melting earlier compared to long-term averages.
. . .
https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate/climate-change-impacts
============================================================
The Effects of Climate Change
The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible for people alive today, and will worsen as long as humans add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
NASA
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
Vital Signs of the Planet
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
Putin Has A Problem: The Russian Military Is Getting Slaughtered In Ukraine
By Stavros Atlamazoglou Published 11 hours ago
According to the Ukrainian estimates, which are corroborated to a certain degree by Western intelligence assessments, the Russian military and Wagner Group mercenary forces lost more than 1,000 troops killed and wounded in the past day of fighting.
And in the past five days, the Russian forces have lost more than 4,200 troops killed or wounded.
Ukraine War Update: Although the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut has been at the center of the fighting for the past weeks, the Russian forces have also been trying to gain ground in the east. However, despite repeated assaults, the Russian military has failed to achieve anything significant.
On day 394 of the war in Ukraine, the Russian forces are still looking for an operational breakthrough.
There Is Fighting in the East Too
Starting in March, the Russian military began a small-scale offensive along the Svatove-Kreminna line of contact in the east of Kharkiv. The offensive operation aims to reclaim lost territory.
In one of its most recent estimates on the war, the British Military Intelligence assessed that the Russian forces in the east are trying to reach Kupyansk and recapture the critical logistical node. The loss of the town last September during the lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive seriously restricted Russian offensive operations not only in the area but in the Donbas too.
The Russian assaults have managed to partially regain some control of the roads that lead to Kreminna but have largely failed to push the Ukrainians back to a safe distance.
“In places, Russia has made gains of up to several kilometres. Russian
If the Ukrainian military captures Kreminna and Svatove, Russian operations in the area would be severely hampered because of the loss of an additional two logistical nodes.
“Operationally, Russia’s intent in the north-east likely remains defensive. Commanders probably fear this is one of the sectors where Ukraine could attempt major offensive operations,” the British Military Intelligence added.
Meanwhile, the Russian forces continue to suffer extremely heavy casualties.
The Russian Casualties in Ukraine
The past 24 hours have been particularly deadly for the Russian forces.
According to the Ukrainian estimates, which are corroborated to a certain degree by Western intelligence assessments, the Russian military and Wagner Group mercenary forces lost more than 1,000 troops killed and wounded in the past day of fighting.
And in the past five days, the Russian forces have lost more than 4,200 troops killed or wounded.
This rate of casualties would be unthinkable before the start of the war, especially considering that during ten years of conflict in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, the Russian military lost 15,000 men killed.
Overall, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense claimed that as of Friday, Ukrainian forces have killed approximately 169,170 Russian troops (and wounded approximately twice to thrice that number),
Destroyed equipment includes:
305 fighter, attack, bomber, and transport jets,
290 attack and transport helicopters,
3,574 tanks, 2,616 artillery pieces,
6,921 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles,
511 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS),
18 boats and cutters,
5,464 vehicles and fuel tanks,
276 anti-aircraft batteries,
2,208 tactical unmanned aerial systems,
277 special equipment platforms, such as bridging vehicles,
and four mobile Iskander ballistic missile systems,
and 909 cruise missiles shot down by the Ukrainian air defenses.
MORE: PAK DA – Is Russia New Stealth Bomer a Joke?
MORE: Was the F-14 Tomcat Retired Too Early?
MORE: Nimitz-Class – The Best Aircraft Carrier Ever?
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/03/putin-has-a-problem-the-russian-military-is-getting-slaughtered-in-ukraine/
===============================================================‘He’s Satan’: Russian Elites Call Putin Every Name in the Book on Leaked Call
Story by Alexander Motyl • Yesterday 4:21 PM
A tape-recording of a recent conversation between two members of the Russian elite has gone viral on Russian social media. .. https://meduza.io/feature/2023/03/26/v-set-slili-zapis-na-kotoroy-predpolozhitelno-prodyuser-prigozhin-i-milliarder-ahmedov-rugayut-putina-i-ego-okruzhenie-teper-prigozhin-ne-ponimaet-kak-zhit-s-etim-dermom
Yosif Prigozhin, a music producer, and Farkhad Akhmedov, a billionaire oligarch, allegedly discussed Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in the most unflattering way.
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/03/putin-has-a-problem-the-russian-military-is-getting-slaughtered-in-ukraine/
[...]
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/03/putin-has-a-problem-the-russian-military-is-getting-slaughtered-in-ukraine/
You don't care about Lieden, whoever that is. The next day you're "voting for Lieden"
Yet you continually refer to LIES, but NEVER provide proof.
That makes you the biggest liar, next to Trump
President Biden is rarely mentioned.
It's about time Trump was charged for that Huuuge violation !
All President Trump's Lies About the Coronavirus
---Wasn’t it Joe Lieden who told us “we won’t get covid if we have these vaccinations”--- LOLOL
Christian Paz August 31, 2020
President Donald Trump has repeatedly lied about the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s preparation for this once-in-a-generation crisis.
Here, a collection of the biggest lies he’s told as the nation endures a public-health and economic calamity.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=158020433
Trump lawyer ordered to turn over Mar-a-Lago case documents
By ERIC TUCKER 12 minutes ago
Attorney M. Evan Corcoran arrives at federal court in Washington, July 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court in a sealed order Wednesday directed a lawyer for Donald Trump to turn over to prosecutors documents in the investigation into the former president’s retention of classified records at his Florida estate.
The ruling is a significant win for the Justice Department, which has focused for months not only on the hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago but also on why Trump and his representatives resisted demands to return them to the government.
It suggests the court has sided with prosecutors who have argued behind closed doors that Trump was using his legal representation to further a crime.
The order was reflected in a brief online notice by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case is sealed, and none of the parties in the dispute is mentioned by name.
But the details appear to correspond with a secret fight before a lower court judge over whether Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran could be forced to provide documents or give grand jury testimony in the Justice Department special counsel probe into whether Trump mishandled top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago.
Related coverage..
* – Trump's potential indictment caps decades of legal scrutiny
* – AP sources: Manhattan DA postpones Trump grand jury session
* – Republicans invoke Soros to steer narrative on Trump probe
Corcoran is regarded as relevant to the investigation in part because last year he drafted a statement to the Justice Department asserting that a “diligent search” for classified documents had been conducted at Mar-a-Lago in response to a subpoena. That claim proved untrue as FBI agents weeks later searched the home with a warrant and found roughly 100 additional documents with classified markings.
Another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, told investigators last fall that Corcoran had drafted the letter and asked her to sign it in her role as a designated custodian of Trump’s records.
A Justice Department investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors is examining whether Trump or anyone in his orbit obstructed its efforts to recover all the classified documents, which included top-secret material, from his home. No charges have yet been filed. The inquiry is one of multiple legal threats Trump faces, including probes in Atlanta and Washington over his efforts to undo the election result and a grand jury investigation in New York over hush money payments. The New York case appears to be nearing completion and building toward an indictment.
Last week, Beryl Howell, the outgoing chief judge of the U.S. District Court, directed Corcoran to answer additional questions before the grand jury. He had appeared weeks earlier before the federal grand jury investigating the Mar-a-Lago matter, but had invoked attorney-client privilege to avoid answering certain questions.
Though attorney-client privilege shields lawyers from being forced to share details of their conversations with clients before prosecutors, the Justice Department can get around that if it can convince a judge that a lawyer’s services were used in furtherance of a crime — a principle known in the law as the “crime-fraud” exception.
Howell ruled in the Justice Department’s favor shortly before stepping aside as chief judge Friday, according to a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to discuss a sealed proceeding and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. That ruling was subsequently appealed, and the court records show the dispute before the federal appeals panel concerned an order that was issued last Friday by Howell.
The three-judge panel that issued the decision include Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, and J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, both appointees of President Joe Biden. The order came just hours after the court imposed tight deadlines on both sides to file written briefs making their case.
A lawyer for Corcoran did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Wednesday, and a lawyer for Trump declined to comment on the sealed order.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-classified-documents-maralago-justice-department-1533b34b17c154be8576f581206a31b2?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
I was rooting for Elizabeth Warren to be Biden's VP
Maybe she still has a future in that world.
Elizabeth Warren says Jerome Powell has ‘failed’ as Federal Reserve chair
"I don’t think he should be chairman of the Federal Reserve," the Massachusetts Democrat said in an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press."
March 19, 2023, 9:12 AM CDT
By Summer Concepcion
For links and video:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/elizabeth-warren-jerome-powell-failed-fed-chair-rcna75635
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., slammed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in an interview Sunday on NBC News' "Meet the Press," saying he "has failed" and shouldn't be in his role.
"He has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy. One is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both," she said.
"Look, I don't think he should be chairman of the Federal Reserve. I have said it as publicly as I know how to say it. I've said it to everyone," said Warren, who is on the Senate Banking Committee.
Powell, first nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017, has faced criticism over his handling of banking regulations after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Warren, who has been pressing for stricter banking regulations, said Powell “took a flamethrower to the regulations” when Trump was in office, adding that Trump gave Congress the “authority to lighten the regulations even more.”
"And then the CEOs of the banks did exactly what we expected. They loaded up on risk that boosted their short-term profits. They gave themselves huge bonuses and salaries and exploded their banks," Warren said.
In a letter Saturday, Warren urged the inspectors general at the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Fed Board of Governors to immediately open a "thorough independent investigation" to determine the causes of the bank management and regulatory issues that led to the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank.
“The bank’s executives, who took unnecessary risks or failed to hedge against entirely foreseeable threats, must be held accountable for these failures,” Warren wrote, asking for preliminary findings of the probe to be delivered to Congress within 30 days.
A group of Democrats led by Warren and Rep. Katie Porter of California announced legislation last week to restore bank regulations that were undone in 2018, during the Trump administration — an effort they say would address the cause of SVB's collapse.
At the time, Republicans in Congress pushed a bill — with the support of some centrist Democrats — that eased Dodd-Frank financial regulations on midsize banks, raising the “too big to fail” threshold from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion. The Warren-Porter bill, first reported by NBC News, would repeal that measure, but it faces a tough road to passage in Congress.
Some Democrats who voted for the 2018 bill are standing by their votes, joining Republicans in resisting more scrutiny for banks and arguing that the U.S. still has ways under existing law to tackle the issue.
President Joe Biden renominated Powell as Federal Reserve chairman in November 2021. The decision was met with pushback from some progressives, and certain Democrats had argued that Powell was too hands-off as a banking regulator.
Around that time, Warren was a leading opponent of Powell, calling him a "dangerous man" who had led an effort to weaken the nation's banking system at a hearing in late 2021.
Warren urged Powell to recuse himself from an internal probe into SVB last week, saying his actions "directly contributed to these bank failures."
“I’ve opposed him because of his views on regulation," Warren said Sunday on "Meet the Press," "and what he was already doing to weaken regulation."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/elizabeth-warren-jerome-powell-failed-fed-chair-rcna75635
Elizabeth Warren's media blitz on SVB, in 60 seconds
By RENEE KLAHR
03/19/2023 01:46 PM EDT
-- “These recent bank failures are the direct result of leaders in Washington weakening the financial rules,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote in a New York Times op-ed .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/opinion/elizabeth-warren-silicon-valley-bank.html .. this week. --
https://www.politico.com/video/2023/03/19/elizabeth-warrens-media-blitz-on-svb-in-60-seconds-860987
Pence says Trump was 'wrong' about Jan. 6 and that history will hold him accountable for it.
March 12, 202311:18 AM ET
By Scott Detrow, Joe Hernandez
That was the message former Vice President Mike Pence delivered at a Washington, D.C., dinner on Saturday night, in what amounted to his most forceful rebuke to date of the former president.
Pence laid into Trump for his efforts to pressure him into blocking the certification of the 2020 election results on Jan. 6, when he told supporters near the White House that he hoped Pence would "do the right thing." Protesters who later marched to the Capitol turned violent and stormed the building where the vote count was being certified. Some chanted "Hang Mike Pence."
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/12/1162923482/pence-trump-january-6-gridiron-dinner
YOUR POST:
A Republican group is putting up gigantic billboards to remind Trump that he lost
Cheryl Teh Oct 14, 2021, 9:33 PM
A group of Republican officials is launching an anti-Trump campaign to call for an end to vote audits.
* A Republican group is putting up billboards to remind former President Trump that he lost the 2020 election.
* The first billboard is up in Times Square, and reads "Trump lost. No more 'audits.'"
* The group plans to run these billboards in states where Trump is calling for vote audits.
....
https://www.businessinsider.com/republican-group-putting-up-billboards-remind-trump-that-he-lost-2021-10
Ukraine war: International court issues warrant for Putin's arrest
By Bart H. Meijer and Olena Harmash
March 17, 20235:00 PM CDT Last Updated 22 min ago
* Court in The Hague issues arrest warrant for Putin
* Putin accused of illegally removing children from Ukraine
* Russians react with outrage, disbelief, scorn
* 'Hands off Putin' says Russia's parliament chief
* Comes days before China's President Xi visits Moscow
AMSTERDAM/KYIV, March 17 (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, alleging Moscow's forcible deportation of Ukrainian children is a war crime, as the Kremlin reacted with outrage.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the move would lead to "historic accountability", adding that the deportations constituted a policy of "state evil which starts precisely with the top official of this state."
The announcement provoked a furious response from Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia found the very questions raised by the ICC "outrageous and unacceptable", and that any decisions of the court were "null and void" with respect to Russia. Russia, like the United States and China, is not a member of the ICC.
Russia has not concealed a programme under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.
"Yankees, hands off Putin!" wrote parliament Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a close ally of the president, on Telegram.
"We regard any attacks on the president of the Russian Federation as aggression against our country," he said.
The United States said there was "no doubt" Russia was committing war crimes in Ukraine. The court also issued a warrant for Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia's commissioner for children's rights, on the same charges.
Putin, only the third serving president to have been issued an arrest warrant by the ICC, is unlikely to end up in court any time soon. But the warrant means that he could be arrested and sent to The Hague if he travels to any ICC member states.
"This makes Putin a pariah. If he travels he risks arrest. This never goes away. Russia cannot gain relief from sanctions without compliance with the warrants," said Stephen Rapp, former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes.
Residents of the Russian capital expressed disbelief at the news. "Putin! Nobody will arrest him," a man who gave his name only as Daniil, 20, told Reuters.
Maxim said, "We will protect him - the people of Russia."
BEIJING, MOSCOW TIES
Moscow's forces have been accused of multiple abuses during Russia's year-old invasion of its neighbour Ukraine, including by a U.N.-mandated investigative body that this week described soldiers making children watch loved ones being raped.
Moscow has repeatedly denied accusations its forces have committed atrocities during the invasion, which it calls a special military operation.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan began investigating possible war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Ukraine a year ago. He said he was looking at alleged crimes against children and the targeting of civilian infrastructure.
News of the arrest warrant came ahead of a planned state visit to Moscow next week by Chinese President Xi Jinping which is likely to cement much closer ties between Russia and China just as relations between Moscow and the West hit new lows.
Beijing and Moscow struck a "no limits" partnership shortly before the invasion, and U.S. and European leaders have said they are concerned Beijing may send arms to Russia.
China has denied any such plan, criticising Western weapon supplies to Ukraine, which will soon extend to fighter jets after Poland and Slovakia this week approved deliveries. The Kremlin said the jets would be destroyed and not change the course of the conflict.
China is keen to deflect Western criticism over Ukraine, but its close ties to Russia and its refusal to label Moscow’s war an invasion have fuelled scepticism about the prospect that Beijing might act as a mediator in the conflict.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Friday the United States had deep concerns China might try to promote a ceasefire because that would not currently lead to a just and lasting peace between Ukraine and Russia.
BAKHMUT FIGHTING
Ukrainian forces continued on Friday to withstand Russian assaults on the ruined city of Bakhmut, the focal point for eight months of Russian attempts to advance through the industrial Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine bordering Russia.
Bakhmut has become Europe's bloodiest infantry battle since World War Two. Russian forces have captured the city's eastern part but have so far failed to encircle it.
The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said Russia had carried out 19 airstrikes and 26 rocket attacks on Friday.
Russian forces also conducted four air strikes on the frontline town of Avdiivka south of Bakhmut on Friday, Yermak, the Ukrainian presidential staff chief, wrote on Telegram. "The city is being shelled almost around the clock," he wrote.
Reuters could not immediately verify those battlefield reports.
Russia denies deliberately attacking civilians but says it has hit infrastructure to degrade Ukraine's military and remove what it says is a potential threat to its own security.
Ukraine and its allies accuse Moscow of an unprovoked war to grab territory from its pro-Western neighbour.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-says-video-shows-russian-jet-intercepted-spy-drone-near-ukraine-2023-03-16/
US military releases footage of Russian fighter jet forcing down American drone over Black Sea
Story by Oren Liebermann • 2h ago
US European Command released footage of the Tuesday encounter between a US surveillance drone and the Russian fighter jets as it played out over the Black Sea.
2:50
Retired lt. general explains significance of Russian fighter jet forcing down US drone
The newly declassified video depicts critical moments in the mid-air encounter, which the Pentagon said lasted between 30 and 40 minutes.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-military-releases-footage-of-russian-fighter-jet-forcing-down-american-drone-over-black-sea/ar-AA18HAKn?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c68111bdaf2947aea0c37dc770a55899&ei=23
US Air Force MQ-9 camera footage: Russian Su-27 Black Sea intercept - bent propller on drone - US European Command
The video shows the camera of the MQ-9 Reaper drone pointed backward toward its tail and the drone’s propeller, which is mounted on the rear, spinning. Then, a Russian Sukhoi SU-27 fighter jet is shown approaching. As it draws closer, the Russian fighter jet dumps fuel as it intercepts the US drone.
In another portion of the footage, the Russian jet makes another pass. As it approaches, it again dumps fuel. The video from the drone is then disrupted as the Russian fighter jet collides with the MQ-9 Reaper, damaging the propeller and ultimately forcing the US to bring down the drone in the Black Sea. Russia has denied that a collision occurred.
When the camera comes back online in the footage, the view is again pointed backward, and the propeller is shown damaged from the collision. With the propeller damaged, the drone operators effectively flew the aircraft as a glider as it descended over the Black Sea, bringing it down in international waters southwest of Crimea. On its way down, two US officials told CNN the operators remotely wiped the drone’s sensitive software, mitigating the risk of secret materials falling into enemy hands before it crashed into the water.
The downing of the drone marked the first time Russian and US military aircraft have come into direct physical contact since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Despite the release of the dramatic footage, and back and forth over who is to blame, the Biden administration has not said it will take action against Russia over the downing of the drone, perhaps indicating a desire to not further escalate tensions after the Kremlin said Wednesday that relations between Moscow and Washington are at their “lowest point.”
A senior Biden administration official said the footage “absolutely confirms” that there was a physical collision and dumping of fuel, but it does not confirm the pilot’s intent.
On Wednesday two US officials familiar with the intelligence told CNN that senior officials at the Russian Ministry of Defense gave the order for the Russian fighter jets to harass a US drone over the Black Sea this week.
The high-level military officials’ connection to the incident suggests that the fighter jet pilots were not taking rogue action when they interfered with the US drone.
But, at this time there is no indication that the highest of political leaders in Russia – particularly those in the Kremlin, including President Vladimir Putin – knew about the planned aggression in advance, one of the US officials said.
National Security Council communications coordinator John Kirby said on “CNN This Morning” Wednesday that the drone had not been recovered and that he was “not sure” the US would be able to recover it.
Moscow had made clear it would attempt to retrieve the wreckage of the drone, and two officials told CNN Wednesday that Russia had reached the MQ-9 crash site in the Black Sea. Kirby would not confirm the reported development, but said the US had “made it impossible for them to be able to glean anything of intelligence value off the remnants of that drone, whatever remnants there might be on the surface of the water.”
The Kremlin has said a decision on whether to retrieve the drone will come from Russia’s Ministry of Defense.
“This is the prerogative of the military. If they believe that it is necessary for our interests and our security in the Black Sea, they will do it,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Thursday.
Peskov said he did not know what the ministry has decided.
Moscow and Washington have been in contact through military and diplomatic channels following the incident.
This story has been updated with additional details.
CNN’s MJ Lee, Jennifer Hansler and Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-military-releases-footage-of-russian-fighter-jet-forcing-down-american-drone-over-black-sea/ar-AA18HAKn?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c68111bdaf2947aea0c37dc770a55899&ei=23
Winners of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition
Alan Taylor | 1:31 PM ET | 22 Photos | In Focus
The top entries in the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition have been announced, and the contest organizers were once again kind enough to share some of their winning and shortlisted photos below, from their 10 categories:
Architecture, Creative, Landscape, Lifestyle, Motion, Natural World & Wildlife, Object, Portraiture, Street Photography, and Travel. Captions have been provided by the photographers.
Hints: View this page full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ?/?.
-- I view the photos "using a Private Window"--
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2023/03/winners-2023-sony-world-photography-awards/673391/
6. She Is Bagheera. Shortlist, Motion. "The first obstacle of the course is the one I prefer most of all, because this is where it all begins. It is where the bond between human and dog is expressed in such a clear way, by such a magnetic look; where you can see the power of the dog’s muscles contracting and releasing energy at the handler’s every nod. Taken during a dog agility competition in Italy." #
12. Monte Rosa Hut—Blue Hour. Shortlist, Architecture. "I took this photograph as part of my Modern Alpine Architecture series. After crossing a glacier and hiking for many hours we arrived at the mountain hut and stayed there for the night. Early in the morning, before sunrise, I started my drone to capture the first light of the new day falling on this beautiful piece of architecture." #
22. Earth Pyramids. Shortlist, Landscape. "Taken in Percha, Italy. These earth pyramids were formed millions of years ago in the Dolomite mountains. On this particular morning they were in low clouds, which adds to the atmosphere." #