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Former police chief and American Phoenix Project founder indicted on conspiracy charges related to January 6, alongside 5 men prosecutors say he recruited to far-right group
AZMI HAROUNJUN 11, 2021, 09:53 IST
https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/former-police-chief-and-american-phoenix-project-founder-indicted-on-conspiracy-charges-related-to-january-6-alongside-5-men-prosecutors-say-he-recruited-to-far-right-group/articleshow/83422864.cms
The ex-La Habra police chief and American Phoenix Project founder was indicted on Jan. 6 conspiracy charges.
Alan Hostetter and 5 men from the far-right group allegedly plotted and broke into the Capitol.
Hostetter organized "Stop the Steal" rallies in Orange County a prelude to the attack on Jan. 6.
A former California police chief, who founded a far-right group, and five other men who joined the group were indicted on conspiracy charges related to the January 6 storming of the US Capitol, according to the AP.
New court documents unsealed on Thursday revealed that Alan Hostetter, the former La Habra, California, police chief, started a far-right group called the American Phoenix Project, which organized anti-COVID lockdown protests and amplified former President Donald Trump's lies about election fraud in the 2020 election.
https://www.businessinsider.in/politics/world/news/former-police-chief-and-american-phoenix-project-founder-indicted-on-conspiracy-charges-related-to-january-6-alongside-5-men-prosecutors-say-he-recruited-to-far-right-group/articleshow/83422864.cms
Three Percenters Militia Members Charged in US Capitol Attack
By Reuters
June 10, 2021 05:55 PM
https://www.voanews.com/usa/three-percenters-militia-members-charged-us-capitol-attack
WASHINGTON - U.S. prosecutors have charged six members of the right-wing Three Percenters militia group with conspiring to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, an indictment unsealed on Thursday in federal court in Washington showed.
Federal prosecutors previously brought similar conspiracy cases against members of two other right-wing groups, The Oath Keepers and The Proud Boys. Those pending cases are the largest and most complex of the roughly 500 brought by the Justice Department in the months since the deadly attack carried out by supporters of former President Donald Trump.
Six men, all from California, were charged in the indictment: Alan Hostetter, Russell Taylor, Eric Scott Warner, Felipe Antonio "Tony" Martinez, Derek Kinnison and Ronald Mele.
According to the indictment, Hostetter founded a group in 2020 called the American Phoenix Project that protested restrictions on public gatherings imposed as a public health measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. That group became a platform to advocate violence against government leaders, according to the indictment.
Hostetter and Taylor had appeared with Roger Stone, a long-time friend and adviser of Trump, outside the U.S. Supreme Court at a protest of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election the day before the Capitol riot.
Trump granted a pardon to Stone in December, wiping away his conviction arising from a federal investigation that documented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
The pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, interrupted the formal congressional certification of President Joe Biden's election victory, clashed with an overwhelmed police force, and invaded the House of Representatives and Senate chambers. Five people died.
https://www.voanews.com/usa/three-percenters-militia-members-charged-us-capitol-attack
A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT - Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers
Election officials and their families are living with threats of hanging, firing squads, torture and bomb blasts, interviews and documents reveal. The campaign of fear, sparked by Trump's voter-fraud falsehoods, threatens the U.S. electoral system.
By LINDA SO in ATLANTA Filed June 11, 2021, 11 a.m. GMT
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-georgia-threats/
Note: This story contains offensive language
Late on the night of April 24, the wife of Georgia’s top election official got a chilling text message: “You and your family will be killed very slowly.”
A week earlier, Tricia Raffensperger, wife of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, had received another anonymous text: “We plan for the death of you and your family every day.”
That followed an April 5 text warning. A family member, the texter told her, was “going to have a very unfortunate incident.”
Those messages, which have not been previously reported, illustrate the continuing barrage of threats and intimidation against election officials and their families months after former U.S. President Donald Trump’s November election defeat. While reports of threats against Georgia officials emerged in the heated weeks after the voting, Reuters interviews with more than a dozen election workers and top officials – and a review of disturbing texts, voicemails and emails that they and their families received – reveal the previously hidden breadth and severity of the menacing tactics.
DEATH THREATS: Tricia Raffensperger - wife of Georgia’s top election official - provided Reuters with screen shots of menacing text messages she received recently.
Trump’s relentless false claims that the vote was “rigged” against him sparked a campaign to terrorize election officials nationwide – from senior officials such as Raffensperger to the lowest-level local election workers. The intimidation has been particularly severe in Georgia, where Raffensperger and other Republican election officials refuted Trump’s stolen-election claims. The ongoing harassment could have far-reaching implications for future elections by making the already difficult task of recruiting staff and poll workers much harder, election officials say.
In an exclusive interview, Tricia Raffensperger spoke publicly for the first time about the threats of violence to her family and shared the menacing text messages with Reuters.
The Raffenspergers – Tricia, 65, and Brad, 66 – began receiving death threats almost immediately after Trump’s surprise loss in Georgia, long a Republican bastion. Tricia Raffensperger started taking precautions. She canceled regular weekly visits in her home with two grandchildren, ages 3 and 5 – the children of her eldest son, Brenton, who died from a drug overdose in 2018.
“I couldn’t have them come to my house anymore,” she said. “You don’t know if these people are actually going to act on this stuff.”
In late November, the family went into hiding for nearly a week after intruders broke into the home of the Raffenspergers’ widowed daughter-in-law, an incident the family believed was intended to intimidate them. That evening, people who identified themselves to police as Oath Keepers – a far-right militia group that has supported Trump’s bid to overturn the election – were found outside the Raffenspergers’ home, according to Tricia Raffensperger and two sources with direct knowledge of the family’s ordeal. Neither incident has been previously reported.
“Brad and I didn’t feel like we could protect ourselves,” she said, explaining the decision to flee their home.
Brad Raffensperger told Reuters in a statement that “vitriol and threats are an unfortunate, but expected, part of public service. But my family should be left alone.”
Trump’s baseless voter-fraud accusations have had dark consequences for U.S. election leaders and workers, especially in contested states such as Georgia, Arizona and Michigan. Some have faced protests at their homes or been followed in their cars. Many have received death threats.
Some, like Raffensperger, are senior officials who publicly refused to bow to Trump’s demands to alter the election outcome. In Georgia, people went into hiding in at least three cases, including the Raffenspergers. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, told Reuters she continues to receive death threats. Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson – a Democrat who faced armed protesters outside her home in December – is also still getting threats, her spokesperson said, declining to elaborate.
But many others whose lives have been threatened were low- or mid-level workers, just doing their jobs. Trump’s incendiary rhetoric could reverberate into the 2022 midterm congressional elections and the 2024 presidential vote by making election workers targets of threatened or actual violence. Many election offices will lose critical employees with years or decades of experience, predicts David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.
“This is deeply troubling,” Becker said.
Carlos Nelson, elections supervisor for Ware County in southeastern Georgia, shares that fear. “These are people who work for little or no money, 12 to 14 hours a day on Election Day,” Nelson said. “If we lose good poll workers, that’s when we’re going to lose democracy.”
In Georgia, Trump faces an investigation into alleged election interference, the only known criminal inquiry into his attempts to overturn the 2020 vote.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller did not respond to Reuters’ questions about the ongoing harassment of election workers, including why Trump has not forcefully denounced the torrent of threats being made in his name.
‘Disturbing and sickening’
The intimidation in Georgia has gone well beyond Raffensperger and his family. Election workers - from local volunteers to senior administrators - continue enduring regular harassing phone calls and emails, according to interviews with election workers and the Reuters review of texts, emails and audio files provided by Georgia officials.
One email, sent on Jan. 2 to officials in nearly a dozen counties, threatened to bomb polling sites: “No one at these places will be spared unless and until Trump is guaranteed to be POTUS again.” The specific text of the threat has not been previously reported. The email, a state election official said, was forwarded to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which declined to comment for this story.
In Georgia, threatening violence against a poll officer is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $100,000. Making death threats is a separate crime carrying up to five years in prison and a $1,000 fine.
Criminal law specialists say the widespread threats could increase the legal jeopardy for Trump in the Georgia investigation. That inquiry is led by the top prosecutor in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta. District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, is probing whether Trump illegally interfered with Georgia’s 2020 election.
....
MUCH MORE
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-georgia-threats/
Revealed: rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats
Julia Carrie Wong in San Francisco
@juliacarriew
Fri 11 Jun 2021 06.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/11/facebook-ads-turning-point-usa-rally-forge
FEC investigation failed to uncover link to Rally Forge, a firm with close ties to Turning Point USA
A digital marketing firm closely linked to the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA was responsible for a series of deceptive Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections, the Guardian can reveal.
In an apparent attempt to split the Democratic vote in a number of close races, the ads purported to come from an organization called America Progress Now (APN) and used socialist memes and rhetoric to urge leftwing voters to support Green party candidates.
Facebook was aware of the true identity of the advertiser – the conservative marketing firm Rally Forge – and the deceptive nature of the ads, documents seen by the Guardian show, but the company determined that they did not violate its policies.
Rally Forge would go on to set up a pro-Trump domestic “troll farm” for Turning Point Action, a “sister” organization of Turning Point USA, in 2020, earning a permanent ban from Facebook.
“There were no policies at Facebook against pretending to be a group that did not exist, an abuse vector that has also been used by the governments of Honduras and Azerbaijan,” said Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook employee and whistleblower who played a small role in the investigation of the Green party ads.
She added: “The fact that Rally Forge later went on to conduct coordinated inauthentic behavior with troll farms reminiscent of Russia should be taken as an indication that Facebook’s leniency led to more risk-taking behavior.”
...
MUCH MORE
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/11/facebook-ads-turning-point-usa-rally-forge
VIDEO: This is what farmers are dealing with during a mouse plague
Posted Yesterday at 4:02am, updated Yesterday at 4:48am
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-10/this-is-what-farmers-are-dealing-with-during-a/13382062
Trump’s Loyal, ‘Low Profile’ Money Man Could Bring Him Down
Asawin Suebsaeng
Fri, June 11, 2021, 1:17 AM·9 min read
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-loyal-low-profile-money-001707327.html
When leaders of The Trump Organization would prepare important documents like asset evaluations or taxes, there were usually only two people in the room: Donald Trump and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
To this point, prosecutors are still searching for ways to flip Weisselberg against his boss. And Trump is Trump. But according to a source with direct knowledge of the company’s inner workings, the man who brought the original documents and tranches of raw data to Trump and Weisselberg—the man who might know how those documents changed in those rooms over the course of more than three decades—is Jeffrey S. McConney.
McConney, a senior vice president at the Trump family empire, was brought in to testify before the grand jury in recent weeks—in the same expansive probe that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is using to potentially indict former President Trump and others, as ABC reported last week.
“Think of The Trump Organization as a small, one-teller bank,” Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime fixer and former personal lawyer, told The Daily Beast. “Donald [Trump] would be the president. Allen [Weisselberg] would be the branch manager. Jeff [McConney] would be the teller. Every single transaction was booked through McConney.”
When the company made a big payment, McConney would order someone to cut the check—and demanded to get a final copy with the boss’s signature. If there is something in the vast archives of Trump Organization documents and tax paperwork that prosecutors are trying to use against Weisselberg or the twice-impeached former president, McConney is one of the few people on the planet who would have intimate knowledge of what’s off.
The problem for investigators, however, is McConney has a long-standing reputation in the Trump orbit as a loyal footsoldier, as someone who both despises the political left and keeps his mouth shut, according to people who’ve worked with or known McConney. And that’s particularly true if he knows something that could hurt the Trump family.
VIDEO Watch: Trump's tax records 'holy grail' to probe - Cohen
When asked about McConney, two words frequently come up with people who’ve moved in and out of the Trump Organization: “low profile.”
He started at the Trump Org. in 1987, according to his LinkedIn resume. And though his exact title has changed over those 34 years, his role has remained the same: the guy in charge of the books.
Four people who’ve worked with or know McConney independently described him as a generally quiet and diligent numbers man at Trump Tower. They said he keeps his head down amid the controversies and louder personalities that have often defined the family empire. And Trump has personally commended McConney for his years of loyalty. At the moment, there is little fear in the upper ranks of Trumpworld that McConney would turn on the former president or harm Weisselberg in his grand-jury testimony, according to these sources.
“He takes instruction well, and has followed orders faithfully and very carefully,” one of these people said.
McConney is generally well-liked at Trump Tower, and has gained a reputation as being, among other things, “not a blabber,” according to another source with knowledge of the matter.
Calls and emails to McConney went unanswered. And The Trump Organization did not respond to requests for comment.
In describing his politics, which the Trump Organization controller usually keeps private and among friends, this source added that McConney “hates liberals, thinks New York was being run to shit by [Mayor Bill] de Blasio, and said Obama was terrible for business. A true, rank-and-file Republican voter.”
During certain stages of Trump’s 2016 presidential run, McConney was also there, quietly working in the background. He was one of the main Trump Org. lieutenants overseeing the preparation of the financial records that Team Trump released during the 2016 campaign, according to a person familiar with the matter.
And throughout the decades, well before the 45th U.S. president’s political rise, Trump and his inner circle have leaned so heavily on McConney that he has at times found himself in the room when Trump and his closest advisers were figuring out how to navigate some of the organization’s biggest crises and cash woes.
According to a person with knowledge of the situation, when the Trump Organization was slammed with heavy losses and financial turmoil during the 1990s, McConney was among the small group of people present in the boardroom on the 26th floor of Trump Tower, where Trump would pace back and forth, thinking about how to dig himself out of a gaping financial hole.
“All I need is one more deal… We’ll get through this, we’ll get through this,” Trump would say, according to this source, trying to reassure himself and the rest of the boardroom crew.
While others at Trump Tower would walk or taxi into work, McConney would take the train, one source said. He’d travel from the same house in Marlboro, New Jersey that he purchased just after landing his job at the company, records show. And when others would go out for lunch, this source said, McConney would sit and watch golf in the conference room with fellow mid-level executives and his boss, Weisselberg. Or he’d eat at his desk.
McConney was so loyal that, when milling about Trump’s Manhattan headquarters, he’d often be spotted dutifully wearing a Trump-branded necktie.
But while McConney developed a trusted reputation, and had the responsibility of monitoring the money flow, he was kept out of the room when the company’s top officials got creative with financial statements, according to one source with direct knowledge of the company’s inner workings.
For example, when it came time to prepare tax paperwork, McConney would bring printouts of the company’s numbers and meet one-one-one with Weisselberg. At that point, he’d leave the room, and Weisselberg would discuss the documents with the company’s go-to taxman at Mazars USA, Donald Bender. Those two would then be joined by Donald Trump himself—and then Bender would eventually leave the room so that just Weisselberg and Trump could finalize the numbers as they saw fit, this source said.
That process was alluded to in an October 2007 issue of Worth magazine, where Trump praised his core in-house financial advisers, singling out people like McConney and Weisselberg.
“I listen to what they have to say, and make my own decisions in the final analysis,” Trump told Worth. “I know the responsibility rests with me, but I have excellent people and I respect their input.”
Trump continued that Weisselberg, McConney, and assistant controller Eric Sacher all worked well together. “I meet with them as we need to, maybe a couple of times a week, and with Allen on a daily basis,” he said.
It is precisely this process that will be examined by law enforcement. The New York investigation into the ex-president and his sprawling business, which now involves the state’s attorney general and the Manhattan DA, is exploring whether the company falsified the values of assets to obtain bank loans and dodge taxes, according to court filings. Their case could hinge on the actions of the company’s chief financial officer, Weisselberg. And that’s where McConney could be pivotal.
As the organization’s controller, McConney has answered directly to Weisselberg.
Investigators recently examined McConney and have been asking about his role at the Trump Organization, largely as part of an effort to “tighten” their focus on Weisselberg, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office declined to comment on McConney or confirm the ongoing secret grand jury proceedings.
In recent months, those approached by investigators have answered questions and supplied documents specifically regarding McConney, one of the sources added. But like Weisselberg, McConney could be difficult to crack.
When the New York State AG looked into what it called a “shocking pattern of illegality” at the Trump Foundation for coordinating with Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, investigators interviewed McConney.
Although he was not a target himself, emails showed he played a central role in cutting checks and redistributing incoming donations from Trump’s rich friends. For example, when the New York Daily News caught Trump stiffing a charity for homeless veterans in 2016, McConney was at the center of the effort to make good on promises to charities.
“Please cut a check out of DJTs foundation in the amount of $40,000 to Veterans in Command,” McConney instructed an employee, referring to Donald J. Trump. “Put a note on the check and return a signed check to me.”
Emails showed that McConney coordinated all the donations, and then ordered all the checks signed by the boss—“DJT”—to be sent back to him. The Trump Foundation was later forced to shut down after a state judge found it broke the law when donations meant for veterans were “used for Mr. Trump’s political campaign and disbursed by Mr. Trump’s campaign staff, rather than by the Foundation.”
McConney popped up again in Aug. 2019, when the Manhattan DA was seeking information about Trump’s hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. McConney was one of the few Trump Organization employees to be singled out in a grand jury subpoena that wanted three years’ worth of documents and communications to see if the payments were criminal, according to court records.
“McConney is supposed to be in charge of all financial and accounting controls. That’s what he does,” said Marty Shiel, a retired supervisory special agent at the IRS. “If somebody is cooking the books, he almost has to be involved. If Weisselberg is the chief chef cooking the books, McConney has to be the sous chef.”
Still, McConney could prove tough to flip. His loyalty runs so deep it apparently extends to his offspring.
His son, Justin McConney, was dubbed by Politico in late 2015 as “Trump’s 29-year-old social media whiz.” The younger McConney is even credited with convincing Trump to adopt social media—particularly Twitter—as a primary tool for political messaging and sniping at celebrities and bitter rivals.
In a 2018 interview, also with Politico, Justin McConney said the moment he found out Trump could tweet himself, it was “comparable to the moment in Jurassic Park when Dr. Grant realized that velociraptors could open doors. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’”
Read more at The Daily Beast.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-loyal-low-profile-money-001707327.html
Jeremy Faust MD MS (ER physician) @jeremyfaust That’s five shifts in a row without a single Covid patient!
Vaccines for the win.
5:15 AM · Jun 11, 2021·Twitter for iPhone
THREAD
That’s five shifts in a row without a single Covid patient!
— Jeremy Faust MD MS (ER physician) (@jeremyfaust) June 11, 2021
Vaccines for the win. 💪🩹
The Trump administration’s attempt to secretly gain access to data of individual members of Congress and others connected to the panel came as the president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations — in Congress and by then-special counsel Robert Mueller — into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump called the probes a “witch hunt,” regularly criticized Schiff and other Democrats on Twitter and repeatedly dismissed as “fake news” leaks he found personally harmful to his agenda. As the investigations swirled around him, he demanded loyalty from a Justice Department he often regarded as his personal law firm.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement that “these actions appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy” waged by the former president.
Trump DOJ seized data from House Democrats in leaks probe
By MARY CLARE JALONICK and MICHAEL BALSAMO
today
https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-donald-trump-ca-state-wire-europe-business-76af370a04c6d80613c9e9ba1e54c8c6
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department under former President Donald Trump seized data from the accounts of at least two members of the House Intelligence Committee in 2018 as part of an aggressive crackdown on leaks related to the Russia investigation and other national security matters, according to a committee official and two people familiar with the investigation.
Prosecutors from Trump’s Justice Department subpoenaed Apple for the data, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the secret seizures first reported by The New York Times.
The records of at least twelve people connected to the intelligence panel were eventually shared, including Chairman Adam Schiff, who was then the top Democrat on the committee. California Rep. Eric Swalwell was the second member, according to spokeswoman Natalie Edelstein. The records of aides, former aides and family members were also siezed, including one who was a minor, according to the committee official.
Apple informed the committee last month that their records had been shared, but did not give extensive detail. The committee is aware, though, that metadata from the accounts was turned over, the official said. The records do not contain any other content from the devices, like photos, messages or emails, one of the other people said. The third person said that Apple complied with the subpoena, providing the information to the Justice Department, and did not immediately notify the members of Congress or the committee about the disclosure.
While the Justice Department routinely conducts investigations of leaked information, including classified intelligence, opening such an investigation into members of Congress is extraordinarily rare.
The Trump administration’s attempt to secretly gain access to data of individual members of Congress and others connected to the panel came as the president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations — in Congress and by then-special counsel Robert Mueller — into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump called the probes a “witch hunt,” regularly criticized Schiff and other Democrats on Twitter and repeatedly dismissed as “fake news” leaks he found personally harmful to his agenda. As the investigations swirled around him, he demanded loyalty from a Justice Department he often regarded as his personal law firm.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement that “these actions appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy” waged by the former president.
“The news about the politicization of the Trump Administration Justice Department is harrowing,” she said.
Schiff, now the panel’s chair, confirmed in a statement Thursday evening that the Justice Department had informed the committee in May that the investigation was closed. Still, he said, “I believe more answers are needed, which is why I believe the Inspector General should investigate this and other cases that suggest the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president.”
The Justice Department told the intelligence panel then that the matter had not transferred to any other entity or investigative body, the committee official said, and the department confirmed that to the committee again on Thursday.
The panel has continued to seek additional information, but the Justice Department has not been forthcoming in a timely manner, including on questions such as whether the investigation was properly predicated and whether it only targeted Democrats, the committee official said.
It is unclear why Trump’s Justice Department would have targeted a minor as part of the probe. Swalwell, confirming that he was told his records were siezed, told CNN Thursday evening that he was aware a minor was involved and “I believe they were targeted punitively and not for any reason in law.”
Another Democrat on the intelligence panel, Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, said he did not find it even “remotely surprising” that Trump went after committee members’ records during the Russia probe.
“From my first days as part of the Russia investigation, I expected that eventually, someone would attempt this – I just wasn’t sure if it would be a hostile government or my own,” Quigley said.
There’s no indication that the Justice Department used the records to prosecute anyone. After some of the information was declassified and made public during the later years of the Trump administration, there was concern among some of the prosecutors that even if they could bring a leak case, trying it would be difficult and a conviction would be unlikely, one of the people said. Federal agents questioned at least one former committee staff member in 2020, the person said, and ultimately, prosecutors weren’t able to substantiate a case.
The news follows revelations that the Justice Department had secretly seized phone records belonging to reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN as part of criminal leak investigations. Following an outcry from press freedom organizations, the Justice Department announced last week that it would cease the practice of going after journalists’ sourcing information.
__
Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-donald-trump-ca-state-wire-europe-business-76af370a04c6d80613c9e9ba1e54c8c6
Brightmark Set to Build ‘World’s Largest’ Advanced Recycling Plant in Georgia
The company’s closed-loop technology converts plastic waste, including difficult-to-recycle types 3 to 7, into useful products such as renewable fuels and wax.
PlasticsToday Staff | Jun 08, 2021
https://www.plasticstoday.com/waste-fuel/brightmark-set-build-worlds-largest-advanced-recycling-plant-georgia
Self-described “waste solutions provider” Brightmark announced that it will build the “world’s largest advanced plastics recycling and renewal facility” in Macon-Bibb County, Georgia. The total investment is expected to be more than $680 million in a new plant situated on a 5.3-million-square-foot lot.
The San Francisco-based company said it will employ a proprietary plastics renewal process that sustainably recycles all plastic waste that has reached the end of its useful life. Notably, the waste can include items made from plastic types 3 to 7, which are difficult to recycle by conventional means. Products such as plastic film, flexible packing, Styrofoam, plastic beverage cups, car seats, and children’s toys are all grist for Brightmark’s recycling mill. The company’s closed-loop technology converts the plastic waste directly into useful products, including renewable fuels and wax, and is also capable of creating the building blocks for new plastics, enabling a circular economy in the plastics industry, the company said in its announcement.
“Georgia’s pro-business environment and support for private-sector innovation continues to pave the way toward a more sustainable future, not only in Georgia but across the world,” said Governor Brian Kemp. “It’s exciting to consider the potential for this project, and I’m thankful to Brightmark for investing in Georgia and the hardworking Georgians of Macon.”
Proprietary process is 93% efficient
Once complete, Brightmark’s second commercial scale plastics renewal facility will divert 400,000 tons of plastic waste each year from landfills and incinerators and convert it into 64 million gallons of ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel and naphtha blend stocks, and 20 million gallons of wax. Brightmark claims that its proprietary process converts 93% of waste in the stream into new products.
Brightmark’s first plastics renewal facility, located in Ashley, IN, is slated to be fully operational this year. That plant is designed to divert 100,000 tons of plastic waste each year from landfills, waterways, and incinerators, and convert it into 18 million gallons of ultra-low-sulfur renewable diesel fuel, naphtha blend stocks, and six million gallons of wax. Brightmark said it is currently working with suppliers of waste plastics to secure feedstock supply agreements and has an open contracting window, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.
Supporting regional economic development
“We are excited to build our next plastics renewal facility in Macon-Bibb and revolutionize the state of recycling for the southeast quadrant of the country,” said Bob Powell, founder and CEO of Brightmark. “Our advanced recycling facility will be the world’s largest and will utilize our proven plastics renewal technology to advance our mission of reimagining waste, while supporting economic development in the region. We look forward to being a part of the community and establishing central Georgia as a leader in the circular economy.”
Brightmark will be filling more than 100 positions in engineering, maintenance, and operations at the new facility.
The Georgia plant will be a key link in Brightmark’s “hub” strategy, which Powell explained to PlasticsToday in August 2020. These facilities will act as regional hubs for materials recovery facilities that have the capability to transport material and get it “back home in a day,” Powell told Clare Goldsberry. The company’s strategy is to move into communities with spokes reaching further from the hub to encompass a “pretty wide circle.”
At the time of the interview, Powell said that Brightmark plans to have at least two sites shovel ready by 2021. Promise kept!
https://www.plasticstoday.com/waste-fuel/brightmark-set-build-worlds-largest-advanced-recycling-plant-georgia
Amanda Carpenter @amandacarpenter·4h Remember this?
Aaron Rupar @atrupar
· May 1, 2019
.@SenKamalaHarris: Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested you open an investigation into anyone?
BARR: ..... ah .....
HARRIS: Seems like something you should be able to answer
BARR: I don't know .......
THREAD
.@SenKamalaHarris: Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested you open an investigation into anyone?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2019
BARR: ..... ah .....
HARRIS: Seems like something you should be able to answer
BARR: I don't know ....... pic.twitter.com/8FIqrGzSrm
.@SenKamalaHarris: Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested you open an investigation into anyone?
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2019
BARR: ..... ah .....
HARRIS: Seems like something you should be able to answer
BARR: I don't know ....... pic.twitter.com/8FIqrGzSrm
Trump Justice Dept. secretly subpoenaed records of two Democrats on House Intelligence Committee
By Matt Zapotosky and Karoun Demirjian
June 11, 2021 at 5:31 a.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/adam-schiff-leak-investigation-eric-swalwell/2021/06/11/ee935590-ca58-11eb-81b1-34796c7393af_story.html
The Justice Department in 2018 secretly subpoenaed Apple for the data of two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, as well as the data of their current and former staffers and family members, in an aggressive push by the Trump administration to determine who was leaking classified information to the news media, according to a committee official and one of the affected lawmakers.
The department sought data on two lawmakers from California who were prominent critics of President Donald Trump — Rep. Adam B. Schiff, then the panel’s ranking Democrat and now its chairman, and Rep. Eric Swalwell — the committee official and Swalwell said Thursday night. The committee official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains politically sensitive, said that Apple in May had notified at least 12 people connected to the panel of subpoenas for their data, and that one minor was among them.
Democrats swiftly condemned the moves, news of which followed three recent disclosures to national media organizations that the Trump Justice Department had secretly sought reporters’ phone and email records in an effort to identify the sources of leaks.
“President Trump repeatedly and flagrantly demanded that the Department of Justice carry out his political will, and tried to use the Department as a cudgel against his political opponents and members of the media. It is increasingly apparent that those demands did not fall on deaf ears,” Schiff said in a statement. “The politicization of the Department and the attacks on the rule of law are among the most dangerous assaults on our democracy carried out by the former President.”
News of the department’s moves to obtain lawmakers’ data were first reported by the New York Times. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. A spokesperson for Apple did not respond to requests for comment, and Trump did not immediately comment.
Schiff said in his statement that the committee was informed by the Justice Department in May that the investigation had been closed. Appearing on CNN late Thursday night, Swalwell said he had been notified by Apple that the Justice Department had subpoenaed records of his communications from the 2017-2018 period. He condemned in particular that the move was kept secret for so long.
“It is concerning that they continued to seek our records with no evidence that there was any wrongdoing other than that they were calling the president out for his corruption,” Swalwell said, adding, “It’s a fragile time for our democracy.”
Swalwell and Schiff were regular fixtures on cable news during the Trump administration’s early years, when Democrats were in the minority and Republicans were running the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“Of course it’s closed,” Swalwell said of the Justice Department’s investigation during his appearance on CNN, “because we did nothing but our jobs, and we followed the rules we were supposed to follow. I’m not above the law, just like no one else is above the law, but to go after this many people, boy, that feels like a Donald Trump-driven investigation and I don’t have a lot of faith in his ability to fairly interpret the law.”
Leak investigations have been hallmarks of both Republican and Democratic administrations, but the move to secretly obtain lawmakers’ records — a dramatic step with significant political consequences — underscores the zeal with which Trump’s Justice Department was willing to pursue such cases.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions in August 2017 held a news conference to boast that the department had more than tripled the number of leak investigations compared with the number that were ongoing at the end of the Obama administration. Behind the scenes, the department’s National Security Division and other officials were meeting regularly — at times biweekly — to discuss the progress of such cases, which generally move slowly, according to people familiar with the matter.
It was not immediately clear what specific leak investigators were concerned about in seeking the records of the congressmen and their staff, or who they might have suspected of wrongdoing. The move to get lawmakers’ records occurred when Sessions was attorney general, but the investigation continued under Attorney General William P. Barr, two people familiar with the matter said.
During Barr’s time in command, these people said, the lawmakers were not considered targets of any leak probe, though investigators had suspicions about congressional staffers.
According to people familiar with the matter, when Barr took over, he set his sights on about seven leak cases he viewed as languishing in the bureaucracy of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and brought in a prosecutor who had been recommended by the U.S. attorney in New Jersey to try to move them forward.
The move was viewed as somewhat unusual, because the department has career officials who specialize in leak cases, though Barr was known to assign people he trusted to assignments of particular importance to him. Some in the department thought that, like most leak cases, the investigations would never produce charges because of the difficulty prosecutors have in winnowing down the pool of people who might have revealed the information at issue.
The committee aide said that the Justice Department has declined to provide any substantive details of the subpoenas, and that other members and staff were still scouring their email accounts to discern whether they, too, had received notifications from Apple similar to those of their colleagues.
Schiff called on the Justice Department’s inspector general to investigate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) echoed the request.
“Transparency is essential,” she said in a statement late Thursday.
Reps. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) and Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), other prominent members of the House Intelligence Committee, both said that after reviewing their records, they were not aware of having received any notifications from Apple that their information had been subpoenaed — though they said they could not definitively rule out having potentially missed such a notification.
Quigley said he surmised that Democrats might end up in the Trump administration’s crosshairs “from Day One.”
“I saw no distinction between the Justice Department and the Trump administration, so I was assuming the Trump administration would try something like this,” he said in an interview. “That was from Day One.”
The Justice Department has been under fire for its aggressive pursuit of leakers in recent weeks, after officials notified The Washington Post, CNN and the New York Times that prosecutors had secretly sought to obtain reporters’ phone and email records in 2020. In the case of CNN and the Times, the organization’s lawyers were, for a time, prohibited from revealing legal negotiations over the Justice Department’s requests.
President Biden has vowed he would not allow the Justice Department to take reporters’ records, and Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a recent congressional hearing that he was drafting a memo to codify that guidance. On Monday, leaders of The Post, the Times and CNN are scheduled to meet with Garland to discuss the matter.
Requests for reporters’ records in leak investigations are different than efforts to get records of lawmakers or their staff, though both carry with them significant political sensitivities.
Reed Albergotti in San Francisco contributed to this report.
By Matt Zapotosky
Matt Zapotosky covers the Justice Department for The Washington Post's national security team. He has previously worked covering the federal courthouse in Alexandria and local law enforcement in Prince George's County and Southern Maryland. Twitter
Image without a caption
By Karoun Demirjian
Karoun Demirjian is a national security reporter covering Capitol Hill, where she focuses on defense, foreign affairs, intelligence and policy matters concerning the Justice Department. She was previously a correspondent based in The Post's bureau in Moscow. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/adam-schiff-leak-investigation-eric-swalwell/2021/06/11/ee935590-ca58-11eb-81b1-34796c7393af_story.html
A New Giuliani Tape Shows a Key Witness Didn’t Testify Accurately in the First Trump Impeachment
Kurt Volker said he didn’t know Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden. New audio indicates he did.
DAN FRIEDMAN
Reporter
UKRAINE 5 HOURS AGO
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/new-giuliani-tape-shows-kurt-volker-didnt-testify-accurately-in-first-trump-impeachment/
The testimony of a key witness in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial is under new scrutiny by the House Intelligence Committee following a report this week that undercuts the veracity of his claim that he was unaware of a Trump effort to pressure Ukraine into mounting a meritless investigation of Joe Biden.
On Monday, CNN reported new details of a July 2019 call between Rudy Giuliani, then–US special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During that call, Giuliani, then Trump’s personal lawyer, aggressively pressed Ukraine to announce investigations into dubious accusations about Biden and about alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election. Portions of this conversation have previously been reported by BuzzFeed News and Time, but CNN published the full audio of the 40-minute call. The recording of the conversation contradicts Volker’s sworn testimony to Congress that he never witnessed any attempt on the part of Trump and Giuliani to muscle Ukraine into launching an investigation of Biden, Trump’s possible opponent in the upcoming presidential election.
The discrepancy between Volker’s testimony and the recording of the call has drawn the attention of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who tells Mother Jones that Volker’s assertions to Congress amounted to “a disingenuous revision of history.”
A former aide to the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who was appointed ambassador to NATO by George W. Bush, Volker is a foreign policy establishment figure who retains posts at a prominent DC lobbying firm and a think tank. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson picked Volker as a special representative to Ukraine in 2017, a nominally part-time job that overlapped with the duties of then-US Ambassador Maria Yovanovitch, who Trump later fired.
Volker became a key figure in the Trump administration’s 2019 effort, spearheaded by Giuliani, to push Ukraine to investigate alleged corruption relating to Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden had once served as a board member. Giuliani particularly wanted Ukrainian prosecutors to announce a probe into flimsy allegations that Biden as vice president had forced the firing of a top Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to derail a supposed investigation into Burisma. This pressure campaign culminated in the White House holding up almost $400 million in military aide for Ukraine and led to Trump’s first impeachment in December 2019.
Volker claimed in sworn testimony during Trump’s impeachment proceedings that, even as he helped push Ukraine to look into Burisma and corruption, he did not know that those topics related to Joe Biden—and, consequently, he was unaware that he was assisting in the Giuliani-Trump effort to smear a political rival.
“Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion,” Volker said in an October 3, 2019 deposition before the House Intelligence Committee. He repeated that claim in televised testimony before the committee the following month: “At no time was I aware of or knowingly took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden. As you know from the extensive real-time documentation I have provided, Vice President Biden was not a topic of our discussions.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/new-giuliani-tape-shows-kurt-volker-didnt-testify-accurately-in-first-trump-impeachment/
Israel’s Netanyahu lashes out as end of his era draws near
By JOSEF FEDERMAN
an hour ago
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-israel-middle-east-government-and-politics-9785d2410bf55bce06b893b19b3e6234
JERUSALEM (AP) — In what appear to be the final days of his historic 12-year rule, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not leaving the political stage quietly.
The longtime leader is accusing his opponents of betraying their voters, and some have needed special security protection.
Netanyahu says he is the victim of a “deep state” conspiracy. He speaks in apocalyptic terms when talking about the country without his leadership.
“They are uprooting the good and replacing it with the bad and dangerous,” Netanyahu told the conservative Channel 20 TV station this week. “I fear for the destiny of the nation.”
Such language has made for tense days as Netanyahu and his loyalists make a final desperate push to try to prevent a new government from taking office on Sunday. With his options running out, it has also provided a preview of Netanyahu as opposition leader.
For those who have watched Netanyahu dominate Israeli politics for much of the past quarter century, his recent behavior is familiar.
He frequently describes threats both large and small in stark terms. He has belittled his rivals and thrived by using divide-and-conquer tactics. He paints his Jewish opponents as weak, self-hating “leftists,” and Arab politicians as a potential fifth column of terrorist sympathizers. He routinely presents himself in grandiose terms as the only person capable of leading the country through its never-ending security challenges.
“Under his term, identity politics are at an all-time high,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a non-partisan think tank.
It is a formula that has served Netanyahu well. He has led the right-wing Likud party with an iron fist for over 15 years, racking up a string of electoral victories that earned him the nickname, “King Bibi.”
He fended off pressure by President Barack Obama to make concessions to the Palestinians and publicly defied him in 2015 by delivering a speech in Congress against the U.S.-led nuclear agreement with Iran.
Although Netanyahu was unable to block the deal, he was richly rewarded by President Donald Trump, who recognized contested Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, pulled out of the nuclear agreement and helped broker historic diplomatic pacts between Israel and four Arab nations.
Netanyahu has waged what appears to be a highly successful shadow war against Iran while keeping Israel’s longstanding conflict with the Palestinians at a slow boil, with the exception of three brief wars with Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.
The situation with the Palestinians today is “remarkably the same” as when Netanyahu took office, Plesner said. “No major changes in either direction, no annexation and no diplomatic breakthroughs.”
But some of Netanyahu’s tactics now appear to be coming back to haunt him. The new Biden administration has been cool to the Israeli leader, while Netanyahu’s close relationship with Trump has alienated large segments of the Democratic Party.
At home, Netanyahu’s magic also has dissipated — in large part due to his trial on corruption charges. He has lashed out at an ever-growing list of perceived enemies: the media, the judiciary, police, centrists, leftists and even hard-line nationalists who were once close allies.
In four consecutive elections since 2019, the once-invincible Netanyahu was unable to secure a parliamentary majority. Facing the unappealing possibility of a fifth consecutive election, eight parties managed to assemble a majority coalition that is set to take office on Sunday.
Israeli politics are usually split between dovish, left-wing parties that seek a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians, and religious and nationalist parties — long led by Netanyahu — that oppose Palestinian independence. If any of the recent elections had centered on the conflict, then right-wing parties alone would have formed a strong, stable majority.
But the Palestinians hardly came up — another legacy of Netanyahu, who has pushed the issue to the sidelines.
Instead, all anyone seemed to talk about was Netanyahu’s personality and his legal troubles, which proved to be deeply polarizing. The incoming government includes three small parties led by former Netanyahu aides who had bitter breakups with him, including the presumed prime minister, Naftali Bennett.
Bennett and his right-wing partners even broke a longstanding taboo on allying with Arab parties. A small Islamist party, which Netanyahu had also courted, is to be the first to join a ruling coalition.
Netanyahu and his followers in Likud have grown increasingly desperate. Initially, Netanyahu tried to lure some “defectors” from his former allies to prevent them from securing a parliamentary majority.
When that failed, he resorted to language similar to that of his friend and benefactor Trump.
“We are witnesses to the greatest election fraud in the history of the country,” Netanyahu claimed at a Likud meeting this week. He has long dismissed the corruption trial as a “witch hunt” fueled by “fake news,” and in the TV interview he said he was being hounded by the “deep state.”
His supporters have held threatening rallies outside the homes of lawmakers joining the new government. Some of the parliamentarians say they and their families have received death threats, and one said she was recently followed by a mysterious car.
Netanyahu’s ultra-Orthodox partners have meanwhile cast Bennett as a threat to their religion, with one even calling on him to remove his kippa, the skullcap worn by observant Jews.
Online incitement by Netanyahu’s followers has grown so bad that several members of the incoming government were assigned bodyguards or even moved to secret locations.
Some Israelis have drawn comparisons to the tensions that led to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January, while others have pointed to the incitement ahead of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
In a rare public statement, Nadav Argaman, the head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, recently warned of a “serious rise and radicalization in violent and inciting discourse” on social media that he said could lead to violence.
Netanyahu has condemned the incitement while noting that he too has been a target.
Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University, said she expects the coming months to remain volatile.
“We’re going to see a very assertive and aggressive head of the opposition, meaning Netanyahu, determined to make sure that this coalition of change would be a short-lived one and that we will have another election as soon as possible,” she added.
“We don’t have even a memory of what normal politics looks like,” Talshir said.
___
Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-israel-middle-east-government-and-politics-9785d2410bf55bce06b893b19b3e6234
Celebrations (and questions) greet US vaccine donation plan
By GERALD IMRAY and KIM TONG-HYUNG
an hour ago
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-asia-g-7-summit-coronavirus-pandemic-business-8ce6cca4689cce38a81e2cc8a790edb6
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Health officials and experts greeted U.S. plans to donate 500 million more COVID-19 vaccines to developing countries with both celebration and hesitation Thursday, amid questions over whether the effort would match the scale and urgency required to help poor regions desperate for doses right now.
With inequities in vaccine supplies around the world becoming alarmingly pronounced in recent months — vaccination campaigns in several richer countries have surged ahead while ones in many poorer nations have barely begun — some expressed hope that the pledge would encourage more such promises to fill a gaping need. Others stressed that the doses needed to roll out quickly.
The first 200 million doses will start to arrive in countries in August, the White House and manufacturer Pfizer said, with the rest following in the first half of 2022.
“Saving lives requires shots in arms now. Not at the end of 2021, not in 2022, but now,” said Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy advisor to the Doctors Without Borders organization. She added the donated vaccines “better come in sufficient volumes and urgently.”
The recent staggering surge in cases in India was a searing reminder of how the pandemic can still spiral out of control without vaccines — and health officials say countries in south and southeast Asia, Africa and elsewhere are desperate for shots now.
Some also noted that the Biden administration’s decision to donate Pfizer vaccines meant it was doubtful that the doses would reach the poorest of the poor: Because those vaccines need to be stored in ultra-cold conditions, many low-income countries with limited infrastructure likely won’t be able to take them to their most remote areas.
Those concerns were raised by health experts in Asia, and the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it would advise its countries to use Pfizer in their major cities.
Still, the Biden administration’s promise was “clearly a cause for celebration,” said Dr. John Nkengasong, the director of the Africa CDC, particularly at a time when virus infections are aggressively increasing on the continent of 1.3 billion people, and there are still countries that haven’t administered a single dose.
“Absolutely, it’s going to be a big help,” Nkengasong said, although he added he was eager to understand the exact timeline for the shots hopefully heading to his continent.
The donation of the Pfizer shots is crucial because the global disparity in vaccination has become a multidimensional threat: a human catastrophe, a $5 trillion economic loss for advanced economies, and a contributor to the generation of mutant viruses, said Jerome Kim, the head of the International Vaccine Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to making vaccines available to developing countries.
The U.S. will work with the global COVAX vaccine alliance to deliver the shots. U.S. President Joe Biden was expected to talk about the plan later Thursday in a speech on the eve of the summit of the wealthy Group of Seven democracies in Britain.
That summit might also give a crucial indication of whether and how far other nations in the elite club are willing to follow the U.S on vaccine sharing amid widespread criticism that richer countries have fallen woefully short so far, despite lofty promises of fairness when the vaccines were being developed.
The gaps in vaccine access are clear: The U.S. and Britain have fully vaccinated more than 40% of their populations, according to a global tracker kept by Johns Hopkins University. While countries like Haiti, on America’s doorstep, Burundi and many others have vaccinated 0%.
“So far, 77% of all the vaccines administered have gone into the arms of people in 10 countries,” said COVAX co-chair Jane Halton. “Now that has got to change.”
The inequality is not just a matter of fairness: There is also increasing concern over newer virus variants emerging from areas with consistently high COVID-19 circulation. At least three variants are circulating in Africa, the African CDC said, and driving infections. Even countries like Britain, with high rates of vaccination, have cited variants as an ongoing concern.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote in The Times of London newspaper that it was now time for wealthy countries to “shoulder their responsibilities” and “vaccinate the world,” although his own country has yet to send any doses abroad or announce any solid plan to share vaccines. Johnson indicated Britain had millions of doses in surplus stocks.
Germany and France have each promised to donate 30 million doses by the end of the year.
The promises by wealthy nations — which have been accused of hoarding vaccines — have often been criticized as too little or too late, or both.
“While Biden’s plan is welcome, it is a small piece of the puzzle, and it doesn’t help countries that are struggling now,” said Fifa Rahman, who is a civil society representative on a World Health Organization body focused on increasing access to COVID-19 vaccines.
She cited the East African nation of Uganda as a concrete example, saying the country’s intensive care units are already full, and it has only small numbers of vaccines left.
Biden’s announcement is also tangled up in geopolitics, as he hopes to put the U.S. and its allies at the forefront of the global virus fight in the face of a growing supply of Chinese or Russian vaccines to poorer countries.
Many countries turned to China, which has exported 350 million doses of its vaccines to dozens of nations, according to its Foreign Ministry. While those Chinese vaccines have faced scrutiny because of a lack of transparency in sharing clinical trial data, many poorer nations were eager to receive anything at all.
China reacted to the U.S. vaccine plan through Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, who said China has always supported using vaccines as a “global public good.”
The shots promised by the Biden administration will go to 92 lower income countries and the African Union. Pfizer said the doses are part of a previous pledge, with its partner BioNTech, to provide 2 billion doses to developing countries over the next 18 months.
The White House had earlier announced separate plans to share 80 million doses globally by the end of June, most through COVAX.
Some experts said donations alone wouldn’t be enough to close the huge gaps in supplies and called for allowing qualified companies around the world to manufacture vaccines without intellectual property constraints.
The U.S. has expressed support for suspending IP protections on vaccines — and some other countries have agreed it should be explored — but, in an indication of the disjointed response from the wealthy G-7 nations, Germany repeated its opposition to an IP waiver on Thursday.
“We don’t think a waiver is helpful or is actually the problem,” said a senior German official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity in line with department rules. “And nothing has changed about that.”
___
Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea. Associated Press writers Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan; Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia; Ken Moritsugu in Beijing; Maria Cheng in London; Jill Lawless in Falmouth, England; Angela Charlton in Paris; Geir Moulson in Berlin; and Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, contributed.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-asia-g-7-summit-coronavirus-pandemic-business-8ce6cca4689cce38a81e2cc8a790edb6
'We both married above our station!' Joe jokes with Boris about their wives as they put Brexit spat behind them for oceanfront love-in ahead of G7 summit
By EMILY GOODIN, SENIOR U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM IN UK and DAVID WILCOCK, WHITEHALL CORRESPONDENT and JAMES TAPSFIELD POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 13:57, 10 June 2021 | UPDATED: 16:25, 10 June 2021
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9672497/White-House-rows-claims-Biden-rebuked-Johnson-inflaming-tensions-Northern-Ireland.html
* President Joe Biden and Jill Biden met British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Carrie Johnson, amid a transatlantic row over Northern Ireland
* Officials downplayed tensions ahead of sit down
* Jill Biden was on message, wearing a jacket with the word 'love' on the back
* At their bilat meeting, Biden joked he and Johnson both married above their station
* Jill Biden told reporters the president had been 'studying for weeks' for trip. 'He knows most of the leaders that will be here,' she said. 'Joe loves foreign policy. This is his forté'
* Earlier, White House backed down after Biden accused Johnson of 'inflaming tensions' in Northern Ireland over EU/Brexit negotiations
* Officials blasted a new report over tensions over Northern Ireland as 'wrong'
* 'It will not be controversial or adversarial,' a senior administration official said of Biden-Johnson sit down. 'He didn't come here to give a lecture'
* Biden and Johnson will hold a face-to-face meeting on Thursday
* Two leaders have multiple personal and professional differences
* Sit down comes amid report Biden ordered his officials to issue a rare diplomatic rebuke to the British Government over Northern Ireland
* The pair will agree to a new 'Atlantic Charter' and will vow to reopen travel between the US and UK
...
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PUBLISHED: 13:57, 10 June 2021 | UPDATED: 16:25, 10 June 2021
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9672497/White-House-rows-claims-Biden-rebuked-Johnson-inflaming-tensions-Northern-Ireland.html
Joe Biden fears Britain is 'inflaming' tension in Ireland and EU
US president orders rebuke of Boris Johnson for jeopardising peace process in Northern Ireland
By Harry Yorke, WHITEHALL EDITOR and James Crisp, EUROPE EDITOR
10 June 2021 • 12:13am
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/09/threat-eu-sausage-trade-war-heats-negotiators-fail-find-breakthrough/
Joe Biden ordered US officials to rebuke Boris Johnson for jeopardising the peace process in Northern Ireland due to its stand-off with the European Union, it emerged on Wednesday night.
In a significant diplomatic intervention which now threatens to overshadow the G7 summit in Cornwall, America’s most senior diplomat in Britain told the Brexit minister Lord Frost that the UK’s stance on the Northern Ireland Protocol was “inflaming” tensions in Ireland and Europe.
Yael Lempert is said to have issued Lord Frost with a demarche - a formal diplomatic reprimand - at a meeting on June 3 in London, during which she relayed to him the US President’s “great concern” over the UK’s approach to the protocol, which was established to prevent a hard Irish border.
A demarche is an official communication or protest to a foreign government that is more commonly lodged with adversaries than a close ally.
The details emerged after Mr Biden’s national security adviser warned ahead of his bilateral meeting with Mr Johnson on Thursday that resolving problems with the protocol was “critical” to protecting the Good Friday Agreement and not imperilling the peace process in the province.
According to a leaked Government memo, obtained by The Times, Ms Lempert said that the dispute over the implementation of post-Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland was “commanding the attention” of Mr Biden, who is a proud Irish American.
It reportedly went on to state that the US had urged the UK to come to a “negotiated settlement” with the EU, even if that meant making “unpopular compromises”.
“Lempert implied that the UK had been inflaming the rhetoric, by asking if we would keep it ‘cool’.”
However, in a move that is likely to provoke significant anger from Tory Brexiteers, the US suggested that if the UK signed up to EU rules on agricultural standards to ease problems with the protocol Mr Biden would ensure it did not “negatively affect the chances of reaching a US/UK trade deal.”
The UK has repeatedly ruled out aligning with the EU’s food safety and animal health rules, arguing that to do so would bind it to laws set in Brussels and enforced by the European courts.
On Wednesday night UK sources confirmed the details of the meeting, but insisted that the UK and US were united in their determination to maintain peace in Northern Ireland.
However, it came just hours after Britain and the European Union appeared to be heading towards a full-scale trade war over Northern Ireland on Wednesday night as Brussels warned that its patience was wearing "very, very, very thin".
During "frank" discussions in London, the Brexit minister Lord Frost said he would not rule out acting unilaterally to prevent a ban on the sale of British sausages in the province from coming into force at the end of the month.
It came despite Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice-president, warning that the EU could ultimately suspend parts of the Brexit trade deal and hit British products with tariffs should the UK choose to extend the grace period on chilled meats.
In a clear show of defiance, one insider involved in the joint committee that oversees the Northern Ireland Protocol told The Telegraph: "David very clearly said he wasn't taking that off the table.”
Lord Frost also rebuffed EU calls for the UK to solve the row by signing up to a Swiss-style veterinary agreement which would require it to follow the bloc's food safety rules as they change over time in a process known as "dynamic alignment".
"Obviously we're not going to accept that," a senior UK official said. "That's been a fundamental part of our position right from the start."
Lord Frost said after the meeting that there had been no "breakthroughs" but the UK would "carry on talking", while Mr Johnson insisted he still believed a solution was "easily doable".
However, others involved in the talks suggested the UK and EU were heading for a major showdown at the end of the month, with one saying: "As far as I can see, we are going backwards instead of forwards."
Speaking at a press conference in London shortly after 1pm, Mr Sefcovic told reporters: "I can say we are at the crossroads in our relationship with the UK. Trust, which should be at the heart of every partnership, needs to be restored.
"Our patience really is very, very, very thin, and therefore we have to assess all options we have at our disposal."
Having personally warned Lord Frost that extending the grace period would have serious consequences, Mr Sefcovic added: "I was talking about the legal action. I was talking about the arbitration and of course I'm talking about the cross-retaliation.
"If the UK were to take further unilateral action, in the coming weeks, the EU will not be shy in reacting swiftly, firmly and resolutely to ensure that the UK abides by the international law obligations."
Asked whether he trusted Lord Frost, Mr Sefcovic said their relationship had got off to a bad start after the Brexit minister chose earlier this year to extend other grace periods for supermarkets and parcel couriers just hours before their first phone call.
Mr Sefcovic again urged Britain to submit to a Swiss-style agreement, which he said would remove 80 per cent of checks on agrifoods "just like that" and was "tangible, credible, easy to do, and which could be accomplished very quickly".
However, pushing back on Wednesday night, a senior UK official close to the negotiations said: "The EU assert that if we were to sign up to dynamic alignment that would get rid of 80 per cent of all the checks.
"What they don't say is that for that to happen we would have to accept that the rules were policed by the Commission, would have direct effect in the UK, and the European Court would police them.
The UK will instead continue to push for an agreement that closely mirrors the EU's deal with New Zealand, which is based on "equivalence" – a recognition of mutually high standards.
But should they fail to break the deadlock, the official suggested that ministers were unfazed by EU retaliation, adding that the UK had "got used to living in an atmosphere where there are threats made to us".
"We hope they won't actually go down that road, but we have learnt to look at this rather philosophically and in the light of experience," they added.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/06/09/threat-eu-sausage-trade-war-heats-negotiators-fail-find-breakthrough/
JUNE 10, 2021 - FBI Director Wray Testifies on Oversight of the Bureau
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the House Judiciary Committee on oversight of the FBI.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?512336-1/fbi-director-wray-testifies-oversight-bureau
Global approval of the United States has rebounded under Biden, survey finds
By Claire Parker
June 10, 2021 at 2:01 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/10/pew-global-approval-biden-us/
President Biden has promised the world that “America is back.”
As he takes his first trip abroad as president, a Pew Research Center global survey released Thursday shows that many in advanced economies believe it.
Trust in the U.S. president fell to historic lows in most countries surveyed during Donald Trump’s presidency, according to Pew.
Under Biden, it has soared. In the 12 countries surveyed both this year and last, a median of 75 percent of respondents expressed confidence in Biden to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” Pew found, compared with 17 percent for Trump last year. Sixty-two percent of respondents now have a favorable view of the United States vs. 34 percent at the end of Trump’s presidency.
“The election of Joe Biden as president has led to a dramatic shift in America’s international image,” the Pew report reads.
The findings come a day after Biden touched down in England on the first leg of a whirlwind trip through Europe. On his agenda: a meeting of the Group of Seven nations in Cornwall, a NATO summit in Brussels, and tête-à-têtes with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Biden cast his voyage as a sort of redemption tour — a chance to revitalize America’s strained alliances and rally like-minded democracies to “meet the challenges and deter the threats of this new age.”
The Pew findings suggest that he will encounter leaders whose publics are confident in his leadership and supportive of key foreign policy priorities.
The United States’ favorability rating grew at least 23 percentage points from last year in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, and a majority of respondents in all four see the country positively.
Among all 16 publics surveyed this spring, German Chancellor Angela Merkel ranks just ahead of Biden in the percentage of respondents who said they trust the leader’s decision-making on world affairs, with a median score of 77 percent. But Biden, with 74 percent, garnered higher rates of confidence than French President Emmanuel Macron, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“In many cases, however, the share who have confidence in Biden is not as high as the share who had confidence in [President Barack] Obama at the start or end of his presidency,” the Pew report notes.
A median of 89 percent of people approved of the United States rejoining the World Health Organization, and a median of 85 percent supported the United States rejoining the Paris climate agreement. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement was widely criticized among advanced economies. Since taking office, Biden has sought to position the United States as a global leader in fighting climate change.
Perceptions of the United States’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic have also improved. Still, among all the publics surveyed, a median of 37 percent of respondents think the United States has done a good job. Many rate the U.S. below Germany, the WHO, China and the European Union in terms of pandemic response.
Biden says he will raise refugee cap from 15,000 to 62,500, after widespread criticism for extending Trump-era levels
And signs of skepticism about the United States’ dependability remain.
Among the 16 publics Pew surveyed in 2021, majorities or pluralities described the United States as a “somewhat reliable” partner. The proportion of respondents who said the U.S. is “very reliable” was below 20 percent in every place.
And with the United States having the highest coronavirus death toll in the world, a divided America still licking its wounds after the Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump still wielding political clout, the image of American democracy appears to have taken a lasting hit.
Attitudes are mixed about how well the U.S. political system functions, and in most surveyed publics, less than 10 percent of respondents said it works very well.
“Publics in the advanced economies surveyed are largely skeptical that democracy in the U.S. is a good example for other countries to follow,” the report reads.
Majorities in most places believe the United States “used to be a good example, but has not been in recent years,” while up to about a quarter reject the notion that it has ever been a model democracy. Young people were particularly skeptical in about half of places surveyed.
Most people surveyed continued to say the United States doesn’t factor the interests of countries like theirs into foreign policy decisions, though attitudes across Europe vary.
A majority of respondents in Asian-Pacific regions also said the United States discounts their interests, with the exception of Japan. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was the first foreign leader Biden hosted at the White House.
NATO, meanwhile, has a median favorability rating of 61 percent, and positive views of the alliance are “at or near all-time highs across several member states,” the Pew report reads.
It’s a finding that will hearten leaders, including Biden, who seek to breathe fresh life into NATO next week. The alliance took a beating in recent years when Trump threatened to pull out of it and Macron declared that it was experiencing “brain death.”
Pew said its 2021 findings on the United States’ international image were based on data from nationally representative surveys of more than 16,000 adults in 16 advanced economies conducted over the phone from March to May. Findings related to the coronavirus pandemic also incorporated a survey of roughly 2,600 U.S. adults conducted in February 2021 using Pew’s American Trends Panel.
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By Claire Parker
Claire Parker is an assistant editor on The Washington Post's Foreign desk. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/10/pew-global-approval-biden-us/
Arizona’s partisan election audit and the Trump-linked donors paying for it
Our investigation found people tied to Trump who fanned election conspiracies were opening their wallets
Sam Levine in New York
Thu 10 Jun 2021 10.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/10/arizona-election-ballot-audit-fight-to-vote
Happy Thursday,
Ever since Arizona Republicans began their review of 2.1m ballots from the 2020 election, a huge question has loomed over the effort: who exactly is paying for it?
The Arizona senate, which authorized the inquiry, only gave $150,000 to fund it, an amount not expected to cover the entire cost (which is unknown). The rest of the money is being paid for by private donors, but the firm running the effort, called Cyber Ninjas, has refused to disclose who they are.
That lack of transparency has drawn harsh criticism from those who have characterized the review as shoddy and an obvious partisan effort to undermine confidence in elections. Why should the public have reason to believe the effort is unbiased, they say, if they can’t see who’s funding it?
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working with Anna Massoglia, a reporter at OpenSecrets, to see if we could better understand where the money was coming from. We found that people tied to Donald Trump who fanned election conspiracies were opening their wallets.
One of them is Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of overstock.com, who launched a group aiming to raise $2.8m for the inquiry, and who says he has contributed $1m to the effort. He has made numerous baseless claims about the election. He was part of a December meeting with Trump, Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn in the Oval Office in which Powell suggested using government resources to seize voting machines. During the meeting, described by Axios as the “craziest of the Trump presidency”, Byrne screamed at White House officials who he said were not doing enough to overturn the election.
More funding for the inquiry is pouring in from Voices and Votes, a group started in March by Christina Bobb, a correspondent on the far-right One America News Network. The group has raised at least $150,000 for the inquiry, including a $50,000 donation from the non-profit of L Lin Wood, a pro-Trump attorney who filed several baseless lawsuits last year. Bobb has continued to cover the inquiry, even as she raises money for it.
There are also ties between the review and Powell, the Trump ally who has continued to claim the election was stolen. Wake TSI, a subcontractor that played a huge role in the inquiry, worked on behalf of Defending the Republic, Powell’s charity, to inspect election materials in Fulton county, Pennsylvania, last year. The company initially submitted a draft report showing there was nothing unusual with the process, the Washington Post reported. But the final version of the report suggested there could have been problems with the election.
We also reviewed messages among audit supporters on the Telegram app in which they pushed Arizona senate officials to hire Jovan Pulitzer, a treasure hunter and inventor, and to use his technology in the review. The effort appears to have worked – Pulitzer’s equipment is reportedly being used to examine the quality of ballot paper, including searching for bamboo fibers in an effort to prove a baseless conspiracy theory that ballots were shipped in from China. Even John Brakey, an activist who was brought in to help run the inquiry, is skeptical.
“This guy is nuts,” Brakey told me in May. “He’s a fraudster.”
Also worth watching …
Democrats in Washington are scrambling to advance a sweeping voting rights bill. Last weekend, the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a key Democratic vote, authored an op-ed saying he did not support the legislation nor did he support getting rid of the filibuster, a procedural rule that requires 60 votes to bills such as this one. It’s unclear how Democrats will find a path forward, or if there is one at all.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/10/arizona-election-ballot-audit-fight-to-vote
Biden warns Russia against 'harmful activities' at start of first official trip
Published 9 hours ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57422348
US President Joe Biden has launched his first official overseas trip with a warning to Russia that it faces "robust and meaningful" consequences if it engages in "harmful activities".
Mr Biden made clear his intention to strengthen ties with US allies, following strained relations under the Trump administration.
President Biden arrived in the UK on Wednesday.
He will meet PM Boris Johnson to agree a new "Atlantic Charter".
The pact will be a modern version of the one agreed between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, with a focus on challenges including climate change and security.
The BBC's political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, says the two are aiming to refresh a vital relationship, after the turbulence of the Trump years and the pressures of the pandemic.
During a packed eight-day European visit Mr Biden will meet the Queen at Windsor Castle, attend a G7 leaders' meeting, and join his first Nato summit as president.
At the end of his trip Mr Biden is due to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.
The White House has indicated that he intends to cover a "full range of pressing issues" with his Russian counterpart, including arms control, climate change, Russian military involvement in Ukraine, Russia's cyber-hacking activities and the jailing of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.
Three organisations linked to Mr Navalny were outlawed by a Moscow court on Wednesday for being "extremist".
Addressing US troops and their families at the RAF Mildenhall airbase in Suffolk on Wednesday, where he landed before travelling on to Cornwall, Mr Biden said he would deliver a clear message to Mr Putin.
"We're not seeking conflict with Russia," he said. "We want a stable and predictable relationship ... but I've been clear: The United States will respond in a robust and meaningful way if the Russian government engages in harmful activities."
Ties between Washington and Moscow are at a low point over a variety of issues. In April, Mr Putin accused Western powers of trying to "pick on" Russia and warned them not to cross a "red line".
Mr Biden said that "at every point" during his first overseas trip as president he wanted to make it clear that "the United States is back and democracies of the world are standing together to tackle the toughest challenges, and the issues that matter most to our future".
Other leaders of the G7 (Group of Seven) will arrive in Cornwall, south-west England, on Friday and meetings will take place over the weekend.
The G7 is made up of the world's seven largest so-called advanced economies - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US - plus the EU.
The main topic of conversation will be Covid recovery, including "a stronger global health system that can protect us all from future pandemics".
In an article for the Times, Boris Johnson said the G7 would "begin the framing of a new global treaty on pandemic preparedness so the world is never caught out in the same way again".
The Biden administration has said it plans to provide 500 million doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine to about 100 countries over the next two years.
The G7 agenda also includes climate change and trade.
Mr Biden is expected to warn that the UK-EU trade row could endanger peace in Northern Ireland. He will call on fellow leaders to protect the gains of the Good Friday agreement.
At the end of the summit, the UK - as the host nation - will publish a document outlining what has been agreed by the leaders.
After the G7, Mr Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will meet the Queen at Windsor Castle before flying to Brussels for talks with Nato on Monday and the EU on Tuesday.
US ties with Nato were strained under Donald Trump, but Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg - visiting the White House on Monday - hailed Mr Biden's "powerful commitment" to America's allies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57422348
The Problem with Saying “Don’t Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions”
by Sabina Nawaz
September 01, 2017
https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-problem-with-saying-dont-bring-me-problems-bring-me-solutions
Summary.
It’s time to retire the saying “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.” Even though advocates of this approach believe it increases empowerment, helps employees manage up, and boosts careers, it’s fraught with challenges. Not every problem has an easy solution, and some require diverse points of view. Requiring solutions can breed a culture of intimidation, and prevent some problems from surfacing until they’re full-blown crises. Many managers demand solutions to avoid a culture of complaining. But you can encourage your team to communicate about problems in a more productive way. Follow these three steps:
* Make it safe. Modify your behavior so that people aren’t afraid to bring you bad news.
* Require problem statements instead of complaints. Train your team in how to communicate problems by providing facts, examining underlying causes, and describing everyone’s role in the issue.
* Find the right person or people to solve the issue. Coach the employee on how to tackle the challenge, or assign the problem to others who can help.
It’s time to retire the saying “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.” Even though advocates of this approach believe it reduces whining, increases empowerment, helps employees manage up, and boosts careers, it’s fraught with challenges.
Not every problem has an easy solution. Tackling the complexity of most significant business issues can take a pool of talented people with diverse points of view. What’s more, according to Wharton professor Adam Grant, solution-only thinking creates “a culture of advocacy instead of one of inquiry,” where each person comes into the situation locked into their way of solving the problem and lobbies hard for that particular solution rather than considering multiple perspectives.
The “bring me a solution” approach can also cause employees to shut down in fear, breed a culture of intimidation, and prevent some problems from surfacing until they’re full-blown crises. Consider the example of one of my clients, James (not his real name), who is the president of a company working on a disruptive service in his industry. He often has an unpleasant reaction when staff raises problems. His team members told me that if they raise an issue or risk, James often hears failure and reacts by losing his temper and raising his voice. The outbursts hurt morale and often cause his team members to lose enthusiasm toward projects and become hesitant to mention problems to James. As a result, James’s team only provides him with good news about initiatives they’re working on, leaving James blind to any potential issues. They also spend a lot of time in each other’s offices, licking their wounds after James’ outbursts, instead of being productive.
If saying “don’t bring me problems” is so troublesome, why do so many managers continue say it? A key reason is because they want to avoid a culture of complaining. But communicating about the potential pitfalls and roadblocks for an initiative is different from complaining, and it can take a more positive form. When issues are communicated properly, it creates an environment where people feel safe to bring you bad news early, giving you precious lead time to avert a crisis.
Here’s how you can encourage your team to bring up problems in a more productive way:
Make it safe. Modify your behavior so that people aren’t afraid to bring you bad news. When I worked at Microsoft, our reviews with Bill Gates often included detailed discussions about problems. Gates says in his book Business at the Speed of Thought that one of his most important jobs as CEO was to listen for bad news so that he could act on it. Discussing potential issues with him and others in the company also helped us to see problems in a new light.
James, on the other hand, equated someone bringing him a problem with a lack of ownership. After discussing this in a coaching session, James began to understand the part he played in creating a culture where people only brought him good news — or, worse, covered up bad news. To combat this, James is learning to pause, paraphrase the concern, and then ask questions about the problem. Doing so has helped him to discover things the rest of his leadership team had known for a while but had been too afraid to bring up to him.
Require problem statements instead of complaints. Although you should want people to alert you to potential issues, they need to learn how to distinguish between raising a valid concern and simply complaining. Complaints are stated in absolutes, such as always and never, rather than in concrete facts. They lack accountability and often have villains (them) and heroes (us). And they often don’t look beyond the surface of the issue. For example, “Group Blue never hits their deadlines, and we’re always left holding the bag” is a complaint. It makes an absolute statement, identifies a villain, and doesn’t show any accountability on the part of the speaker.
Problem statements, on the other hand, provide objective facts, examine underlying factors and causes, and reveal everyone’s role in creating the problem, even the person presenting it. A problem statement for the same issue would be something like this: “In the past six months, Group Blue has missed deadlines four times, by an average of 6.5 days. In two cases we were also unprepared to meet the deadline. However, in the other two cases our group completed our part of the project on time, but we had to work weekends to integrate Blue’s late work so that it wouldn’t impact the customer.”
When the issue is presented in the form of a problem statement, it’s much easier to spot the pattern of repeated delays. Because the presenters acknowledge their part in the problem, you know they’re open to being part of solution, not just blaming others. This allows everyone to dig in deeper and identify the root cause of the issue. Perhaps Group Blue needs more resources or isn’t receiving the information they need to complete their work on time. Or maybe the way projects are scheduled fails to account for unexpected events.
Find the right person or people to solve the issue. When an employee brings you a problem, consider its scope and that person’s ability to solve it. If they can singlehandedly tackle the challenge, maybe they just need your approval before proceeding. Or they may need you to coach them on how to think about the situation and broaden the field of potential solutions.
If the size of the problem is beyond their ability to solve, someone else might be better suited for the challenge, or people across departments may need to collaborate. In some cases, the problem might be so important or visible that you need to stay involved. Based on the situation, you can coach the individual to stretch their abilities and tackle the challenge; thank them for raising the issue and assign it to the appropriate people to resolve; or bring together several groups to address it.
Your employees are always going to encounter problems. By inviting people to surface problems early, often, and constructively, you reduce fear and increase empowerment and the speed of problem resolution. As Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei says, “Identifying problems can be a solo sport, but finding solutions rarely is.”
Sabina Nawaz is a global CEO coach, leadership keynote speaker, and writer working in over 26 countries. She advises C-level executives in Fortune 500 corporations, government agencies, non-profits, and academic organizations. Sabina has spoken at hundreds of seminars, events, and conferences including TEDx and has written for FastCompany.com, Inc.com, and Forbes.com, in addition to HBR.org. Follow her on Twitter.
https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-problem-with-saying-dont-bring-me-problems-bring-me-solutions
The proud mama was left stunned by her daughter’s decision to turn down the scholarship money.
“I just knew she’s ready for me to let her be on her own,” Annan said. “I’m not afraid, and I’m not sad about it that someone’s going to get some good help. If I had gotten that help, I would have been thrilled.”
Project Monitor and Abatement Supervisor Plead Guilty To Conspiring to Violate Asbestos Regulations
Two individuals pleaded guilty today to conspiring to violate federal and New York State regulations intended to prevent human exposure to asbestos.
Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, June 8, 2021
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/project-monitor-and-abatement-supervisor-plead-guilty-conspiring-violate-asbestos-regulations
Project Monitor and Abatement Supervisor Plead Guilty To Conspiring to Violate Asbestos Regulations
Two individuals pleaded guilty today to conspiring to violate federal and New York State regulations intended to prevent human exposure to asbestos.
According to court documents, between 2015 and 2016, Kristofer Landell, 36, and Madeline Alonge, 27, both permitted, and in some cases directed, abatement workers to use illegal methods to remove asbestos from a former IBM site in Kingston, now known as TechCity. The facility in question contained over 400,000 square feet of regulated asbestos-containing material (RACM), as well as an additional 6,000 linear feet of RACM pipe wrap. Alonge, then a supervisor for the asbestos abatement company operating on the TechCity site, oversaw multiple crews of abatement workers who were illegally removing asbestos. Landell held a New York license to work as a person responsible for ensuring compliance with federal and state asbestos regulations and had been hired as the “project monitor” on site. Landell was also responsible for conducting air monitoring to ensure that asbestos fibers were not released into the surrounding environment.
According to court documents, Alonge and Landell failed to fulfill their responsibilities. As a result, New York State issued numerous notices of violation (NOVs). Notwithstanding those NOVs, A2 owner Stephanie Laskin, as well as abatement supervisors Alonge and Gunay Yakup, instructed workers to remove asbestos illegally. For example, they removed RACM dry, produced visible emissions of asbestos, and directed work to proceed in areas that were not properly sealed off with “critical barriers,” which are designed to prevent asbestos emissions outside a work area. Their co-conspirator Landell not only permitted such practices to continue, but also failed to conduct requisite air monitoring, falsified compliance records, and failed to properly conduct “final air clearances,” as required by New York regulations. Final air clearances are intended to ensure areas are safe to be reinhabited following abatement activities. All of the defendants charged as co-conspirators had received training in proper asbestos removal and regulatory requirements.
“The pleas entered today are especially important because they address not only criminal violations of the Clean Air Act, but also the criminal circumvention of the third party project and air monitor systems designed to ensure compliance,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Jean E. Williams for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). “I would like to take this opportunity to thank New York State inspectors for their support of this prosecution.”
“Today’s plea agreements again reflect the serious consequences of the failure of these defendants to comply with EPA’s regulations that protect public health from asbestos, a dangerous human carcinogen,” said Special Agent in Charge Tyler Amon of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Criminal Investigation Division. “These criminal acts endanger workers and the community and cost the taxpayers substantial monies in cleanup costs. EPA commends the Justice Department prosecutors for vigorously prosecuting this environmental crime case.”
Because of the defendants’ and others’ actions, asbestos was released into the surrounding environment, as admitted by co-defendant Roger Osterhoudt. Although not charged with conspiracy, Osterhoudt took responsibility last month for his criminal negligence in re-hiring A2 Environmental Services after having been made aware of numerous NOVs and other evidence of illegal practices. According to Osterhoudt’s plea, his negligence caused a release of asbestos into the environment that placed others at an increased risk of death or serious bodily injury. Asbestos has been determined to cause lung cancer, asbestosis, and mesothelioma, an invariably fatal disease. The EPA has determined that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos.
Landell and Alonge entered guilty pleas to violating the federal conspiracy statute before Hon. Judge McAvoy in Binghamton, New York. Sentencing is currently scheduled for Oct. 6, and Oct. 19, respectively. Both individuals face up to five years in prison, three years supervised release, a $250,000 criminal fine, and may be held liable for providing restitution to any victims.
These charges are related to conspiracy pleas previously entered by Laskin, who owned A2 Environmental Solutions, and Yakup, who — like Alonge — worked for Laskin as an abatement supervisor.
Special agents of the EPA and individuals from the New York Departments of Labor and Environmental Conservation investigated the case.
Todd W. Gleason and Gary N. Donner of ENRD’s Environmental Crimes Section prosecuted the case with the assistance of paralegal Chloe Harris.
Component(s):
Environment and Natural Resources Division
Press Release Number:
21-536
Updated June 8, 2021
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/project-monitor-and-abatement-supervisor-plead-guilty-conspiring-violate-asbestos-regulations
‘Point of No Return’: Don McGahn Told Congress How Close Trump Came to
‘Inflection Point,’ Another ‘Saturday Night Massacre’
ADAM KLASFELD Jun 9th, 2021
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/point-of-no-return-don-mcgahn-told-congress-how-close-trump-came-to-inflection-point-another-saturday-night-massacre/
In a fit of pique over Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, former President Donald Trump almost reached an “inflection point” and “point of no return” that would have set in motion a Richard Nixon-style “Saturday Night Massacre,” ex-White House Counsel Don McGahn recently told Congress behind closed doors.
The just-released transcript of McGahn’s closed door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee contains a series of new answers and elaborations on details that were publicized in the Mueller Report.
Releasing the June 4th transcript on Wednesday, Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said: “Mr. McGahn provided the Committee with substantial new information—including firsthand accounts of President Trump’s increasingly out of control behavior, and insight into concerns that the former President’s conduct could expose both Trump and McGahn to criminal liability.”
“Mr. McGahn also confirmed that President Trump lied when he denied the accuracy of the Mueller report, and admitted that he was the source for a Washington Post report that confirmed Trump’s direction to McGahn to remove the Special Counsel,” Nadler wrote in a statement.
In the transcript, McGahn explains his reluctance to convey a message from Trump pressuring then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to not allow the special counsel to serve because of alleged conflicts—a request that McGahn considered an “inflection point.”
“‘Inflection point,’ with that I meant a point of no return,” McGahn testified. “If the Acting Attorney General received what he thought was a direction from the counsel to the President to remove a special counsel, he would either have to remove the special counsel or resign. We are still talking about the ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ decades and decades later.”
The Saturday Night Massacre was the name given to Nixon’s decision to fire the special prosecutor investigating Watergate. Nixon demanded that three of his top officials carry out his order. The first two top officials at the Justice Department refused and resigned, but the third-most senior official, then-solicitor general Robert Bork, complied and stayed.
McGahn quipped that he wanted his reputation to be “Judge Robert Bork” and not “Saturday Night Massacre Bork,” according to the transcript.
Spanning 241-pages, the colorful transcript records McGahn’s response to Trump’s insults and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s assertions about his contacts with Russian diplomat Sergey Kislyak.
Asked by the House Judiciary Counsel’s Sarah Istel about Trump calling him a “lying bastard,” McGahn described the jibe as “disappointing.”“Why?” Istel asked.
“Well, because it’s not true. And,” McGahn replied.
“Why isn’t it true?” the counsel prodded.
“Because I’m not a lying bastard,” McGahn clarified. Recall: Trump claimed during an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in 2019 that McGahn lied under oath when testifying that Trump suggested firing Mueller as special counsel. Why? Because, according to Trump, McGahn wanted to “make himself look like a good lawyer.”
Asked on June 4 whether former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’s remarks that Trump asked McGahn to “do crazy shit” was a fair characterization, McGahn first responded that Trump would probably have found it unfair.
Prodded about his own opinion, McGahn said: “I think it’s fair.”
As for Flynn and Kislyak, McGahn did not appear impressed with the retired general’s claims that he had forgotten the details of his lengthy discussion with the Russian diplomat about sanctions. McGahn agreed he thought Flynn was lying.
“I don’t think he could have forgotten,” McGahn told the committee. “It just didn’t ring true.”
Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI about the Kislyak discussions in late 2017, well before being pardoned by Trump in the twilight of his presidency.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/point-of-no-return-don-mcgahn-told-congress-how-close-trump-came-to-inflection-point-another-saturday-night-massacre/
The Beast: How Biden's getting around on his first overseas trip
Published 1 hour ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57424507
US President Joe Biden has arrived in the UK for his first official overseas trip.
It is his first stop on an eight-day visit to Europe. He will attend a G7 leaders' meeting in Cornwall and see the Queen before crossing the Channel for more official events - including his first Nato summit as president, and concluding by meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.
Mr Biden does not travel lightly. The US president has an array of specialty vehicles to help him move around in safety and comfort, on land and in the air.
And none is more iconic than the presidential plane - Air Force One.
...
MUCH MORE
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57424507
Former Army driver guilty of neo-Nazi terror offences
Published 8 minutes ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-57429414
An ex-Army driver who made a video of himself strumming a guitar to footage of fatal mosque shootings in Christchurch has been found guilty of neo-Nazi related terror offences.
Dean Morrice was seen playing in time to the gunshots of the 2019 attack.
He also stockpiled chemicals used in home-made explosives, terrorism manuals and instructions for a 3D printed gun.
Morrice, from Paulton, Somerset, was remanded in custody at Kingston Crown Court ahead of sentencing on Monday.
The court heard Morrice regularly took part in far-right forums and had set up two of his own channels, glorifying figures from the Third Reich and hailing neo-Nazi terrorists as "saints".
Prosecutor Naomi Parsons told the jury while it was not illegal to hold neo-Nazi views, Morrice's conduct "crossed the line into terrorism".
Morrice, who ran a small business fixing electronics after a brief stint in the Army, told the court he enjoyed dressing up as a "right-wing fascist".
He admitted holding "fascist and neo-Nazi views", but said he did not believe in "committing acts of violence towards ethnic or religious groups" and did not want to encourage terrorism.
Police raided his home on 20 August last year where they found enough ingredients to make 1.3kg of gunpowder and 680kg of the flammable material thermite, which Morrice claimed were to pursue his interest in homebrewing.
Officers also found a manual about how to make a gun, a document about making explosives and a handbook on how to encrypt data stored on his mobile phone,
Morrice was found guilty of two counts of having an explosive substance, three counts of dissemination of a terrorist publication, one of encouraging terrorism and four of possession of a document useful for terrorist purposes between 15 March 2019 and 20 August 2020.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-57429414
TRT World @trtworld Australians are at the centre of the country's worst mouse plague in decades with some complaining that the rodents nibble on their hair and nails when they are sleeping
VIDEO
Australians are at the centre of the country's worst mouse plague in decades with some complaining that the rodents nibble on their hair and nails when they are sleeping pic.twitter.com/JQyBaEbQFn
— TRT World (@trtworld) June 10, 2021
Australians are at the centre of the country's worst mouse plague in decades with some complaining that the rodents nibble on their hair and nails when they are sleeping pic.twitter.com/JQyBaEbQFn
— TRT World (@trtworld) June 10, 2021
'Miraculous' mosquito hack cuts dengue by 77%
By James Gallagher
Health and science correspondent
Published 12 hours ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57417219
Dengue fever cases have been cut by 77% in a "groundbreaking" trial that manipulates the mosquitoes that spread it, say scientists.
They used mosquitoes infected with "miraculous" bacteria that reduce the insect's ability to spread dengue.
The trial took place in Yogyakarta city, Indonesia, and is being expanded in the hope of eradicating the virus.
The World Mosquito Programme team says it could be a solution to a virus that has gone around the world.
Few people had heard of dengue 50 years ago, but it has been a relentless slow-burning pandemic and cases have increased dramatically.
In 1970, only nine countries had faced severe dengue outbreaks, now there are up to 400 million infections a year.
Dengue is commonly known as "break-bone fever" because it causes severe pain in muscles and bones and explosive outbreaks can overwhelm hospitals.
The enemy of my enemy
The trial used mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia bacteria. One of the researchers, Dr Katie Anders, describes them as "naturally miraculous".
Wolbachia doesn't harm the mosquito, but it camps out in the same parts of its body that the dengue virus needs to get into.
The bacteria compete for resources and make it much harder for dengue virus to replicate, so the mosquito is less likely to cause an infection when it bites again.
The trial used five million mosquito eggs infected with Wolbachia. Eggs were placed in buckets of water in the city every two weeks and the process of building up an infected population of mosquitoes took nine months.
Yogyakarta was split into 24 zones and the mosquitoes were released only in half of them.
The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed a 77% reduction in cases and an 86% reduction in people needing hospital care when the insects were released.
"It's very exciting, it's better than we could have hoped for to be honest," Dr Anders told the BBC.
The technique has been so successful the mosquitoes have been released across the whole city and the project is moving to surrounding areas with the aim of eradicating dengue in the region.
Dr Anders, who is also the director of impact assessment at the World Mosquito Programme, said: "This result is groundbreaking.
"We think it can have an even greater impact when it is deployed at scale in large cities around the world, where dengue is a huge public health problem."
Wolbachia are also spectacularly manipulative and can alter the fertility of their hosts to ensure they are passed on to the next generation of mosquitoes.
It means once Wolbachia has been established, it should stick around for a long time and continue to protect against dengue infection.
This is in sharp contrast to other control methods - such as insecticides or releasing large numbers of sterile male mosquitoes - that need to be kept up in order to suppress the blood-suckers.
Dr Yudiria Amelia, the head of disease prevention in Yogyakarta City, said: "We are delighted with the outcome of this trial.
"We hope this method can be implemented in all areas of Yogyakarta and further expanded in all cities in Indonesia."
The trial is a significant landmark after years of research as the species of mosquito that spreads dengue - Aedes aegypti - is not normally infected with Wolbachia.
Disease modelling studies have also predicted Wolbachia could be enough to completely suppress dengue fever if it can be established.
David Hamer, a professor of global health and medicine at Boston University, said the method had "exciting potential" for other diseases such as Zika, yellow fever and chikungunya; which are also spread by mosquito bites.
Follow James on Twitter
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57417219
He brought a sawed-off rifle to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Then he plotted to bomb Amazon data centers.
By Katie Shepherd
June 10, 2021 at 10:08 a.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/10/seth-pendley-amazon-bomb-guilty/
For weeks this spring, 28-year-old Seth Aaron Pendley had plotted an attack on Amazon data centers in Virginia. He’d already taken a sawed-off rifle to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Now, he hoped to cripple much of the Internet and take down government networks.
Last April, he finally arranged a meeting with a man promising to provide the C4 explosive devices. When they met in Fort Worth, Tex., the man showed Pendley how to arm and detonate the powerful bombs.
But just as Pendley placed the devices into his Pontiac, federal agents swarmed in and arrested him. The bomb seller was actually an FBI plant who had helped unravel a plan Pendley believed could “kill off about 70 percent of the internet.”
On Wednesday, Pendley pleaded guilty to planning to bomb Amazon facilities in an attempt to undermine the U.S. government and to spark a rebellion against the “oligarchy” he believed to be running the country.
The case underscores the dramatic rise in domestic terrorism driven by right-wing extremists, and raises concerns about those who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection plotting new attacks. Domestic attacks peaked in 2020, mostly driven by white-supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government extremists. Those far-right attacks have killed 91 people since 2015, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2021/domestic-terrorism-data/?itid=lk_inline_manual_9
Justice Department officials on Wednesday said Pendley’s plans could have injured or killed workers at the Amazon facilities if the FBI hadn’t intervened.
“Due in large part to the meticulous work of the FBI’s undercover agents, the Justice Department was able to expose Mr. Pendley’s twisted plot and apprehend the defendant before he was able to inflict any real harm,” Prerak Shah, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said in a statement. “We may never know how many tech workers’ lives were saved through this operation — and we’re grateful we never had to find out.”
Pendley’s plot against the government began to take shape in January, according to investigators. He said that he traveled to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 with a sawed-off rifle concealed in a backpack. As a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, he decided to leave the gun in his car and never entered the building, according to court records. But he later boasted about taking a piece of broken glass from the federal building home to Texas with him.
Not long after the riot, Pendley, using the screen name Dionysus, began posting on a website called MyMilitia.com about his plans to bomb data centers. A concerned citizen forwarded those posts to the FBI.
In February, Pendley began chatting with an informant who told him that he could help connect him obtain C4 explosives. Over the encrypted messaging app Signal, he shared his plans and began to ask “risky questions” about how to execute a bombing.
“If I had cancer or something I would just drive a bomb into these servers lol,” he wrote in one message.
The informant asked if he would be interested in obtaining C4 for the attack.
“Yeah,” Pendley wrote back. “And I’m not telling anyone anything. Even if I gotta wheel a wheelbarrow in that b---- I’m sure we can get it done.”
As the weeks passed, Pendley continued talking to the informant about his plans. He shared hand-drawn maps of the Amazon data centers, with multiple routes in and out of the buildings. Eventually, the informant proposed that Pendley meet with him and another man he claimed could provide C4 for the attack. That man, though, was really an undercover FBI agent.
The trio first met on March 31 in Fort Worth. During the secretly-recorded rendezvous, Pendley described his scheme in more detail.
He said he had painted his silver Pontiac black with a temporary, peel-away paint. He planned to drive the now-black car to Virginia and swap the license plates before carrying out the bombing. Then, he would peel the black paint away and replace his plates, making it more difficult for police to connect the car with the attack.
Pendley also described his motives in detail.
“The main objective is to f--- up the Amazon servers,” he told the two men, according to court records. “It’s gonna p--- all the oligarchy off.”
He said he hoped the U.S. government would overreact to the attack and that the consequences would turn people against the nation’s leaders.
“Hopefully, they let the world know in a weird way by acting too fast that they are a … dictatorship,” he said, according to court records. “And then hope like hell some of the people that are on the fence jump off the fence.”
The undercover FBI agent agreed to meet Pendley one week later to provide the explosives he would need to carry out the attack. On April 8, they met again, and Pendley took several fake C4 plastic explosives and placed them in his car. Then, police arrested him.
Investigators also searched Pendley’s home, where they found wigs and masks, notes, hand-drawn maps and flash cards laying out the details of his plans to bomb the Amazon data centers in Virginia. They also found a sawed-off rifle and a pistol painted to look like a toy gun.
Under his plea agreement, Pendley faces between five and 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and three years of probation, and will be banned from owning firearms.
His sentencing hearing is set for October 1.
By Katie Shepherd
Katie Shepherd is a reporter on The Washington Post's Morning Mix team. Before joining The Post, she was a staff writer at Willamette Week in Portland, Ore. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/10/seth-pendley-amazon-bomb-guilty/
Michelin's inflatable sails hybridize freight ships to cut emissions
By C.C. Weiss
June 09, 2021
https://newatlas.com/marine/michelin-wisamo-inflatable-ship-sails/
TALL TAIL Britain blamed for mouse plague terrorising Australia as ‘rodent army’ descended from convict ship stowaways
Jon Lockett
7 Jun 2021, 14:10Updated: 7 Jun 2021, 15:18
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15187540/britain-mouse-plague-australia-convict-ship-stowaways/
VIDEO blob:https://www.thesun.co.uk/e581e006-8931-44a7-abb0-8221c0ea5ab1
THE plague of mice ravaging swathes of Australia are almost certainly descended from rodent stowaways on British convict ships nearly 250 years ago.
They have since gone on to multiply massively with numbers surging to the biblical proportions now seen terrorising farmers, destroying crops and pillaging grain stores.
Tens of millions of rampaging rodents have sparked devastation stretching 1,000km from Brisbane down to Melbourne and tormented rural communities for months.
However, the common house mice (mus musculus) is thought to have only appeared in the vast country in the wake of the arrival of the British First Fleet - which carried 750 convicts to Botany Bay in 1788.
They scuttled through holds and cabins as the ships made their way to the other side of the world before the rodents then scurried onto dry land with the new settlers.
DNA sequencing tests indicate there is a "strong link" with the mice found Down Under and those seen in Western Europe, reports the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health.
It states: "Invasive species have a major impact on Australia, threatening native biodiversity and causing massive costs to agriculture every year.
"The house mouse is a highly successful invader worldwide and particularly throughout mainland Australia and surrounding islands.
"It has become a serious agricultural pest in Australia, particularly in grain-growing regions where it shows aperiodic but increasingly frequent outbreaks.
"Australia was probably the last continental landmass to be colonised by the house mouse, presumably remaining mouse-free until the arrival and settlement of the first Europeans colonists, about two centuries ago.
"The arrival of the British First Fleet in 1788 is often cited as the most probable origin of house mice into Australia."
However, some believe the mice may have actually arrived on Dutch ships in the 1600s.
Last week, we reported how the Australian government is set to blitz its mouse plague with "napalm for mice" amid fears the infestation could double every three weeks.
In just three months, two mice can spark a colony of almost 400, rapidly spawning to tens of thousands, the Daily Mail Australia reported.
A mouse can live for up to two or three years - and females can start reproducing at just six weeks of age.
They can give birth to ten babies every three weeks and the mum can get pregnant again the very next day.
Experts have warned "without a concerted baiting effort in the next few weeks this could easily turn into a two-year plague event".
And in a desperate bid to stop the mouse menace, the government in New South Wales has secured 5,000 litres of the toxic rodent poison bromadiolone - dubbed "napalm for mice" - which is currently banned for agricultural use in the country.
...
MUCH MORE
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15187540/britain-mouse-plague-australia-convict-ship-stowaways/
NSW’s plan to use more potent mouse plague poison could devastate threatened parrots, experts say
Conservationists call for state’s application to distribute more toxic pesticides to be denied as crop areas overlap with locations of the superb parrot
The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority says it was still assessing the NSW government’s application to use bromadiolone around crops. Photograph: Laura Rayner
Graham Readfearn
@readfearn
Mon 7 Jun 2021 13.30 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/08/nsws-plan-to-use-more-potent-mouse-plague-poison-could-devastate-threatened-parrots-experts-say
The New South Wales government should be blocked from using a more potent poison to deal with the state’s mouse plague after reports emerged of a mass bird death, BirdLife Australia and scientists say.
Experts say the areas where the government wants to distribute the more toxic rodenticide, bromadiolone, overlap the known locations of threatened superb parrots and could devastate the species.
The federal government’s Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority said on Monday it was still assessing the NSW government’s application to use bromadiolone around crops.
Scores of galahs were found dead in Parkes in the central west of NSW late last week, where farmers are desperately trying to control a months-long mouse plague.
The NSW government says it has 10,000 litres of bromadiolone and 20 locations primed to treat grain with the powerful anticoagulant if it gets approval from APVMA.
But conservation group BirdLife Australia has written to the government and the APVMA saying the application should be denied.
Holly Parsons, of BirdLife Australia, said: “Our concern is that a broad scale rollout of this second generation pesticide will be using the poison in a way that’s not currently allowed because of the harm that it can do to wildlife.
“Farmers are suffering and we need to try and use the best tools that we have.”
Galahs are seed-eating parrots and Parsons said it was suspected those found dead in Parkes had eaten grain laced with zinc phosphide that farmers are using to control mice.
The EPA has warned that native wildlife, especially birds, could be affected by zinc phosphide.
The NSW Department of Primary Industries has made two emergency permit applications to the APVMA to use bromadiolone around crops either in bait stations or as a treatment for grain that can be laid in trails.
The poison is restricted in Australia. Conservation scientists say the chemical could have far reaching effects through the food chain, and puts mice-eating animals like snakes and raptors at risk.
The APVMA told the Guardian it has yet to make a decision on the application but is prioritising emergency use permit applications in relation to the mouse plague.
NSW EPA said in a statement it could not confirm if mouse baits were involved in the Galah deaths, “however with the significant and important baiting being done by community members it is possible that birds are taking baits.”
The statement said: “This is why we urge people to follow the instructions on pesticides labels.
“The EPA is investigating a number of reports where animals have been affected by mouse baits. To date there is no evidence that there has been intentional misuse of pesticides.”
The EPA had investigated bird deaths of species including galahs, pigeons and magpies in Forbes, Parkes, Dubbo, Narromine, Condobolin and the Riverina.
The statement added: “Toxicology results have confirmed some of the bird deaths were caused by the chemicals used in mouse baits.”
McLean Cobden, who is researching superb parrots with the Difficult Bird Research Group at Australian National University, said the proposed distribution stations of bromadiolone – in the central west, Riverina and south-west slopes areas – made “almost the perfect map” of where the threatened birds lived.
“That’s a cause for concern and has the potential to be devastating for superb parrots,” he said.
“One of their favourite foods is grain and people do see them on the side of the road feeding on grain spilled from trucks. They also love to feed on grain on the ground much like galahs do.”
Cobden said the birds would be especially active in the upcoming spring breeding season. There was a possibility, he said, the mice would be competing for the same grain as the birds, creating a potential food shortage as they head into breeding season.
The superb parrots use hollows in trees as breeding and nesting sites and are seen in trees along the Murrumbidgee and Murray rivers, as well as in the agricultural landscape where they find trees that remain after clearing.
He said estimates of bird numbers vary, but between 5,000 and 10,000 superb parrots are thought to be left.
Dr Robert Davis, of Edith Cowan University, said experts were already worried about the impact on birds of prey of the current chemicals being used. Those concerns were now extending to seed-eating birds.
Bromadiolone stops the clotting of the blood, leading to internal bleeding and death. Parsons said death after eating could take several days. Other birds that preyed on dying or dead mice could also be at risk.
There have also been reports of Murray cod regurgitating dead mice.
The EPA said anyone concerned about an incident of misuse of pesticides should call 131 555. Reports of mass deaths or signs of disease in animals can also be made to Wildlife Health Australia. A hotline is available for reporting disease outbreaks on 1800 675 888.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/08/nsws-plan-to-use-more-potent-mouse-plague-poison-could-devastate-threatened-parrots-experts-say
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Biden to lay out vax donations, urge world leaders to join
By ZEKE MILLER and AAMER MADHANI
today
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-europe-africa-g-7-summit-coronavirus-pandemic-2a95a7f4da8f8899d3039ad3a46ddd31
MAWGAN PORTH, England (AP) — One year ago, the U.S. was the deadliest hotspot of the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the cancellation of the Group of Seven summit it was due to host. Now, the U.S. is emerging as a model for how to successfully emerge from more than 15 months of global crisis.
For President Joe Biden, who is meeting with leaders of the wealthy G-7 democracies on his first overseas trip since taking office, it’s a personal vindication of his pledge to turn around the U.S. virus, but also a call to action to enlist other countries in the global fight.
In a speech on the eve of the summit, Biden on Thursday will unveil plans for the U.S. to donate 500 million vaccine doses around the globe over the next year, on top of 80 million he has already pledged by the end of the month. U.S. officials say Biden will also include a direct request to his fellow G-7 leaders to do the same.
“We have to end COVID-19, not just at home — which we’re doing — but everywhere,” Biden told American servicemembers Wednesday on the first stop of his three-country, eight-day trip, adding that the effort “requires coordinated, multilateral action.”
“There’s no wall high enough to keep us safe from this pandemic or the next biological threat we face — and there will be others,” he added.
The U.S. has faced mounting pressure to outline its global vaccine sharing plan, especially as inequities in supply around the world have become more pronounced, and the demand for shots in the U.S. has dropped precipitously in recent weeks.
The new U.S. commitment is to purchase and donate 500 million Pfizer doses for distribution through the global COVAX alliance to 92 lower-income countries and the African Union, bringing the first steady supply of mRNA vaccine to the countries that need it most. The U.S. is now set to be COVAX’s largest vaccine donor in addition to its single largest funder with a $4 billion commitment.
The global alliance has thus far distributed just 81 million doses, and parts of the world, particularly in Africa, remain vaccine deserts.
After leading the world in new cases and deaths over much of the last year, the rapid vaccination program in the U.S. now positions the country among the leaders of the global recovery. Nearly 64% of adults in the U.S. have received at least one vaccine dose and the average numbers of new positive cases and deaths in the U.S. are lower now than at any point since the earliest days of the pandemic.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development last week projected that the U.S. economy would grow at a rate of 6.9% this year, making it one of the few nations for which forecasts are rosier now than before the pandemic.
U.S. officials are hopeful the summit will conclude with a communique showing a commitment from the G-7 countries and other invited nations to do more to help vaccinate the world and support public health globally.
“I don’t anticipate contention on the issue of vaccines. I anticipate convergence,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Wednesday. “Because we’re all converging around the idea that we need to boost vaccine supply in a number of ways: sharing more of our own doses — and we’ll have more to say on that; helping get more manufacturing capacity around the world — we’ll have more to say on that; and, of course, doing what’s necessary across the chain of custody from when the vaccine is produced to when it gets in someone’s arms in the rural developing world, and we’ll have more to say on that.”
Last week, the White House unveiled plans to donate an initial allotment of 25 million doses of surplus vaccine overseas, mostly through the United Nations-backed COVAX program, promising infusions for South and Central America, Asia, Africa and others.
Officials say a quarter of that excess will be kept in reserve for emergencies and for the U.S. to share directly with allies and partners, including South Korea, Taiwan and Ukraine.
Sullivan noted that Biden has previously committed to turning the U.S. into a modern day “arsenal of democracies” for vaccines, but that the country also has health reasons for spreading vaccinations — preventing the rise of potentially dangerous variants — and geostrategic ones as well.
China and Russia have shared, with varying success, their domestically produced vaccines with some needy countries, often with hidden strings attached. Sullivan said Biden “does want to show — rallying the rest of the world’s democracies — that democracies are the countries that can best deliver solutions for people everywhere.”
The U.S.-produced mRNA vaccines have also proven to be more effective against both the original strain and more dangerous variants of COVID-19 than the more conventional vaccines produced by China and Russia. Some countries that have had success in deploying those conventional vaccines have nonetheless seen cases spike.
Biden’s decision to purchase the doses, officials said, was meant to keep them from getting locked up by richer nations that have the means to enter into purchasing agreements directly with manufacturers. Just last month, the European Commission signed an agreement to purchase as many as 1.8 billion Pfizer doses in the next two years, a significant share of the company’s upcoming production — though the bloc reserved the right to donate some of its doses to COVAX.
Global public health groups have been aiming to use this week’s G-7 meetings to press the nation’s wealthiest democracies to do more to share vaccines with the world, and Biden’s plans drew immediate praise toward that end.
Tom Hart, acting CEO at The ONE Campaign, a nonprofit that seeks to end poverty, said Biden’s announcement was “the kind of bold leadership that is needed to end this global pandemic.”
“We urge other G-7 countries to follow the U.S.’ example and donate more doses to COVAX,” he added. “If there was ever a time for global ambition and action to end the pandemic, it’s now.”
But others have called on the U.S. to do even more.
“Charity is not going to win the war against the coronavirus,” said Niko Lusiani, Oxfam America’s vaccine lead. “At the current rate of vaccinations, it would take low-income countries 57 years to reach the same level of protection as those in G-7 countries. That’s not only morally wrong, it’s self-defeating given the risk posed by coronavirus mutations.”
Biden last month broke with European allies to endorse waiving intellectual property rules at the World Trade Organization to promote vaccine production and equity. But many in his own administration acknowledge that the restrictions were not the driving cause of the global vaccine shortage, which has more to do with limited manufacturing capacity and shortages of delicate raw materials.
___
Miller reported from Washington.
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-europe-africa-g-7-summit-coronavirus-pandemic-2a95a7f4da8f8899d3039ad3a46ddd31
AP Exclusive: State bar investigating Texas attorney general
By JAKE BLEIBERG
today
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-us-supreme-court-texas-election-2020-071cd81a1447f17bfd115edffc4ff456
DALLAS (AP) — The Texas bar association is investigating whether state Attorney General Ken Paxton’s failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election based on bogus claims of fraud amounted to professional misconduct.
The State Bar of Texas initially declined to take up a Democratic Party activist’s complaint that Paxton’s petitioning of the U.S. Supreme Court to block Joe Biden’s victory was frivolous and unethical. But a tribunal that oversees grievances against lawyers overturned that decision late last month and ordered the bar to look into the accusations against the Republican official.
The investigation is yet another liability for the embattled attorney general, who is facing a years-old criminal case, a separate, newer FBI investigation, and a Republican primary opponent who is seeking to make electoral hay of the various controversies. It also makes Paxton one of the highest profile lawyers to face professional blowback over their roles in Donald Trump’s effort to delegitimize his defeat.
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Paxton’s defense lawyer, Philip Hilder, declined to comment.
Kevin Moran, the 71-year-old president of the Galveston Island Democrats, shared his complaint with The Associated Press along with letters from the State Bar of Texas and the Board of Disciplinary Appeals that confirm the investigation. He said Paxton’s efforts to dismiss other states’ election results was a wasteful embarrassment for which the attorney general should lose his law license.
“He wanted to disenfranchise the voters in four other states,” said Moran. “It’s just crazy.”
Texas’ top appeals lawyer, who would usually argue the state’s cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, notably did not join Paxton in bringing the election suit. The high court threw it out.
Paxton has less than a month to reply to Moran’s claim that the lawsuit to overturn the results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin was misleading and brought in bad faith, according to a June 3 letter from the bar. All four of the battleground states voted for Biden in November.
From there, bar staff will take up the case in a proceeding that resembles the grand jury stage of a criminal investigation. Bar investigators are empowered to question witnesses, hold hearings and issue subpoenas to determine whether a lawyer likely committed misconduct. That finding then launches a disciplinary process that could ultimately result in disbarment, suspension or a lesser punishments. A lawyer also could be found to have done nothing wrong.
The bar dismisses thousands of grievances each year and the Board of Disciplinary Appeals, 12 independent lawyers appointed by the Texas Supreme Court, overwhelmingly uphold those decisions. Reversals like that of Moran’s complaint happened less than 7% of the time last year, according to the bar’s annual report.
Claire Reynolds, a spokeswoman and lawyer for the bar, said state law prohibits the agency from commenting on complaints unless they result is public sanctions or a court action.
The bar’s investigation is confidential and likely to take months. But it draws renewed attention to Paxton’s divisive defense of Trump as he and Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush vie for the former president’s endorsement in the Republican primary to run for attorney general in 2022.
On the Democratic side, Joe Jaworski, the former mayor of Galveston, has said he’ll run. Moran said Jaworski is a friend but that he played no role in the complaint against Paxton.
Paxton’s election challenge was filled with claims that failed to withstand basic scrutiny. A succession of other judges and state elections officials have refuted claims of widespread voter fraud, and Trump’s own Justice Department found no evidence of fraud that could have changed the election’s outcome.
Nonetheless, Paxton’s lawsuit won him political and financial support from Trump loyalists at a time when fresh allegations of criminal wrongdoing led many in the state GOP to keep their distance from the attorney general.
Last fall, eight of Paxton’s top deputies mounted an extraordinary revolt in which they accused him of abusing his office in the service of a wealthy donor. The FBI is investigating their claims.
Paxton has denied wrongdoing and separately pleaded not guilty in a state securities fraud case that’s languished since 2015. He has also used his office in ways that have benefited allies and other donors.
The new criminal allegations prompted an exodus of the top lawyers from Paxton’s office. But Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins was still serving as Texas’ top appellate lawyer at the time of the election lawsuit.
Although the solicitor general usually handles cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, it was a private Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who brought the election challenge with Paxton. Hawkins has since moved to private practice. A spokesman for his firm said “we can’t help you” with questions about why he didn’t handle the suit.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-joe-biden-us-supreme-court-texas-election-2020-071cd81a1447f17bfd115edffc4ff456
Solar Eclipse LIVE | 10 June 2021
Covid lab-leak theory shows the ‘fact wars’ are still raging
The debate around the origins of coronavirus highlights how politicised ‘truth’ can be
Jemima Kelly AN HOUR AGO
Opinion Coronavirus pandemic
https://www.ft.com/content/41f6f9ba-db82-4782-8ec0-bc952abb3836
The conversation around Covid-19’s origins has shifted markedly in recent weeks. Suddenly, the idea that the virus could have come from an accidental lab leak, once dismissed as a “conspiracy theory”, is considered a possibility — even a likelihood, by some.
Fact-checking site PolitiFact recently decided to “archive” a fact-check it published last year on whether the virus was “man-made”, which it gave its most censorious “pants-on-fire!” rating, but which it now says is “more widely disputed”.
Likewise, The Washington Post issued a correction on a story it published in February 2020 on Republican senator Tom Cotton’s efforts to press China for evidence to back up its claims that the virus had emerged naturally. The Post said he was repeating a “conspiracy theory that was already debunked”; it now acknowledges there is “no determination about the origins of the virus”.
One might assume that this shift has come on the back of new evidence, but the facts haven’t changed in any material way, though some new information has emerged. What has changed, however, is that the lab-leak theory has become politically acceptable.
It seems it is only now that Donald Trump — who claimed in April 2020 to have evidence that Covid-19 had emanated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — has departed the White House that the possibility that the virus was man-made can be entertained.
“The fact that Trump embraced this idea suddenly turned it into a polarising conversation,” says Daniel Drezner, a political scientist at Tufts University. “Now that Trump is no longer in office, suddenly it becomes a little bit more permissible to talk about this.”
We live in a world in which topics are often approached with preconceived notions about what we would like the truth about them to be, based on our political stances, and we then seek out “facts” that prove those notions.
But just because Trump spewed endless lies about all manner of topics, and spoke about China in a way that many considered offensive and racist, doesn’t mean we should discount everything he said simply because it was he who was saying it.
We also seem to live in a world that prefers binary possibilities. One of the reasons the theory of an accidental lab leak was dismissed was because it was conflated with the idea that China had maliciously developed Covid-19 as a bioweapon. While this idea didn’t gain traction, even among Trump and his allies, by falsely equating the leak with biological weaponry, it was much easier to dismiss.
“People took the lab leak hypothesis, they straw-manned it, and then they debunked the straw-manned version that they had straw-manned themselves,” says Eric Weinstein, a mathematical physicist and managing director at Thiel Capital, who has long considered the lab leak hypothesis plausible.
It wasn’t just journalists and social commentators who conflated the two hypotheses; some scientists did too. The Lancet published a statement in February 2020 signed by 27 scientists who said they “(stood) together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin”.
By using the words “condemn”, and “conspiracy theories”, these scientists — who, it has emerged, had been brought together by a man whose organisation has funded research at the WIV — managed to make even questioning the idea that the virus had passed from an animal into humans appear unethical.
But just because rigorous debate was difficult, doesn’t mean it should not have taken place. We need to be comfortable seeking out truths that might make us uncomfortable, and to stay open to the possibility that we might end up agreeing with those who we find disagreeable.
The Biden administration may be less enthusiastic about “alternative facts” than the previous one, but what we might call “fact wars” have outlived Trump’s presidency. “Facts” are being used as weapons selected to push narratives, rather than to guide us to the truth. We need to stop policing the discourse if we are to avoid living in an alternative reality.
jemima.kelly@ft.com
https://www.ft.com/content/41f6f9ba-db82-4782-8ec0-bc952abb3836
Biden pushes protection for more streams and wetlands, targeting a major Trump rollback
The change could have broad implications for farming, real estate development and other activities. It is the latest salvo in a decades-long battle over how far federal officials can go to stop contaminants from entering small streams and other waterways.
By Dino Grandoni
June 9, 2021 at 7:00 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/06/09/biden-epa-clean-water-act/
Algae floats on the surface of Lake Erie's Maumee Bay in Oregon, Ohio. (Paul Sancya/AP)
The Biden administration is ready to toss out a rule adopted under President Donald Trump that significantly reduced the number of streams, marshes and other wetlands that fall under federal protection, kicking off a legal and regulatory scuffle over the fates of thousands of acres of wetlands and waterways from the arid West to the swampy South.
Micheal Regan, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said his team determined that the Trump administration’s rollback is “leading to significant environmental degradation.” The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers will now craft a new set of protections for waterways that provide habitats for wildlife and safe drinking water for millions of Americans, according to a joint statement.
With the announcement, the Biden administration is wading into a decades-long battle over how far federal officials can go to stop contaminants from entering small streams and other wetlands.
“Communities deserve to have our nation’s waters protected,” said Jaime A. Pinkham, acting assistant secretary of the Army for civil works.
In 2015, the Obama administration expanded federal authority to stop or curtail development that could harms a variety of wetlands, streams and ditches that feed into larger bodies of water protected under the Clean Water Act.
Heeding the call of home developers, oil drillers and growers who saw the restrictions as detrimental to their livelihoods, the Trump administration rolled back those Obama-era pollution controls.
But critics, including a panel of independent scientists picked by the Trump administration itself, slammed the move for potentially hastening the destruction of waterways, including so-called ephemeral streams that appear only after rainfall and help purify water on its way to larger lakes and rivers that serve of sources of drinking water for millions of Americans. The current lack of protections is particularly notable in dry states such as New Mexico and Arizona, the EPA said.
“The science says those streams and these wetlands are an important part of our clean water system in the United States and should be protected,” said Tom Kiernan, head of American Rivers, a conservation group.
Now, EPA Administrator Michael Regan says he’s trying to strike the delicate balance between conservation and development that both the Trump and Obama administrations failed to reach.
“We’ve learned lessons from both, we’ve seen complexities in both, and we’ve determined both rules did not necessarily listen to the will of the people,” Regan told House lawmakers in April.
The Biden administration’s rulemaking could help stem the staggering loss of wetlands.
Since the end of the Revolutionary War, more than half of the 221 million acres of wetlands in what would become the contiguous United States have been drained, often for farming. The rate of destruction only began to wane in recent decades.
Trump rule eases effort to strip-mine near Okefenokee Swamp
In northwest Ohio, for instance, corn and other crops are grown on a vast tract once known as the Great Black Swamp. Farmers began draining it during the 19th Century, and now agricultural runoff flows into Lake Erie and feeds the growth of toxic algae that regularly closes beaches and once forced the city of Toledo to suspend tap water use for about two days.
Bill Stanley, state director of the Nature Conservancy in Ohio, said the Trump administration’s withdrawal of federal protections for what few streams remain to filter nutrient waste from fertilizers could make the lake susceptible to even bigger algae blooms.
“ ‘Nutrients’ doesn’t sound like a bad word,” he said, “but when you get too many of them, it causes major problems for our water quality in Ohio.”
But farmers like Daryl Lies, who raises hogs and sheep and grows vegetables on 160 acres in central North Dakota, say the Obama-era restrictions on wetland development would have been “painstakingly costly for agriculture.” Those rules, he said, “would have made it a lot harder to have the livestock” near a creek that winds along his farm on its way to the Missouri River.
“Farmers and ranchers are the original environmentalists, I say,” said Lies, who heads the North Dakota Farm Bureau. “We’re not the activists, like we hear across the nation, but we are the real environmentalists. We care about taking care of our land and having it there for the next generation.”
The Trump-era ruled eased the path for several construction projects, including a commercial, industrial and residential park along the Savannah River, which forms the border between South Carolina and Georgia.
The RiverPort project came with the promise of jobs in shipping and construction. But wildlife officials at the nearby Savannah National Wildlife Refuge warned in 2010 the proposal “represents a significant threat” to its bottomland hardwoods of gum and maple trees and freshwater marshes that attract migrating waterfowl.
Yet after the Trump administration rolled back the Obama-era rule, more than 200 acres of the wetlands in the project’s footprint fell out of federal oversight, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is suing the EPA over the regulation.
“Every day the rule is in place, we are losing protections for 92 percent of wetlands, waters and streams,” said Kelly Moser, a senior attorney at the Charlottesville, Va.-based legal advocacy group, citing the organization’s own analysis of the impact of the Trump rule.
In total, the EPA and Army Corps said they are aware of 333 projects that no longer require federal water permits under the Trump rule.
Tracking Biden’s environmental actions
A former regulator from the purple state of North Carolina, Regan arrived in Washington with a reputation as a consensus builder and has spent much of his first months in office listening to both sides of the debate over water protections. Lies was among several people in North Dakota’s agriculture and oil industries Regan met with last week on a trip to Bismarck hosted by Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.).
“I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll be able to work with this EPA administrator, and that he truly is sincere about getting out and getting input,” Lies said.
But the fate of the EPA’s effort ultimately will hang in the U.S. Supreme Court.
At the center of the decades-long legal storm over water protections is the Clean Water Act, which bans pollution in a “waters of the United States” without a permit. The question of what constitutes such water has been up for debate since the law’s passage in 1972.
In a 2006 decision, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote federal officials could step in when there was a “significant nexus” between smaller and larger bodies of water. The Obama administration wrote its rule around that standard.
With the announcement Wednesday, the Biden administration is kicking off a lengthy rulemaking process in which it will first strike down the Trump rule before issuing its own definition for which waterways get federal protection.
But after Kennedy’s retirement and with the Supreme Court taking an even more conservative turn with the appointments of three justices by President Trump, it’s unclear what sort of rule could now pass muster.
“That is the $64 million question, isn’t it?” said Patrick Parenteau, a professor of natural resources law at Vermont Law School. “It’s got to be a rule that gets five votes on the Supreme Court, and that’s going to be damn difficult.”
By Dino Grandoni
Dino Grandoni is a reporter on the national desk of The Washington Post, focused on covering the Environmental Protection Agency, climate change and other environmental issues. Twitter
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/06/09/biden-epa-clean-water-act/
CNN Breaking News @cnnbrk · 17s The Trump administration continued to pursue CNN reporter Barbara Starr’s email records even after a federal judge said the reasoning was “unanchored in any facts”
Trump administration pursued CNN reporter's records in months-long secret court battle
CNN Digital Expansion 2018 Katelyn PolantzEvan Perez byline
By Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez, CNN
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/09/politics/trump-pursuit-cnn-reporter-records-secret-court-battle/index.html?utm_source=twcnnbrk&utm_content=2021-06-09T18%3A04%3A08&utm_medium=social&utm_term=link
Updated 1800 GMT (0200 HKT) June 9, 2021
7:04 PM · Jun 9, 2021·SocialFlow
THREAD
The Trump administration continued to pursue CNN reporter Barbara Starr’s email records even after a federal judge said the reasoning was “unanchored in any facts” https://t.co/N783lLz7oT
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) June 9, 2021