China’s Ministry of Transport data showed total cross-regional passenger traffic averaged 293 million trips per day, up 8 percent from a year ago, while sales of major retail and catering businesses were up 6.3 percent during the holiday, the state-run Global Times reported.

“The twin boom in travel and consumption not only ignited the holiday economy but also revealed the depth and vast potential of China’s economic development,” a Global Times editorial on May 5 said.

Contrary to Chinese state media reports, sources in the region said the overall consumer sentiment and market environment during this year’s May Day holiday was far worse than before.

Once-bustling shopping venues were devoid of their usual volume of eager shoppers, while cost-conscious travelers were opting for cheaper alternatives to get around, they added.

For example, the Baidu search index showed the search popularity of “green train” increased significantly during the May Day holiday, as many passengers sought the cheap but time-consuming mode of travel, instead of the more expensive but significantly faster high-speed rail option.

The reality of the middle and low-income groups “having holidays but no budget” is very different from Chinese state media reports of “boom in consumption,” say netizens.

Wuhan resident Zhang said shoppers were few when he visited the popular Wangfujing shopping complex on Zhongshan Avenue.

“(It) was empty and there were not many people ... The atmosphere is definitely not as good as before. Prices have gone up; even the price of medicine has gone up,” Zhang said.

Last month, RFA reported that businesses in major export hubs in southeastern China were announcing factory “holidays” – halting production and slashing employee wages and work hours – with more than 50% of export companies in Zhejiang set to take a “long holiday” after the Labor Day holiday on May 1.

“Even if we receive orders (from the U.S.) now, we have to transfer them to Vietnamese factories,” Chen Xiaoqin, head of a foreign trade company in Shenzhen city in Guangdong province, told RFA.

“Many factory production lines in Guangdong have stopped. What do you think we should do?” she asked.

Edited by Tenzin Pema and Mat Pennington.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Qian Lang for RFA Mandarin.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Current. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In January, standing before a cluster of television cameras on the steps of the state Capitol, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp promoted his experiment in Medicaid reform as a showcase for fellow conservatives seeking to overhaul safety net benefits around the country.

“What we are doing is working,” Kemp boasted about Georgia Pathways to Coverage. The federally subsidized health insurance program is supposed to cover nearly a quarter-million low-income Georgians who can prove they are working, studying or volunteering.

What the governor did not disclose, however, was that his program is not achieving two primary goals: enrolling people in health care and getting them to work, according to an examination by The Current and ProPublica. The findings were confirmed recently by an independent evaluation commissioned by the state that has yet to be publicly released.

As of the end of 2024, the Pathways program has cost federal and state taxpayers more than $86.9 million, three-quarters of which has gone to consultants, The Current and ProPublica found. The state asserted that costs increased because of a two-year delay to the program’s launch.

A mere 6,500 participants have enrolled 18 months into the program, approximately 75% fewer than the state had estimated for Pathways’ first year. Thousands of others never finished applying, according to the state’s data, as reports of technical glitches mounted. The state also never hired enough people to help residents sign up or to verify that participants are actually working, as Georgia required, federal officials and state workers said.

As a result, the Kemp administration has quietly rolled back a core tenet it heralded when it launched Pathways as an alternative to government entitlement programs for poor people that many conservatives deride as handouts and the nanny state. Rather than verifying that people are working every month, Georgia is confirming that participants meet these requirements only at the time of enrollment and upon their annual renewal, the state said in January.

Georgia’s experience offers a warning for the nation as conservatives attempt to curtail federally subsidized health care for low-income Americans, as outlined by Project 2025, the playbook designed for a second Donald Trump presidency. Congressional Republicans are pushing for deep cuts to Medicaid along with requiring recipients to work. Right now, Georgia is the only state that imposes a work requirement for Medicaid coverage. But nearly a dozen largely Republican-led states are considering work requirements for Medicaid enrollees.

Federal and state officials who have worked on Pathways say a litany of bad decisions, some technical and some political, doomed the program from meeting Kemp’s original goals. Even some lawmakers in Kemp’s own party want to pull the plug on Pathways.

The quarter-million people eligible for Pathways would have had an easier road to coverage had the state simply chosen to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 health reform law that extended insurance to tens of millions of Americans, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy. Kemp is one of 10 Republican governors who refused federal government subsidies to expand Medicaid under the belief that entitlement programs encourage freeloaders and are a drag on federal and state budgets. Sixteen percent of working-age residents in Georgia lack health insurance, one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation.

In response to Pathways’ low enrollment numbers, Kemp’s spokesperson Garrison Douglas said the governor never thought it was realistic to enroll the entire pool of eligible Georgians in the program. Douglas said Kemp’s health care strategy for low-income Georgians is superior to Medicaid expansion because it saves the state money and funnels participants into private health insurance, rather than what the Kemp administration has described as overregulated government-mandated plans that reimburse hospitals and doctors at lower rates.

“As the governor has said repeatedly, those who continue to promote full Medicaid expansion are selling Georgians a bill of goods,” he said.

The Pathways program is slated to sunset this fall, but Georgia has filed a request with the Trump administration to extend the experiment for another five years with the less stringent verification rules, as independent evaluators recommended. The Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment about its support for Medicaid work requirements and its views on Georgia’s Pathways experiment.

State officials did not explain why Georgia has not been able to meet its own verification standards.

“The governor’s mandate for all state agencies is to continually seek ways to make government more efficient and accessible for hardworking Georgians,” Fiona Roberts, a Department of Community Health spokesperson, said in a written statement.

The state requires Pathways participants to work at least 80 hours a month or be enrolled in school, job training or volunteering — activities the governor’s office says it believes contribute to eventual “financial independence.” Health policy research shows that requiring low-income people to work for health insurance does not increase coverage or boost their economic circumstances because most of them already have jobs.

“If the goal truly is to increase health insurance for low-income Georgians, they are doing it wrong,” said Dr. Harry J. Heiman, a member of a state commission to study comprehensive health coverage and a professor at Georgia State University School of Public Health. “The one thing that Pathways seems to do well is waste taxpayer money on consultants and administrative costs.”

Pathways was supposed to help a group of Georgians whom the state had previously deemed ineligible for Medicaid: adults between 18 and 64 years old earning less than $15,650 a year if they are single, or $32,150 for a family of four.

The state told the federal government in its application to experiment with Pathways that it hoped to enroll 25,000 of the 246,000 Georgians eligible for Pathways during the program’s first year.

But those seeking coverage faced technical hurdles right away, according to interviews with six applicants as well as federal officials and current and former state employees.

The enrollment portal crashed each of the three times Kelsey Williams tried to apply. The single mother had been kicked off Medicaid last spring, after her son turned 1, per state law allowing her to keep her coverage for a year after giving birth. She called the Pathways customer service hotline for help and was sent through a phone tree that ended in a voicemail asking callers to leave a message.

“You’d go from one robot voice to another,” said Williams, who worked irregular hours as a convenience store clerk outside Macon.

No one called back. She gave up after nearly a month of trying. “I got the feeling that they really didn’t want to help me,” she said.

State officials have paid Deloitte Consulting more than $50 million so far for a software application that often froze and wiped out personal information, forcing applicants to start over. The technology also proved hard to navigate for many of Pathways’ target clients who don’t own smartphones or have access to reliable high-speed internet.

I got the feeling that they really didn’t want to help me.

As of January, the state’s own documents show that the program had a backlog of 16,000 applications awaiting processing, and in some months, upwards of 40% of people who started applications for Pathways gave up.

An independent evaluation from December, obtained by The Current and ProPublica, analyzed data gleaned from the first 13 months of the Pathways program and noted that applicants experienced administrative barriers to enrollment. People 50 and older had an especially difficult time proving they met the requirements, the evaluation said. The program requires applicants to provide paperwork that verifies their work status, including pay stubs and tax documents. That protocol contradicts Medicaid regulations that states should use available data to confirm most eligibility criteria, when possible, instead of making people provide documentation.

For Georgians who did manage to enroll, the technology problems persisted when they were required to verify each month that they had a job or were otherwise participating in a “qualifying activity.”

Paul Mikell lives in an area outside Atlanta without reliable internet service — and he doesn’t have the income for a phone plan with unlimited data. It takes him more than an hour each month to upload the employment documents necessary to reconfirm his eligibility, often using the free Wi-Fi at his public library.

Sometimes, Mikell said, the task has stretched days, even a whole week, because the Pathways verification portal freezes or crashes. One time, he said, he waited eight days for customer support to retrieve a password and restore his access.

The 49-year-old works part time for a hauling and trucking company in exchange for housing. He also picks up odd jobs to support his young son and elderly father. He does not receive traditional pay stubs that could be easily pulled by the state to verify his work status.

“It’s really, really difficult,” said Mikell, adding that stress over the possibility of losing coverage keeps him awake at night. “But it’s the only health care for someone like me.”

Mikell’s informal employment situation is typical for many low-income Americans who exist outside mainstream financial networks, and illustrates why verification can be an arduous process for programs with work requirements, said Jennifer Wagner, an expert in Medicaid enrollment technology at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank. In Georgia, 65% of people eligible for Pathways are employed at least part time, while many of the rest are tethered to unpaid work such as caregiving that Pathways does not recognize, state data shows.

To help automate the application and verification processes, Georgia uses digital tools to collect wage and work histories of employees at large companies as well as those who are self-employed. But these tools are not comprehensive, and the task of verifying applicants’ eligibility for Pathways largely falls on a cadre of overburdened caseworkers.

In August 2023, a month after Pathways launched, the state was only able to verify that 39 of the 152 enrollees were indeed working or otherwise engaged in activities deemed acceptable by the state, according to state reports to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Those reports attributed the low numbers to a lack of “functionality” and did not provide further explanation.

The state’s contracts with Deloitte, which The Current and ProPublica obtained through a public records request, were heavily redacted and reveal no detail about the technical design of Pathways’ digital platform or how it would be tested before launch.

Deloitte declined to comment and referred questions about the technical difficulties to Georgia officials. Roberts, the spokesperson for Georgia’s Medicaid agency, referred to Pathways as “both a policy and technical success” but said it had to work through issues “consistent with the launch of a new program of similar scale and complexity.”

“Based on feedback from customers and the community, the state continues to evolve the Pathways program and its processes,” Roberts said in a written statement.

The state still requires Pathways recipients to upload paperwork every month, but Georgia is only verifying it annually, Roberts said. The state also says it is not kicking anyone off the rolls.

Loosening Pathways’ verification process does not change what federal and state officials say is another fundamental flaw in the program: Getting people enrolled would ultimately hinge on an understaffed department already struggling to keep up with processing applications for other safety net benefits.

About 30% of the staff at Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services that oversees benefits enrollment and employment verification had turned over between 2017 and 2022, according to state data. Former agency managers attribute the unusually high churn to a workforce fed up with low pay and high stress, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2023, the year Pathways launched, the agency was already swamped.

Caseworkers had started the time-intensive task of reenrolling the 2 million Georgians who had traditional Medicaid benefits, a process that happens every five years to ensure that participants still meet the requirements.

Federal officials were simultaneously scrutinizing the department for its backlog of 157,000 food stamp applications and ordered it to develop a “corrective plan” to process those benefits more quickly. Georgia was also slipping behind the 45-day standard for processing Medicaid applications, according to federal data.

Meanwhile, for approximately six months before Pathways started, caseworkers needed extensive training for the new program, further delaying reviews of food stamps and Medicaid applications, former managers said.

That spring, Kemp approved a temporary fix to the department’s workforce shortage: using federal grants to hire 300 additional caseworkers to handle the flood of Medicaid renewals. But state officials did not beef up staffing to handle Pathways applications, according to two federal employees and one former state manager, despite the fact that so much of Kemp’s political capital was riding on the program’s success.

The workload ballooned after Pathways’ launch in July 2023, according to three former caseworkers. “I’d go into work every day with piles and piles of files, and each of those files represented a real human being with real suffering,” said Deanna Matthews, who quit last year. “What people don’t realize is that some of us were processing food stamp applications and our families were struggling and needing food assistance as well.” (Starting salary for a caseworker who determines applicants’ eligibility for federal benefits is approximately $32,000 — the same as the federal poverty line for a family of four.)

I’d go into work every day with piles and piles of files, and each of those files represented a real human being with real suffering.

In December 2023, the state agency overseeing DFCS moved 200 caseworkers who had been processing applications for Medicaid to tackle the backlog of food stamp applications.

In Pathways’ first six months, the department had enrolled just 2,300 people, according to state data.

In response to questions from The Current and ProPublica, Ellen Brown, a spokesperson for the Georgia Department of Human Services, said the state has committed enough people to administer Pathways but that it “can always use more caseworkers” and continues to hire.

At the state Capitol, Republican legislators representing rural counties, where large numbers of uninsured adults live, had begun questioning their governor’s push for Pathways. They sought advice from other Republican-led states that were expanding Medicaid without work requirements.

Arkansas had removed its work requirements after a federal judge ruled that such policies resulted in a significant number of people losing health coverage, which goes against Medicaid’s rules. The former head of North Carolina’s Medicaid agency testified to Georgia lawmakers that Medicaid expansion would boost local economies, rather than drag down state budgets, as many conservatives fear.

Last spring, a bipartisan group of Georgia lawmakers introduced bills in both the House and Senate to allow Medicaid expansion and let Pathways sink into oblivion.

“What we’re doing so far just hasn’t seemed to work. And so, at some point, we’ve got to be open to more ideas,” Georgia state Sen. Matt Brass, a Republican from Newnan and co-sponsor of the bill, said during a committee hearing at the time.

But the measure never made it to a full vote in either chamber.

Kemp quashed the rebellion after his allies in the Legislature argued that Pathways needed more time to prove itself. Georgia awarded Deloitte a $10.7 million advertising contract last summer to create television, radio and social media spots encouraging enrollment and to tout the program at community events around the state.

As a new legislative session is underway, no bill to abandon Pathways in favor of expanding Medicaid has emerged.

“We are focused on Pathways,” said state Rep. Lee Hawkins, a Republican dentist who represents the rural constituency of Gainesville. “We are going to build on what we’ve got and focus on making it better.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Margaret Coker, The Current.

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Former U.S. Rep. Billy Long of Missouri, whom President-elect Donald Trump has named his nominee to head the IRS, touts his expertise in tax matters.

He advertises his credential as a certified tax and business advisor, and he adds CTBA to his name on his X profile. That profile encourages people to message him to “save 40% on your taxes.”

But tax experts told ProPublica that they have never heard of CTBA as a credential in the tax profession. The designation is offered by a small Florida firm, Excel Empire, which was established just two years ago and only requires attendance at a three-day seminar. That is in stark contrast to the 150 credit hours and the rigorous exams required to become a certified public accountant, a standard certification for tax accountants.

In most tax cases, only lawyers, CPAs and enrolled agents — federally authorized tax practitioners — can represent taxpayers at the IRS.

“The cost of relying on tax advice from somebody that is solely focused on minimizing the tax liabilities that you have — as opposed to somebody that’s focused on both minimizing the tax liabilities and complying with the tax law — can be extraordinarily high if you are found to be in violation of the standards,” said Nathan Goldman, an associate professor of accounting at North Carolina State University.

Excel Empire’s three-day certification course has been advertised for as much as $30,000; its upcoming session is advertised at $4,997. Matthew Pearson, one of its founders, said this summer in a podcast that about 135 people have earned the CTBA designation, which the firm designed to help people without tax backgrounds to become advisors.

Nina Olson, a prominent taxpayer advocate, said that the modern tax industry has seen “a proliferation of different groups and entities that are providing tax advice” and that consumers have no way of knowing who is competent.

“It could just be that you’ve taken a very short course, and paid a large fee for that course, and that gives you the ability to put some initials after your name,” said Olson, who served as the IRS’ national taxpayer advocate from 2001 to 2019. She is now executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, a Washington-based nonprofit that promotes fairness and access to justice in tax systems.

Tax experts said that Long’s years of experience as a real estate agent and as an auctioneer — before spending a dozen years in Congress — pales next to the deep experience in tax policy or management of the people who have held the job. For instance, the current IRS commissioner, Danny Werfel, previously served as acting IRS commissioner and held leadership roles at the Office of Management and Budget. He also worked in the private sector as a managing director at Boston Consulting Group.

Long’s experience in the tax world has been more narrowly focused. In the two years since he left Congress, he worked to bring in customers for at least two firms that marketed the employee retention credit — a pandemic-era benefit designed to support businesses that kept workers despite revenue losses or disruptions caused by COVID-19.

The credit also attracted fraud, eventually landing on the IRS’ “worst of the worst” list for tax scams. Two Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday announced an investigation into the firms, noting Long had neither a “background in tax preparation nor any credential as a licensed accountant, attorney or enrolled agent.”

Worth up to $28,000 per employee, the credit was available for the 2020 and 2021 tax years and has been widely used by both for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations across the country. However, the IRS raised significant concerns about aggressive promoters pushing ineligible businesses to file questionable claims. Red flags included inflated payroll numbers, claims for all quarters without proper eligibility or citing minor government orders that did not directly impact business operations.

The IRS says it has recovered over $1 billion from businesses that voluntarily reported improper claims. And it has launched hundreds of criminal investigations to try to recoup what it says could be billions of dollars more.

In a prepared statement in November, Werfel said businesses should review their claims and see if they were misled by firms marketing the tax credit.

“They should listen to trusted tax professionals, not promoters,” he said.

In a 2023 podcast discussing his work for the two firms, Long joked that he had a hat bearing the name of the credit glued to his head. He said his work marketing the tax credit had caused some clients to question their CPAs’ advice.

“Hey, this auctioneer, real estate broker, former congressman told me I’m going to get $1.2 million back,” he said. “Uh, you’re my CPA. Why didn’t you tell me that?” And he said the response of CPAs would be: “That’s a joke. That’s a fake deal. That’s not true. You’re going to have to pay all that money back. You’ll get audited.”

But he said the firms he worked for had never seen the IRS turn down one of their claims.

There is no evidence that either Excel Empire, Long or the firms that he worked for — Lifetime Advisors of Hudson, Wisconsin, and Commerce Terrace Consulting of Springfield, Missouri — engaged in wrongdoing. In the same 2023 podcast, Long emphasized he and his colleagues had helped only taxpayers who were entitled to the benefit.

Neither Long, Lifetime Advisors nor Commerce Terrace Consulting responded to requests for comment.

If Long is confirmed and succeeds Werfel, he’ll have the power to influence how Americans pay their taxes and how the federal government collects revenue. Trump has promised to end IRS “overstepping,” while Republicans have said that they would slash billions of dollars in funding passed under the Biden administration to modernize the IRS and enhance tax enforcement.

The IRS and the Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

During his time representing Southwest Missouri in Congress, Long pursued legislation to abolish the IRS and establish a national sales tax. Billionaire Elon Musk, a Trump advisor, recently asked on X if the agency’s budget should be “deleted.”

Like Long, members of Excel Empire suggest that accountants don’t feel it is their role to save their clients money because they prioritize compliance over planning and are too busy during tax season to discuss strategies. The company’s website claims the firm has saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Edward Lyon, who is listed on Excel Empire’s website as chief tax planner and tax attorney, writes on his personal website that the seven most expensive words in the English language are “My CPA takes care of my taxes.”

Lyon elaborated on a podcast last year, noting that accountants “generally are rule followers,” but when it comes to lawyers, “we are trained to understand the rules but we’re trained to stretch the rules and bend the rules and poke at the rules and do an end run around the rules. It's a much more proactive focus.” Still, he has consistently emphasized that his company acts “legally, ethically and morally.”

The company’s co-founder, Pearson, once described Lyon on a podcast as the “preeminent proactive tax attorney in the country.” Lyon and Pearson declined to comment.

The Ohio Supreme Court suspended Lyon’s law license in 2005 for failing to meet registration and fee requirements on time, and he hasn’t regained it. He also does not appear to be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as an investment advisor.

Despite this, Lyon says he has trained tens of thousands of tax and finance professionals. As the author of several books and a column, he claims to be one of the country’s most widely read tax strategists and commands speaking fees of $15,000 and first-class travel arrangements.

Lyon has also developed several tax certification programs. On the Excel Empire website, some officers, including Pearson, use a title created by Lyon: tax master.

Appearing on another podcast, Lyon discussed how small businesses can be used as tax shelters. As an example, he asked the host, Heather Wagenhals — who also carries the CTBA title — if she had a swimming pool at her home, where she records her show.

“I do,” Wagenhals said. “That’s why I picked this one.”

Lyon responded: “All right, so I’m gonna rock your world in five words, ready? On-premises employee athletic facility.”

“Oh my God!” Wagenhals said.

Lyon added: “It’s really there in the tax code, and nobody’s told you that.”

In another podcast, Pearson brags about firing an accountant who balked at his request for advice about how to use a new Corvette “to keep from paying taxes.”

Olson said that attitude was disturbing and that simplistic answers can create problems for taxpayers in IRS audits and in the courts. “A swimming pool in someone’s home, even if employees are working in the home and using it, still would require the court to look at the percentage of employee use versus personal use — and they would look really closely at that,” she said.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Jeremy Kohler and Alex Mierjeski.

Junta leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing accused ethnic political groups and former ceasefire members of “destroying national peace” in a speech Tuesday to commemorate the now largely meaningless Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement.

The agreement, commonly known as the NCA, was implemented in 2015 by the administration of President Thein Sein and signed by ethnic political groups including the Arakan Liberation Party, Chin National Front, Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, Karen National Union/ Karen National Liberation Army Peace Council, Pa-O National Liberation Organization and Arakan Liberation Party, along with the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front.

After the junta overthrew a democratically elected government in a 2021 coup, at least five parties withdrew and entered into active conflict with the military.

The junta’s mass arrests, along with daily airstrikes and raids that killed and injured tens of thousands across the country, have brought condemnation from local and international rights groups and criticism from other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Despite ASEAN’s calls for peace talks, Min Aung Hlaing maintained in a speech on the ninth anniversary of the NCA that the junta would not concede to demands made through armed conflict.

“Conflict can only be solved by coming to the political table peacefully, not by asking for your desires through armed violence,” he said. “We won’t compromise with violent terrorists.”

Ongoing armed conflicts have been used to justify acts of terrorism, he said, adding that some ethnic armed groups had destroyed and exploited the NCA and for their own political self-interest. 

China’s interest in trade, investment and a stable shared border has spurred its leaders to broker several short-lived ceasefires this year with the ethnic armies in the Three Brotherhood Alliance that has been taking territory off the junta since it launched its Operation 1027 almost a year ago.

Despite an offer by alliance member the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army to work with China to stop the fighting and end its advance on northern Shan state towns, near-daily junta bombings of the area have left it ill inclined to join peace talks.

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Min Aung Hlaing also accused several ethnic armed and political groups, including the Pa-O National Liberation Organization, Kachin Independence Army and Karen National Union, as well as People’s Defense Force militias under the civilian shadow National Unity Government, of destroying peace and stability.

Former NCA signatories have made significant gains in townships in their respective territories, which have often been followed by junta bombings and civilian deaths. 

Khun Myint Tun, chairman of the Pa-O National Federal Council, which represents the second largest ethnic group in Shan state, told Radio Free Asia that the junta is not qualified to implement the NCA, calling Min Aung Hlaing’s claims impractical and unrealistic.

“The junta is not a legal body to implement the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement. The public’s elected, appointed government must discuss it in parliament,” he said. “Ceasefires, jailed political parties, elections – from the revolutionary groups’ point of view, it’s just ridiculous.”

In September, the junta invited rebel groups to contact it and “solve their political issues” ahead of a planned 2025 election, to which several ethnic political parties have already been denied entry leading them to dismiss it as a sham.

Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by Mike Firn. 

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

Tuesday night’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris focused heavily on immigration, with the Republican nominee attacking the current administration for not closing the border, and spreading xenophobic and racist conspiracy theories about asylum seekers. “Donald Trump resorted to the same deranged and despicable rhetoric that is meant to divide people. From his very first answer, he was demonizing immigrants,” says journalist Jean Guerrero, who has written extensively about immigration, including the book Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. Guerrero says that while Harris “was able to project strength on the border” and undermine Trump on his “signature issue,” she did not do enough to challenge the narrative about immigrants bringing crime and disorder to the country. “I wish that she had countered him on immigration in a more sustained way.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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Oklahoma’s oil and gas industry touts its altruism and environmental stewardship by pointing to a voluntary levy that companies pay on their production, which is then used to clean up orphan wells that have been left to the state.

But some of Oklahoma’s biggest oil companies have opted out of the fund, forcing the state to return millions of dollars that would have otherwise gone to restoring land scarred by discarded drilling infrastructure and contaminated by leaks and spills, according to a ProPublica and Capital & Main analysis.

The list of companies that received such refunds includes some of the Oklahoma oil industry’s household names, such as Ovintiv and Chesapeake Energy Corp. It also includes the two richest people in the state: Harold Hamm, a pioneer in fracking technology and the founder of the multibillion-dollar Continental Resources, and George Kaiser, whose success as head of his family’s oil company helped him buy the Bank of Oklahoma.

All told, dozens of oil companies received refunds worth about $11 million over the past seven years, ProPublica and Capital & Main found. Put another way, for every $100 the state brought in via this funding mechanism, it sent $8.58 back to oil companies.

The Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, created by the Legislature in 1993, collects a 0.1% assessment on oil and gas production that functions like a tax on the state’s largest industry. The roughly $163 million collected — after refunds — since the levy’s inception has funded the restoration of more than 20,000 sites.

If the board had not had to issue the millions of dollars in refunds, it could have restored an additional 1,500 orphan well sites, according to the board’s average cleanup bill. Until they are plugged, these wells can leak a litany of pollutants, from toxic gasses to salty wastewater, presenting an environmental crisis across Oklahoma.

ProPublica and Capital & Main reached out to all 76 companies that requested refunds in the past seven years as well as to the main in-state trade groups, the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance and the Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma. The Petroleum Alliance of Oklahoma, Hamm’s Continental Resources, Kaiser’s Kaiser-Francis Oil Co., Chesapeake Energy and Ovintiv did not respond to requests for comment.

Only two oil producers answered questions: one said she requested refunds to cut down on contact with regulators, while the other dismissed concerns about the refunds, stating that “it’s not that much money.”

Zack Taylor, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance, wrote in an email that the board “has done very important work cleaning up abandoned well sites all over Oklahoma.” But, he added, “We believe it should be an opt in program so the smaller producers and royalty owners could agree up front whether or not to participate.”

In addition to paying for orphan well site cleanup, the Energy Resources Board’s levy funds pro-fossil fuel marketing campaigns that range from K-12 curricula promoting the industry in classrooms to programming with Mike Rowe, the reality television star known for the show “Dirty Jobs.”

Mindy Stitt, the Energy Resources Board’s executive director, said the state’s oil companies “exemplify what it means to be a good neighbor.”

“They contribute millions of dollars to our programs, even if they must request a refund some years, making significant impacts across our state,” she said.

Not everyone sees it that way.

Don Scott has worked his farm in south-central Oklahoma for years, harvesting hay while carefully avoiding an orphan well that scars one of his fields. The green pump jack stood inoperable on a recent visit to the farm, rust eating through the metal. Salt contamination had turned the soil an unnatural white, the dirt cracking at the base of the well.

The well occupies otherwise productive land and could leak more pollutants into the environment. “And that ain’t counting the aggravation of having to work around it,” said Scott, whose father and grandfather worked in the oil fields and who now laments the state’s orphan well epidemic.

More than 18,000 wells have already been labeled as orphans by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the state’s main oil regulatory body. That number is likely to swell, as the state has more than a quarter-million unplugged wells — some active, some already idle — according to data from energy software firm Enverus.

But the money available for cleanup pales in comparison to the task. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission collects its own tax, which has generated only a several-million-dollar orphan well fund. The state quickly exhausted federal money it received from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to plug wells. And drillers have set aside only 0.6% of the projected cleanup cost via financial instruments called bonds, according to a ProPublica and Capital & Main analysis of state data.

This leaves the Energy Resources Board and its voluntary cleanup fund as an important tool in Oklahoma’s struggle to address its unplugged wells.

If the Energy Resources Board fund continues to be voluntary in a state that’s already slow to impose regulations on its most lucrative industry, critics say, then companies should at least be required to set aside enough money to plug their own wells.

“Local industry also has a part to play in funding remediation,” said Kara Joy McKee, director of the Sierra Club’s Oklahoma chapter. “It should be a general obligation of the industry that has received so much wealth from the resources of this state.”

Some of the state’s major oil producers top the list of companies that requested refunds.

Continental Resources received nearly $1.6 million in refunds over the seven years for which the Energy Resources Board maintains data, while Kaiser-Francis Oil took in about $490,000.

Ovintiv, an $11 billion oil company, was by far the largest recipient, as its subsidiaries and related entities got more than $3.8 million back.

Next on the list, a partnership between large driller Mach Resources and private equity firm Bayou City Energy Management received more than $2.1 million in refunds. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

The Oklahoma City-headquartered Chesapeake Energy, valued at $10 billion, also appeared on the list, getting a more than $400,000 refund.

And companies belonging to the McCasland family, longtime Oklahoma oil producers, filed dozens of requests totalling several hundred-thousand dollars in refunds. One of the family’s companies, Twin D Energy, repeatedly pursued the refund, even when it stood to only get back amounts as low as $2.57, $3.47 and $3.71 in a given year. Tom McCasland III, the president of the family’s companies, said they only request refunds for their own portion of oil production, not for other working interest owners.

Oklahoma has a sunset law that sets the date by which the state must dissolve or renew certain government agencies, and the Energy Resources Board is facing the chopping block. In 2023, its sunset date was pushed back to 2025 to give lawmakers time to decide what to do with the agency. But several bills proposed in this year’s and last year’s legislative session to extend or update the board’s mandate failed.

Instead, the state’s oil trade groups have entered negotiations to draft their own language destined for the Legislature. Some of their ideas threaten to further undermine funding for the board’s cleanup work.

On one hand, the trade groups are discussing provisions to allow the board to plug wells instead of only cleaning up surface contamination. But some oil companies are also aiming to make it easier to avoid paying the assessment that funds the board’s work, potentially only collecting money from drillers who opt in.

“There are people that don’t feel that it is really refundable,” said McCasland, who serves as the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance’s chairman in addition to his work with his family’s oil companies. As a result, the negotiations have included discussions about the ease of getting the money back.

Every dollar refunded is one less dollar spent cleaning up the industry’s orphan wells, so landowners like Scott, the farmer with an orphan well on his land, might have to continue waiting to see old, leaking infrastructure removed from their property.

The Energy Resources Board is a “good thing,” Scott said, and it has begun cleanup on his land. So he expressed frustration upon learning that oil companies regularly ask the board for refunds.

“Once it’s paid in,” he said, “it ought to be there permanently.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Mark Olalde, ProPublica, and Nick Bowlin, Capital & Main.

In the latest of such efforts, a commentary in the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Guangming Daily headlined “Smearing the East won’t deter its rise or prevent the downward trend of the West,” argued that although the United States’ proportion of the world’s GDP increased in 2023 as China’s shrank, it does not mean that the Chinese economic outlook is bleak or that the pattern of a “rising East and declining West” will stop.

Zhang Yongjun, deputy chief economist of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, who wrote the commentary pointed out that China's economic growth of 5.2% last year was more than double the U.S.’s 2.5%. Furthermore, the Chinese currency’s depreciation against the dollar and falling prices versus America’s inflation and stronger currency were causal factors of a contracted GDP contribution.

The Chinese economy is expanding at its slowest pace since 1990 when it grew at 3.9%.

Wang Ruiqin, an entrepreneur and former member of the Qinghai Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), a political advisory body to the Chinese Communist Party dismissed the article as “pure propaganda to drum up support for the CCP.”

“No one in China reads this [Guangming Daily],” Wang said in an interview with Radio Free Asia, adding that Zhang’s China Center for International Economic Exchanges is controlled by the National Development and Reform Commision and established by former Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan. Based on the background, “Zhang Yongjun is likely an official in the name of a scholar.” 

The “rising East and declining West” concept was raised by President Xi Jinping in 2021 as the “most prominent” in “today’s world which is undergoing major changes unseen in a century.” Xi said then that the COVID-19 pandemic further pressured the recovering but weak global economy, and amplified “criticisms of Western capitalism.” However, when Beijing made an about-turn in its zero-COVID policy, leaving the economy to fall off a cliff, observers began to question whether the “declining West” theory was far from reality.

According to Xia Ming, a political science professor at the City University of New York in the U.S., in the 1950s Mao Zedong had also viewed the world as one where “the east wind prevails over the west wind.”

But Xia said he believes there is a limit to how much such vague political concepts can be used to cover up economic activities involving foreign capital in China or the outbound investments of Chinese companies abroad. 

All about the economy

Economic issues are expected to dominate when China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, and the CPPCC (known as the two sessions) meet in Beijing next week. 

The Central Commission for Financial and Economic Affairs and the State Council executive meetings held on the eve of the two sessions discussed new economic measures in place of old ones to boost demand for equipment and consumer goods while calling for efforts to stabilize foreign investments. 

Xi, who chaired the Central Commission meeting, advocated for a new wave of large-scale upgrades among Chinese firms, and consumers trading-in old equipment such as cars and home appliances to boost domestic demand and raise the overall development threshold.

Cheng Cheng-Ping, a finance professor at Taiwan’s National Yunlin University of Science and Technology said the upgrade proposal is to address the deflation problem and comes as previous multi-pronged measures like lowering reserve requirements and interest rates failed to stimulate demand. 

“Out of the few carriages that can drive China's economic growth, the most powerful ones are either government spending or private consumption. The meeting also addresses the supply side. Demand for large machines and equipment for replacement will stimulate production, allowing state-owned enterprises to catch up in terms of productivity. He [Xi] also hopes to drive a new wave of private consumption.” 

But amid Beijing’s policy of advancement of state enterprises and the retreat of the private sector, Cheng wondered about the sustainability of private firms.

“How many private firms can keep up and how strong can they be? There’s no way [we can] be too optimistic.”

Out of options

U.S.-based economist Cheng Xiaonong sees the proposal as a last-ditch measure.  

“It seems that as long as he gives an order, all companies will replace equipment, and then the economy seems to be able to survive for a while. The problem is that if manufacturing companies really obey these orders, wouldn’t they chalk up bank loans? 

“Using administrative orders to promote the economy or forcefully pull the economy is not workable. It just means that he can’t find any useful methods, so he comes up with these very stupid ideas. Such an approach shows that the CCP is desperate and has no other options.”

Cheng Xiaonong also pointed out the difference between this upgrading wave and the measure implemented by former Premier Wen Jiabao who urged Chinese consumers in the countryside to replace their old appliances with new ones.

At the time, there was a real demand in the rural areas, compared with a lack of orders now for new consumer goods.

Separately, at the State Council meeting, Premier Li Qiang emphasized the importance of ensuring a stable flow of foreign investment into the country, and claimed that the authorities’ efforts to resolve local debt problems were working.

Translated by RFA staff. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qiao Qinen and Chen Zifei for RFA Mandarin.

• Michigan teen sentenced to life for 2021 high school mass shooting.
• Biden touts $8 billion in federal funding for passenger rail, including funds for California high speed rail.
• Labor Department reports 199,000 new jobs in November and unemployment down slightly.
• US vetoes UN Security Council resolution calling for immediate Gaza ceasefire.
• Bay Area activists demand Lockheed Martin stop selling weapons to Israel.
• Administration officials address Ukraine Gaza wars with reporters.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – December 8, 2023 Biden touts $8 billion in federal funding for passenger rail, including funds for California high speed rail. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

It has been a year since the president signed his signature climate and jobs law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes incentives for car companies to ramp up manufacturing of EVs and for consumers to purchase them.

The law has paved the way for the "Big Three" automakers—Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors (GM)—to build EV battery plants in joint ventures with companies such as Samsung, SK On, and LG Energy Solution, but the federal incentives and loans have been given to the firms without the guarantee of fair pay and working conditions for the people who will work in the plants.

"We have to make sure endorsements are earned and not freely given. Politicians have to prove they are in the fight with us, which is the only way to win back the working class in the Midwest. We don't have to endorse anyone at all."

A $9.2 billion loan given to Ford and SK On last month for the construction of battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee, for example, has left the UAW questioning Biden's self-identification as a "union man,"considering the states' union protections are not among the nation's strongest.

If Biden hands out incentives and subsidies to automakers who pay "poverty wages," like Fain has accused one joint venture plant built by GM and LG Energy Solutions of doing, the president will miss "our generation's defining moment with electric vehicles," the UAW president said.

"If the IRA continues to bring sweatshops and a continued race to the bottom it will be a tragedy,” Fain told The Guardian. "The government should invest in U.S. manufacturing but money can't go to companies with no strings attached. Labor needs a seat at the table. There should be labor standards built in, this is the future of the car industry at stake."

"You have workers at Ultium on $16.50 an hour, which is less than what you'd get working for Waffle House," he added, referring to the GM joint venture plant in Lordstown, Ohio. "It's criminal."

On Monday, the workers' rights-focused media organization More Perfect Union released a video detailing the conditions Ultium employees have worked in without the protections the UAW has called on the Biden administration to require at EV battery plants.

"It is not a great place to work if you are on the floor producing the product that they so rave about, that's so great and is the future," one worker named Tony told More Perfect Union. "There's a dirty, dirty behind-the-scenes that's going on here at Ultium to get to that future."

The video detailed worker injuries and illnesses suffered by nearly two dozen workers, air quality problems, and retaliation against employees who raise concerns about safety hazards.

"The electric vehicle revolution promised thousands of good union jobs. So far, that hasn't happened," said the outlet. "But now the UAW is calling on Biden to make this promise a reality."

The UAW is in the midst of contract negotiations with the Big Three manufacturers, and Fain has demanded significant wage increases for union auto workers that would reflect the companies' record profits and match the raises CEOs have gotten in recent years.

On Monday, Biden called on the two parties to reach an agreement that will "enable workers to make good wages and benefits to support their families, while leading us into a future where America is leading the way in reducing vehicle emissions."

"I'm asking all sides to work together to forge a fair agreement," said the president. "I support a fair transition to a clean energy future. That means ensuring that Big Three auto jobs are good jobs that can support a family; that auto companies should honor the right to organize; take every possible step to avoid painful plant closings; and ensure that when transitions are needed, the transitions are fair and look to retool, reboot, and rehire in the same factories and communities at comparable wages."

"The UAW deserves a contract that sustains the middle class," he added.

Fain toldPolitico that the union agrees "with the president that the Big Three's joint venture battery plants should have the same strong pay and safety standards that generations of UAW members have fought for," but the outlet noted that Biden did not speak about labor conditions and pay at the joint venture plants.

The UAW has so far withheld its endorsement of Biden, four months after he officially announced his campaign for reelection, and Fain made clear Tuesday that the union intends to use its strength in numbers to continue pressuring the president to push for fair wages and conditions in the burgeoning EV sector.

"I do believe the president's heart is in the right place but we have to make sure endorsements are earned and not freely given," Fain told The Guardian. "Politicians have to prove they are in the fight with us, which is the only way to win back the working class in the Midwest. We don't have to endorse anyone at all."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

• President Biden touts manufacturing and clean energy in swing through New Mexico.
• Wildfires rage on Hawaiian islands of Maui and Big Island.
• 90-year-old Senator Feinstein falls in her home, briefly hospitalized.
• White House voices concern for health of Niger President ousted in coup.
• Anti-nuclear activists commemorate Nagasaki bombing anniversary.
• SF safe drug use sites lose support among Supervisors.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – August 9, 2023 President Biden touts manufacturing and clean energy in swing through New Mexico. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

• President Biden touts manufacturing and clean energy in swing through New Mexico.
• Wildfires rage on Hawaiian islands of Maui and Big Island.
• 90-year-old Senator Feinstein falls in her home, briefly hospitalized.
• White House voices concern for health of Niger President ousted in coup.
• Anti-nuclear activists commemorate Nagasaki bombing anniversary.
• SF safe drug use sites lose support among Supervisors.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – August 9, 2023 President Biden touts manufacturing and clean energy in swing through New Mexico. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

• President Biden touts manufacturing and clean energy in swing through New Mexico.
• Wildfires rage on Hawaiian islands of Maui and Big Island.
• 90-year-old Senator Feinstein falls in her home, briefly hospitalized.
• White House voices concern for health of Niger President ousted in coup.
• Anti-nuclear activists commemorate Nagasaki bombing anniversary.
• SF safe drug use sites lose support among Supervisors.

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – August 9, 2023 President Biden touts manufacturing and clean energy in swing through New Mexico. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Countries must persuade the Burmese military to follow through on the five-point plan, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as he met with his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and other countries in Jakarta on Friday.

“In Myanmar, we must press the military regime to stop the violence, to implement ASEAN’s five-point consensus, to support a return to democratic governance,” Blinken said in a speech during a meeting with ASEAN ministers. 

The bloc, of which Myanmar is a member, has sought to mediate a resolution to the situation in that country, where the military toppled an elected government in February 2021 and threw civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in prison. Nearly 3,800 people have been killed in post-coup violence, mostly by junta security forces.  

On Thursday, ASEAN issued a joint statement of its foreign ministers, but that was delayed by a day following a meeting of the region’s top diplomats Tuesday and Wednesday. Reports said the delay arose because they could not agree on what their joint statement would say about Myanmar.

The statement reflected the dissonance. 

Thailand had last month held another meeting with Myanmar’s junta-appointed foreign minister, representatives of ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and India and China. The Burmese and Thai militaries are said to be close, and the outgoing Thai PM is a former army chief.

ASEAN 2023 chair Indonesia did not take kindly to that meeting, which it skipped along with Singapore and Malaysia.

And yet, the joint statement acknowledged that meeting, noting that “a number of ASEAN member states” viewed it “as a positive development.”

The statement went on to note, however, that efforts to solve the Myanmar crisis must support the five-point consensus and efforts by ASEAN chair Indonesia.

Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai defended the meeting, saying it was in line with an earlier ASEAN document that called for exploring other approaches for resolving the crisis.

In another shocker for the rest of ASEAN, and indeed, everyone else, the Thai foreign minister announced on Wednesday that he had met secretly over the weekend with Myanmar’s imprisoned civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The Thai foreign ministry said that she and the junta had approved the meeting with Don.

And not everyone is on board with the five-point consensus either, although they present a unified front, reports say.

The previous foreign minister of Malaysia, Saifuddin Abdullah, was an exception. He had said last July that it was time to junk the peace plan and devise a new one on a deadline that included enforcement mechanisms. 

ASEAN operates by consensus, which means any action it takes has to be approved by every member state. Divisions within the bloc have meant that not every member has approved of tougher action against Myanmar.

Therefore, other than shutting out the Burmese junta from all high-level ASEAN meetings for reneging on the consensus, little else has happened since February 2021.

Hunter Marston, a Southeast Asia researcher at the Australian National University, said the ASEAN top diplomats’ joint statement was largely in line with his expectations.

He would have liked to see “ASEAN invite the NUG as a way of imposing costs on the junta, but that won’t receive consensus,” Marston told BenarNews, referring to the National Unity Government, which is the shadow civilian administration.

He would have also liked to see “see a clearer acknowledgement of ASEAN’s frustration with the military junta.”

And the statement “still left room for Thailand’s rogue … diplomacy,” Marston said. 

Another analyst, Muhammad Waffaa Kharisma, from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said he had expected a little better from the joint statement.

“[N]ow I only hope that ASEAN does not accept back the junta without accountability,” he told BenarNews.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tria Dianti for BenarNews.

The chief executive of UnitedHealth Group told investors Friday that he "appreciates" the Biden administration's decision to more slowly implement its crackdown on overbilling in Medicare Advantage, a privately run, government-funded program that the Minnesota-based insurance behemoth touted as a key profit driver in its newly released first quarter earnings report.

UnitedHealth, one of the largest Medicare Advantage providers in the U.S., reported $91.9 billion in revenue for the first three months of 2023—15% growth year-over-year—and more than $8 billion in earnings from operations, exceeding analysts' expectations.

UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealth Group's insurance business, "is pacing strongly to its outlook for another year of market-leading growth in serving more people through its Medicare Advantage offerings," the company said in its earnings release. The company said Friday that it added 655,000 new Medicare Advantage members in the first quarter of the year.

UnitedHealth's earnings report came after the company helped lead an aggressive lobbying campaign against new Biden administration rules aimed at limiting Medicare Advantage insurers' ability to overcharge the federal government by making patients appear sicker than they actually are.

According to The New York Times, UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty appeared on Capitol Hill in person to lobby against the proposed changes, which the lucrative Medicare Advantage industry falsely characterized as cuts to the program that now provides insurance to nearly half of the overall Medicare population.

Late last month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) offered a number of concessions to the industry, agreeing to impose its policy changes over a period of three years instead of all at once and boosting Medicare Advantage payment rates by more than expected.

As STATreported last week, Wall Street investors were "overjoyed" by the Biden administration's move, which drew criticism from progressive lawmakers and healthcare analysts who warned the slow phase-in will allow Medicare Advantage plans to continue their abusive practices. UnitedHealth, like other Medicare Advantage insurers, has been accused of wrongfully denying or attempting to deny patients necessary care, in some cases utilizing artificial intelligence to determine when to end coverage.

When it comes to excess billing, CMS recently estimated that overpayments to Medicare Advantage totaled $11.4 billion in fiscal year 2022—a significant drain on the Medicare trust fund.

Citing one industry analyst, STAT noted that UnitedHealth could reap $900 million in additional profit next year alone thanks to the administration's decision to delay full implementation of the reforms.

In an analysis published in February, former insurance executive Wendell Potter noted that UnitedHealth is one of just seven large for-profit insurance companies that now control 70% of the Medicare Advantage market, which is dependent on taxpayer money.

According to Potter, who now heads the Center for Health and Democracy, insurance giants UnitedHealth, Cigna, CVS/Aetna, Elevance, Humana, Centene, and Molina saw their combined revenues from taxpayer-supported programs grow 500% between 2012 and 2022.

"They've essentially been bailed out by taxpayers," Potter said of for-profit insurance giants like UnitedHealth in a recent interview with The American Prospect. "And members of Congress, and various administrations, have been just standing on the sidelines, not paying attention to what's been going on."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Cutting methane emissions is an urgent climate project. The gas is 80 to 90 times stronger than carbon dioxide at heating up the planet in its first 20 years in the atmosphere, and it leaks out of fossil fuel infrastructure ranging from wells to pipelines all the way to power plants and homes. Methane breaks down in the atmosphere in a matter of decades, meaning that addressing these leaks today can reduce its impact quickly — which would slow down climate change and stave off some of its worst effects. 

A year ago, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed regulations to address methane leaks from existing oil and gas sites. The U.S. already had some rules in place to prevent leaks from new wells, but existing wells have been allowed to go on polluting. Now, after an extensive public comment period, the agency is proposing even stronger regulations that could take effect as soon as next year. Environmental groups applauded the government on Friday for addressing key concerns raised by experts in their feedback on the original proposal.

“The Biden administration is continuing to advance the ball on these crucial standards,” said Jon Goldstein, the senior director of regulatory and legislative affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund.

Under last year’s proposal, if emissions at a particular oil or gas well were low enough, those wells would be exempt from routine monitoring for leaks. Now the EPA wants regular monitoring of all wells — including those that are no longer being pumped but have yet to be properly shut down. These previously exempt wells, often called “marginal wells” because they don’t produce much oil or gas, are estimated to be responsible for more than 50 percent of all wellsite methane.​​ 

The oil and gas industry fought to exclude marginal wells from monitoring, claiming the rules would be too burdensome for smaller companies. But the Environmental Defense Fund found that three-quarters of these wells are in fact owned by large companies that raked in an average gross revenue of $335 million in 2019.

The EPA is also proposing to strengthen limits on “flaring,” an industry practice of burning off methane that comes out of oil wells, converting it into carbon dioxide — which is still harmful to the climate, but less so in the short term. But flares regularly fail, and the less wasteful alternative is to capture that gas and sell it, so that if it’s burned, it’s at least creating usable energy. The new rules would require well operators to capture the gas unless they can prove it’s not feasible or safe to do so.

“While we are disappointed EPA did not propose an outright ban on oil and gas industry flaring,” said Melissa Hornbein, a senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center, “we are nonetheless encouraged by the draft rule’s incisive measures to tackle leak detection and repair from all sources, including low-producing and abandoned wells.”

The third big change is a “super emitters program” that would authorize third parties that track methane leaks to notify companies when they detect big plumes and require companies to respond within a matter of days. Satellite companies like Kayrros regularly uncover high-volume methane leaks in the Permian Basin, an oil and gas field that spans West Texas and Southern New Mexico. To date that data has been used to shame companies — now it could be used for enforcement. 

The EPA says the rules would deliver an estimated $3 billion worth of climate and health benefits per year, taking into account the costs of compliance. That includes preventing 36 million tons of methane from entering the atmosphere between now and 2030, the greenhouse gas equivalent of shutting down all the coal power plants in the U.S. for a year. The estimate also accounts for eliminating nearly 10 million tons of volatile organic compounds, chemical gases emitted by oil and gas infrastructure that can harm human health and contribute to the formation of ground-level ozone. 

Once put into effect, the rules would work in conjunction with a fee on methane emissions that was created by the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate bill Biden signed in August. Beginning in 2025, major offenders will be charged a fee of up to $1,500 for each excess ton of methane they release.

In addition to strengthening regulations at home, Biden is also working to shore up international cooperation on methane. At last year’s climate conference in Glasgow, the U.S. launched the Global Methane Pledge to cut methane emissions from all sources by 30 percent by 2030. At COP27 on Friday, the U.S., along with the European Union and a number of other partner countries, agreed to develop standards for monitoring and reporting methane emissions that would help create a market for “low methane-intensity natural gas.” 

More than 130 countries signed on to the Global Methane Pledge, and dozens are expected to release more detailed plans to address methane at the conference. But the initiative has still failed to attract the three of the worst methane offenders in the world — Russia, India, and China.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden touts methane crackdown at COP27 on Nov 11, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Emily Pontecorvo.

President Joe Biden took a victory lap on Thursday after his administration helped broker a deal to stave off what would have been the first national freight railroad strike in 30 years. But the potential crisis is not over until rank-and-file rail workers vote on whether to approve the agreement — which could take weeks.

“Until railroad workers in the coming days can digest this and have their questions answered, there’s no consensus able to build on whether this deal is good, bad or ugly,” said Ron Kaminkow, a Nevada-based engineer and member of the Teamsters-affiliated Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen (BLET).

"If the tentative agreement is rejected, the railroads may again be headed for a national strike or lockout later this year."

The tentative agreement reached early Thursday covers over 60,000 workers with the BLET and the Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division (SMART-TD), two of 12 rail unions that have been in contract negotiations with the major freight rail carriers for nearly three years. While the other unions had already reached tentative deals, the BLET and SMART-TD were the last holdouts. 

BLET President Dennis Pierce, who was directly part of the high-stakes negotiations, told In These Times that in accordance with the union’s internal processes, the tentative agreement will first be reviewed by the union’s general chairmen, who will finalize the document before it is sent out to the membership for a ratification vote via mail.

“This is probably going to take three to four weeks to [get full details into the members’ hands],” Pierce said. ​“It’s not a delay tactic, it’s just the way the process works. Everyone needs to remain calm, because they will have their day to exercise their democratic rights on whether they want this to be their contract or not.”

At the center of the labor dispute is draconian attendance policies, which don’t allow workers to take sick leave — and force them to be on-call 24/7. In recent decades, major Class I rail carriers like BNSF, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern and CSX have implemented ​precision scheduled railroading (PSR) — a kind of lean production, just-in-time model designed to maximize shareholder profits by slashing expenses.

Because of PSR cost-cutting, over the past six years, the major Class I railroads like BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX and Norfolk Southern have slashed their collective workforce by 29 percent (around 45,000 workers), leaving the industry woefully understaffed and putting extra strain on workers already accustomed to long, irregular hours. 

“We used to work under much more flexible attendance policies that we could self-select when we needed time off for ourselves or our families within reason, before these carriers embraced PSR and started clamping down on these attendance policies,” said Ross Grooters, an engineer and BLET member based in Iowa.

While PSR has harmed workers, shippers and consumers, it has led to the rail carriers recording record profits, with shareholders raking in $183 billion in buybacks and dividends since 2010.

Bargaining

Since 2020, two coalitions of 12 rail unions — dubbed the ​“United Rail Unions” — have been in negotiations with the major railroad companies, represented by the National Carriers’ Conference Committee. 

Alongside sick leave and holidays, other key issues at the negotiating table have included wages, healthcare and staffing, with the rail carriers demanding that freight train crews be reduced from two workers to just one.

In an early effort to avert a strike, this July, Biden appointed a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), consisting of three labor law experts, with the purpose of examining the dispute and proposing a fair settlement.

After a month-long investigation, the PEB issued its report on August 16. While recommending a headline-grabbing 24 percent compounded wage increase by 2024, the emergency board called on the unions to withdraw their demands for paid sick leave and added holidays, while also refusing to make recommendations on train crew size.

The next day, the rail carriers declared they were ​“prepared to meet with the rail unions and reach agreements based on the PEB report without delay.” But some rank-and-file railroad workers took to social media to express their disgust at the emergency board’s recommendations, angry that they did not resolve central issues around leave and attendance.

In a survey of over 3,000 rail workers from multiple unions conducted in late August by Railroad Workers United—an inter-union, cross-craft solidarity caucus of rank-and-file railroaders — a whopping 93 percent of respondents said they would vote to reject the PEB recommendations if they were offered as a tentative contract agreement.

One phrase from the PEB’s report particularly stood out to many workers, offering a clear picture of what their employers think of them: ​“The [rail] Carriers maintain that capital investment and risk are the reasons for their profits, not any contributions by labor.” 

“It really shows how out of touch rail carriers are to say that out loud,” Grooters said. ​“We as workers are fighting for human dignity at this point, just to be recognized as part of the reason that these carriers are extremely profitable.”

In the weeks after the PEB report, most of the unions reached tentative agreements with the railroads based on the emergency board’s recommendations. So far, at least two unions have ratified their agreements (the Transportation Communications Union and the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen), but members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 19 voted to reject their tentative deal, delaying a possible strike by that particular union to September 29. Others are still in the process of voting.

Strike averted

Entering this week, with a potential strike on the horizon on September 16, only SMART-TD and the BLET — the two largest rail unions — still did not have tentative agreements. In an apparent attempt to ratchet up the pressure, the rail carriers announced embargoes of fertilizer, ammonia and other chemical products crucial to agriculture, while Amtrak began canceling long-distance passenger service.

“The railroads are using shippers, consumers, and the supply chain of our nation as pawns in an effort to get our Unions to cave into their contract demands knowing that our members would never accept them,” SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson and BLET President Pierce said on September 11. ​“Our Unions will not cave into these scare tactics, and Congress must not cave into what can only be described as corporate terrorism.”

On Wednesday, citing the economic disruption a rail strike would cause, Senate Republicans attempted to end the negotiations by forcing the PEB’s recommendations onto the unions, a move that was blocked by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“The CEOs in the freight rail industry need to understand that they cannot have it all,” Sanders said on the Senate floor. ​“The rail industry must agree to a contract that is fair and is just. And if they are not prepared to do that, it is time for Congress to stand on the side of workers for a change.”

“If [a railroad strike] is going to devastate the economy,” said Kaminkow, ​“then why doesn’t the government clip the wings of these Fortune 500 corporations that are pushing us to these kinds of limits? That question is never asked.”

Early Thursday morning, after a marathon bargaining session in Washington, D.C. convened by Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh that included Biden’s personal involvement, the unions and rail carriers reached a tentative deal that goes above the PEB’s recommendations by reportedly allowing workers to take voluntary assigned days off and one additional paid personal day.

In a joint statement, Ferguson and Pierce explained that ​“for the first time ever, the agreement provides our members with the ability to take time away from work to attend to routine and preventive medical care, as well as exemptions from attendance policies for hospitalizations and surgical procedures.” The deal also protects two-person crews ​“for the indefinite future,” according to the union presidents.

“These rail workers will get better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their healthcare costs: all hard-earned,” Biden said in a statement. ​“I thank the unions and rail companies for negotiating in good faith and reaching a tentative agreement that will keep our critical rail system working and avoid disruption of our economy.”

“Not over”

The tentative agreement must now go out to the union membership for review and approval, which could take several weeks.

“Now it’s up to the rank-and-file union members to evaluate this deal and determine whether it works for them,” Sanders said on Thursday. ​“I will respect and support whatever decision they make.”

Without the precise contract language in front of them, railroad workers have many questions about the details of the tentative agreement, including how exactly assigned days off will work. Some have already suggested on social media that they will vote to reject the deal.

Kaminkow said that he and his fellow workers are skeptical because they’ve ​“been lied to so much by politicians, union leaders and other powers-that-be.”

But BLET president Pierce stressed that union leadership has been hard at work communicating with members about negotiations throughout the bargaining process and will continue doing so.

“If they want to vote no, they can vote no. If they want to vote yes, they can vote yes,” Pierce said. ​“We’re not trying to impose anything. We’re trying to give them a chance to decide their future. But they can’t do that based on an emotional decision.”

If the tentative agreement is rejected, the railroads may again be headed for a national strike or lockout later this year, unless Congress imposes an agreement.

“We’re following the law, we’re going to be communicating with the members. They did not give up their right to strike,” said Pierce. ​“If the majority votes no, we will be right back in about eight weeks time to where we sat yesterday.”

“Even if we accept this agreement, it’s not over,” Grooters said. ​“We’re still going to be fighting for basic human dignity and to preserve our freight rail system and make sure it functions safely.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jeff Schuhrke.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi paid a courtesy call to Marcos after meeting with Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo. Wang said the nations’ two-way relationship “overcame all sorts of difficulties” under previous Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte, who handed the reins of government to Marcos on June 30. 

However, as Duterte pursued closer ties with Beijing during his six years in power, bilateral tensions over the South China Sea persisted as senior officials from his administration complained about the unauthorized presence of Chinese ships within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ).   

Given the “uncertain, unstable and complex regional and international dynamics, it is even more important for China and the Philippines, as two close neighbors, to join hands to further enhance mutual trust (and) expand mutually beneficial cooperation,” Wang said through an interpreter about his meeting with Manalo. 

“This will not only serve the common interest of the two countries and two peoples but will also be our important contribution to peace and stability in our region,” he said, noting that cooperation during the previous administration brought “tangible benefits” to both countries. 

Wang’s visit to Manila was his third stop on a five-nation tour of Southeast Asia. The Philippines, an archipelago in the middle of the disputed South China Sea, is one of the region’s oldest defense allies of China’s main superpower rival, the United States, whom Marcos’ father, the longtime Filipino dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, staunchly supported during his rule from 1965 to 1986.

Shortly after Duterte took office in mid-2016, an international arbitration court ruled in favor of Manila over Beijing after its ships refused to leave Scarborough Shoal, which lies within the Philippine EEZ. 

Instead of confronting China, Duterte set aside the ruling in favor of investments and cooperation. The soft approach allowed Beijing to carry on with its expansionist moves in the maritime region, according to observers.

With the election of Marcos, Beijing’s relationship with Manila has “turned a new page,” Wang said.

“We highly appreciate President Marcos’ recent commitment to pursuing friendly policy toward China,” said Wang, whose government is seeking to blunt U.S. influence in Southeast Asia. “And we speak highly of his recent statements that have sent out very positive signals to the outside world.” 

He quoted Marcos as saying that China “is the strongest partner of the Philippines” and that he hopes to fortify the relationship.

China, in turn, is “ready to work toward the same direction,” Wang said. “And I am confident, with our two sides working together, we can surely open up a new golden era for the bilateral relationship.”

After the meeting, Marcos posted a message on Twitter saying he was “grateful to Minister Wang Yi for extending the message of congratulations and support from President Xi Jinping. We also discussed agriculture, infrastructure, energy, and our commitment to maintaining the strong relationship between our peoples in the coming years.”

The new president had previously said he would pursue close ties with China without necessarily giving away the country’s sovereignty. 

On Tuesday, before Wang landed in Manila, Marcos said the visit was expected to boost ties with Beijing, including through military exchanges.

“It’s essentially always trying to find ways to improve relationships. We would like for us to increase the scope. China and the Philippines should not only focus on the West Philippine Sea. Let’s do other things too and that way we will normalize our relationship,” Marcos said, referring to Philippine-claimed territories in the South China Sea.

Beijing claims nearly all of the South China Sea including waters within the EEZs of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the maritime disputes, Beijing also claims historic rights to parts of the sea that overlap Indonesia’s EEZ.

Last month, the Philippines announced that it had filed a new diplomatic protest against Beijing over a massive Chinese fleet operating “illegally” in April around Whitsun Reef.

The complaint cited a 2016 landmark international court ruling that invalidated China’s sweeping claims to the waterway. Beijing has refused to recognize the decision by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Camille Elemia and Jojo Riñoza for BenarNews.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived Thursday in the Solomon Islands, kicking off a 10-day Pacific tour that will include Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste. 

Wang is hoping to strike a deal with 10 small nations. A draft copy of a so-called Common Development Vision seen by Reuters and the Associated Press covers multiple sectors from security to data communication to fisheries. China plans to reach some agreement on it at a meeting between Wang and his Pacific counterparts in Fiji on May 30.

Richard McGregor, senior fellow at the Lowy Institute, an Australia-based think tank, wrote in The Guardian that Wang’s itinerary “is an emphatic statement by Beijing that it intends to entrench itself in the region, where it has been building influence for more than a decade.”

Underscoring the growing strategic competition for influence in the Pacific – where the U.S. sent its own high-level diplomatic mission a month ago – Canberra’s new top diplomat Penny Wong arrived in Fiji on Thursday. She landed hours ahead of Wang’s arrival in the Solomons, promising to “put more energy and resources” into the Pacific.

International attention on the Pacific islands has built since April, when China and the Solomon Islands confirmed that they’d signed a security pact without divulging its contents.

The deal sparked concerns about China’s growing presence and influence, especially as a leaked document suggested that it would allow Beijing to set up military bases and deploy troops in the Pacific island nation.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Wang sought to calm critics by saying that “the security cooperation between China and the Solomon Islands does not target any third party and China has no intention of building a military base there.”

The deal is aimed at helping the island nation to improve its law enforcement capabilities to maintain public order while protecting the safety of Chinese citizens and organizations there, Wang was quoted as saying by state-run Xinhua news agency.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that the two sides “agreed to jointly build major landmark projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, make good use of the zero-tariff preferential policy for products exported to China” as well as to expand bilateral cooperation to cover a wide range of fields including response to climate change and multilateral affairs.

China will also help the Solomon Islands to prepare facilities for the upcoming Pacific Games 2023. 

Wang said that China respects Solomon Islands' ties with other countries, opposes all forms of power politics and bullying, and in Beijing the Solomon Islands have “one more good friend and one more sincere and reliable partner.”

Similar words were employed by the new Australian foreign minister after she arrived in Suva, Fiji, which lies about 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) to the southeast of the Solomons’ capital, Honiara. 

Wong, a senator, said Australia has “a strong desire to play our part in the Pacific family and build stronger relationships," according to the Australian broadcaster ABC. 

Australia respects the Pacific nations’ choice of friends and partners, she said, adding that her country wants to “be a partner of choice and demonstrate to your nation and other nations in the region that we are a partner who can be trusted and [is] reliable, and historically we have been."

Wong said the new Labor government in Australia, formed on Monday after the general election, will renew the focus on climate change and continued economic support for the region.

In a speech to the Pacific Islands Forum secretariat in Fiji, the foreign minister said Australia “will be a partner that doesn’t come with strings attached nor imposing unsustainable financial burdens,” apparently drawing a contrast with China’s policies.

Wong said she acknowledged that the previous Australian government “neglected its responsibility to act on climate, ignoring the calls of our Pacific family” and showed disrespect to Pacific nations.

As Wong urged Pacific leaders to consider long-term and “think about where you might be in a decade” after reaching deals with China, a former Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, said Australia and allies should offer better proposals rather than deliver “a moral lecture.”

Speaking Friday at the Future of Asia conference in Tokyo via video link, Rudd said China is showing "a much more assertive leadership style and intends therefore to change the status quo by adopting a more assertive foreign security policy in the region and the world."

“The way forward for Western allies like Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. is … to offer different, better, development-friendly proposals,” said Rudd, who is now president of the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York.

New Zealand meanwhile said it would extend the New Zealand Defense Force's deployment to the Solomon Islands until at least May next year. 

Wellington deployed troops there at the request of the local government in December 2021 after riots broke out in Honiara after anti-government protests.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.

Media justice groups on Monday warned that the Biden administration's new program offering discounted internet service to people with low incomes isn't "nearly enough" to help households facing barriers to broadband access and denounced the White House for celebrating the program with the same companies currently blocking the confirmation of consumer advocate Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission.

"These companies don't need a White House ceremony, they need the oversight and regulation that only a complete FCC can provide."

The White House announced Monday that it has brokered a deal with 20 internet providers which will offer discounted service to people whose incomes are at or below 200% of the federal poverty line or who participate in government-run housing, food assistance, or other aid programs.

An estimated 48 million people across the U.S. will qualify for reduced rates under the program, according to the Biden administration, which arranged the lower costs with companies including Altice USA, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and Spectrum.

The commitment from internet companies is expected to build on the $14.2 billion Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which was passed as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021. That program provides $30 monthly stipends for low income households and $75 stipends for people in tribal areas. Before the White House's announcement on Monday, 11.5 million families were participating in the ACP.

According to the White House, about 40% of U.S. households will now qualify for the ACP under the agreement with the internet companies, which will apply to high-speed plans of at least 100 megabits per second.

The companies involved in the deal, said the grassroots group MediaJustice, which fights for racial, economic, and gender justice within digital spaces, are some of the same internet providers that have lobbied the Democratic Party to stall Sohn's confirmation.

"Instead of applauding corporations that continue to fail families needing to stay connected to healthcare, jobs, school, and one another through the pandemic, President Biden should be applying pressure to Senate leadership to confirm his Federal Communications Commission nominee Gigi Sohn," said Steven Renderos, president of the organization.

"While Sohn's confirmation has stalled for over six months, preventing the full functioning of the FCC, these internet service providers watched their profits rise as 21 million Americans go without home broadband," he added. "These companies don't need a White House ceremony, they need the oversight and regulation that only a complete FCC can provide."

As Common Dreams reported last month, the telecommunications industry has donated to political action committees intent on waging a "smear campaign" against Sohn aimed at portraying her as insufficiently committed to expanding rural broadband access and as having a "deeply problematic track record on media diversity issues."

"It's going to be hard to watch them stand shoulder to shoulder with leaders of the same companies orchestrating a shameful smear campaign against their FCC nominee," tweeted advocacy group Free Press ahead of the White House ceremony announcing the program.

Contrary to claims by groups like One Country Project—which was started with "leftover campaign cash" by former Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, who had close ties while in office to Comcast and AT&T—advocates of Sohn's confirmation say that the founder of telecom policy group Public Knowledge has called for greater attention to broadband affordability across the U.S., in rural areas as well as urban ones.

"As we recover from the pandemic, predict an urgent health crisis precipitated by a Supreme Court decision depriving Americans of their reproductive rights, and head toward midterm elections, Black and brown families will continue to be disproportionately harmed by being left offline because they cannot afford an internet connection," said Renderos. "The commitments to increasing speed and quality of internet connections are just pledges and do nothing to improve infrastructure, especially in rural areas and on tribal lands that are still not connected."

Some of the people representing internet providers at the White House on Monday, said Matt Wood, vice president of policy for Free Press, are actively "sabotaging President Biden's FCC even as they pose for today's photo op."

Sohn, a fierce defender of net neutrality, was nominated to the FCC earlier this year. Her confirmation would end the 2-2 deadlock of the panel, which has left the commissioners unable to reinstate net neutrality protections, ensure that the funds appropriated for the ACP are distributed equitably, create rules to protect communications networks from the climate crisis and other threats, and halt monopolization within the sector.

Biden's efforts to ensure Sohn is confirmed "have not been nearly enough," said Renderos, urging the president to work with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "to get the votes necessary to confirm Sohn now and get the FCC fully running."

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, came under fire in February for delaying a vote on Sohn's confirmation and for calling a second hearing on her nomination.

"We've now been waiting 474 days for President Biden and the Senate to give the nation a fully functional FCC," said Wood on Monday. "They have utterly failed to fully staff this vital agency, doing little as Senate Republicans and industry lobbyists blatantly block Sohn and repeatedly delay a vote on her nomination."

"The failure of the Democratic administration and Senate majority to see beyond this cynical effort and expediently confirm Sohn," he said, "is undermining the FCC's ability to close the digital divide, protect the open internet, and fulfill many other commitments Biden himself has made."

Continued inaction in Congress regarding Sohn's confirmation, said former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, risks rendering Biden's actions directed at the telecom sector meaningless.

“Big money opposition is conducting a sleazy campaign to stall Ms. Sohn's confirmation, and it's time to put an end to it," said Copps. "The big ISP gatekeepers understand that a functional FCC would hold them accountable and prevent them from engaging in anticompetitive and discriminatory practices that undermine our ability to get online. We can’t allow these corporate interests to subvert the public interest."

"It's simple," he added. "Ms. Sohn deserves a vote."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

A Florida republican campaigning for a U.S. House of Representatives seat released an ad on May 5, 2022, boasting about the use of his company’s crowd-control munitions against members of the press.

Cory Mills, who served in the Trump administration's Department of Defense and is now running for Florida’s 7th Congressional District, posted the campaign ad to YouTube and Twitter. The Floridian reported that Mills also made a“six-figure” ad buy in the Orlando media market to air the video on television.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

Xinjiang’s Public Security Bureau achieved a 100% resolution rate in current murder cases for six consecutive years, ranking first in the country, while the region’s High People’s Court handled 17,600 cases related to people’s livelihoods in 2021, the highest number in all of China, said the March 25 report by the China News Service in Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi), Xinjiang’s capital.

“For six consecutive years, the police detection of number of homicides in Xinjiang has increased to 100%, with the number of homicides in Xinjiang falling to its lowest level in history, with the highest number of homicides detected in the history,” the report said.

The Xinjiang Public Security Bureau (PSB) has in recent years launched a mechanism of average people “collectively assisting the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region [XUAR] public security bureau’s criminal investigation team in investigating major cases,” it said.

The report also stated that the PSB had implemented a “one file per case” standard, and through gathering complete past records of crimes, were able to find murderers from cases dating back 20 years.

Xinjiang police have been using a “one tactic per person, one plan per person, one measure per person” system for detecting criminals by using advanced technology and information, and identifying and analyzing suspicious activities, the report said.

Ilshat Hassan Kokbore, a political analyst based in U.S., said that such Chinese reports are unreliable because the Chinese police’s handling of cases is “completely obscure.”

“We cannot just trust the numbers provided by the Chinese government in their reports,” he told RFA. “This is always the case because Chinese police statistics or figures are unreliable.”

“Second, they don’t disclose their records,” said Kokbore, who is also vice chairman of the Executive Committee of the World Uyghur Congress. “They always keep it all the evidence undisclosed. No one can question the credibility of their findings or evidence. To sum up they detect their cases in the dark, not in the open.”

Chinese human rights activist and lawyer Teng Biao said that while the Chinese police in Xinjiang did not disclose the number of cases they have detected, the fact that they ranked first in the country is concerning.

“[Xinjiang police] saying that in six years they have raised the case clearance rate to 100% and reduced the crime rate to its historic low has a scary reality behind it,” he told RFA.

Setting up internment camps and installing high-tech surveillance cameras everywhere has helped in authorities’ efforts to expose “crimes” and to reduce the crime rate, Teng said.

“In the Chinese judiciary, on the other hand, the power of the police is greater than the power of the judge and the prosecutor,” he said. “If the police suspect someone, the judge and prosecutor will also convict him.”

Teng noted that the Xinjiang police were able to report a 100% case clearance rate and rank first in China because police routinely use torture to obtain confessions, which then are included in court verdicts.

“In China, the law enforcement agencies have a lot of power, the judiciary is not independent, and there are a lot of wrongdoing and murder cases that have been suppressed because of the lack of freedom of the press,” Teng said.

‘Justice in today’s world’

Speaking about the Xinjiang High People’s Court’s achievement, Teng told RFA that judicial standards should be fair, and pursuing speedy outcomes should not be priority.

“Chasing speed is a sign that China has turned its own judicial system into something else. It is incompatible with the idea of justice in today’s world,” he said.

Officials have conducted a major shakeup of judges and prosecutors who work in the Xinjiang judiciary, according to a March 28 report by the Bingtuan News Network, run by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC).

A state-owned economic and paramilitary organization, the XPCC, also known as the Bingtuan, has been sanctioned by the U.S. for its involvement in human rights violations against Uyghurs.

On Monday, the Standing Committee of the XUAR’s People’s Congress issued a list of more than 120 officials who have been dismissed or appointed to serve in the region’s courts.

Experts say that it is rare for so many judges and prosecutors to be replaced in Xinjiang at the same time, but that the Chinese government is likely refreshing the judiciary and prosecutors as it prepares for an upcoming visit by a U.N. delegation led by Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, to Xinjiang.

Bachelet announced earlier in March that she had reached an agreement with the Chinese government for a visit “foreseen to take place in May” to China, including the turbulent Xinjiang region.

Her office is under pressure from rights activists to issue an overdue report on serious rights violations by Chinese authorities targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic communities in the XUAR.

Up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others have been held in a vast network of internment camps operated by the Chinese government under the pretext of preventing religious extremism and terrorism among the mostly Muslim groups.

“In preparation for the U.N. rights chief visit in the region, the Chinese government may have removed the politically unreliable judges and prosecutors and replaced them with judges and prosecutors loyal to the Chinese Communist Party,” Teng said.

Reported and Translated by RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

We discuss President Biden’s first State of the Union address with Jacobin magazine’s Branko Marcetic, who says Biden should have focused more of his speech on laying out goals to reach renewable energy independence since the continued reliance by the U.S. on the oil and gas reserves of countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia gives those countries “relative freedom” to commit war crimes on the world stage. He says the task ahead is to “both avoid military escalation” and “try and get a ceasefire agreed to as soon as possible.” Marcetic’s latest piece is headlined “Four Ways to Counter Russian Aggression That Don’t Risk Nuclear War.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

At the Ministerial Forum for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, which took place in Paris on Tuesday, the EU announced the extension of the concept of a coordinated maritime presence in the north-west Indian Ocean, to support regional stability and security. That would ensure a permanent and visible European naval presence and outreach.

“This will allow the EU to further support stability and security in the Indo-Pacific region, to optimize naval deployments, to promote coherence of European action and to facilitate the exchange of information and cooperation with partners in the Indo-Pacific, including by conducting joint maritime exercises and port calls,” according to a statement issued at the end of the meeting.

Top diplomats from 30 Indo-Pacific counties and 27 foreign ministers from EU member-states took part in the meeting hosted by France, this year’s president of the Council of the European Union. The United States and China were not at the forum in the French capital.

The forum “highlighted the shared ambition among participants to: reaffirm their commitment to a rules-based international order, democratic values and principles, as well as to the strengthening of multilateralism and the rule of law, respect for international law, and freedom of navigation, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” the statement said.

Participants also agreed to work towards peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, which has become a pre-eminent geopolitical theater as Washington responds to an increasingly assertive Beijing in the disputed South China Sea. China has never accepted a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that Beijing’s expansive “historical claims” in the waterway have no legal basis.

The Indo-Pacific meanwhile has become strategically important for the EU, which is the top investor in the region, according to the European Commission (EC).

Together, the Indo-Pacific and Europe command more than 70 percent of the global trade in goods and services, as well as more than 60 percent of foreign-direct investment flows, the EC said on its website.

However, the commission warned, the growing geopolitical rivalry could threaten this increasingly robust trade and investment relationship.

“[C]urrent dynamics in the Indo-Pacific have given rise to intense geopolitical competition adding to increasing tensions on trade and supply chains as well as in technological, political and security areas” the commission said.

“This is the reason why the EU has decided to step up its strategic engagement with the Indo-Pacific region.”

The statement issued after Tuesday’s meeting highlighted this point.

“The EU participants reiterated the importance of the Indo-Pacific region for Europe and underlined their support for an increased and long-term engagement of the EU and its member-states through concrete actions,” the statement said.

“The role of the outermost regions and European overseas countries and territories in the Indo-Pacific was highlighted in this respect,” the statement said, referring to France which has territories in the region.

The Indo-Pacific is home to nearly 2 million French citizens and 9 million square kilometers (3.47 million square miles) of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

Six Asian governments have territorial claims or maritime boundaries in the South China Sea that overlap with the sweeping claims of China.

They are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. While Indonesia does not regard itself as party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia's exclusive economic zone.

Retno Marsudi, Indonesia’s minister of foreign affairs who attended the meeting, said she reiterated that international law “must be respected.”

“Peace, stability and respect for international law must be at the center of regional cooperation and all discussions,” she told a virtual news conference from Paris on Wednesday.

“Indonesia emphasized the importance of cooperation and collaboration amidst deepening rivalry that could lead to open conflict,” she said, adding, “Indonesia sees the Indo-Pacific as a vast sea of opportunity too large to be dominated by any one country. Therefore, mutual security, mutual stability, and common prosperity must be a public good.”

BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shailaja Neelakantan and Ronna Nirmala for BenarNews.

• New York daily death toll peaks to 713, but could plateau soon.
• British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in ICU with coronavirus.
• President pushes India to release malaria drug he has stock in, to fight virus.
• President dismisses Pentagon Inspector General and other oversight watchdogs.
• Navy secretary resigns after profanity against fired navy captain.
• SCOTUS rules Wisconsin election must continue, despite COVID-19.
• California Governor: 16,000 coronavirus cases, new mental health hotlines.
• Coronavirus insurance claims rejected, SF Supes urge state action.
• San Francisco passes emergency ordinance to locate homeless in hotels.
• Bay Area religious leaders turn to internet to honor holidays.
• Los Angeles asks residents to stay home this week, maybe next.

The post President Trump threatens India to release malaria drug he has stock in, touts it will cure COVID-19 – April 7, 2020 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.