Republican Case Against Biden Beautifully Goes Up in Flames on Fox News
Tori Otten – September 25, 2023
Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Monday completely—and hilariously—destroyed one of Republicans’ main arguments to prove that Joe Biden is corrupt.
Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden, after months of insisting that the president is guilty of criminal wrongdoing. The GOP has yet to produce any actual evidence of their claims. But one of their main talking points is that Poroshenko fired former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin after Biden pressured him to do so.
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade played Poroshenko a clip of Shokin saying Biden wanted him fired because he had been investigating the oil company Burisma Holdings while Hunter Biden served on the board.
“First of all, this is [a] completely crazy person,” Poroshenko replied without hesitation, referring to Shokin. “This is something wrong with him. Second, there is not one single word of truth.”
“Please do not use such a person like Shokin to undermine the trust we feel” from both U.S. parties, he continued.
Poroshenko added that Shokin was fired because “he played very dirty games.”
Shokin was fired in 2016 for corruption. Three years later, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani started a conspiracy theory that the Biden family accepted a $10 million bribe to remove Shokin to stop a probe into Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma. This claim has been repeatedly debunked by the owner of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, as well as Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas. And now, the former Ukrainian president himself.
AAA says it now costs more than $12,000 a year to drive a vehicle
Jonathon Ramsey – September 25, 2023
It’s time for the American Automobile Association’s (AAA) 2023 “Your Driving Costs” study. The spreadsheet breaks down the average yearly costs of owning a new vehicle and driving it for either 10,000, 15,000, or 20,000 miles. The five top-selling vehicles of 2023 across nine categories are included, from small sedan to half-ton pickup, hybrid, and EV. Sample costs factored in are fuel, maintenance, full-coverage insurance, registration and taxes, finance charges, and depreciation at each mileage level. In 2019, Your Driving Costs came up with an annual outlay of $9,282 for the first five years of ownership, driving 15,000 miles per year. That was a 5% bump over 2018. In 2021, the annual cost had risen to $9,666 for the same use case. This year’s study is out, and no one will be surprised to find costs are up: AAA says it costs an average of $12,182 every year — $1,015.17 every month — to drive for five years at 15,000 miles per year.
That’s almost $1,500 more last year’s study result of $10,728 annually.
The average annual cost to own and maintain a small sedan is $8,939. A compact front-wheel drive SUV needs $10,066, a midsize AWD SUV is $11,971, an electric vehicle is $10,112. It’s the enormous popularity of half-ton crew cab pickups that drives the final figure, their annual costs $15,858. We’d be interested in results that excluded pickups just to see the difference.
No denying it costs more to own any kind of car, though. It starts with MSRPs still being elevated. The knock-on effect is elevated car payments, especially with more new buyers choosing shorter terms to get manufacturer incentives that don’t come with the 84-month terms. And higher interest rates eat up savings no matter the term. Earlier this month, Experian Automotive research said the average monthly car payment is $729 for a new car and $528 for a used car. J.D. Power followed that up with news about the rising costs of auto insurance, rates getting so high that more households have stopped buying coverage. The same story explained that higher insurance premiums are partly due to skyrocketing vehicle repair costs.
Of note, the AAA study doesn’t include luxury cars, so the average MSRP of the new cars among the field is $35,000. Even though that’s up 4.7% from last year, there’s quite the gap between that number and the most recent data on average transaction prices; KBB information for July put the average price paid for a new non-luxury vehicle at $44,700, an amount that’s held pretty steady throughout the year. The KBB number jives with Experian Automotive’s finding that the average loan amount for a new vehicle in Q1 of this year was $40,851.
Going lightly used was once a slam dunk for big savings, but those days are gone for now. A new study from iSeeCars showed that buyers spending $23,000 could get a three-year-old car in 2019, but now, that amount struggles to buy a six-year-old vehicle.
‘Full fascist’ Trump condemned after ‘treason’ rant against NBC and MSNBC
Martin Pengelly in Washington – September 25, 2023
Photograph: John Locher/AP
Donald Trump said Comcast, the owner of NBC and MSNBC, “should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’” and promised to do so should he be re-elected president next year.
In response, one progressive group said the former US president and current overwhelming frontrunner in the Republican 2024 presidential nomination race had “gone full fascist”.
The Biden White House said Trump threatened “an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law”.
The US media was “almost all dishonest and corrupt”, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, “but Comcast, with its one-side and vicious coverage by NBC News, and in particular MSNBC … should be investigated for its ‘Country Threatening Treason’.”
Listing familiar complaints about coverage of his presidency – during which he regularly threatened NBC, MSNBC and Comcast – Trump added: “I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I win the presidency of the United States, they and others of the lamestream media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.”
Trump also used familiar terms of abuse for the press: “the enemy of the people” and “the fake news media”.
Observers reacted to Trump’s threat to NBC, MSNBC and Comcast with a mixture of familiarity and alarm.
In a statement, Andrew Bates, White House deputy press secretary, said: “President Biden swore an oath to uphold our constitution and protect American democracy. Freedom of the press is a fundamental constitutional right.
“To abuse presidential power and violate the constitutional rights of reporters would be an outrageous attack on our democracy and the rule of law. Presidents must always defend Americans’ freedoms – never trample on them for selfish, small and dangerous political purposes.”
Elsewhere, Paul Farhi, media reporter for the Washington Post, pointed to Trump’s symbiotic relationship with outlets he professes to hate, given that only last week Trump was “the featured interview guest last week on Meet the Press, the signature Sunday morning news program on … NBC”.
Others noted that on Monday night, the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness for the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on Congress, which Trump incited, was due to be interviewed on MSNBC.
“Female political or media antagonists really cause blood to come pouring out of Trump’s eyes,” wrote Howard Fineman, a columnist and commentator.
Sounding a louder alarm, Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, said Trump had gone “full fascist” with an “unhinged Sunday-night rant”.
“There you have it, folks,” it said. “While Trump and his Republican enablers love to falsely accuse Democrats of ‘weaponizing’ the government against Trump, Trump himself is now openly threaten[ing] to weaponize the presidency to completely remove entire news channels from the airwaves simply because they expose his rampant criminality.”
Juliette Kayyem, a Kennedy School professor and CNN national security analyst, pointed to a previous warning: “To view each of Trump’s calls to violence in isolation – ‘he attacked Milley’ or ‘he attacked NBC’ or ‘he attacked the jury, the prosecutor, the judge’ – is to miss his overall plan to ‘introduce violence as a natural extension of our democratic disagreement’.”
Trump’s rantings were also coupled with threats to Gen Mark Milley, the chair of the joint chiefs of staff whose attempts to cope with Trump were detailed in an Atlantic profile last week.
They come after a Washington Post poll gave Trump a 10-point lead over Joe Biden, who beat him in 2020, in a notional 2024 general election matchup.
The Post said the poll was an “outlier” but Trump dominates the Republican nomination race and generally polls close to Biden despite facing 91 criminal charges – for election subversion, retention of classified information and hush-money payments – and civil threats including a defamation trial arising from an allegation of rape a judge said was “substantially true”.
Another new poll, from NBC, showed Trump and Biden tied at 46% but Trump up 39%-36% if a third-party candidate was added. A “person familiar with White House discussions” about the prospect of a candidacy from No Labels, a centrist group, said it was “concerning”, NBC said. Biden, the report added, was “worried”.
California workers who cut countertops are dying of an incurable disease
Emily Alpert Reyes, Cindy Carcamo – September 24, 2023
Leobardo Segura Meza, 27, of Pacoima suffers from silicosis, an incurable lung disease that has been afflicting workers who cut and polish engineered stone high in crystalline silica. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Inside the row of workshops in an industrial stretch of Pacoima, men labored over hefty slabs of speckled stone, saws whining over the sounds of Spanish-language rock.
Pale dust rose around them as they worked. Many went without masks. Some had water spurting from their machines, but others had nothing to tamp down the powder rising in the air.
“Nobody uses water,” one man in a Dodgers cap said in Spanish when Maria Cabrera approached, holding flyers about silicosis, an incurable and suffocating disease that has devastated dozens of workers across the state and killed men who have barely reached middle age.
Cabrera, a community outreach worker with the nonprofit Pacoima Beautiful, urged him and others at the Branford Street site to try to protect themselves. Silicosis can ravage the lungs of workers after they inhale tiny particles of crystalline silica while they cut and grind stone that contains the mineral.
The disease dates back centuries, but researchers say the booming popularity of countertops made of engineered stone, which has much higher concentrations of silica than many kinds of natural stone, has driven a new epidemic of an accelerated form of the suffocating illness. As the dangerous dust builds up and scars the lungs, the disease can leave workers short of breath, weakened and ultimately suffering from lung failure.
“You can get a transplant,” Cabrera told the man in Spanish, “but it won’t last.”
In California, it has begun to debilitate young workers, largely Latino immigrants who cut and polish slabs of engineered stone. Instead of cropping up in people in their 60s or 70s after decades of exposure, it is now afflicting men in their 20s, 30s or 40s, said Dr. Jane Fazio, a pulmonary critical care physician who became alarmed by cases she saw at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. Some California patients have died in their 30s.
“They’re young guys who essentially have a terminal diagnosis,” Fazio said.
In Pacoima, a 27-year-old father said he now has to hustle home from the park with his 8-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son because his oxygen tank starts to run out as they play. Leobardo Segura Meza said he could no longer run around on the soccer field or exercise the way he used to.
Nor is he able to work. For a decade, he made a living by cutting, polishing and installing countertops in and around Los Angeles County. Dust was everywhere, he said, and he was given only a dust mask — one he said was inadequate for the job — to protect himself. Sometimes he brought a hose and tried to attach it to the machine to reduce dust, but there were no machines dispensing water as they were cutting, he said.
He began to suffer a cough that wouldn’t go away and lost his breath when going up stairs, he said. His weight dropped. At one point, he was hospitalized when one of his lungs collapsed.
Segura Meza had never heard of silicosis before he was diagnosed. “There’s no cure for this illness. The only thing they can do is a lung transplant,” he said in Spanish.
What he fears, he said, is that as more workers grow ill, “there aren’t enough lungs for us.” At a state hearing this summer, Segura Meza said two of his co-workers had already died waiting for transplants.
To warn workers about the threat, Cabrera and another Pacoima Beautiful outreach worker, Claudia Vasquez, made their rounds at the parking lot of the Home Depot in San Fernando, where laborers in long-sleeve shirts waited for people to drive up and offer them work. Few had heard of the disease.
“It’s very dangerous, this illness?” asked one man in Spanish, leaning against a palm tree in the parking lot.
Cabrera told him there was no cure. She urged him to use wet saws to limit any dangerous dust rising in the air and NIOSH-approved respirators to avoid breathing it in. Workplace safety regulators have recommended a suite of measures including water spraying systems, ventilation and vacuum systems to clear dust, in addition to protective respirators for workers — ones covering the entire face if silica levels in the air are high.
A construction worker sands a kitchen counter inside a unit of Building 207 that is being refurbished as housing for veterans on the Veteran Affairs West LA campus in Los Angeles on June 23, 2022. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The risk is serious for workers in the industry: Although estimates of its prevalence vary from study to study, some screenings in Australia have found roughly 1 in 5 stone workers had the disease. In California, workplace safety regulators have estimated that out of roughly 4,000 workers in the industry across the state, silicosis will afflict between 485 and 848 — and that as many as 161 could ultimately die.
A recent study by UCLA and UCSF physicians found that among dozens of California workers who got silicosis from grinding countertops, nearly a fifth had died. Their median age at death was 46. More than half had suffered delays in getting diagnosed, as the disease was mistaken for bacterial pneumonia or tuberculosis, and over a third already had severe scarring in their lungs when they were diagnosed.
Los Angeles County has been an epicenter of the debilitating disease, with 60 out of the 83 cases among countertop workers identified across the state since 2019 by the California Department of Public Health.
The San Fernando Valley is a hub for the stone “fabrication” industry — those who cut and polish the slabs made by manufacturers — and county officials also said that growing awareness spurred by Fazio and others may have resulted in better reporting of such cases in L.A. In July, the state sent out an advisory to healthcare providers about the threat, recommending that physicians ask if ailing patients have worked as countertop cutters and urging them to report any identified cases of silicosis to the state.
California workplace safety regulators are now drafting emergency rules to try to protect workers as engineered stone has come to dominate the countertop industry. The material is also sometimes called artificial or synthetic stone, made with crushed quartz bound together with resin. L.A. County is exploring whether to go further and ban the sale and installation of “silica engineered stone” entirely.
Existing safety standards must be followed, but “we feel that there need to be additional changes to the standards to make it even more safe in the workplace,” said Dr. Nichole Quick, deputy director of health protection with the L.A. County public health department.
The county department is now preparing a report requested by county supervisors on options for a potential ban, as well as other possible steps. It has also partnered with Pacoima Beautiful to provide outreach. “This is a preventable disease,” Quick said, “and we want to take appropriate action to make these workplaces safer.”
One question before the county — and government regulators across the globe — is whether any safeguards will effectively protect workers grinding materials so high in silica. The Agglomerated Stone Manufacturers Assn., an international group representing manufacturers of engineered stone, maintains its products can be cut “with no safety issues or health hazards if it is performed according to the best practices.”
In a statement, the association said the risk lies not with engineered stone itself, but poor adherence to safety measures by fabricators, arguing that safety regulations need to be “simplified and rigorously enforced.” Members of the Stone Coalition, which represents fabricators as well as manufacturers, said an L.A. County ban would have “severe economic consequences” and argued for additional enforcement and training on workplace safety, especially efforts to eliminate “dry cutting.”
And the Los Angeles County Business Federation contended that enforcing safety regulations “will do more to prevent disease, while not adversely [affecting] the cost of construction at a time when Los Angeles is seeing a devastating housing crisis.”
But Raphael Metzger, a Long Beach attorney who represents Segura Meza and other workers suing manufacturers of engineered stone such as Cambria and Caesarstone for damages, argued that typical respirators and other standard measures don’t go far enough. Even with many “wet methods,” workers can be exposed to dangerous levels of silica and need additional protection, NIOSH research has found.
Nearly half of the workers suffering silicosis in the UCLA and UCSF study said their workplaces were using water to control dust. Roughly a quarter said they always had respiratory protection. Fazio said studies have found that in many shops, dust is so thick in the air that respirators cannot filter out a sufficient amount.
Metzger argued that the kind of sophisticated and costly measures that would be needed to reliably protect workers cutting engineered stone are not economically plausible in an industry where immigrant workers typically labor in small shops and are often paid in cash. Engineered stone “is too dangerous to be used safely,” he said. “If there’s any industrial product that should be banned, this is the product.”
Segura Meza agreed, calling it “very deadly.” Vasquez, with Pacoima Beautiful, said that when she and Cabrera started talking to workers about engineered stone and silicosis, many of them asked, “How come they don’t do anything with the stores that sell the products?”
In Australia, where the government is weighing whether to ban engineered stone, a professional group whose members assess worker health hazards concluded that the high concentration of silica in engineered stone makes it difficult for measures such as wet cutting and ventilation to adequately protect workers.
Additional measures for respiratory protection are needed, but such systems “have largely been absent from this sector,” the Australian Institute of Occupational Hygienists wrote. In light of those concerns, it recommended prohibiting engineered stone containing more than 10% crystalline silica, but said it would also support banning all engineered stone because of the rigorous compliance needed even at a 10% level.
In California, existing rules to protect workers have often not been followed, state regulators found. Cal/OSHA, which is now hustling to draft emergency standards to protect California workers in the stone cutting and polishing industry, found rampant violations of the current standards when it looked closer in 2019 and 2020.
Despite the rise of the deadly disease, homeowners and other consumers shopping for countertops know little about the threat it could pose to the workers behind the surfaces in their kitchens and bathrooms, Fazio said. Engineered stone is now estimated to represent more than 60% of materials used for countertops, the L.A. County business federation said, and market researchers say its popularity is only expected to rise.
Engineered stone “is everywhere and people have no idea,” Fazio said. Consumers “have a right to know that the countertop that might be the cheapest one … may really be costing folks’ lives.”
Now that problem has reached the news pages of southern Ohio, and this will likely just be the beginning of coverage of fracking-related damage to the country’s groundwater supplies. (There has been much coverage of studies that suggest such harm is inevitable and likely happening from fracking. But, we are now shifting into the stage where the actual harm will start to be discovered—almost certainly too late to prevent contamination in many cases.)
The main culprit (for now) is not the oil and gas wells themselves, but the injection wells used to dispose of huge volumes of water laced with toxic chemicals that have been injected into wells under great pressure to fracture underground rocks containing oil and natural gas in shale deposits. A lot of that water comes back to the surface and so must be disposed of. One of the easiest ways to do that is to pump it deep underground—many thousands of feet down—where it can supposedly be safely deposited away from the surface and far below drinking water aquifers used by us humans.
The trouble is—as I pointed out in my piece 11 years ago—the injected wastewater doesn’t necessarily stay put. And, that’s the problem in southern Ohio. In the Ohio case, “the [Ohio] Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management found that waste fluid injected into the three K&H [waste injection] wells had spread at least 1.5 miles underground and was rising to the surface through oil and gas production wells in Athens and Washington counties.”
This is why a former EPA scientist referenced in my 2012 piece believes that groundwater practically everywhere there is any kind of drilling will become contaminated within the next 100 years as toxic fluids migrate from working and abandoned oil and gas wells and wastewater injection wells into fresh drinking water aquifers.
Part of the problem is the piecemeal regulation of oil and gas operations and wastewater injection. States do the regulation and currently face large and powerful oil and gas companies and the companies that haul their toxic fracking wastewater away. The states have a difficult time monitoring what these companies are dumping, not least of all because the composition of the fluids used to fracture shale oil and gas deposits is considered a trade secret. States cannot easily pry open the files of these companies to find out exactly what is in these fluids.
The fact that companies which use hazardous chemicals that can easily get into the drinking water supply are not obliged to divulge publicly the formulas for the mixtures they inject underground ought to shock the public. But unless Congress fixes some or all of the exemptions from federal disclosure laws enjoyed by the oil and gas industry, the public will continue to be in the dark about the makeup of the waste fluids from oil and gas drilling, especially in shale oil and gas fields, and associated injection of toxic fluids deep into the Earth.
Without crucial information about contaminants which threaten public drinking water supplies, regulators and the public will be shadow-boxing their oil and gas industry foes. My guess is that if companies were obliged to release their fracking formulas and be subject to analysis of the actual fracking fluids and every community was by law informed of this information and its implications for public health, regulation of these practices would be far stricter and some current practices, such as injection of wastes underground, would be banned. Permian Basin fracking (2014) by Rhod08 via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Permianbasinfrac082014.png
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He is currently a fellow of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions.
Jimmy Carter makes rare public appearance, days before his birthday and 7 months after starting hospice
Tal Axelrod – September 24, 2023
Jimmy Carter makes rare public appearance, days before his birthday and 7 months after starting hospice
Former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, made a surprise appearance in their Georgia hometown on Saturday — having largely retreated from the spotlight amid health challenges.
The Carters went to the Plains Peanut Festival in what seems to have been their first outing since the announcement seven months ago that Jimmy Carter would receive hospice care. The couple previously attended two events last year.
“Beautiful day for President & Mrs. Carter to enjoy a ride through the Plains Peanut Festival! And just a week before he turns 99. We’re betting peanut butter ice cream is on the menu for lunch! #JimmyCarter99,” the Carter Center wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. (Peanut butter is a favorite of Jimmy Carter’s.)
At 98, he is both the oldest living and longest-lived U.S. president. He will turn 99 on Oct. 1.
The former president’s office announced in February that he had decided to receive hospice care following a series of short hospital stays. He had suffered multiple falls in 2019 and survived cancer in 2015.
In May, the Carter Center said the former first lady had been diagnosed with dementia. The Carters are also the longest-married presidential couple in American history, having wed in 1946.
The Carter Center launched a tribute earlier this month for the former president’s upcoming birthday.
Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson, recently said on “GMA3” that “we didn’t know, and we didn’t believe at the time, that we were going to get to this 99th birthday.”
“They are coming to the end, of course, at this time in their lives. But they are at peace, they are together, they’re at home, they’re in love. And you don’t get much more than that, and they don’t expect more,” he said.
“It’s a true blessing for all of us to have had this much time with him,” Jason Carter added.
In anticipation of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, White House spotlights org that helps boost Black participation in clinical trial
TheGrio Staff – September 22, 2023
Compared to white women, Black women die from breast cancer at a rate that is 41% higher. Black women under 35 had a twofold increase in breast cancer cases and a threefold increase in mortality.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the White House highlights a group that intends to increase Black women’s involvement in clinical trials.
TOUCH, The Black Breast Cancer Alliance, or “TOUCH BBCA,” has promised to contact 350,000 Black women and inspire 25,000 to visit trial portals, according to a press release. CEO Rick Fairley said it is essential to enhance the science of Black Breast Cancer to lower the dismal mortality rate for Black women.
“We’ve already been able to achieve nearly half of our projected goal with the unprecedented impact and momentum of our iconic When We Tri(al) Movement,” Fairley said, noting that they’ve sent over 12,000 Black women into clinical trial portals. “We’re confident that we will not only meet but exceed our commitment to motivate 25,000 Black women into clinical trial portals by 2025.”
TOUCH, The Black Breast Cancer Alliance, or “TOUCH BBCA,” is on a mission to increase Black women’s participation in clinic trials. The organization has promised to contact 350,000 women and inspire 25,000 to visit trial portals by 2025. (Photo Credit: Adobe Stock)
Black women die from breast cancer at a rate that is 40% higher than white women, according to the American Cancer Society. Black women under 35 had a twofold increase in breast cancer cases and a threefold increase in mortality, the press release noted.
However, just 3% of Black women participated in clinical studies that resulted in the FDA approving cancer medications between 2008 and 2018 – a stark underrepresentation that persists today.
Black women will continue to experience poorer breast cancer outcomes unless more of them participate in clinical trials.
TOUCH BBCA also launched TOUCH Care. According to the release, TOUCH Care is the first program run by a breast cancer advocacy group that offers a nurse navigator service to help Black breast cancer patients participate in trials by creating culturally responsive recruitment materials, educating trial personnel, and guiding participants.
TOUCH Care co-founder and breast cancer survivor Valarie Worthy will discuss the practical and psychological difficulties Black women face when participating in clinical trials. Worthy also serves as a patient navigator manager at Duke Cancer Center.
The TOUCH Care program aims to increase Black women’s participation and retention in breast cancer clinical trials by offering culturally aware support to Black women diagnosed with breast cancer throughout the clinical trial interest, screening, enrollment, and treatment processes.
Genentech is helping pilot the program, which will add five trials annually.
“The lack of representation of Black women diagnosed with breast cancer in clinical trials perpetuates disparities in cancer outcomes,” said Lauren Davis Pariani, director of patient advocacy relations at Genentech.
Pariani added that Genentech is excited to support TOUCH Care, which builds on a commitment to “address inequities by advancing inclusive research in breast cancer and bridging the gap between research and clinical care for those who need it the most.”
How climate change threatens some of the world’s most coveted real estate
Kathleen Magramo and Chris Lau – September 23, 2023
Until recently, the upscale homes of the Redhill Peninsula seemed like an oasis for rich Hong Kongers aspiring to a tranquil lifestyle in an otherwise notoriously cramped metropolis of 7.5 million.
Its cliffside location and unobstructed views of the South China Sea made for great Feng Shui and offered the perfect antidote to the hustle and bustle of city life for its gated community of tycoons, expats and celebrities.
But that same pristine location worked against it on September 8, when a storm brought the heaviest rainfall in nearly 140 years to Hong Kong, wreaking havoc across the city.
Two people were killed and more than a hundred injured as more than 600mm (23.6 inches) of rain barreled down on the coastal city, flooding metro stations and turning roads into rivers.
The chaos was not confined to the flooded lowlands. Up on the edge of the cliff separating the Redhill Peninsula from the sea below it chipped away at the soil, leaving three millionaire homes perilously close to the edge and prompting an evacuation.
In a city that had just experienced its hottest summer on record, the unprecedented rainfall – itself the product of the second typhoon to have hit the city in the space of a week – was a potent demonstration of the threat posed by climate change and its associated extreme weather.
But for the residents of the Redhill Peninsula it was also a reminder that climate change is rewriting the rules of what can be considered “safe” construction, and that even the costliest, most well-constructed homes can be vulnerable.
For some it may even be a reminder that such rules exist at all. City authorities say they are investigating whether building code violations in some of the houses contributed to the problem, in a development likely to fuel perceptions that the rich don’t play by the same rules as the poor.
Whatever those investigations find, experts say extreme weather events like that of September 8 will become more frequent and when they do rich and poor alike will suffer the consequences – whichever rulebook they play by – even if the former have far more ability to bounce back from disasters than the latter.
As Benny Chan, the president of Hong Kong Institute of Architects, points out, Hong Kong has long been prone to typhoons and torrential downpours and has “plenty of experience building these kinds of cliffside houses.”
It also has stringent safety standards designed over many years with landslides in mind, he says. So it would have been reasonable – at least until a couple of weeks ago – to expect somewhere like the Redhill Peninsula to be a safe place to be in a storm.
But the old rules, experts say, may no longer apply.
Houses at the Redhill Peninsula, a luxurious residential estate in the Tai Tam area of Hong Kong, on September 13. – Chris Lau/CNN
A ‘sensitive’ issue
That is likely to be an uncomfortable realization for anyone who has invested in the Redhill Peninsula – one of the most expensive neighborhoods in one of the world’s most expensive property markets.
Properties here have the sort of appeal and cachet of the Malibu coast in Los Angeles. They have a distinctive Mediterranean style, with colors alternating in hues of cream and pink, and many have french windows overlooking the cove of Tai Tam, a scenic spot with a lush hiking trail nearby and ample shelter for luxury yachts to anchor below.
They can go for between $10 million-$20 million for a 2,400-3,600 square foot home (and rent for up to $20,000 a month). Or at least, they could before the recent downpour. Local real estate agents say what effect the storm will have on property prices is a “sensitive” issue for some in the community.
When CNN visited Redhill last week, sports cars and SUVs sporting the logos of Porsche, Land Rover and Ferrari were among the vehicles that cruised past the palm-tree-lined entrance, where a security guard stood like an impenetrable wall preventing the gaggle of assembled journalists from going in.
The real pull of the district, according to a real estate agent with more than two decades of experience selling properties here, is its tight-knit community.
“It has an international school and kids can hang out with one another at home after school,” said the agent, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. She was referring to the Hong Kong International School, one of the most prestigious in town.
“Almost every house comes with a view of the sea,” she said, adding that while the development is far from the hustle and bustle of the city, it offers a convenient shuttle bus service to ferry residents around.
The three houses most affected by the landslides were between 2,700 and 3,000 square feet in size, each valued at up to $11.5 million, the agent said.
She added that she had noticed a change of mood in recent days and expects anyone trying to sell a property – especially one near to the sea – to lay low for a while.
“It’s sensitive timing,” she said.
Flooded roads after heavy rains in Hong Kong on September 8. – Tyrone Siu/Reuters
The old rules may not apply
Heavy rain is far from unusual in Hong Kong, especially during the summer months.
Even so, recent weather patterns have been unsettling to many, with two consecutive typhoons sweeping across the region within a space of less than two weeks.
Typhoon Saola, which barreled through Hong Kong on September 1, was the strongest to hit the city in five years. A week later, the remnants of Typhoon Haikui unleashed the rains that caused the problems at Redhill, dozens of landslides and left large swathes of the city underwater.
Scientists say climate change will make such weather events only more frequent and some are urging Hong Kong to rethink its rain mitigation strategy.
Leung Wing-mo, former assistant director of the city’s weather observatory, told public broadcaster RTHK that rainstorms are becoming harder to predict because of climate change.
“In the past few decades, record-breaking events have been occurring much, much more frequently…This is a clear indication that climate change has a role to play. As a matter of fact, climate change is making extreme weather more extreme,” Leung said.
With that in mind, architects and civil engineers are also calling for the city to review standards set decades ago for hillside buildings, including many luxury mansions.
The city experienced some of its worst landslides in the 1970s, including one that knocked down a series of residential buildings in the city’s upscale Mid-Levels district, causing 67 deaths.
The same powerful rain that caused the Mid-Levels landslide in 1972 also triggered a hill in a district of Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula to collapse, decimating a squatter site in Sau Mai Ping causing a further 71 deaths.
Structural engineering professor Ray Su, from the University of Hong Kong, said that the series of catastrophic incidents had prompted the government of the time to reinforce slopes across the city, turning Hong Kong into one of the most resilient places against landslides and floods in the world.
But some engineers fear safety rules that seemed adequate in the past may no longer be enough.
Su noted that some of the city’s low-rise houses were still built on shallow footings.
In extreme rain scenarios, “they will take a big hit when landslides crumble down,” he said.
The Redhill Plaza shopping center in the Tai Tam area of Hong Kong on September 13, 2023. – Chris Lau/CNN
‘A ticking time bomb’
Complicating matters in the case of the Redhill Peninsula is the suggestion by authorities that some of properties in danger may not even have been playing by the old rules.
In the wake of the storm, government authorities detected what they suspect may be illegal alterations made to the three Redhill properties – alterations that experts say may have contributed to the disaster.
That suggestion is something of a third rail issue in a city that has a track record of scandals involving wealthy individuals and politicians altering their properties and violating building codes with the sort of illegal extensions skeptics say the less well-off wouldn’t get away with.
Hong Kong’s Buildings Department says among those unauthorized modifications are basements, a swimming pool, and a three-story extension.
So controversial is the issue that even the city’s leader John Lee has stepped in, vowing that the government will investigate and prosecute anyone found to have violated building codes.
“The landslide at Redhill Peninsula has already shown us that part of the estate carries risks, so relevant departments will target the estate for inspections,” he said last week.
Preliminary investigations have shown a retaining wall was demolished in one of the houses.
Chan, from the Hong Kong Institute of Architects, said the modification could destabilize the structure of the cliff below and greatly affect the drainage of the soil underneath, ultimately causing landslides.
“The more the water is trapped, the less the slope can maintain a high steepness,” Chan said.
He said while painful lessons in the past had given rise to high standards on building retaining walls and drainage systems, the old set of requirements is slowly losing relevance.
“These standards were set a long time ago,” he said.
“Can the present standards withstand that much rain? It is time for the government to look at them again,” he added.
Chan Kim-ching, founder of Liber Research Community, a non-government organization that focuses on scrutinizing the authorities on land policies, said the safety problems that arose from illegal modifications went far further than the cases at Redhill.
His group recently compared contracts available on public records and identified at least 173 individual houses across the city suspected of violations on public land.
“We studied it in the past because it involves the fair use of public resources. Never did it strike us that it’s an issue that would threaten public safety,” he said.
How Texas became the new “homebase” for white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups
Areeba Shah – September 23, 2023
Greg Abbott Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Texas has seen a sudden surge in extremist activity within the past three years, with white supremacist and anti-LGBTQ+ groups making the Lone Star state its base of operations.
According to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League, there has been an 89% increase in antisemitic incidents in Texas from January 2021 to May of this year. Along with six identified terrorist plots and 28 occurrences of extremist events like training sessions and rallies, Texas also saw an increase in the frequency of propaganda distribution.
“Texas has a long history of white nationalist activity and for many years has had a very active presence of white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups in the state, but the report’s findings really do paint a very troubling picture of the current situation,” Stephen Piggott, who studies right-wing extremism as a program analyst with the Western States Center, a civil rights group, told Salon.
“Texas is the homebase for a number of really active white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups, such as the Patriot Front and the Aryan Freedom Network.”
This is one of the main factors driving extremism in the state. Patriot Front has contributed to Texas experiencing the highest number of white supremacist propaganda distributions in the United States in 2022, the report found.
The group has a “nationwide footprint,” with members all around the country and their messaging contributing to 80% of nationwide propaganda in 2022 – a trend replicated every year since 2019, according to the report.
Patriot Front has also held rallies in major cities across the country, including Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia and Indianapolis, where the events are frequently the largest public white supremacist gatherings.
Texas’ close proximity to Mexico also makes it a hotbed for anti-immigrant activity, Piggot added, pointing to a growing number of nationalist and neo-Nazi groups focusing on immigration issues.
“They’ll have rallies where a lot of the rhetoric is focused on demonizing immigrants and using dehumanizing rhetoric about immigrants,” he said. “They’re focused on the issue of immigration because Texas is a border state, but also an avenue for getting more recruits.”
The political context further amplifies this phenomenon, Peter Simi, a sociology professor at Chapman University and an expert on white supremacists in the U.S., told Salon.
“When you look at the political context of what’s happening in Texas as far as [the movement of] anti-CRT, anti-reproductive rights, anti-gay… that is extremely conducive and consistent with groups like the Patriot Front, so they kind of thrive,” Simi said.
Last year, 31 members of Patriot Front were arrested near Idaho after police stopped a U-Haul truck near a “Pride in the Park” event and found members dressed uniformly and equipped with riot shields. Every present Patriot Front member was charged with criminal conspiracy to riot.
But this hasn’t deterred the group from putting on public demonstrations and in many cases, even documenting them. In July, close to 100 masked group members recognized Independence Day by holding a flash demonstration in Austin while carrying riot shields, a banner reading “Reclaim America” and upside-down American flags.
“Whenever they have a gathering or any type of kind of public demonstration, they have folks filming and they put out really kind of flashy videos on social media, especially on places like Telegram and it’s all designed to make it look cool and edgy,” Piggot said.
Extremist groups often use online platforms to recruit and spread their ideology. Over the past year, ADL found that online hate and harassment rose sharply for adults and teens ages 13-17.
Among adults, 52% reported being harassed online in their lifetime, the highest number we have seen in four years, up from 40% in 2022, ADL spokesperson Jake Kurz said.
“Many online platforms either recommend more extreme and hateful content or make it easier to find once searched,” Kurz said pointing to the report’s findings. “For some, this could lead to a dark spiral into hate and extremism.”
Patriot Front has emerged as one of the most aggressive groups in terms of distributing propaganda, Simi pointed out. They often even post pictures of the propaganda they’ve distributed online and circulate those images more broadly.
“In a nutshell, they’re trying to really be aggressive in establishing a physical presence through [distributing] flyers as well as through actual demonstrations,” Simi said. “They’ve also been known to do these flash mob style demonstrations and sometimes more coordinated demonstrations where they’ve shown up in places, like our nation’s capital.”
As a part of their recruitment strategies, white supremacist groups have consistently targeted the LGBTQ+ community, disrupting drag shows, targeting pride events and even going after businesses that support LGBTQ+ events. They have used slurs like “groomers” when talking about the LGBTQ+ community to draw more individuals to their movement.
“The anti-LGBTQ+ animus is probably the single greatest driver of white nationalist and anti-democracy activity that we’re seeing across the country right now,” Piggot said.
ADL tracked 22 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents in 2022 across Texas. While some actions involved extremists, others engaged more mainstream anti-LGBTQ+ entities, offering extremists opportunities to expose new audiences to different forms of hate.
“Hate and extremism seem to be a growing issue across the United States,” Kurz said. “The number of antisemitic incidents across the country are the highest we have ever measured. Instances of white supremacist propaganda are high and we are seeing an alarming amount of violence motivated by hate and misinformation.”
Kurz added that people should look at the Texas report and recognize that while some of the types of extremism are different, extremism is a problem in every community in the country.
The communities that are being targeted in Texas mirror those targeted nationwide, said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director for research, reporting and analysis at the SPLC.
“Some of the real intense false conspiracies that circulate around QAnon are resulting in an increase in the sovereign citizen movement – a conspiratorial movement that is not followed and and even recognized a lot in the U.S.,” Carroll Rivas said.
Other trends in Texas that are indicative of broader extremism patterns in the country include the targeting of school curriculums, she added.
The reason why these groups feel comfortable operating in Texas is because of the role that elected officials in the state are playing in “echoing white nationalist talking points,” Piggot said.
He pointed to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s extreme anti-immigrant actions, putting up barbed wire across the Rio Grande and a chain of buoys with circular saws.
“Governor Abbott is essentially doing the work for white nationalists by echoing and then amplifying their dehumanizing rhetoric,” Piggot said. “Just this week, he declared an invasion [at the border]. That’s a phrase that white nationalists have used to describe what’s happening on the U.S. [and] Mexico border for decades.”
In both Texas and Florida, neo-Nazis and white nationalists are “feeling energized” and have increased their activities due to seeing this type of messaging from Abbot and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, he added.
“We need elected officials to be closing the political space for these groups and denouncing them instead of amplifying their messages for them,” Piggot said.
Amy has been updating fans regularly on the challenges of her health journey, and most recently posted a video of her shaving off her hair.https://www.instagram.com/p/Cxc3nC9ox5t/embed/captioned?cr=1&v=12
She previously spoke out about her struggle with “hair shedding” as one of the side effects of chemotherapy, and has spoken at length previously about the emotions she’s felt around losing hair, but she’s now decided to take matters into her own hands.
Updating her followers on Instagram, the Strictly star shared a video of herself tearfully saying goodbye to her hair, with the help of some friends and family.
“Taking control – the hardest step so far,” she wrote. “I tried my best to save it. I know it’s only hair but these past few months I’ve had what feels like so much taken away from me that has made me not feel like Amy.
“I’m missing every possible aspect of dancing. I just wanted to keep my identity with my hair and I tried telling myself it wouldn’t go. But I would dread the pain of waking up to the shredding everyday.”
Dowden admitted that chopping off her hair was a difficult decision to make, and it’ll take some time for her to get used to her new appearance.
“Since taking control, I feel I can now see the finish line,” she wrote. “This for me was a hurdle I couldn’t even bring myself to think or speak about.
“I’ve done it and I’ve also crossed the halfway chemo line! I’m feeling empowered and positive!
“To everyone on their own journey, whatever that may be, I’m sending love, power, strength and courage.”
