Large part of Ukranian corn crop may stay in fields over winter.
November 21, 2022
KYIV, Nov 20 (Reuters) – Significant areas of Ukraine’s corn crop may be left to overwinter in the fields due to difficulties with harvesting and fuel shortages, analyst APK-Inform said on Sunday.
Corn can potentially be harvested in winter or early spring, but previously only very small areas of the crop would be left to overwinter if farmers wanted to reduce grain moisture.
Ukraine is a major global corn grower and exporter and harvested almost 42 million tonnes in 2021. This year, analysts say, the harvest could total 27.5 million to 27.9 million tonnes.
APK-Inform said in a report that the prospect for a large part of the corn crop to stay in fields this winter was “becoming more and more possible” due to low domestic prices, difficulties with field work caused by the war and high fuel prices.
The Ukrainian agriculture ministry said on Friday only 50% of the area sown for corn had been harvested as of Nov. 17, or 12.3 million tonnes.
The government has said Ukraine could harvest between 50 million and 52 million tonnes of grain this year, down from a record 86 million tonnes in 2021, because of the loss of land to Russian forces and lower yields.
Farmers have already completed the 2022 wheat and barley harvests, threshing 19.4 million and 5.6 million tons respectively. (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
The midlife health checks you should never skip – and the ones worth paying for
Lebby Eyres – November 21, 2022
Even if you feel on top of your game and are symptom-free, it’s best not to ignore tests
We’ve all heard the expression “Life begins at 40” – but, unfortunately, 40 is also the age when life starts to catch up with us. The gloomy truth is that if you’re drinking, smoking, eating a bad diet and sitting on your sofa a bit too much, you’re four times more likely to die in the next decade than your smoothie-drinking, teetotal, marathon-running mate.
But help is at hand, because even if those party invitations are petering out, midlife is when the NHS screening invites start to arrive. Even if you feel on top of your game and are symptom-free, it’s best not to ignore them – especially as it’s estimated around three million people missed screening appointments when most services were paused at the beginning of the pandemic, contributing to the 39,000 missed cancer diagnoses from April 2020 to March 2021. As a result, more people will be diagnosed at a later stage, meaning their cancer may be harder to treat or even incurable.
Despite this, around 30 per cent of us don’t go to the tests we’re entitled to. According to recent NHS figures, only 70 per cent of cervical cancer screening invitations were accepted, while mammograms were taken up by 64 per cent and only 71 per cent responded to bowel cancer screening invitations in 2022.
Preventative screening of a healthy population is different from diagnostic testing when symptoms are present. Dr James Gill, clinical lecturer in clinical skills at Warwick University, explains, “A test would be, ‘We think this is going on – can we find it?’ With screening, we are saying, ‘We don’t think anything is going on – but can we see any evidence of something going on early?’ Effective screening has three crucial features: to be able to identify a disease early on, to have a reliable test and, as a result of the first two, you must then be able to affect the course of disease to result in a positive outcome.”
In Britain, the independent UK National Screening Committee makes recommendations about screening programmes to ministers based on evidence, benefit vs harm ratio and cost-effectiveness.
You might ask why we don’t screen everyone in the relevant age bracket, every year for all the key cancers. Dr Samar Mahmood, a GP and clinical lecturer from South Yorkshire, explains: “So, more screening equals more cancers diagnosed, yes. But also more false positives and more harm to the additional people who ended up having further unnecessary tests [such as scans or biopsies]. There is a sweet spot, and the NSC crunch the numbers on this.”
Our national screening programmes are similar to other countries. Most focus on breast, bowel and cervical with some variation in frequency and age screening starts. Mammograms are offered every two years in France and Ireland from 50. Germany offers men aged 50 and women aged 55 a colonoscopy once every nine years, and a skin cancer check every two years to over-35s. In America, cervical screening begins at 21, and in Australia women can ask for a mammogram from 40 every two years.
But what is the situation in the UK? Here are the essential screening tests you’ll be invited to on the NHS.
The screening: the NHS Health Check
When you have it on the NHS: From aged 40, and repeated every five years
How you get it: In theory, you should be invited as everyone is entitled to a test but funding was paused during the pandemic. Dr Mahmood urges the over-40s to, “Check with your GP surgery whether or not you will be invited.”
What’s involved: Dr Mahmood says, “It’s a five-yearly MOT that consists of a set of routine blood tests and measurements of height, weight, blood pressure. It can pick up on signs you might develop certain diseases in the future, including diabetes and high blood pressure, whether you have anaemia, how high your cholesterol is, or, if you are clinically overweight.”
Regular check ups are important from midlife onwards – E+
Why it’s important: High BP (over 140/90) is a risk factor for kidney and heart disease and stroke and an indicator of diabetes. Your GP or nurse will calculate your “QRISK” score for cardiovascular disease using your results, which is the likelihood of having a heart attack or stroke in the next ten years.
What if you have an abnormal result?
“Any abnormalities picked up on the blood tests will then be reviewed further by the GP,” says Dr Mahmood. The GP may carry out a HbA1c test to see if you have diabetes. A QRISK score of over 10 per cent could result in statins being prescribed, while heavy drinkers could be offered a liver scan. Finally, the test may pick up if you have an increased risk of dementia. Lifestyle changes may be advised.
The screening test: Breast cancer screening
When you have it on the NHS: every three years from age 50-71 or annually from 40 for high-risk women.
How you get it: you should be sent an invitation by your GP, breast screening unit or hospital (if high risk). You must be registered with a GP.
Why it’s important: Eight out of ten breast cancers occur in women over 50. “We’re trying to find evidence for the disease early on before it becomes noticeable,” says Dr Gill, “and we’re trying to prevent a greater level of disease burden by treating these patients early.”
What’s involved: A mammographer will take two X-rays of each breast. It can be slightly uncomfortable but is a very quick procedure.
What if you have an abnormal result?
You’ll receive a letter with results, and diagnostic tests may take place such as another mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy.
The screening test: Cervical cancer screening
When you have it on the NHS: Women aged 25 to 49 have it every three years, and from 50 to 64 it changes to every five years.
Why it’s important: Around 3,200 cases are diagnosed each year. Fifty per cent survive for 10 years or more. “The vast majority of cervical cancers are due to HPV, Human Papilloma Virus,” says Dr Gill. “But even if someone isn’t sexually active, or has never had sex with men, it’s still advisable to have a cervical cancer screening, because not all causes are due to an HPV.”
Even if someone isn’t sexually active, or has never had sex with men, it’s still advisable to have a cervical cancer screening – Shutterstock
What’s involved: A smear test. Although the process is the same, there is now a new test which screens for the HPV virus first. If it is positive, your sample will be tested again to see if there are changes in the cells.
What if you have an abnormal result?
“If you’re positive for signs of HPV, we’ll make sure you are called in more frequently,” says Dr Gill. This is usually annually. If you are positive for HPV and have abnormal cells, you’ll have a colposcopy.
The screening test: Bowel cancer screening
When you have it on the NHS: Every two years for people aged 60-74 – although this is gradually being lowered to age 50.
How you get it: You’ll be sent a faecal immunochemical test in the post, which you send back. “It’s the most minimally invasive screening test you could have and looks for evidence of blood in the stool,” says Dr Gill. “A haemoglobin level of below 120 in women and 130 in men is an indication for a possible bowel cancer – patients will be sent a FIT test.”
Why it’s important: There are 16,800 cancer deaths in the UK every year, and it’s the second biggest cancer killer, yet 98 per cent will survive for a year or more if treated in the earliest stages.
What if you have an abnormal result?
Around 2 per cent of FIT tests are abnormal and patients are normally referred for a colonoscopy.
The screening test: Aortic Abdominal Aneurysm
This is for a swelling of the main blood vessel that leads from the heart to the abdomen.
When you have it on the NHS: Men aged 65 are offered a one-off screen.
Why it’s important: “If you have an AAA and it leaks or bursts in the community, your chance of dying is 90 per cent,” says Dr Gill.
What if you have an abnormal result?
“Sometimes we’ll keep an eye on it until it’s grown big enough that the risks of surgery outweigh the risks of leaving it,” says Dr Gill. “Once it’s big enough, we will go in to try and essentially line it with Gore-Tex to stop it bursting.”
The test: Prostate specific antigen test
When you have it on the NHS: There is no prostate screening on the NHS, as the benefit may not outweigh the harm. “The PSA test is not reliable,” says Dr Gill. “Sexual activity, vigorous exercise and eating a large amount of meat can throw off the PSA test, which is why we do it in a controlled situation.”
In 2018, Prostate cancer became the third biggest cancer killer in the UK – WBU
How you get it: Healthy men over 50 can ask for a PSA test via the NHS informed choice programme.
Why it’s important: In 2018, Prostate cancer became the third biggest cancer killer in the UK. in February, Prostate Cancer UK launched a Find the 14,000 Men campaign with the NHS to urge men to check their risk online and talk to their GP if they are: prostate cancer accounts for over a third of undiagnosed cancers during the pandemic.
What if you have an abnormal result?
PSA testing has a high number of false positives, and one in seven are false negatives. A positive result may result in further investigation including an MRI, sometimes followed by a biopsy. “Prostate biopsies can cause infections, impotence and bowel issues,” says Dr Gill.
Finally, although it has not been rolled out yet, in June this year, the UK NSC recommended the first national lung cancer screening programme, targeted at people aged 55-74 at high risk. When it is rolled out, people who smoke or used to smoke may be offered a low-dose CT scan.
Private healthcare providers also offer all of the above screening at your own convenience and in comfortable surroundings. Healthcare charity Nuffield Health provides 360 health assessments which offer additional non-invasive tests. Dr Kim Goldin, Senior General Practitioner and Clinical Lead for Nuffield Health’s GP team, says, “NHS Health Check is a very good baseline but there is more you can add on. For example, at Nuffield, we offer a HbA1c test, urate test and, for women over 50, TSH levels, Which test respectively for diabetes, gout and also metabolic diseases, and thyroid issues.”
But is it worth screening for cancer, or other illnesses, more often than the NHS advises? Not according to Dr Mahmood. “While there may be no long-lasting damage from a one-off private CT scan or X-ray, if somebody was frequently getting it done as part of a private screening test then there could be a chance of radiation-related cancer in itself,” he says. “The other thing to consider is harm in other ways. For example, regular private screening might indicate that somebody has health anxiety and perhaps the answer to this is to speak to their GP rather than get a screening test done.”
If you have symptoms, however, that could be a different matter.
The tests worth paying for
MRI tests often have a long wait for NHS patients – E+
In October, it was revealed that in August, 461,400 people had been waiting six weeks or more for one of 15 key diagnostic tests including an MRI or ultrasound. Some patients are choosing to go private, but how do you do that and what should you be aware of? Dr Mahmood answers the key questions.
Q: I’m worried about waiting. How do I get a diagnostic test done privately?
A: You can approach any private healthcare provider and ask whether they carry out the test you are interested in. For simple tests, such as blood tests or ECG, a consultation with a doctor is not required beforehand. For something more invasive, such as an endoscopy, you may need to consult with a clinician before they are able to recommend the test for you.
Q: Can I self-refer?
A: For a private consultation with a doctor, most providers will want a referral letter from your NHS GP. However, for the private tests (without a specialist consultation) mentioned above, a self-referral will usually be accepted.
Q: Can a GP access private health diagnostic results and vice versa?
A: GPs do not have access to private diagnostic results, other than paper copies of your results which you would need to provide them with. Similarly, private providers cannot access your NHS results/health records unless you provide them.
Q: What happens if I have an abnormal result?
A: Ordinarily, unless your private test is done following a private consultation with a specialist who will follow your case up, you would go back to your NHS GP for further management. Be aware it can be hard for the GP to interpret another provider’s test result without the context behind why the test was done.
Sandy Hook families sued Alex Jones. Then he started moving money around.
Jonathan O’Connell, The Washington Post – November 21, 2022
FILE – Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones takes the witness stand to testify at the Sandy Hook defamation damages trial at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn. Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. On Friday, Oct. 21, Jones has asked a Connecticut judge to throw out a nearly $1 billion verdict against him and order a new trial in a lawsuit by Sandy Hook families over Jones’ lies that the 2012 Newtown school shooting was a hoax.(Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Alex Jones was losing in court.
Parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School had sued him and his media company for defamation after he repeatedly claimed the 2012 massacre in Connecticut was a hoax. Fans of the Infowars host had harassed and threatened grieving families. By the summer of 2020, two of the lawsuits weren’t going his way.
As the potential for damages mounted, Jones began moving millions of dollars out of his company, Free Speech Systems, and into companies controlled by himself, friends or relatives, according to a Washington Post review of financial statements, depositions and other court records. The transfers potentially put those funds out of reach of the Sandy Hook plaintiffs.
Between August 2020 and November 2021, Free Speech Systems signed promissory notes – essentially IOUs – for $55 million to cover what it said were past debts to a company called PQPR Holdings that Jones owns with his parents, according to financial records filed in court by Jones’s attorneys. PQPR, which is managed by Jones’s father, a dentist, had bought tens of millions of dollars in supplements for Jones that he then sold on his show, the records say. A lawyer for Free Speech systems has said in court that the debt accrued unnoticed due to sloppy bookkeeping.
This year, Jones started paying his personal trainer $100,000 a week to help ship supplements and other merchandise, a Free Speech Systems attorney said in court. A company managed by Jones’s sister and listed as a “supplier or vendor” was paid $240,000, financial records show.
Courts have awarded the Sandy Hook families nearly $1.5 billion in damages against Jones, including $45.2 million in a Texas case in August and $965 million in a Connecticut case two months later. On Nov. 10, the judge in the Connecticut case ordered Jones to pay an additional $473 million in punitive damages, including $323 million for legal fees. Jones has said on his show that he plans to appeal.
The IOUs and other recent transactions helped tip Free Speech Systems into bankruptcy in July, according to Jones’s court filings. An accountant hired by Jones calculated that Free Speech Systems had $79 million in liabilities at the end of May and only $14 million in assets, court records show. As a result, the Sandy Hook families could be left vying with other creditors – including the companies tied to Jones himself – to collect.
The bankruptcy court will ultimately determine which creditors are paid and how much. It is examining whether the promissory notes to PQPR and other transactions are legitimate. Attorneys for PQPR have argued in court that it should be paid before unsecured creditors, a category that would include the Sandy Hook plaintiffs.
Attorneys for the Sandy Hook families contend in a separate suit filed in April in Texas state court that PQPR is “not actually an independent business” and that Jones has engaged in fraudulent transfers to shield his wealth. They have argued in bankruptcy court that Jones began moving money out of Free Speech Systems only after he began to face legal setbacks in the defamation cases.
“In the middle of this lawsuit, they started documenting debts that had no evidence of existing beforehand,” Sandy Hook attorney Avi Berkowitz said in an interview.
A Justice Department trustee whose role in the bankruptcy case is to ensure the integrity of the process also has criticized the agreement to pay PQPR. “We, the U.S. Trustee, we do have concerns with the underlying transaction,” attorney Ha Nguyen told the court, according to a transcript. An agency spokeswoman declined to comment.
Alex Jones, his personal attorney, and attorneys for Free Speech Systems and PQPR did not respond to requests for comment or to detailed lists of questions from The Post. David Jones, Alex Jones’s father, and an attorney representing him also did not respond to requests for comment.
Jones and his father have said in court proceedings that PQPR was created in 2013 for liability protection as Jones got into the supplement business and as his father took on a management role. The accountant hired by Jones told the bankruptcy court that PQPR was a legitimate business that shared responsibility with Jones’s main company for “setting up supply chains, obtaining required governmental certifications, negotiating with vendors, procuring and paying for product, and overhead.”
Raymond Battaglia, a lawyer for Free Speech Systems, has said that as the Infowars brand ballooned, and millions of dollars poured in, the family-run business never adopted “appropriate management and accounting controls,” and so it failed to note the debt that had built up to PQPR.
“This is kind of like the garage band that became the boy band overnight, and had his girlfriend running the books, and the head roadie being the business manager,” Battaglia said in August in the bankruptcy case.
On their own, the corporate structures were not unusual, said bankruptcy experts. Many small-business owners create separate but related entities to organize and protect their wealth. Experts say the fact that the entities do not have any employees, offices or owners other than Jones and his parents does not mean they are not legitimate businesses.
The issue, said Jay L. Westbrook, a University of Texas bankruptcy law professor, is whether the court rules the transfers of wealth were made in the ordinary course of business. “At the end the of the day, the question is whether these are valid payments,” Westbrook said.
The Post examined financial records, depositions and other documents from the court cases to trace the flows of money around Free Speech Systems and establish the ownership of the other companies that were involved. The analysis shows that the transfers echoed financial moves Jones made almost a decade earlier, when divorce proceedings jeopardized his fortune, according to sealed court records from the divorce case obtained by The Post.
Infowars has made Jones a wealthy man, to a degree that has become apparent only because of the Sandy Hook litigation. In August testimony, an expert hired by the Sandy Hook families estimated Jones’s net worth at between $135 million and $270 million. Jones has disputed the plaintiffs’ estimations of his wealth.
“I don’t have all this money they’ve made up,” he said recently.
The supplement business tied to PQPR is the engine of Jones’s fortune, according to financial records Jones submitted in bankruptcy, often generating 2,000 to 3,000 orders a day, according to court testimony. Among the offerings are Survival Shield X-3 iodine spray, DNA Force Plus capsules and Super Male Vitality dietary supplement.
Of the $65 million in income Free Speech Systems had in 2021, the vast majority came from supplement sales, according to those records.
Berkowitz said his clients may be willing to settle with Jones for less money if it meant Jones would end his broadcasting career.
“If he wants to agree to some sort of terms that hold him accountable for all he’s done, we’ll be open to listening,” Berkowitz said. “Whether that means walking away from public life, to paying Sandy Hook families in full, the Sandy Hook families are not going to stop until Jones is held accountable.”
Jones, 48, has said he will keep fighting no matter what.
“They want us off air, that’s their goal,” he said during one show last month. “You’ve got my commitment. I’m not backing down.”
– – –
Jones grew up in Texas, first in Dallas and then in Austin. He has said his early thinking was shaped when, as a high school student, he read the book “None Dare Call it a Conspiracy” by a member of the far-right John Birch Society. Jones was 19 in 1993 when federal agents raided the Branch Davidians’ compound in Waco, north of Austin, leading to a prolonged standoff that ended with 76 dead. He went to Austin Community College for a time but left after growing bored, he told the Austin-American Statesman.
He told the newspaper that his anger toward big government stemmed from problems his father and his grandparents had with the IRS. “That’s where the venom comes from with me,” he said.
Jones started his broadcasting career with a public access TV show in Austin in the early 1990s. Several years later, a local FM radio station gave him a show after his father agreed to sponsor it, according to an accounting expert Jones hired in bankruptcy filings.
By the late 1990s, dozens of stations nationwide carried his show.
On air, Jones called the Branch Davidians victims of “a government coverup of its violation of the First Amendment,” and he asked listeners to send donations to help the sect build a new church and memorial. He wore a pin to the 1999 groundbreaking that said “You burn it, we build it,” according to the Associated Press. He was 25.
Jones railed against the government, the media and what he called the New World Order. He claimed that major world events were not what they seemed – and often that they were manufactured crises, staged to serve as pretexts to accomplish the goals of a secret cabal of globalists and multinational corporations.
In 1999, Jones registered the site infowars.com. As the internet era took off, he launched a subscription-only streaming video service and began selling videos, books and T-shirts, according to bankruptcy records. In 2007 he incorporated Free Speech Systems and created a series of other companies that held intellectual property and film rights, splitting ownership with his then-wife, Kelly, whom he had met at the public access station.
According to records obtained by The Post, in 2009 Free Speech Systems took in $6.2 million in revenue, including $2.6 million in merchandise sales, $1.6 million in advertising and $1.2 million from his streaming video site.
A few years later, Jones’s business was booming, but his marriage was failing.
In the fall of 2013 – two months before Kelly filed for divorce – Jones and his father created a series of companies, including PQPR, which they said in depositions were aimed at protecting Jones from legal liability as he grew his business. PQPR was owned by two other companies, which in turn were owned by Jones or his parents, a representative of Free Speech Systems said in a deposition filed in the bankruptcy case.
PQPR was worth $4.4 million in 2014, according to an accountant Jones hired in the divorce case, records show. Accountants working for Kelly Jones said it was worth as much as $6.2 million.
Alex Jones recounted during a June deposition in one of the defamation cases that they created the companies after he spoke with attorneys familiar with the Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that regulates dietary supplements. “For liability protection issues, you know, it’s good to have a separate company that then does all of the compliance, buys the products, does all of that,” he said.
Jones’s father said in a deposition filed in the divorce case that Jones recruited him to leave dentistry in order to help professionalize operations and protect the company from liability. “He wanted to be sure that the entities that had been created were up and running properly, that they were legally constituted, that they were doing business as they were supposed to do,” he said, according to a court transcript.
Jones’s ex-wife has alleged that he created the companies as the couple was headed to divorce in order to protect his money, much as the Sandy Hook plaintiffs now accuse him. “Our marriage was absolutely terrible at that time. We were in negotiations for us to break up,” she said in an interview with The Post. “So he did that to hide his assets for when we broke up.”
Records from the divorce case are sealed. It was not clear from the documents obtained by The Post if the court ever directly examined that allegation.
Before the divorce, Kelly was part owner of the main Infowars company and several original affiliates, holding stakes ranging from 49.5 percent to 51 percent, according to records from the divorce case. A 2015 divorce rendition grants her no interest in PQPR or in what were then the newly created companies. Her name does not appear on any of their registration documents.
Those companies all have a stake in Jones’s biggest revenue source: The supplements that he promotes as a way for viewers to improve their health and keep his show running. The supplement sales dramatically boosted his business, according to bankruptcy filings and former employees.
The profit margin on supplements ranges from between three and five times their cost, far more than most of the products he sells, according to the filings. Free Speech Systems often collects $70 million to $80 million annually, according to the accounting expert Jones hired, and it took in more than $500 million in revenue from 2012 to 2022.
Josh Owens, who worked as a video editor at Infowars from 2013 to 2017, said he helped Jones with his first advertisement for an iodine supplement. “Everything changed after that,” he said. “It snowballed after that. It was pretty quickly creating new products, selling new products.”
– – –
In 2018, three years after his divorce was finalized, Sandy Hook families filed a series of lawsuits against Jones. They recounted how he had claimed that the parents were “crisis actors” and that the event was staged to further gun-control efforts.
Jones sought to have the cases thrown out. The day before an appeals court rejected his motion to have one of the cases dismissed, Jones signed a promissory note to PQPR for $29.6 million on Aug. 13, 2020. He also agreed to provide all of his company’s assets and revenue as collateral for the debt to PQPR, according to a contract Jones and his father signed.
On Sept. 27, 2021, a trial court in Texas ruled that Jones had violated the rules of the discovery process by failing to turn records over to the plaintiffs. Four days later, Jones signed an agreement to send PQPR $11,000 per day to cover the alleged debt outlined in the promissory note. On Nov. 10, Jones signed a secondary promissory note saying, in effect, that he had discovered another unpaid debt to PQPR, this time for $25.3 million.
Jones was also taking money out of the company for himself, records from the court cases show. By the end of 2021, he had withdrawn $61.9 million, according to the records. Jones’s attorneys have said in court that the withdrawals occurred over 15 years, and that half that amount was used to pay taxes. The plaintiffs’ attorneys have suggested the withdrawals may have been meant to prevent Sandy Hook families from accessing the money.
In February of this year, Jones transferred ownership of his Austin home – appraised at $2.8 million – into his wife’s name, according to county property records.
His personal trainer, Patrick Riley, in March created a logistics company, Blue Asension Logistics, to pack and ship supplements and other merchandise ordered by Infowars fans. The company hired nearly all of its employees from Infowars and uses the same Infowars warehouse, rent-free, to fulfill the orders, according to Riley’s testimony in the bankruptcy case. Jones agreed to pay him $400,000 upfront and then $105,000 per week, according to bankruptcy records.
Riley did not respond to voice mails seeking comment. He testified that he is the sole owner of the company.
An attorney for the Sandy Hook families, Marty Brimmage, said “this is not an arms-length transaction,” during an Aug. 12 hearing. “It isn’t even close.”
Battaglia argued that, while Riley may be friends with Jones, his business was independent. “Does Mr. Riley have a relationship with Mr. Jones? Absolutely. Is he an insider? No,” Battaglia said in the hearing.
In May and June, Free Speech Systems made six payments totaling $240,000 to a company managed by Jones’s sister, Marleigh Jones Rivera, according to bankruptcy records. The records do not specify who owns the company or the nature of its business.
Marleigh Jones Rivera did not respond to requests for comment.
On Nov. 10, the Connecticut judge temporarily blocked Jones from accessing the company’s money beyond what he needs for “ordinary expenses.”
The bankruptcy judge in Texas, Christopher M. Lopez, is expected to determine whether Jones engaged in fraudulent tactics designed to wall off assets from creditors. If the court finds that he did, the money that has been paid out or committed as debt could be divvied among creditors, said Georgetown University law professor Adam J. Levitin, an expert in corporate bankruptcy.
Levitin said the most likely scenario may be that Free Speech Systems chooses to liquidate, which would likely mean Jones forgoing the rights to all his films, brands and intellectual property, the Infowars name included. “There is nothing beyond a real Hail Mary route for him to avoid liability at this point,” he said.
In one of the defamation courts, Jones apologized to the Sandy Hook families and said he now believes the killings did occur. On his show, he remains defiant.
“I don’t lose sleep at night about giving them a billion dollars,” he said at a news conference he held in Connecticut in October. “They just misrepresent how much money I have. It’s a total fraud.”
This Week, Billionaires Made a Strong Case for Abolishing Themselves
Guest Essay By Anand Giridharadas – November 20, 2022
Mr. Giridharadas is the author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” and other books.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Credit…Tom Brenner for The New York Times
In recent years, a swelling chorus of Americans has grown critical of the nation’s bajillionaires. But in the extraordinary week gone by, that chorus was drowned out by a far louder and more urgent case against them. It was made by the bajillionaires themselves.
One after another, four of our best-known billionaires laid waste to the image of benevolent saviors carefully cultivated by their class.
It is a commendable sacrifice on their part, because billionaires, remember, exist at our collective pleasure. If enough of us decided to, we could enact labor, tax, antitrust and regulatory policies to make it hard for anyone to amass that much wealth while so many beg for scraps. It is not only the vast political power of billionaires that keeps us keeping them around, it’s also the popular embrace of certain myths — about the generosity, the genius, the renegade spirit, the above-it-ness of billionaires, to name a few.
As of this writing, Elon Musk is running Twitter into the ground, with much of the company’s staff fired or quitting, outages spiking and everyone on my timeline hurrying to tell the app the things they have been meaning to say before it departs for app heaven (or hell?).
In tweeting through one of the most extraordinary corporate meltdowns in history, Mr. Musk has been performing a vital public service: shredding the myth of the billionaire genius.
His particular pretension of benevolence is that his uncontainable genius can solve any challenge. Now he is lavishing his mind and time on electronic money, now on colonizing Mars, now on electric cars and solar panels, now on saving Thai soccer players trapped in a cave, now on liberating speech from its liberal oppressors.
Mr. Musk’s genius pose has long been undermined by his actual record, which is defined by claiming credit for what others have built and is shot through with complaints of discrimination, mismanagement and fraud.
But it wasn’t until Mr. Musk took over Twitter that his claim of infinitely transferable genius truly fell apart. That what Mr. Musk has called the global town square can be eviscerated in a time period somewhere between a Scaramucci and a Truss makes one wonder if we should be more skeptical of all the other billionaire geniuses with ideas for our schools, public health systems and politics.
For example, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, who this week was doing his part to undermine another pretension of billionaire benevolence: the generosity pose.
On Monday, he made a big splash when CNN released an interview in which he announced that he was giving the great bulk of his more than $120 billion fortune away, with a focus on fighting climate change and promoting unity.
That sure sounds impressive, but his gesture wasn’t about generosity any more than Herschel Walker’s Senate candidacy in Georgia is for the children. After all, the money Mr. Bezos is now so magnanimously distributing was made through his dehumanizing labor practices, his tax avoidance, his influence peddling, his monopolistic power and other tactics that make him a cause of the problems of modern American life rather than a swashbuckling solution.
It’s too soon to tell if Mr. Bezos’s philanthropy will help others, but what’s certain is that it will help Mr. Bezos a lot. Mega-philanthropists of his ilk tend to give through foundations, which they establish in ways that save them an immense amount in taxes, sometimes merely by moving the money from one of their own accounts to another. Giving will also burnish Mr. Bezos’s reputation, in that way preserving and protecting his opportunity to earn yet more money — and to do more social damage.
And it will increase his already gigantic power over public life. For plutocrats like Mr. Bezos, that may be the biggest payoff of all. Their wealth is so vast that by distributing even a small fraction of it, they skew the public agenda toward the kind of social change they can stomach — the kind that doesn’t threaten them or their class. Shortly before his big announcement, Mr. Bezos gave Dolly Parton a $100 million “Courage and Civility Award” to spend on her chosen causes. Ms. Parton is indeed courageous and civil, but so are the workers fighting to unionize Amazon facilities, and I don’t see anyone offering them nine-digit thank-you bonuses.
But once again, instead of the usual critics having to make this case, this week Mr. Bezos took the wheel. Just minutes after his philanthropy announcement on CNN, news broke that Amazon would be laying off thousands of workers, reminding everyone of what was really going on.
At first glance, the two stories might seem like matter and antimatter, or at least two opposite realities. But they are the same story: The system that treats human beings as disposable commodities upholds and reproduces itself by sprinkling some fairy dust and hoping that we will forget the injustice that paid for it.
Then, of course, there was Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced crypto kingpin whose spectacular downfall, along with that of FTX, the company he founded, caused $32 billion to disappear, much of it belonging to hundreds of thousands of regular people.
Mr. Bankman-Fried embodies another pretension of plutocratic benevolence: that of the renegade, the people’s billionaire. Like many others, he hawked cryptocurrency as a fight against the establishment, against the big banks, against the powers that be, man. He has said his work was motivated by the ideals of effective altruism, a trendy school of thought that encourages people to go out and make as big a heap of money as they can so that they can use it to heal the world. But, as he admitted in an interview this week with Kelsey Piper of Vox, Mr. Bankman-Fried’s claims about the ethical nature of his pursuit were an example of “this dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”
Finally, of course, this week there was Donald Trump (because let’s face it, there’s always Donald Trump), who has incarnated the most dangerous billionaire pretension of all: that of the hero who in all the world is the only one who can save us. He gamed the system so effectively that only he knows how to un-game it; he manipulated politicians so much that only he knows how to drain the swamp; he amassed so much money that only he is above corruption.
On Tuesday night he addressed a crowded room at Mar-a-Lago and, as expected, announced that he was going to run for president again. He said the usual things that politicians are supposed to say, about how he was doing it for America’s benefit. But this time it was no longer possible to imagine that even he believed it. After all, only a week had passed since America had voted in the midterm elections and rejected most of the high-profile candidates he endorsed — in the process, even Republican commentators agree, rejecting him. He dragged the party down so far that it did not regain the Senate and only barely regained the House.
Fearing even more disastrous outcomes, trusted advisers and allies encouraged him not to run again, or at least to delay his announcement. But they were wasting their time. Standing up there onstage, so low-energy that even Jeb Bush’s son felt compelled to comment, Mr. Trump took in the applause but offered no new ideas or directions. It was a variant of the performance that the others had been putting on, but with one crucial difference: Unlike Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos and Mr. Bankman-Fried, who strain to show us how public-spirited they are, Mr. Trump could hardly be bothered to care.
It was a particularly unsubtle reminder that billionaires are not our saviors. They are our mistake.
Russian chess legend says war in Ukraine is a ‘battle between freedom and tyranny’
Alexander Nazaryan, Senior W. H. Correspondent – November 19, 2022
NEW YORK — Chess is a cerebral game, but legendary Soviet grand master Garry Kasparov could make it seem like a contact sport. When he was at the height of his powers in the mid-1980s, he approached the chessboard with the buzzing physical intensity of a wrestler consigned to the wrong contest.
Today, his relentless energies are directed entirely against Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Kasparov approaches with the same singular focus he once reserved for his Soviet nemesis, Anatoly Karpov — who, as it happens, now serves as a pro-Putin parliamentarian. But if the Kremlin autocrat disgusts him, nothing enrages Kasparov like Western hand-wringing over how much to help Ukraine, and for how long.
“Putin is attacking not just Ukraine. He is attacking the entire system of international cooperation,” Kasparov told Yahoo News in a recent interview. “Ukraine is on the frontline of this battle between freedom and tyranny.”
Garry Kasparov at the Congress of Free Russia in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sept. 1. (Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
Last week’s congressional elections in the U.S. could complicate Ukrainian aid, especially if Republican skepticism hardens into outright resistance. Speaking at a press conference last week, President Biden expressed hope that aid to Ukraine would continue — but also bristled at charges that he’d given Ukraine too much.
“We’ve not given Ukraine a blank check,” the president told reporters, alluding to a complaint about the extent of Ukraine-focused spending made by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who will assume the role of House speaker in January. “There’s a lot of things that Ukraine wants that we didn’t do.”
That is precisely the kind of talk that frustrates Kasparov. He praises Biden’s support of the Ukrainian effort, which has been consistently supplemented by European allies, but can’t imagine its scope being scaled back. “It was much less than Ukraine needed and wanted, but much more than Putin expected.”
The war in Ukraine is closer to poker than chess, a contest of stare-downs and bluffs. On the chessboard, an opponent has nowhere to hide his pieces, but poker is by its nature a game of incomplete information, of trying to guess and then being forced to act on those guesses.
Is one of the cards Putin is holding a nuclear strike? How long can an energy-starved Europe last before folding? How long will American aid last?
Kasparov does not ignore those very real considerations, but he also refuses to become paralyzed by the infinite varieties of geopolitical speculation. For him, the war retains an unignorable moral clarity. “I believe Ukraine can and will win,” he says. “I think it’s inevitable. It’s a matter of the cost. And every day of delay, of giving Ukraine what it needs to win, simply is pushing this cost up.”
Russia President Vladimir Putin at a videoconference at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow on Monday. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Utterly unpalatable to Kasparov is the argument that Ukraine should sue for peace, not because the war is going badly for Kyiv but because it is expensive for Washington, London and Berlin.
That was the widely understood subtext of a letter sent on Oct. 24 by House progressives to Biden, urging him to “pursue every diplomatic avenue” while pointing out — not incorrectly — that the war is “fueling inflation and high oil prices for Americans in recent months.” A furor followed, and a day later the letter was recalled, but not without the Russians having noticed growing American reluctance to fund the Ukrainian resistance.
Kasparov finds such talk exceptionally dangerous. He thinks of the conflict in the Manichaean world of chess, where there is only black and white, defeat or victory. Either the West defeats Putin, or Putin defeats the West. “If we capitulate today in light of Putin’s nuclear blackmail, who’s to say that he won’t use the same exact blackmail five years later, six years later?” Kasparov wonders, his tone and expression suggesting this is far from an idle musing.
“And who’s to say,” he continues, “that other dictators around the world won’t look at this and say, ‘Oh, look at that. The West is willing to capitulate to nuclear blackmail? Why don’t we do the same thing?’ And for countries that don’t have nuclear weapons today? Why shouldn’t they have nuclear weapons if nuclear weapons are effective, and helping them get what they want?”
In a photo released on Oct. 26, a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile is test-fired as part of Russia’s nuclear drills in Plesetsk, northwestern Russia. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
Kasparov was especially dismayed — and, characteristically, infuriated — by Elon Musk’s “peace plan,” which would effectively cede vast swaths of Ukraine to Russia. Kremlin propagandists instantly embraced the idea, pointing to condemnation from the American political and media establishment as evidence that Musk (who did not respond to a Yahoo News request for comment sent over Twitter) had spoken some forbidden, consensus-shattering truth.
“He’s buying Russian propaganda points,” Kasparov says of Musk. “It’s very, very damaging.”
Kasparov left Russia in 2013, disgusted by the ever-deepening repressions of the Putin regime. In 2015 he published “Winter Is Coming,” an urgent warning to Western policymakers about Putin, whom he called “clearly the biggest and most dangerous threat facing the world today.”
Never especially shy or circumspect, Kasparov blames President Barack Obama for trying to “reset” relations with Putin shortly after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, in what was the first incursion by the Kremlin into a sovereign nation since the fall of the Soviet Union. Later, Obama warned that if Russia crossed a “red line” in Syria and used chemical weapons in support of Bashar Assad’s regime, “there would be enormous consequences.”
Putin and President Barack Obama at a bilateral meeting during a G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, in 2012. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
Then Russia did use chemical weapons. “And Obama blinked,” Kasparov laments, charging the president with “weakness.” It’s not clear, however, what Obama — already managing two costly conflicts, in Afghanistan and Iraq — could have done to stop Putin, short of a military intervention that likely would have been unpalatable to the American public. A representative for the former president did not respond to a request for comment.
No development emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine, Kasparov argues, like the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. “I wouldn’t call it withdrawal. It was a stampede,” he told Yahoo News. “And it was a disaster. And undoubtedly, it added to Putin’s confidence.”
Today, the 59-year-old New York resident — who is retired from professional chess but still teaches a class on MasterClass — runs the Renew Democracy Initiative, a nonprofit that closely coordinates aid efforts with not-for-profit relief organizations working in Ukraine, which RDI executive director Uriel Epshtein says ensures that supplies and funds get to the right people, in the right places, instead of being squandered or lost.
“It’s our responsibility to give them what they need not merely to survive, not just enough to survive, but enough to actually win the war,” Epshtein, the son of Soviet immigrants who settled in New Jersey, told Yahoo News. He also described efforts in what has come to be known as the “information space,” which the Kremlin has tried to flood with its own propaganda.
Kasparov on MasterClass. (PR Newswire via AP)
RDI works with retired U.S. Gen. Ben Hodges to produce short, polished videos that explain the state of war in digestible terms. It has also solicited and published essays by dissidents from around the world in partnership with CNN, part of a series called Voices of Freedom. Contributors have included, among others, the Egyptian-American dissident Mohamed Soltan and the Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad, who was recently the target of an assassination attempt in New York.
“They have the credibility to break through our partisan shields,” Epshtein says, “to remind us that America is a force for good, and it can remain a force for good.”
That argument has been challenged by Putin’s dark tirades against what he has described as a West whose colonial bloodlust, in his telling, has been married to an anti-Christian progressive agenda. As the war has gone ever more poorly for Russia, these anti-Western screeds have grown ever more sharp.
“Putin’s Russia is on a steep decline,” Kasparov says. “I don’t believe that by next spring Russia will be able to conduct this war.” Recent military advances by Ukraine, including most recently the liberation of Kherson, do give hope of an eventual Ukrainian battlefield victory.
Here Epshtein intercedes: “It’s up to us,” he says.
GOP billionaire mega-donors distance themselves from Trump’s 2024 run
Alexandra Semenova, Reporter – November 18, 2022
Former President Donald Trump is pressing on with another bid for the White House.
But Trump can’t yet count on the financial support of some wealthy backers who once stood in his corner.
At least three billionaire mega-donors to the Republican party have already distanced themselves from his 2024 campaign, with one prominent benefactor not even waiting for Trump’s announcement to throw cold water on the former president’s prospects.
At the start of the week, Trump drew the ire of hedge fund Citadel’s billionaire founder and CEO Ken Griffin, a prominent GOP donor.
Griffin called Trump a “three-time loser” at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore on Tuesday, just hours before Trump officially entered the presidential race in a Tuesday evening announcement. The Citadel chief executive said the former president should step aside for fresh faces like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has yet to announce a formal run but is widely expected to enter the race.
A day later, Trump’s Wall Street ally Stephen Schwarzman, the founder and CEO of private equity giant Blackstone, said he will not back the former president.
Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone sits near former U.S. President Donald Trump on April 11, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)
“America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, not today and yesterday,” Schwarzman said in a statement Wednesday, first reported by Axios. “It is time for the Republican party to turn to a new generation of leaders and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.”
Longtime Trump pal Ronald Lauder, the son of Estée Lauder and heir to the cosmetic fortune, also said he will not back Trump’s White House run, CNBC reported Wednesday.
Defections from from the three billionaires deal a symbolic blow to Trump’s early re-election efforts given their public influence as two of the GOP’s biggest political donors.
Leading up to the midterm elections, Griffin was the third-largest donor in this year’s political cycle, shelling out more than $68 million to Republican efforts, according to OpenSecrets, the nonprofit organization tracking spending on campaigns and lobbying. Schwarzman allotted more than $35 million to the party over 2022.
Other billionaire donors to the GOP that could follow suit in breaking from Trump’s run include shipping conglomerate Uline founders Richard Ellis Uihlein and Elizabeth Uihlein, options trader Jeffrey S. Yass, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, whose donations to Republican efforts this year totaled about $81 million, $44 million and $31 million, respectively.
6 Popular Supplements Don’t Lower ‘Bad’ Cholesterol, Study Finds
Kristin Kirkpatrick – November 17, 2022
Longhua Liao
About 94 million U.S. adults have cholesterol levels higher than normal laboratory values, yet only a little more than half of these individuals use pharmacological approaches to treat it. A new study found that six popular supplements didn’t lower “bad” cholesterol levels or improve cardiovascular health, but statin medications did.
The study, presented at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions and published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, sheds light on the effectiveness of statin drugs in lowering LDL cholesterol versus supplements. It was conducted at the Cleveland Clinic and funded by AstraZeneca, which makes the statin that was used in the study.
The trial followed 190 adults between the ages of 40 to 75 with no history of cardiovascular disease for 28 days. Individuals were randomized into groups and given either a low-dose statin medication (5mg of rosuvastatin daily), placebo or supplement. The supplements included fish oil, cinnamon, garlic, turmeric, plant sterols or red yeast rice. At the end of the trial, researchers assessed the percentage change in LDL cholesterol from baseline. Researchers found that the statin drug reduced LDL cholesterol by more (a 37.9% decrease in LDL cholesterol and a 24% decrease in total cholesterol) than all the supplements and the placebo.
In fact, none of the supplements showed any significant reductions in LDL cholesterol compared to the placebo and each supplement. As an added benefit, the statin drug was also found to reduce triglycerides (a marker of fat in the blood) and total cholesterol.
Dr. Luke Laffin was the lead author on the trial and is a cardiologist and co-director for the Center for Blood Pressure Disorders at Cleveland Clinic. Laffin said that the popularity of supplements among his patients as a motivating factor in conducting the study. He explained that “we see our patients taking all the tested supplements for ‘heart health’ or ‘cholesterol management’ — and that’s why we chose to evaluate them in the study.” Laffin said the most common that he sees in clinical practice are fish oil, red yeast rice, turmeric, and garlic.
There were several limitations to the trial. For example, the duration of the intervention was only 28 days in length. Although this time frame falls within the timeline of assessing the impact of statins based on the 2018 American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association guidelines, more studies may be needed to determine more long-term results. “We cannot definitively say that supplements would not have an impact if taken for longer,” Laffin said.
Dr. Paul Jurgens, preventative cardiologist at South Denver Cardiology Associates in Littleton, Colorado, was not involved with the study but is familiar with the findings. Jurgens said he was not surprised by the results, noting that “there have been some studies in the past looking at red yeast rice and garlic. These studies have not shown significant reductions in LDL cholesterol which is a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke.”
What to know about supplements and cardiovascular health
While supplements have often received mixed data in terms of effectiveness for lowering lipids, other studies have demonstrated potential benefits to other cardiac risk factors. A 2022 study, for example, showed that fish oil supplementation might help lower blood pressure. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that folic acid and B12 supplementation may reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Despite some positive data, the Food and Drug Administration regulates supplements differently than foods and drug products so consumers may need professional guidance in identifying which options are high quality, appropriate — and without added risk.
Laffin cautioned that patients need to assess the risk of treating high cholesterol with supplements. “One potential risk of supplements is that patients are not addressing a known cardiovascular risk factor — high cholesterol. Another risk of supplements is drug to drug interactions. We often do not know what is in these products, and they can interact with medications taken for any number of medical conditions,” he explained.
Lifestyle changes and, for some, medication play a role in lowering cholesterol
Lifestyle approaches, such as diet, exercise, and stress management, have also been cited as contributing factors in lowering and managing high cholesterol. Studies have shown that specific dietary patterns, such as the Nordic diet, may also help reduce cholesterol. Particular foods such as avocados, walnuts, and soy have also been implicated in reductions and incorporation of physical activity, and relaxation techniques such as yoga may also play a role.
Laffin explained that lifestyle changes “clearly play a role and can help not only with cholesterol reduction but reducing overall cardiovascular risk.” He also pointed out that genetics play a role as well, stating that a “large contribution to cholesterol levels are genetically mediated so certain individuals even with great lifestyle habits also need cholesterol-lowering medications.”
Jurgens agreed that lifestyle intervention is a key factor in management, stating, “For all of my patients, regardless of where they are in their heart health, I always recommend a combination of dietary interventions and physical activity.” He also frequently uses statins in his practice as well, explaining that, for his patients, he “calculates a unique and personalized risk assessment and then potentially recommends statins from there.”
Laffin explained that “cholesterol management is not one thing or another but rather a combination of factors. “An important point to remember is that it’s not a question of medications or lifestyle — the two go hand in hand. As I say to my patients, cardiovascular risk reduction takes a three-pronged approach: nutrition, exercise, and in certain cases, medications.”
Some studies have shown statin medication has benefits beyond improving cholesterol levels. A 2002 study showed that statin drugs might help reduce the risk of depression, and a 2022 analysis showed that they might even plan a role in preventing cancer cell metastasis. Statins have even been cited to positively impact the severity of COVID-19.
A 2018 review examining the treatment of cardiovascular disease found that diets heavy in plant-based foods, which provide a natural source of vitamins and minerals, should be reinforced as a treatment over the supplemental form. This advice aligns with the current trial’s findings: Eat more plants, move, and, if necessary, consider discussing stains with your physician. There is no one size fits all approach to health. Working with your physician on sustainable approaches that lead you towards a path of happiness, health, and longevity is perhaps the first step to better cholesterol levels.
Editor’s note: The author is a registered dietitian who works at the Cleveland Clinic, but had no role in the study.
CORRECTION (Nov. 18, 2022 at 8:41 a.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated that supplements are unregulated. The FDA regulates supplements under a different set of regulations than those covering food and drug products.
Global population passes 8 billion, says UN amid concerns of impact on climate crisis
Sravasti Dasgupta – November 15, 2022
The world population has crossed eight billion, the United Nations said on Tuesday as it warned of the impact of climate change and resource scarcity.
John Wilmoth, director of the UN’s population division said that reaching eight billion people is “a sign of human success, but it’s also a great risk for our future”.
According to a statement by the UN, the global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950.
UN projections suggest that the global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050.
It is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and to remain at that level until 2100.
The figures were earlier released by the UN in a report ahead of World Population Day in July.
“China and India, with more than 1.4 billion each, accounted for most of the population in these two regions,” the report said.
“India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023,” it added.
Despite the global population increasing, experts say that the growth rate has fallen steadily to less than 1 per cent per year.
“A big part of this story is that this era of rapid population growth that the world has known for centuries is coming to an end,” Mr Wilmoth said.
Experts have warned that the rising population combined with the impact of climate change will adversely affect vulnerable nations and people.
Deborah Balk, a demographic researcher at the City University of New York, said: “African cities will, on average, grow.”
Ms Balk said that this will leave millions more urban dwellers exposed to climate threats such as rising seas.
Analysts warn that there will also be resource scarcity with the population rise.
“Every single person needs fuel, wood, water, and a place to call home,” said Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director at Center for Biological Diversity.
UN officials have also said that rising population is likely to impact achieving sustainable development goals.
“The relationship between population growth and sustainable development is complex and multidimensional” said Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs in a statement.
“Rapid population growth makes eradicating poverty, combatting hunger and malnutrition, and increasing the coverage of health and education systems more difficult.
“Conversely, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those related to health, education and gender equality, will contribute to reducing fertility levels and slowing global population growth.”
Why a Trump-appointed Texas judge blocked Biden’s student-debt cancellation plan
Ayelet Sheffey – November 14, 2022
A view of the US Capitol before a news conference to discuss student-debt cancellation on September 29, 2022.Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Trump-appointed Judge Mark Pittman struck down Biden’s debt relief in Texas last week.
He argued the two student-loan borrowers who sued have sufficient standing to block the plan.
But some legal experts and Democrats said Pittman should never have taken up the case in the first place.
A federal judge doesn’t think President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel student debt for millions of borrowers is legal.
On Thursday evening, Mark Pittman — a Texas judge appointed by former President Donald Trump — struck down Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student-loans for federal borrowers making under $125,000 a year. He ruled in favor of two student-loan borrowers who filed the lawsuit because each of them didn’t qualify for the full amount of relief, and at this point, Pittman’s ruing bars the Education Department from discharging student loans until a final verdict is made.
The Texas case, along with a number of other lawsuits backed by conservative groups, challenges Biden’s authority to use the HEROES Act of 2003, which gives the Education Secretary the ability to waive or modify student-loan balances in connection with a national emergency, like COVID-19. They claimed that enacting broad student-loan forgiveness is an overreach of the authority and should require Congressional approval, while Biden has maintained one-time student-loan forgiveness is well within the administration’s legal authority.
Pittman appeared sympathetic to the conservatives’ arguments in his ruling. “This case involves the question of whether Congress—through the HEROES Act—gave the Secretary authority to implement a Program that provides debt forgiveness to millions of student-loan borrowers, totaling over $400 billion,” Pittman wrote in his ruling. “Whether the Program constitutes good public policy is not the role of this Court to determine. Still, no one can plausibly deny that it is either one of the largest delegations of legislative power to the executive branch, or one of the largest exercises of legislative power without congressional authority in the history of the United States.”
The other lawsuits are also moving through the courts. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, for example, ruled on Monday that its temporary pause on student-debt relief will remain in place until further orders from the court on a separate lawsuit in which six Republican-led states sued the loan forgiveness, arguing it would hurt their states’ tax revenues.
One of the key parts of Pittman’s ruling is that the plaintiffs actually met the legal requirements for a valid lawsuit. He ruled that they have standing to sue the administration, but several prominent Democrats and legal experts have questioned that decision — and other courts have thrown out similar conservative lawsuits due to a lack of standing.
The plaintiffs’ standing to sue
Both of the plaintiffs who brought the Texas lawsuit hold student loans. The first plaintiff, Myra Brown, sued because her loans are commercially-held and therefore ineligible for Biden’s debt relief, which requires the borrower to owe their debt directly to the federal government. And the other plaintiff, Alexander Taylor, sued because he was eligible only for $10,000 in debt forgiveness and not the full $20,000 since he did not receive a Pell Grant in college.
They both argued they were not given the opportunity to challenge the relief before its announcement since it didn’t go through the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice-and-comment period, and they said that failure to go through typical rulemaking processes, along with overstepping authority granted through the HEROES Act, were reasons why the debt relief should be blocked.
Pittman ruled that the plaintiffs have valid reasons for suing the administration. In his opinion, Pittman wrote that standing contains three legal requirements: there must be concrete injury, there must be causation, and there must be redressability, which is the likelihood the requested relief — in this case, blocking debt cancellation — would repair the injury caused. Pittman said that Biden’s Justice Department argument that the plaintiffs’ standing does not exist is “untrue.”
“Plaintiffs do not argue that they are injured because other people are receiving loan forgiveness,” Pittman wrote. “Their injury—no matter how many people are receiving loan forgiveness—is that they personally did not receive forgiveness and were denied a procedural right to comment on the Program’s eligibility requirements.”
And while Pittman concluded that debt relief did not violate procedural requirements, he said it violates authority under the HEROES Act because the “pandemic was declared a national emergency almost three years ago and declared weeks before the Program by the President as ‘over.’ Thus, it is unclear if COVID-19 is still a ‘national emergency’ under the Act.”
Some Democrats and legal experts take issue with the ruling
While Republican lawmakers were quick to laud Pittman’s decision, some legal experts weren’t sold on the merits of the ruling. Steve Vladeck, a CNN legal analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, wrote in an opinion piece that “the biggest problem with Pittman’s ruling isn’t its substance; it’s why he allowed the case to be brought in the first place.”
Vladeck referenced prior conservative lawsuits seeking to challenge the debt relief that had been dismissed for lack of standing, and that if “the complaint is just that the government is acting unlawfully in a way that doesn’t affect plaintiffs personally, that’s a matter to be resolved through the political process – not a judicial one.”
And Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Law, wrote on Twitter that the ruling “is just the latest example of Trump-appointed district judges doing completely outlandish, lawless things to rule against policies by Democratic administrations,” referring to what she said was a lack of standing on the plaintiffs’ side.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren also slammed the ruling, telling NBC News on Sunday that “we have a court down in Texas, and if they’re going to play politics instead of actually following the law, they do put the program at risk.”
Mexico releases ‘ambitious’ renewable energy targets to fight climate change
Ben Adler, Senior Editor – November 14, 2022
U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard hold a press conference at the COP27 climate conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
Mexico announced Monday that it plans to dramatically increase the amount of power it generates from renewable sources of energy, deploying more than 30 additional gigawatts of annual electricity generation from wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower by 2030.
The new clean energy targets were made public at a news conference at the United Nations climate change conference, known as COP27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. By the end of the decade, Mexico aims to generate more than 40 gigawatts of power from wind and solar alone.
As of 2019, Mexico had 80 gigawatts of installed electricity generation capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The majority of that comes from natural gas, while renewables account for 10% and hydropower 7%, so the new target would represent a major shift toward a largely renewable energy portfolio if the country succeeds in meeting its new target.
John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate change, joined Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard at Monday’s news conference.
U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry speaks at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
“Secretary Kerry indicated his support for Mexico’s new renewable goal, and the United States intends to work closely with Mexico to achieve these ambitious goals, including through U.S. efforts to mobilize financial support and joint efforts to catalyze and incentivize investments into new Mexican renewable energy deployment and transmission,” the U.S. Embassy in Mexico reported.
Mexico is the 13th-largest global emitter of greenhouse gases. It is one of the few countries that updated its plan to reduce emissions at COP27, pledging to reduce emissions by 35% from business-as-usual levels by 2030. The renewable energy targets are intended to help it meet that goal. Mexico also said it plans to double its spending on clean energy by 2030, protect more of its forests, increase electric vehicle usage and cut down on methane emissions from its oil and gas drilling sectors.
“This is a huge, significant shift from where Mexico was last year in Glasgow,” Kerry told reporters on Saturday, in response to Mexico’s new emissions reduction promise and in reference to the last climate change conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland. Kerry added that he had negotiated extensively with his Mexican counterparts and said Mexico has “extraordinary availability of sun, extraordinary availability of wind power.”
Earlier on Monday the U.S. and China achieved a diplomatic breakthrough when President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to restart stalled climate change negotiations.
The sun sets behind the sign showing the logo of the COP27 climate conference at the Sharm el-Sheikh resort. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)
Kerry has been working to persuade large developing countries to take new actions to decarbonize their economies and offering assistance to do so. Last week, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union countries committed to jointly mobilizing $8.5 billion to finance South Africa’s deployment of electric vehicles and clean energy and a new low-carbon source of energy called ‘green hydrogen.'” On Monday, Indonesia announced the planned retirement of a coal-fired power plant with assistance from the Asian Development Bank, and it is expected to announce on Tuesday a similar plan to South Africa’s.
Still, COP27 is not expected to produce significant changes in the global emissions trajectory, as the biggest emitters, such as the United States and China, have not lowered their planned emissions in this decade. But on Monday, in what climate change activists consider a sign of potential progress, President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that the two countries will put aside their differences over tense issues such as the fate of Taiwan and try to work together on climate change.
