| Ex-DOJ official: Trump was 'vulnerable' to foreign intelligence agencies Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:44 PM PST  Mary McCord, the top Justice Department official who oversaw the FBI investigation into Donald Trump's ties to Russia in its early stages, talks to the Yahoo News "Skullduggery" podcast.
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| Alyssa Milano’s 'facts are wrong': Andrew Yang refutes activist’s allegations of campaign staffer sexual misconduct Posted: 14 Dec 2019 08:58 AM PST  Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang denied allegations made by actress Alyssa Milano that an unnamed campaign engaged in sexual misconduct, saying the matter had been looked at promptly.
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| The ‘Little Kids’ Suspected in Tessa Majors’ Murder Posted: 14 Dec 2019 02:23 AM PST  Five days before 18-year-old Barnard College student Tessa Majors was slashed to death in Morningside Park at the edge of campus, a younger teenage girl was chased into the 118 Deli one block further away.The younger girl lost her footing as a boy who would prove to be 13 came in after her."He kicked her on the floor," the woman behind the counter would recall. "Situation like that, all I know is I got to call the cops. Once I see something like that, I'm calling the cops."The counterwoman, who declined to give a reporter her name, made the call. She then took a cellphone photo through the deli window of the boy after he rejoined four other young teens out on Manhattan Avenue, two male, two female.The boy who had kicked the girl wore a black parka with red and white stripes, the hood up. He and his friends had departed by the time police responded.The girl who had been kicked remained in the store. The counterwoman had been told that the boy and the girl were an item, and she offered her the same advice she would have given in an instance of adult domestic violence."I told her to speak with the cops," the counterwoman recalled.Barnard Student Who Came to NYC Full of Hope Has Unimaginable EndThe girl did as she was advised. But there wasn't much the cops could do, just as there was not much they could do when another of the teens stole a box of bite-sized cakes from the deli and when they threatened the 67-year-old manager, Rachid Ousaji. He had the audacity to tell them "Don't steal" and they challenged him to come out from behind the counter, intimating they would do him bodily harm. "They start talking bad; 'Come over and I will show you,'" Ousaji recalled on Friday.The teens had hit the man who worked the counter in the afternoon in the face with a snowball. "They robbing the store, I told them to stop," the man recalled.The afternoon counterman had made another of many calls of his own to the police in recent weeks."I call, I call, I call," he reported on Friday. "Sometimes, I'm shamed to always call 911."The people who run the deli say the kids often spoke of committing robberies. The woman said she heard some time back that they had robbed somebody in Morningside Park, a block away.On Wednesday evening, the whole city heard of another robbery in the park, this involving a knife and resulting in the death of Tessa Majors, an incandescent 18-year-old Barnard College freshman from Virginia. "The first thing that came to mind was those kids," the woman behind the counter recalled.So, the counterwoman was not surprised when the police became the ones to call the deli. A detective said they were looking for a group of teens in connection with the killing. "They said the kids that have been making all the problems here is the same kids," the woman behind the counter later told a reporter.The detective came and took the device that recorded the surveillance camera footage on the day of the crime. "They said they want the video to see [the teens] all together," the counterwoman said.At 2:20 p.m., when nearby Public School/Intermediate School 180 let out for the day and the boy who had kicked the girl would normally have been causing more problems at the deli, he was in Family Court, charged with felony murder. He was arraigned as a juvenile rather than as an adult because he was not believed to have actually inflicted the wounds that resulted in the death of Tessa Majors. "I'm 13," he replied when asked to state his age.Detective Vincent Signoretti testified that the 13-year-old had confessed to robbing Majors along with two other teens: a 14-year-old who had also been arrested and a third teen who remained at large. By the 13-year-old's account as told by the detective, the three teens had considered robbing a man before targeting Majors. The 13-year-old had cast himself as almost a spectator while one of his pals rifled her pockets and the other pal applied a chokehold such as been popular with New York muggers since the "bad old days" of the 1980s. One of the pals dropped a knife and the 13-year-old said he had picked it up and given it to them. The teen still at large began stabbing Majors, slicing through her down jacket and causing feathers to fly in the air. She had struggled up the steps leading to Columbia University and Barnard. The teens fled in the direction of their middle school and the deli and their homes.The 13-year-old was remanded without bail."This time they got themselves into something," the counterwoman at the deli said. "Somebody died."The screen on the wall that usually carries images of the surveillance cameras was blank. The detectives were still checking the footage. "They want to know what time he was hanging around here, make sure it's him and where he was," the counterwoman said.The superintendent for the apartment building that includes the deli came in. He had often called the police on the 13-year-old and other young teens who seemed to be growing ever more out of control even as the neighborhood itself grew more gentrified. "The neighborhood start picking up, but these little kids…" the super, 53-year-old Tyrone Singleton, said. "The kids out there, no home training, just getting wild. They're just getting crazier." He added, "You'd figure it'd be an older kid messing with you. No, [it's] 12- or 13-year-old kids. What do they know about things? It's just crazy."The "No Trespassing" signs he posted in the building mean nothing. He calls the police every other day to have the kids cleared from the lobby and hallways and stairwells."Soon as the cops leave, they right back," he reported. The Majors killing struck doubly close to home for him, not just because the murder scene was a block away but also because his own 18-year-old daughter is away at college, attending the State University of New York at Plattsburgh."I gave my daughter a stun gun," he said. "I had to. You got to be careful."He then said, "I'm going tomorrow morning to pick her up for the holidays."He was wearing a proud-dad Plattsburgh hooded sweatshirt and his smile made you think that Majors' father would no doubt have been equally thrilled to have his daughter back home for Christmas. Your next thought was of what the holidays will be like for Majors' family without her. Singleton then strode out beneath the blank surveillance screen that has often shown the 13-year-old and his pals in the deli and in the street outside.A number of very polite young teens came in to buy snacks, suddenly the manifest majority in the absence of the hooligans. They included a 13-year-old girl who gazed at the counterwoman's cellphone photo of the boy in the black parka with red and stripes standing outside the deli with his buddies. The girl allowed that she knew the boy, though only through a mutual acquaintance. She was told the boy had been arrested in connection with a murder and she went quiet for a moment before the enormity of that fact. She then said she had been with friends the day before who had wanted to play basketball in the park only to find it closed off by the police."They said something happened," the girl now reported.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| The campaign to stop Brexit is over and Britain is heading for another decade of Conservative dominance Posted: 12 Dec 2019 03:25 PM PST  If borne out in the results, the official exit poll suggests the UK is heading for Brexit and at least ten more years of Conservative government
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| 2 children dead after being swept away in Arizona floodwaters Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:34 AM PST  The bodies of two children were found about three miles from the crash scene.
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| Iran Demands $6 Billion Oil Payment From South Korea: Chosun Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:47 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry called in the South Korean ambassador last month to demand payment of 7 trillion won ($6 billion) for oil it sold to the Asian country, Chosun Ilbo reported, citing officials it didn't identify.Iran expressed "strong regret" over Seoul's failure to complete the payment, which has been deposited at two South Korean banks without being transferred to Iran's central bank for years due to U.S. sanctions against the Middle Eastern country, the newspaper said. It added that other Iranian authorities including the central bank also complained.South Korea sent a delegation to the Middle East late last month and explained that the country will cooperate with the U.S. to successfully complete transfer of the payment, it added.To contact the reporter on this story: Kanga Kong in Seoul at kkong50@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Sara Marley, Siraj DatooFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| In 2030, What Countries Will Have the Most Power Airforces? Posted: 12 Dec 2019 06:30 PM PST  We can tell you.
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| The 10 Best Tech Gadgets of 2019 Posted: 13 Dec 2019 11:58 AM PST |
| Anger erupts at U.N. climate summit as major economies resist bold action Posted: 14 Dec 2019 02:28 AM PST  Major economies resisted calls for bolder climate commitments as a U.N. summit in Madrid limped toward a delayed conclusion on Saturday, dimming hopes that nations will act in time to stop rising temperatures devastating people and the natural world. With the two-week gathering spilling into the weekend, campaigners and many delegates slammed Chile, presiding over the talks, for drafting a summit text that they said risked throwing the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle global warming into reverse. "At a time when scientists are queuing up to warn about terrifying consequences if emissions keep rising, and school children are taking to the streets in their millions, what we have here in Madrid is a betrayal of people across the world," said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate and energy think-tank in Nairobi.
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| Turns out I'm Jewish after all Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:45 AM PST ![Turns out I'm Jewish after all]( "Turns out I'm Jewish after all") Being Jewish has become hard again.After decades when Jews in America permitted themselves to believe they had finally found a welcoming home in a majority Christian, creedally universalist country, things have begun to shift in familiar and terrifying ways. Jews have been murdered in synagogues and kosher delis in the United States. They are regularly harassed and beaten on the streets of American cities. Swastikas scrawled on walls, acts of attempted arson and vandalism at synagogues, shouted slurs — the stories add up, amplifying one another and mixing with similar and worse stories from abroad.Over a hundred gravestones in a Jewish cemetery in France were spray-painted with swastikas earlier this month. It was the latest in a seemingly endless series of incidents across the continent. And of course leaders (and would-be leaders) of nations, along with prime-time TV pundits, now actively encourage such demonization, turning Jewish philanthropists into scapegoats, blaming them for a wide range of injustices. As enemies of the Jewish people have always done.It's a painful spectacle for anyone committed to liberal ideals of pluralism and tolerance. But it's especially, existentially, agonizing for Jews themselves — even for bad, part-time Jews like me.I was born Jewish — my father is the son of orthodox Jewish immigrants from Central Europe (Poland and Austria), and my mother a convert — but for much of the past two decades, that hasn't much mattered. I grew up identifying as a Jew, but we never worshipped at a synagogue (even on high holy days). I received no Jewish education. There was no Hebrew school. No bar mitzvah.By the time I started to sense religious stirrings in my late 20s, I knew far more about Christian, and especially Catholic, theology and moral teaching than I did about Judaism. Plus, by then I'd gone and done what American Jews are often warned against doing (and yet increasingly do anyway): I married a non-Jew. That my wife's family hoped and expected our children to be raised Catholic made the path forward obvious. I would repudiate my upbringing by converting to Catholicism.As regular readers know, the conversion didn't take. After 17 years, in August 2018, I publicly renounced Catholicism. The decision was mainly motivated by disgust at the church's systematic sexual perversion and corruption. But there was also something else going on.Exploration of existential possibilities is relatively easy in good times. When I turned away from my birthright, I knew it was a rejection — a turning of my back on my family, an act of disregard for the demographic fate of the Jewish community, which would lose me and my progeny forevermore. But I would still express love for my family in other ways, and my rejection of Judaism seemed like the infliction of a very small harm. True, there aren't that many Jews in the world. But really, how important was little old me, my kids, and those who would follow us? And anyway, the Jews were doing just fine — in the U.S., in other liberal democracies around the world, in Israel. My contribution seemed pretty close to infinitesimal, utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of Jewish history.But things look and feel very different in dark times. Not that I'm now deluded enough to think the fate of Judaism in the world depends in any measurable way on whether or not I call myself a Jew or rise in defense of Jews when they face threat or come under outright attack. Of course it doesn't. I'm as infinitesimal and irrelevant as ever. Yet the fact remains that my youthful shirking of my inheritance no longer feels like a liberation. It feels more like an act of cowardice, perhaps even an expression of decadence, a sign that I took certain things for granted that no Jew should ever treat as a given.I also fear that at some level I was trying to hide, conceal, or camouflage myself by seeking to blend in so thoroughly and completely to the default Christianity of the surrounding culture. At the time of my conversion, in the center-right circles where I then worked, that culture was maximally welcoming of my spiritual decision while also treating the Judaism I left behind with a great deal of sincere respect. The borderline between traditions and faiths felt porous. Permeable.But not anymore. Walls are going up. Hard edges and irreconcilable differences are returning all over the liberal democratic world, raising a serious question about whether and to what extent that world will remain liberal and democratic. It would be nice if the cosmopolitan universalism that prevailed in the decade or so following the conclusion of the Cold War — during the era when so many of us permitted ourselves to believe that history had come to a peaceful end — could continue to feel compelling in the face of this threat. But it doesn't. It feels like foolishness. The world has changed, and we are changing with it. And we don't know how far the change is going to go.Turns out I'm Jewish after all. However malformed and badly enacted that Jewishness is and has been. The times are no longer compatible with, they no longer afford me the luxury of, denying it. Anything else would be irresponsible.That certainly doesn't mean I'll stop being infuriatingly, unreliably contrarian in my judgment of political issues and disputes. I'll continue to judge Israel's settlement policies and some of its punitive actions against the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza to be acts of moral and strategic idiocy. But I'll also continue to defend Israel's unconditional right to exist and defend itself against military threat. I'll continue to view President Trump's gestures of support for Jews with considerable skepticism — as incompatible with free speech and as doing little to compensate for the much greater harm precipitated by his intolerant and inflammatory rhetoric, which has done so much to activate previously dormant racism and anti-Semitism in the country. But I'll also continue to think of Judaism as a nationality or ethnicity as well as a religion. (Otherwise I could never have been considered a Jew in the first place.)But then what does my reaffirmation of my own Judaism amount to?All it means is that if things get worse — and who would dare try to reassure a Jew that it won't? — I will know exactly how and where I'll be taking my stand: in proud, defiant self-defense with my fellow Jews.More stories from theweek.com Trump's pathological obsession with being laughed at The most important day of the impeachment inquiry Jerry Falwell Jr.'s false gospel of memes
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| Satellite evades ‘day of reckoning' to discover puzzling weather phenomenon on Jupiter Posted: 13 Dec 2019 04:51 PM PST  At first glance, these newly released images by NASA may look like lava churning in the heart of a volcano, but they reveal otherworldly storm systems whirling in a way that surprised scientists.The swirls in the photos are cyclones around Jupiter's south pole, captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft on Nov. 3, 2019. Juno has been orbiting the solar system's largest planet since 2016 and has seen these polar cyclones before, but its latest flight over this region of the planet revealed a startling discovery - a new cyclone had formed unexpectedly. Six cyclones can be seen at Jupiter's south pole in this infrared image taken on Feb. 2, 2017, during the 3rd science pass of NASA's Juno spacecraft. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM) Prior to its early November pass, Juno had photographed five windstorms arranged in a uniform, pentagonal pattern around one storm sitting stationary over the south pole."It almost appeared like the polar cyclones were part of a private club that seemed to resist new members," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.It is unclear when exactly the new cyclone formed, but it changed the arrangement of the storms from a pentagon to a hexagon.Winds in these cyclones average around 225 mph, according to NASA, wind speeds higher than any tropical cyclone ever recorded on Earth. An outline of the continental United States superimposed over the central cyclone and an outline of Texas is superimposed over the newest cyclone at Jupiter's south pole give a sense of their immense scale. The hexagonal arrangement of the cyclones is large enough to dwarf the Earth. (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM) The discovery of this evolving meteorological phenomenon almost didn't happen as Jupiter itself almost caused the mission to end abruptly.Juno is a solar-powered spacecraft that relies on constant light from the sun to keep the craft alive. Flying through Jupiter's enormous shadow would take about 12 hours to complete, which would cut off the power source, drain the spacecraft's battery and potentially spell the end of the mission."Our navigators and engineers told us a day of reckoning was coming, when we would go into Jupiter's shadow for about 12 hours," said Steve Levin, Juno project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.To avoid the potential mission-ending eclipse, Juno fired up its engine (which was not initially designed for such a maneuver) and adjusted its trajectory just enough to avoid the icy grip of Jupiter's shadow. Jupiter's moon Io casts its shadow on Jupiter whenever it passes in front of the Sun as seen from Jupiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Tanya Oleksuik, (C) CC BY) "Thanks to our navigators and engineers, we still have a mission," said Bolton. "What they did is more than just make our cyclone discovery possible; they made possible the new insights and revelations about Jupiter that lie ahead of us."NASA scientists will continue to study these polar vortices in future flights over Jupiter's south pole to better understand the atmosphere over this part of the planet."These cyclones are new weather phenomena that have not been seen or predicted before," said Cheng Li, a Juno scientist from the University of California, Berkeley. "Nature is revealing new physics regarding fluid motions and how giant planet atmospheres work. Future Juno flybys will help us further refine our understanding by revealing how the cyclones evolve over time."
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| ‘Move to Canada’ searches spike after Tories win general election Posted: 13 Dec 2019 06:08 AM PST  Online searches for 'move to Canada' surged 49-fold in the wake of the Conservative's general election victory, according to data from Google.People seemingly unhappy with the prospect of another five years of Tory rule began searching for alternative countries as soon as the exit poll results were published on Thursday evening.
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| Would China Try to Claim Most of the Pacific Ocean? Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:11 PM PST  Nine-dash line? How about two hundred and fifty? Some fake news freaked an academic conference out several years ago.
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| Republican congressman publicly identifies purported whistleblower Posted: 12 Dec 2019 02:52 PM PST  On Wednesday, Rep. Louie Gohmert publicly named a person some Republicans and allies of President Trump claim is the alleged whistleblower who first brought the Trump-Ukraine scandal to light.
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| Biden, Warren, Sanders, Yang, and Buttigieg are threatening to skip the next Democratic debate amid a labor dispute Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:55 PM PST  The Democratic candidates say they stand in solidarity with campus food service workers who are on strike as they demand better wages and healthcare.
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| Man gets life for killing 2 engaged doctors in their condo Posted: 13 Dec 2019 07:52 AM PST ![Man gets life for killing 2 engaged doctors in their condo]( "Man gets life for killing 2 engaged doctors in their condo") Bampumim Teixeira, 33, requested not to be in the courtroom when the sentence was handed down because he said he wouldn't control himself. Teixeira declined to address the court, but the victims' families gave impact statements. Field's brother, Jason Field, delivered a tearful speech in which he described his brother as his "life adviser and best friend," the best man at his wedding and his roommate in college.
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| US military releases photos showing Bagram Air Base damage following brazen Taliban assault Posted: 12 Dec 2019 01:22 PM PST  A source on the ground detailed to Military Times that a firefight between the Taliban and Afghan and U.S. forces lasted nine to 10 hours.
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| Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing Posted: 12 Dec 2019 07:49 PM PST ![Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing]( "Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing") A Salvadoran man seeking asylum in the United States was kidnapped and murdered in the Mexican border city of Tijuana where he was sent to wait for his asylum court hearing under a migrant protection program instated by President Donald Trump. Critics of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have argued that the migrants affected by the initiative, mostly from the impoverished and violence-plagued countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, are at risk in Mexico. The 35-year-old Salvadoran man, father of two, had waited for four months in Tijuana where he had found a job at a pizzeria, said his widow.
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| Meghan McCain Confronts Tom Steyer: ‘You Bought Your Way’ Onto Debate Stage Posted: 13 Dec 2019 09:30 AM PST  2020 Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer got a warm welcome from every co-host of The View except one on Friday morning. "Mr. Steyer, between you and Mayor Bloomberg, you have now spent $200 million on political ads," Meghan McCain told their guest. "It hasn't really helped you very much in the polls, but you did make it to the next debate stage. I think you bought your way there, and I don't think it's fair that you're there and Cory Booker isn't. Change my mind." After letting out an uncomfortable chuckle, Steyer skirted the question by touting his message about a "broken" government "bought by corporations." When the candidate pointed out that he has been spending time in the early primary states—unlike that other billionaire—McCain shot back, "Cory Booker has too, who doesn't have $200 million." "I'm talking about breaking a corporate stranglehold on our government that is preventing it from acting on anything," Steyer said. "And no one can say that I have been purchased, but I also have 10 years of putting together coalitions like the people in this audience to stand up for our rights and to take on unchecked corporate power that has bought our government." "But it's good you have $100 million to buy Facebook ads to get you on a debate stage," McCain said, interrupting him. "I'm completely unconvinced by this, but we can move on." Later in the segment, after Steyer vowed to help elect whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being and reminded the hosts that he started "one of the biggest grassroots organizations in the United States," McCain came back with, "That doesn't make you a good politician, with all due respect." "Mayor Bloomberg was mayor for three terms, and so if you're going to go the billionaire route," she continued, with a dramatic eye roll, "he's a lot more compelling than you are." Meghan McCain: Greta Thunberg Didn't 'Earn' Person of the YearRead more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Death toll from New Zealand eruption rises to 14 after authorities conduct harrowing mission to retrieve bodies from the island Posted: 12 Dec 2019 08:14 PM PST  New Zealand police said that two people remain missing and are presumed dead after one of New Zealand's most active volcanoes erupted on Monday.
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| Small plane makes emergency landing on California interstate Posted: 12 Dec 2019 07:38 PM PST  The single-engine Cessna had two people on board when it landed on Interstate 5's center divider in Carlsbad as smoke filled the cockpit. Both were unhurt.
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| America's Lethal F-15, Meet Russia's Su-35, PAK-FA and China's J-20 Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:30 PM PST  Will the battle-tested Cold War veteran fighter become obsolete?
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| Italy's 'Sardines' to pack Rome for anti far-right rally Posted: 14 Dec 2019 02:51 AM PST  Tens of thousands of members of Italy's youth-driven Sardine Movement are due to rally in Rome on Saturday, in their bid to further shake up the country's politics and battle xenophobia. The "Sardines" have become a symbol of protest against the far-right firebrand leader Matteo Salvini, who served as interior minister and deputy prime minister in Italy's previous coalition government and cracked down on immigration. The movement is only a month old and started in Bologna when a rally organised by four unknown activists to denounce Salvini's discourses of "hatred and division" drew a crowd of 15,000, surprising everybody.
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| China is cautiously welcoming the new 'Phase One' deal struck with the US, but the trade war is far from over Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:27 AM PST  The "Phase One" deal will mean reduced tariffs on both sides, and China will buy up more American farm products.
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| Johnson's win may deliver Brexit but could risk UK's breakup Posted: 14 Dec 2019 06:30 AM PST  Leaving the European Union is not the only split British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has to worry about. Johnson's commanding election victory this week may let him fulfill his campaign promise to "get Brexit done," but it could also imperil the future of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Northern Ireland didn't vote for Brexit, didn't embrace this week's Conservative electoral landslide -- and now may be drifting permanently away from London.
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| Biden proposes comprehensive immigration overhaul Posted: 12 Dec 2019 03:24 PM PST  Joe Biden said Wednesday he would reverse President Trump's immigration policies during his first 100 days in office while renewing a push for Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul and boosting aid to three key Central American countries to $4 billion over four years.
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| Warren, slumping in the polls, attacks Biden and Buttigieg Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:39 PM PST  With polls showing her once steady rise to the top tier of the Democratic race stalling, Elizabeth Warren went on the attack in New Hampshire.
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| The 25 Best Survival Games Posted: 14 Dec 2019 06:00 AM PST |
| California police officer involved in two fatal shootings in one year Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:05 PM PST  A new report has found that a California police officer was involved in two fatal shootings in just one year, highlighting the deadly results of American police policies that generally allow officers to use deadly force when they deem necessary.In both instances, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, Ceres police officer Ross Bays shot at individuals who had stumbled out of a car and began running away — and experts say that the timing of the shootings should be worrisome, even though both were ultimately ruled justified.
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| An Invisible Menace to the Climate, Revealed in Infrared Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:07 PM PST  To the naked eye, there is nothing out of the ordinary at the DCP Pegasus gas processing plant in West Texas, one of the thousands of installations in the vast Permian Basin that have transformed America into the largest oil and gas producer in the world.But a highly specialized camera sees what the human eye cannot: a major release of methane, the main component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas that is helping to warm the planet at an alarming rate.Two New York Times journalists detected this from a tiny plane, crammed with scientific equipment, circling above the oil and gas sites that dot the Permian, an oil field bigger than Kansas. In just a few hours, the plane's instruments identified six sites with unusually high methane emissions.Methane is loosely regulated, difficult to detect and rising sharply. The Times' aerial and on-the-ground research, along with an examination of lobbying activities by the companies that own the sites, shows how the energy industry is seeking and winning looser federal regulations on methane, a major contributor to global warming.Operators of the sites identified by The Times are among the very companies that have lobbied the Trump administration, either directly or through trade organizations, to weaken regulations on methane, a review of regulatory filings, meeting minutes and attendance logs shows. These local companies, along with oil-industry lobby groups that represent the world's largest energy companies, are fighting rules that would force them to more aggressively fix emissions like these.Next year, the administration could move forward with a plan that would effectively eliminate requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities. By the Environmental Protection Agency's own calculations, the rollback would increase methane emissions by 370,000 tons through 2025, enough to power more than 1 million homes for a year.In the air, Times reporters surveyed an area in and around two counties in the heart of the Permian with the help of specialists in methane detection."This site's definitely leaking," said Paolo Wilczak, a scientist and the pilot of the two-seater aircraft, as a laptop monitor hooked up to the equipment registered a blip in methane levels. "And that one, too."The reporters drove to the sites armed with infrared video gear that revealed methane billowing from tanks, seeping from pipes and wafting from bright flares that are designed to burn off the gas but sometimes fail to do so completely. At one site, a worker walked directly into a methane plume unprotected.Tim Doty, a former senior official at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who is trained in infrared leak detection, examined and helped analyze the findings. "That's a crazy amount of emissions," he said. "It takes a little bit of investigative work, but with an infrared camera, you can see it."Oil and gas companies were committed to driving down emissions "while delivering affordable, reliable energy to American families," said Howard Feldman, senior director of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, a major industry lobby group. Its members believed that regulations should be improved, however, to provide clarity for businesses, avoid duplicating state rules and drive industry innovation, he said.The regulatory rollback sought by the energy industry is the latest chapter in the administration's historic effort to weaken environmental and climate regulations while waging a broad-based attack on climate science.Scientists say that, in weakening the rules, the Trump administration underestimates methane's global climate effects. It also disregards research that suggests methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure are far larger than previously estimated.The findings address the mystery behind rising levels of methane in the atmosphere. Methane levels have soared since 2007 for reasons that still aren't fully understood. But fracking natural-gas production, which accelerated just as atmospheric methane levels jumped, is a prime suspect.Methane leaks from oil and gas production threaten to erode the advantage that natural gas has over coal in meeting the world's energy needs, scientists say. When burned for electricity, natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide that coal does. But if methane is not burned off when released, it can warm the planet more than 80 times as much as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.Methane also contributes to ground-level ozone, which, if inhaled, can cause asthma and other health problems."It's increasingly clear that fossil fuel production has dramatically increased global methane emissions," said Robert Howarth, an Earth system scientist at Cornell University and author of a study estimating that North American shale gas production may be responsible for about a third of the global increase in methane emissions over the past decade.A bright red-and-white plane pirouetted above the Texas scrub, banking so sharply it were as if the tiny aircraft was spinning on a wingtip. Wilczak, a pilot and flight scientist for Scientific Aviation, an aerial leak-detection company, executed tight circles above an oil installation.Tiny tubes affixed to the wings siphoned air to a sensitive spectrometer, jammed behind the seats, capable of detecting and measuring methane. Wilczak said it takes about seven seconds for the air to pass through and register a reading on a computer balanced on the lap of the only passenger.Detecting methane emissions is difficult work that often begins with flights like these. Oil and gas sites are not required to install round-the-clock emissions monitors, and flights are one of the ways to spot trouble.In the course of about four hours of flying, we found at least six sites with high methane-emissions readings, ranging from about 300 pounds to almost 1,100 pounds an hour, including at DCP Pegasus, which is part owned by energy giant Phillips 66.Those readings would very likely put those sites in the category of "super emitters," a term used by scientists to describe large-scale releases that are responsible for a disproportionately high share of methane emissions from oil and gas sites. In a 2017 study of the Barnett shale basin in Texas, methane releases of about 60 pounds or more an hour were classified as super emitters, making up just 1% of sites but accounting for nearly half of total emissions.On the ground, the Permian is a landscape of parched cotton fields, bobbing pump jacks and dirt roads that stretch for miles. We drove out to photograph the emissions we had detected from the air with a specialized infrared camera fitted with a lens made not of glass, but metal.At the DCP Pegasus plant, south of Midland, the camera transformed a tranquil scene into a furnace. Hot columns of gas shot into the air. Fumes engulfed structures.The camera sees several types of gases, including methane and ethane, both greenhouse gases, as well as pollutants called volatile organic compounds. Any emissions are likely to contain a mixture of the gases. Doty, who now runs a consultancy, said the emissions appeared to be from vapor combustors, compressors and storage tanks.According to Texas regulatory records, DCP has reported more than 250 unpermitted emissions events this year in the Permian Basin and is among the area's bigger emitters. State rules allow facilities to report irregular emissions without penalties.Sarah Sandberg, a spokeswoman for DCP, which operates several pipelines and almost 50 gas processing plants nationwide, said she had "many questions regarding the accuracy of your assessment and assumptions." She did not respond to repeated follow-ups.Phillips 66 declined to comment.At the EagleClaw Midstream gas processing plant just south of Pecos, we found emissions spewing from the top of a wastewater tank. The plant's manager, Justin Bishop, walked over to look at what we were filming. "We didn't know it was leaking," he said.A worker went to check on the tank, climbing some stairs and walking into the plume.He said the emissions were simply water vapor. "There's no problem," he said. "We aren't reporting it."But Doty, the former Texas emissions regulator, said water vapor would have been visible to the naked eye. "That isn't water," he said. "That's a whole lot of emissions."In a statement, EagleClaw said its workers had discovered that the tank's valve did require maintenance and that the problem had been fixed 30 minutes later."The amount of gas that leaked was determined, by our experts, to be well below any legal reportable limits," Todd Carpenter, the company's chief compliance officer, said in an email. He added that the safety and security of EagleClaw's employees, and of the public, "was of primary concern." The company has not filed an emissions event report this year.As early as March 2017 -- just months after the presidential inauguration -- fossil fuel companies made contact with the Trump administration to argue for a rollback of methane emissions rules.They held repeated meetings with federal officials, including an important one in November 2018, when lobbyists for DCP, EagleClaw and other oil processing companies met with officials from the EPA to discuss a critical topic: unintended or "fugitive" methane emissions.Representatives of the lobby group, GPA Midstream, argued that the EPA should relax monitoring requirements for fugitive emissions at gathering and compressor facilities, according to regulatory records reviewed by The Times. GPA Midstream met with Trump administration officials at least three times on the matter."More frequent monitoring would not be cost-effective," GPA lobbyists later said in comments filed with the agency, and stricter regulation was "costly and burdensome."The efforts were part of a broader industry push to reverse Obama-era rules that would have forced operators to more aggressively monitor and repair natural gas leaks while reducing flaring.Earlier, at a March 2018 meeting, lobbyists for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents thousands of oil and gas companies nationwide, circulated material that forcefully rebutted the scientific evidence of large fugitive emissions from drilling sites. The lobbyists said the data "create the illusion" that super emitters pose a problem, according to a handout from the meeting.The petroleum association vice president, Lee O. Fuller, said in an interview that for smaller operators, which often run low-producing wells, the costs of excessive regulations could be crippling. They "could put many out of business," he said.The companies found an administration willing to listen. Before his appointment to the post of assistant administrator at the EPA overseeing air pollution, William L. Wehrum lobbied on behalf of oil and gas producers, including gas processors and petroleum refineries.Wehrum resigned from the agency in June and is under investigation for his contacts with former clients. His former boss, Andrew Wheeler, the EPA administrator, also lobbied for energy companies earlier in his career.By this August, the EPA had proposed a broad rollback, including rescinding direct regulations of methane emissions completely. Volatile organic compounds, a separate but related category of gases, would remain regulated, which would have a side effect of limiting some methane emissions.In a statement, an EPA spokesman, Michael Abboud, said methane was a valuable resource, so the industry already "has an incentive to minimize leaks." He added that EPA staff members work with ethics officials "to ensure they are in compliance with all ethics rules." Wehrum did not respond to a request for comment.Energy giants including BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Shell have, to varying degrees, publicly supported methane regulation. However, trade associations representing all three, including the American Petroleum Institute and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, have fought against direct regulation.A spokesman for BP said the company wanted to maintain the direct regulation of methane, and an official from Exxon said the company was making voluntary efforts to reduce methane, including infrastructure upgrades. A Chevron spokesman, Sean Comey, said the company "supports global efforts to reduce flaring and methane emissions." Shell said it supported the continued direct regulation of methane and more frequent leak inspections.Some companies are starting to use infrared cameras, drones and other technology to detect methane leaks. BP said recently it would use drones and surveillance cameras to monitor for fugitive emissions at new oil and gas projects. Shell is testing solar-powered technology to watch for leaks.As the boom-and-bust oil business goes through another one of its financial gyrations -- production in the Permian is expected to slow as a glut of gas and rock-bottom prices take their toll -- there are concerns that investments in methane detection won't be a priority, particularly for smaller operators.One site where we identified leakage with the infrared camera was an unmanned well pad with a battery of gray tanks. "There's a lot of volume coming out of there," Doty later said of the images. "If this is going 100% of the time, that's a lot of emissions."The site was owned by MDC Texas Operator, which we discovered had filed for bankruptcy that very day.Calls to the company went unanswered, and its bankruptcy lawyers didn't return requests for comment. It is unknown whether the tank is still spewing gas.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Boris Johnson's victory is 'catastrophic warning' to Democrats: Bloomberg Posted: 14 Dec 2019 08:37 AM PST  Boris Johnson's election victory is a 'catastrophic warning' to Democrats in the United States, presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg has warned.
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| Iraq's top Shiite cleric condemns gruesome hanging of teen Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:25 AM PST  Iraq's top Shiite cleric on Friday denounced the killing of a teenager whose body was strung up by his feet from a traffic pole in a Baghdad square, as conflicting versions emerged about what led to the 16-year-old's death. Security officials initially told The Associated Press that he had been beaten to death by an angry mob after he killed four anti-government protesters and two shopkeepers in a shooting spree. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the nation's top Shiite cleric, called the teen's killing a "horrific crime" that must not be repeated and urged Iraqi authorities to hold the perpetrators accountable.
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| 5 things Republicans tried to change in the impeachment articles against Trump Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:00 AM PST  Included in the amendments proposed by Republican members of the Judiciary Committee were efforts to remove both articles of impeachment altogether.
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| The Tiny, Simple Nuclear Reactor That Could Change Energy Posted: 13 Dec 2019 03:31 PM PST  The next step in nuclear power is 1/100th the size of today's reactors.
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| Spokane Cop Accused of Sex Assault Finally Loses Pay After More Accusers Come Forward Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:32 AM PST  A Washington state police officer once told a coworker he would "say exactly what's on my mind, unless I'm on body camera." This week, his boast came back to haunt him. The Spokane Police Department suspended Officer Nathan Nash without pay after a domestic violence victim accused him of assaulting her, and a police investigation found he had turned off his body camera during the event.The investigation began in October, when a domestic violence victim told the police department Nash had sexually assaulted her in a follow-up call to her house. The woman says she called Nash to ask about the location of her evidence photos, according to court documents obtained by KXLY. Nash allegedly asked her to meet in a private place to "go over the bruises on her body" and then pressed her to let him come over before her mother returned. On his way to the woman's apartment, Nash allegedly turned off both his body camera and tracking equipment, resulting in a 36-minute location gap that a police analyst later described as "peculiar." Once inside, the woman says, Nash followed her into her bedroom and directed her to take off her pants and underwear. She told investigators she was confused by the request, but complied because he was a police officer. The woman says Nash then penetrated her with his fingers for 30 seconds to a minute. She says she panicked, but thought it might be what he was supposed to do. Eventually, she says she told Nash "OK, that's enough." She later told investigators the alleged assault was the worst thing that has ever happened" to her.Before leaving, the woman says, he gave her his personal cellphone number. He did not photograph or otherwise document her bruises.When questioned by investigators, Nash blamed the incident on the domestic violence victim, suggesting that she had come on to him and become "embarrassed, mad, or upset," when he ended the sexual contact, according to court documents. He added that the police department's body camera manual was more than 100 pages and "there's no way I'm gonna know all that content." In a statement after Nash's arrest, his personal attorney Rocco Treppiedi said Nash "categorically denies the allegation of sexual assault and any criminal activity." "Ofc. Nash considered the additional evidence she provided, and immediately followed up on the information she provided," Treppiedi said. Nash's attorneys did not respond to The Daily Beast's request for comment.In the weeks after the initial report, two more women came forward with concerns about Nash. One was a second domestic violence victim, who told investigators that Nash had come on to her while he was investigating her complaint in May. During a visit to her home, the woman said, Nash made a point of turning off his bodycam, then gave her his personal cellphone number and said he would respond faster than 911. Over the following weeks, she says he friended her on Facebook and started liking photos of her in lingerie, and sending her "creepy" and "needy" messages. According to court documents, she told investigators she felt he "had a hidden agenda of starting a relationship with her."A police department volunteer also complained about Nash, claiming he had given her his personal number and sent her inappropriate texts, including a Jeopardy-themed message reading, "Things I would like to do to you for $600," and "Answer: what is a naked back rub?""I'm too old to play games, no need in beating around the bush," Nash allegedly wrote in another message. "I just say exactly what's on my mind, unless I'm on body camera."Nash was arrested on Nov. 22 and pleaded not guilty to second- and third-degree rape and official misconduct. His trial is set to begin in February.Nash was originally placed on administrative leave while the investigation progressed. This week, the police department put him on "unpaid lay-off status," meaning he will not work or be paid until the outcome of his case is determined. If he is found not guilty, he will be reinstated while the department investigates whether he violated any department policy, City spokesperson Marlene Feist told local news station KREM."The alleged conduct is completely unacceptable and in absolute conflict with the high standards of the Spokane Police Department," Chief Craig Meidl said in a press release. "Our men and women took an oath to protect and serve the community in which we live. We will not shy away from that oath and it will be upheld."Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Breaking Up with Britain: Why Mauritius Wants an Agreement with America Posted: 13 Dec 2019 06:18 AM PST  Mauritian political leaders are united in support of a strong, continued U.S. presence on Diego Garcia.
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| 29 photos show how climate change has ravaged the Arctic in the past decade Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:14 PM PST  NOAA's Arctic Report Card warns that climate change is transforming the Arctic. These photos show its dire effects on the region so far this decade.
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| Cholera kills over 27,000 pigs in Indonesia Posted: 14 Dec 2019 01:56 AM PST  More than 27,000 pigs have died in a hog-cholera epidemic that has struck Indonesia, with thousands more at risk, an animal welfare official said. Thousands of pigs have died in more than a dozen regencies across North Sumatra over the past three months, and the pace of deaths is increasing, authorities said.
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| As California thins forests to limit fire risk, some resist Posted: 12 Dec 2019 10:39 PM PST  Buzzing chainsaws are interrupted by the frequent crash of breaking branches as crews fell towering trees and clear tangled brush in the densely forested Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Francisco. With California's increasingly warm, dry and overgrown landscape, wildfire has become a perpetual danger. State lawmakers committed more than $200 million annually to fire prevention efforts and Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to spend even more, motivated by infernos such as one last year that killed 85 people in Paradise, California, some who died in their cars while trying to flee.
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| U.S. prosecutor calls on UAW to cooperate, probe may widen Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:43 AM PST  The U.S. Attorney leading the investigation of corruption within the United Auto Workers (UAW) told Reuters on Friday the union's leadership still is not fully cooperating with the government, but that individuals are giving federal investigators tips that could expand the probe. "The deadline is now" for UAW leadership to be more open with investigators looking into corruption within the union, Matthew Schneider, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan said in an interview. Schneider said a federal takeover of the UAW is among the options available, but the government's investigation of individuals linked to misuse of union funds and other impropriety is his priority.
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| McDonald’s Wins High-Stakes Labor Battle With Help From White House Posted: 12 Dec 2019 02:19 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- In a television commercial that's become part of the lore surrounding Donald Trump's affinity for McDonald's Corp., he embraced a purple, lumpy denizen of the fast-food chain's "McDonaldland" and said, "Together, Grimace, we could own this town."He was talking about New York, not Washington. Yet on Thursday, some 17 years after he appeared in that spot for the "Big 'N' Tasty" sandwich, President Trump's appointees delivered a high-stakes political victory for McDonald's in one of the most important labor disputes in decades.The national board that referees union-organizing drives effectively absolved the company of liability for alleged labor-law violations in some of its franchisees' restaurants, easing a major threat to the fast-food giant's business structure. Trump's appointees overrode an agency judge and rebuffed ethical concerns raised by labor advocates to approve a group of settlements in the matter on a 2-1 decision. The deal resolves allegations of wrongdoing without holding the corporation legally liable as "joint employer" with its franchisees.The victory, which eluded McDonald's during Obama's presidency, could help the fast-food giant close a bruising chapter in its history that imperiled its valuable brand as well as the franchise structure it's built on. In an emailed statement, McDonald's Corp. said it was "pleased" that the case had been concluded, and that the decision "allows our franchisees and their employees to move forward, and resolves all matters without any admission of wrongdoing."Separately, top administration officials, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, are pushing to enact new, more lenient rules that would help insulate McDonald's and similar chains from liability for the conduct of their franchisees. "President Trump has made deregulation a priority across the administration, which has helped unleash unprecedented economic and job growth," White House spokesman Judd Deere said.There's no sign that Trump has personally intervened in the NLRB's McDonald's case. Regardless, the case stands apart—both in terms of its history and its potential repercussions.During a messy, multi-year saga, the company became a focal point in the "Fight for $15" movement to increase pay and unionize fast-food workers, among others. As protests engulfed McDonald's restaurants, a corporate team responded by organizing a central effort to help franchisees push back against the union, according to evidence submitted in the case. Workers eventually complained to the NLRB, alleging that the tactics franchisees used amounted to illegal retaliation for engaging in federally protected union activities. In 2014, the board's general counsel found enough merit in the workers' claims to issue formal complaints against a group of franchisees, complaints that also accused McDonald's of acting as a "joint employer" with them. McDonald's and the franchisees have denied any illegal retaliation or other unfair practices. McDonald's has called the allegations baseless and argued that it can't be legally held responsible for decisions of its franchisees, who run more than 90% of McDonald's restaurants and set their own wages and hiring practices. Franchisees denied the allegations as well. In the board's ruling Thursday, two Trump appointees approved proposed settlements that provide back pay to McDonald's workers but do not hold McDonald's Corp. liable as a "joint employer." In their decision, the members wrote that the deal would "remedy every violation alleged" in the government's complaints against McDonald's."Moreover, we conclude that further litigation would impose a substantial burden on the parties, without a significant probability of prevailing on the complaint's joint-employer allegation," board members Marvin Kaplan and William Emanuel said in the ruling.Union advocates had lodged a formal petition with the board arguing that Emanuel needed to recuse from the case because he worked at a law firm that McDonald's hired to counter the Fight for $15 organizing and protest efforts.Emanuel "has considered the motion and has determined, in consultation with the Board's Designated Agency Ethics Official, not to recuse himself," according to the ruling, which noted that his firm had not been representing McDonald's or franchisees in the NLRB case itself. Last month, Board Chairman John Ring — who also came from a law firm that has worked for McDonald's — revamped ethics policies that might have made it harder for him or Emanuel to participate in the case. As it turned out, Ring was not part of the three-member panel that ruled on the McDonald's decision.In a dissent, the NLRB's sole Democrat, Lauren McFerran, said the settlements were "unreasonable," and that with McDonald's joint-employer status unaddressed, "it is likely that similar issues will arise in the future."The decision represents a setback for the Service Employees International Union, which since 2012 has backed the "Fight for $15" protests. The SEIU's president, Mary Kay Henry, pledged to appeal any adverse decision."It's going to take a lot more than a politically motivated decision on behalf of a Trump administration doing McDonald's bidding to stop the workers of the Fight for $15," Henry said in a statement.The board's vote also means that the corporation's moves to help resist the protests and unionization effort have received, more or less, tacit acceptance from federal regulators. Those tactics, which were discussed by and, at times, coordinated by regional executives of the company, included gathering intelligence from a cashier who attended a union meeting as a mole, circulating names of suspected pro-union workers and coaching a franchisee on how to avoid hiring union sympathizers, according to excerpts from thousands of previously unreported documents and internal emails. The documents, which were provided to the NLRB by McDonald's and several franchisees under a federal judge's subpoena, reveal an inside look at how McDonald's corporate staff members worked with franchisees on strategies to fight the union.McDonald's didn't respond to specific questions about several allegations, but said in a statement to Bloomberg News that the case is "incredibly complex" and that the "evidence is vast and complicated, and requires significant context to accurately and responsibly consider." The company took issue with Bloomberg's summary of that evidence, saying, "What you have highlighted are selective allegations and asserted them as facts, when there has been no judicial decision or review." Last year, as she rejected a proposed settlement in the case, an administrative judge for the NLRB found that the case contained "copious evidence pertinent to McDonald's activities in order to provide resources and support for its franchisees throughout the country in response to the Fight for $15 campaign." Specifically, Judge Lauren Esposito wrote that the case included "evidence that McDonald's response to the Fight for $15 campaign was formulated and implemented from its corporate headquarters." On Thursday, the board ordered her to accept the settlement.The joint-employer question at the heart of the NLRB case carries profound implications. In 2015, in a different case that didn't involve McDonald's, the NLRB issued a ruling that would make it easier to hold companies accountable for franchisees' mistreatment of workers. By 2017, that issue was seen as so dire—not just for McDonald's, but for franchise operations generally—that the then-chair of the International Franchise Association compared it to the 9/11 terror attacks. While fighting McDonald's at the NLRB, the union has opened other fronts too, arguing the company should share any liability for a range of alleged transgressions inside franchised stores. Recently, dozens of workers have alleged sexual harassment in the chain's restaurants in lawsuits or complaints filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In August, McDonald's announced an "operator-led, company-supported" training initiative for 850,000 workers across the country to help ensure "safe and respectful" workplaces.Last month, amid that latest rash of allegations, the company fired Chief Executive Stephen Easterbrook for engaging in a consensual relationship with an employee, a violation of company policy. During his almost five-year tenure atop McDonald's, Easterbrook presided over a sharp rise in the company's share price—despite a decline in annual revenue to about $21 billion from $25 billion. The revenue changes stem from a "refranchising" strategy to sell corporate-owned stores to independent owners that began in 2015, according to McDonald's. Over the same period, annual profit margins surged to about 28% from 17%, a jump driven partly by new innovations such as all-day breakfast, touch-screen ordering kiosks and home delivery.But in time, overseeing the company's reversal of fortune in Washington—and preserving the liability buffer between the corporate headquarters and the franchisees—may be viewed as Easterbrook's most lasting impact. After being targeted by the Fight for $15 campaign for years, this March McDonald's announced that it would no longer fund lobbying efforts to prevent minimum wage increases. The company said in a letter that it would continue talking to lawmakers about how any increases should work, including that "all industries should be treated the same way." In its statement, the company said it has "made significant investments in our people practices to provide employees at both McDonald's corporate-owned and franchise locations with opportunities for competitive wages, education and safe and respectful workplaces."Average starting pay at its corporate-owned restaurants is $10 an hour, the company said—well above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour but well below the fought-for $15. The average starting wage equates to $20,800 over a year's worth of 40-hour weeks. "While franchisees control wages in their restaurants, we believe they are similar and competitive," the company said.Most people remember Ray Kroc, who took McDonald's from a small, California-based chain to a global fast-food empire, for innovations in franchising, but he also pioneered the low-wage fast-food job. As he oversaw the chain's proliferation nationwide, the new restaurants staffed up with low-wage workers, many of them teenagers. Today, teens are a declining share of the food-service workforce; 18% of restaurant workers are aged 16 to 19, down from 20% in 2008, according to the National Restaurant Association, which projects additional declines by 2026. About 90 percent of McDonald's 14,000 U.S. restaurants are franchises, a structure that keeps the company relatively asset-light and low-risk. The Trump administration is working on new rules that would reduce legal exposure for corporate franchisers. The proposals would make it harder, for example, to hold McDonald's Corp. liable, along with franchisees, if kitchen managers are accused of sexual harassment or workers claim they weren't paid overtime. The structure also makes it nearly impossible for workers at franchised restaurants to win the right to bargain collectively with McDonald's executives—unless the NLRB determines that the corporation is indeed the workers' "joint employer." Without that, or a negotiated deal between the company and the union, any organizing effort would have to take place in pieces, franchise by franchise. The risk that the corporation could simply drop any unionized franchise would make that even harder to accomplish.Over the years, the company has weathered its share of public relations challenges. French anti-globalization radicals bombed its restaurants. Animal-rights extremists distributed "Unhappy Meals" with a plastic chicken covered in fake blood. The 2001 book Fast Food Nation tied McDonald's to the obesity epidemic. But the Fight for $15 movement took place on a scale the company hadn't seen before.Beginning in 2012, in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, a union-backed drive immersed McDonald's restaurants in street protests that eventually spread globally. Protesters jammed drive-thrus, chanted in restaurants, banged on windows and stood atop tables. Corporate executives monitored developments as managers helped orchestrate a years-long anti-union response across the U.S., according to an analysis of thousands of pages of documents filed in the national labor board's case. In 2014, the NLRB's Obama-era general counsel alleged that the company's subsidiary, McDonald's USA LLC, was liable as a joint employer for a nationwide pattern of anti-union activity that included franchisees making threats, conducting surveillance, cutting work hours and firing workers who sought better pay and working conditions.Signs of unionizing efforts began emerging in October 2012, as reflected in a memo about organizing activity that circulated via McDonald's internal email. "Seems to be affiliation with Occupy Wall Street movement," said the document, which was in an email from a senior director of human resources. Soon, notes about the union showed up on an internal McDonald's "activity log." Said one entry: "White male talking to employees about affordable housing and asking questions about pay. Repeatedly in restaurant."After word of an upcoming union meeting surfaced, a cashier at one New York City McDonald's acted as a mole for the company, records show. She attended the meeting in Harlem, and by the next day, she shared her findings: About a dozen workers signed up to be union leaders, a report on the incident said."They said McD makes $Billions + only pay minimum wage," the worker reported. "… Focus seems to be on young, attractive female cashiers that speak English well …."On Nov. 29, 2012, the Fight for $15 campaign made its first public splash with protests at fast-food restaurants across New York City as workers at McDonald's and other chains went on strike for the day. From there, protests spread nationwide, fueled by old-school organizing and social-media messaging. At the time, McDonald's had only a sparse social-media team and had yet to match the union in that capacity, according to two people familiar with the company's operations.The company created fast, effective communications channels with franchisees to discuss the union's activities. In emails and text messages, its managers made plans to combat "the opposition" and emphasized that some messages needed to be secret."There is a sense of urgency regarding the gathering of this intel so that we can plan and prep the operators …," said one email from a human resources director. "As a tip, you can text your operators regarding this message, however you have to instruct them to ERASE the message and response back to you, and you will need to do the same." McDonald's didn't respond to questions about why recipients were advised to erase messages.In addition to a cadre of labor lawyers and several public relations firms, McDonald's worked with "union avoidance" strategists, records show. In one case, a regional executive shared with a franchisee strategies on how to identify and avoid "salts," or people who try to get hired in order to help organize a workplace. Federal law restricts the organized avoidance of such hires.Corporate employees circulated names of workers thought to be supporting the union. Once, in 2013, the company dispatched a "mobile security detail" to several Manhattan franchisees' restaurants after receiving what an internal email described as "intel" about a possible Fight for $15 rally. The company told Bloomberg News that at times "security may be necessary on-site at restaurants for the safety of our property, customers and/or employees."More than once, a regional McDonald's executive organized gatherings in downtown Chicago for franchisees to discuss the situation, internal emails show. Their choice of venue? A Ronald McDonald House, part of the nonprofit foundation whose stated mission is to "improve the health and well-being of children and their families."Since the unionization drive began, dozens of workers have filed complaints with the NLRB alleging elements of an anti-union culture in McDonald's restaurants. Emmanuel Flores, 28, told Bloomberg he saw just such a culture firsthand at a company-owned restaurant in Monterey Park, California.Flores said he endured months of lewd comments, sexual overtures and groping from supervisors and co-workers. Early this year, on the advice of a union organizer, he told his store manager about it.The next day, Flores said, his shift hours were cut. Days later, during an informal staff meeting with him and other workers, the manager compared union activists to "leeches" and said "that even if we got paid $15 an hour, it wouldn't matter because she would cut our hours," Flores said. Flores filed complaints with California officials and the EEOC, and he was named as a witness in a retaliation complaint that the union filed with the NLRB. Trump's fondness for McDonald's is no secret. During his 2016 campaign, it was part of his standard fare; one order consisted of "two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted,'' wrote his former campaign aides Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie in their 2017 book, Let Trump Be Trump.McDonald's soon met with senior members of the new administration. In July 2017, Trump's first labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, sat down for dinner at The Smith, a popular restaurant near Capitol Hill, with Easterbrook and Sam Tatevosyan, the company's top lobbyist, according to the official Department of Labor calendar. The next day, Acosta and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin spoke at a McDonald's lobbying summit, records show. Acosta declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mnuchin.McDonald's said it hosts both Democrats and Republicans for such Washington meetings. "The company traditionally invites officials from the current administration to discuss topics relevant to the business—and did the same during the Obama administration," the company said. Once Trump's appointees began taking office, McDonald's sought to end its long struggle at the NLRB. In December 2017, a lawyer for the company emailed a letter to the board's new general counsel, Peter Robb. Robb prosecuted a landmark case against the American air traffic controllers' union during President Ronald Reagan's administration. The union was found to have engaged in an illegal strike, and Reagan fired more than 11,000 workers, a lasting blow to the American labor movement."Our request is straightforward," said the McDonald's letter, a copy of which was reviewed by Bloomberg News. "We ask that you use your prosecutorial discretion to end this waste of taxpayer resources and consider what your predecessor would not consider—a global resolution of the underlying unfair labor practice allegations." The lawyer asked for a resolution that would not designate McDonald's a "joint employer."Within a few months, the company got what it asked for: Robb's office offered to settle the case with no joint-employer finding. The proposed settlement would have provided back pay to about 20 workers, in amounts ranging from about $30 to $50,000, and it required no admission of any wrongdoing. But the administrative judge overseeing the case, Esposito, rejected the settlement, calling it too lenient on the company.The White House in effect aided McDonald's in other ways. According to people who've worked in the administration, Acosta drew Mulvaney's ire for dragging his feet on Labor Department rule changes, including making the agency's "joint employer" standard more lenient. Colleagues thought Acosta was too concerned about provoking congressional Democrats, according to two people familiar with the situation. Trump's aides repeatedly pressed Acosta's staff during White House meetings about the status of the rules—and Mulvaney largely replaced Acosta in the process, taking final say over the new rules' content and timing, the people said. Mulvaney tends to get more involved in policy than previous chiefs of staff because of his dual role as White House budget director, according to a White House official who spoke on background. When his Office of Management and Budget pushes back on an agency's work, it's for good reasons, the official said.At the NLRB, Trump appointees have attempted to defang the joint-employer threat, despite encountering ethical snags. The Board tried in 2017 to overturn an Obama-era precedent on the issue, but then had to quickly invalidate that change after the agency's ethics officer found that one of Trump's appointees, Emanuel, had wrongly failed to recuse himself. The board is now trying to change the standard using its rulemaking authority instead.Meanwhile, Robb has asked board members to overturn the judge's rejection of his proposed McDonald's settlement. Union advocates lodged a formal petition with the board, arguing that two of Trump's appointees must recuse themselves from the case because they worked at law firms that McDonald's hired to counter the Fight for $15 organizing and protest efforts.On Nov. 19, the board's Trump-appointed chairman, John Ring, released what he called a "first of its kind" internal ethics review, which clears a path for the board to set aside such objections. Ring is one of the two board members who've been urged to recuse; while he came to the board from a law firm that worked for McDonald's, there's no evidence that he personally worked for the company.Ring's unusual "ethics recusal report" last month concluded that each NLRB member can "insist on participating" in cases even if federal ethics officials say otherwise. While the ethics officials' decisions may be binding, they're not "self-enforcing," the report found. So NLRB board members can overrule them simply by disagreeing with their legal conclusions, Ring wrote. He didn't respond to a request for comment.The McDonald's case has generated 21,000 pages of trial transcript, with testimony from more than 100 witnesses. Judge Esposito called it "the largest case ever adjudicated by this agency." The union's pledge to appeal Thursday's decision suggests that it could go on for years to come.For now, at least, the company has friends in the White House. In April, Mulvaney spoke at McDonald's latest lobbying event, where the joint-employer issue was a key topic. He wore a tie the color of the golden arches.—With assistance from Leslie Patton and Ben Penn. (Updates throughout with labor board's decision. An earlier version of this story was updated with additional comment from McDonald's on refranchising strategy)To contact the authors of this story: Lauren Etter in Los Angeles at letter1@bloomberg.netJosh Eidelson in Palo Alto at jeidelson@bloomberg.netHassan Kanu in Arlington at hkanu2@bloomberg.netMichael Smith in Miami at mssmith@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: John Voskuhl at jvoskuhl@bloomberg.net, Flynn McRobertsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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