Month: October 2023

Damage caused to an Aboriginal rock shelter by mining giant Rio Tinto (RIO.AX) in August underscores the need for better heritage protection laws and a greater say for Indigenous groups promised in this month’s Voice referendum, advocates say.

Rio admitted on Sept. 21 to damaging a rock shelter on Aug. 6 in Western Australia’s Pilbara region while blasting at a nearby iron ore mine. Rio is now working with the Muntulgura Guruma people to assess what had happened, it said.

Rio’s destruction of rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in 2020 prompted a global outcry, the departure of top executives and a parliamentary enquiry that recommended an overhaul of Australia’s Aboriginal heritage protection laws.

“Regrettably, it seems as though Rio’s blast management plan has failed on this occasion leaving the Muntulgura Guruma People to pick up the pieces,” said Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation (WGAC), which represents the Muntulgura, in a statement. “Any impact is of course unwelcome.”

The blast on Aug. 6 led to the fall of a Pilbara scrub tree and one square metre of rock from the overhang of a rock shelter estimated to have been inhabited for 40,000-50,000 years.

Rio Tinto, which did not make a public statement for seven weeks, said it was sorry for the incident, and that it had taken steps to inform appropriate parties.

“As soon as we identified it, we informed traditional owners, we informed the regulator, we informed our employees at that mine site around what happened and that was for us the appropriate steps to take,” Rio’s iron ore boss Simon Trott told public broadcaster the ABC last week.

Lawmaker Warren Entsch, who led the parliamentary enquiry into Juukan Gorge, said Rio shouldn’t have caused the damage in the first place, and should have been more transparent in disclosure.

“Clearly no lessons have been learnt,” he told Reuters.

Rio said it has reformed its business since Juukan including changing its blast procedures to better protect heritage sites, revising internal governance including around policies, procedures and practices, and improving its transparency.

Reaction to the incident has been more muted compared to the outrage over the Juukan Gorge rock shelters so far.

Rio’s initial assessment indicating no structural damage or impacts to cultural materials, which it had assessed via drone footage, had broker Morgan Stanley “somewhat relieved,” it said in a note to clients.

Looming over the incident is Australia’s upcoming Indigenous Voice referendum set for Oct. 14 that would create a panel to advise parliament on issues affecting the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islands communities.

James Fitzgerald, legal counsel at the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) said investors should be aware that industry self-regulation does not effectively manage the destructive impacts of mining.

“It’s hard to think of a more compelling practical example of the need for an Indigenous Voice in the mining policy debate,” he said. “As long as Indigenous people are not represented at tables where laws and policies affecting them are made, we will witness more unjust and unnecessary outcomes.”

Rio and other major companies have spoken out in support of the Yes vote. But as the vote draws closer, the issue is becoming more contentious and support has dipped.

Some Indigenous supporters say fear that criticism of the latest incident may further erode backing for the referendum is contributing to the muted reaction.

“In speaking to traditional owners, there is a reluctance to loudly criticise heritage protection issues in the state at the minute in case it galvanises the no vote in the upcoming referendum,” Jamie Lowe, CEO of land rights advisory body National Native Title Council, told Reuters.

The incident also comes as Western Australia is set to overturn its 2021 Aboriginal cultural heritage protection laws, introduced on July 1 after the destruction of the Juukan Gorge shelters. The law was repealed after just five weeks in force due to opposition from landowners.

A spokesperson for the state department regulating Aboriginal heritage protection said it was in contact with Rio Tinto but it was not investigating the latest incident.

“Aboriginal people are best placed to speak to matters relating to their cultural heritage, and whether or not it has been impacted. Should the Department receive a complaint from Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation, it will act immediately to investigate.”

WGAC said it had not yet complained to the regulator but reserved its rights to do so once it had established the facts and would visit the site in the coming weeks.

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Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) on Monday moved to force a vote on ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), following through with his pledge to do so after the Speaker put a “clean” continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government on the House floor.

A vote on the motion to vacate the chair will have to be brought up within two legislative days. But it is likely that the House, rather than voting on the resolution itself, would first vote on some mechanism to kill or delay it, such as voting to table the resolution.

McCarthy, for his part, is exuding confidence amid the effort to oust him.

“Bring it on,” he wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after Gaetz made the motion.

The Speaker told reporters Monday morning that his support within the House GOP conference is “very strong,” and he said Sunday “I’ll survive” if a vote is brought against him.

“Let’s get over with it and let’s start governing. If he’s upset because he tried to push us in a shutdown and I made sure government didn’t shut down, then let’s have that fight,” McCarthy told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday.

Gaetz introduced the privileged resolution to boot McCarthy two days after the Speaker worked with Democrats to pass a “clean” continuing resolution hours before a government funding deadline. The short-term stopgap bill — which overwhelmingly passed with bipartisan support in both chambers — helped avert a shutdown that was set to begin at midnight Saturday.

Gaetz, who has a history of sparring with McCarthy, had been heightening his threats to force a vote on ousting the Speaker for weeks, warning him against putting a clean CR on the floor.

He announced his plan to try and boot the California Republican from his post Sunday.

“I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy,” Gaetz told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Updated at 7:36 p.m.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of U.S. senators, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, plans to visit China next week and hopes to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a spokesperson for Republican Senator Mike Crapo confirmed on Monday.

Schumer’s office said last month he was planning a trip to China, South Korea and Japan co-led by Crapo but did not comment on Monday. The Chinese Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

Some senators are eager to boost engagement with China and address business-related issues between China and the United States.

A growing number of U.S. businesses are expressing frustration at operating in China, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said recently. “For U.S. business in many cases patience is running thin and it’s time for action,” she said.

* Communication between U.S. and Chinese officials has increased in recent months, bringing some improvement in ties strained for years over issues such as Taiwan, the origins of COVID-19 and accusations of Chinese spying.

* The Biden administration has placed curbs on chip exports to China, saying they aim to deny Beijing access to advanced technology that could further military advancements or rights abuses. China hit back with accusations of economic coercion.

As I have observed on another occasion, the inclusion of “Thou shalt not bear false witness” in the Ten Commandments suggests that the ancients had a particularly potent insight into that particularly egregious injustice. It is far more specific than the less febrile and more decorous “Thou shalt not lie.” It cuts to the heart of one of humanity’s most vile and dishonourable sins: inventing testimony contrived to destroy another human being.

Anyone who has had it done to them, and I’m sure that includes everyone, understands why false testimony is particularly damaging and hateful. What kind of monster would do such a thing? It should come as no surprise to anyone that Republicans have done it, and they did it in public, and they did it to Hunter Biden and his father Joe.

It’s important that you remember that Republicans are supposed to be the “Christians” here. Among their pet projects has been trying to display the Ten Commandments in courthouses and classrooms across the land, in violation of the Constitutional principle of the separation of church and state. They might occasionally try reading it.

Recently New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exposed House Republicans for displaying a fabricated screenshot during the first formal hearing in their so-called “impeachment inquiry” against President Joe Biden. Specifically, Republican Representative Byron Donalds of Florida displayed a message that Jim Biden, the president’s brother, sent to Hunter Biden, the president’s son, in 2018. Donalds claimed the message indicated that the president benefited from fraud and money laundering committed by Hunter Biden.

That explanation seemed plausible until you saw the message in context. What the message actually showed was Jim Biden responding to Hunter Biden’s call for help. Specifically, Hunter Biden needed his father’s financial help in meeting his alimony obligations. At the time, the president’s son was in the depths of his drug addiction and going through a divorce.

The message was from 2018, which means that Joe Biden wasn’t President of the United States at the time. He wasn’t even Vice President. He was citizen Joe, and his son was enlisting his uncle’s help in an appeal for a loan for a very personal matter.

It is a sad and poignant moment. Who but Republicans would twist a commonplace, vulnerable everyday plea for help into something evil and scabrous? Who but Republicans would bear such shameful false witness? Who but Republicans would go to such depths in the service of Donald Trump? After all, that’s what this is about. Serving Donald Trump.

When Donald Trump once said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes, I was sufficiently naive to think that was mere hyperbole. I now see it as an understatement. In fact, I now see that Republicans would shoot someone on Fifth Avenue themselves to protect Donald Trump. They would destroy American democracy for Donald Trump, they would ruin the planet and mortgage their children’s future for Donald Trump. There is no limit to the evil they would do for Donald Trump.

Bearing false witness for Donald Trump is a mere walk in the park for Republicans, a misdemeanour en route to even greater and more heinous crimes. They know the impeachment hearing is a sham. That’s why they invent false evidence. That’s why they break their own Ninth Commandment.

The impeachment hearing is a distraction. It’s something for Fox News to talk about while their lord and saviour Donald Trump is being tried for 91 felonies across 4 indictments.

By itself this latest lie, this bearing of false witness, would be the scandal of the month. As it is it can safely hide out in an ocean of Republican lies and perfidies. And there it will remain, forgotten by a fickle news media and an amnesiac public. In the end, its original intent, to smear Hunter Biden and his father, will be remembered and held against them anyway. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

The post Republicans bearing false witness appeared first on Palmer Report.

It’s worth pointing out that Trump’s civil fraud trial started today, on exactly the day it was supposed to. All of Trump’s “delay tactics” failed to delay this trial by even a single day.

Trump doesn’t have a magic “delay” wand, and in spite of endless media hype to the contrary, he never did. This trial started on the day it was supposed to. The E. Jean Carroll trial started on the day it was supposed to start.

It’ll be the same with his criminal trials. Let’s keep that in mind going forward. For all the doomsday hype we’ll hear from some corners about Trump being able to “delay, delay, delay” and “run out the clock,” that’s clearly fictional. Just look around. Trump isn’t able to delay trials. If he were, his trial wouldn’t have started today.

The post So much for Donald Trump’s trial “strategy” appeared first on Palmer Report.

(NewsNation) — Charlotte Sena, the missing 9-year-old girl, has been found alive in good health, and a suspect is in custody, according to New York State Police.

An Amber Alert was issued Sunday morning in the search for Sena, who had been camping with her family in upstate New York, officials said.

Sena was last seen Saturday evening in Moreau Lake State Park, about 35 miles north of Albany. She had been riding her bike around a loop in the park with other children when she decided to ride around alone one more time.

Her parents became alarmed when the fourth grader failed to come back after 15 minutes, Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a briefing Sunday. The girl’s mother called 911 after her bicycle was found about 6:45 p.m. Saturday.

Officials issued an Amber Alert after an exhaustive search because “it was quite possible that an abduction had taken place,” state police Lt. Colonel Richard Mazzone said.

“The search for Charlotte is continuing with the assistance of New York State Park Police, New York State Forest Rangers, New York State Fire, Saratoga County Sheriff’s Office and more,” said Public Information Officer Stephanie O’Neil.

The more than 100 searchers Sunday included police, forest rangers and civilians. Drones, bloodhounds and an airboat were also used in the search.

“We are leaving no stone, no branch, no table, no cabin unturned, untouched, unexamined in our search to find Charlotte,” said Hochul, who described her as a “joyful” girl who was recently elected a class officer for student council.

The girl, a resident of nearby Greenfield, had last been seen wearing an orange tie-dye Pokemon shirt, dark blue pants, black Crocs and a grey bike helmet.

Anyone with information should call (518)457-6811 or email crimetip@troopers.ny.gov.

NedsNation affiliate WTEN and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis has appeared to leave open the possibility of priests blessing same-sex couples, if they are limited, decided on a case-by-case basis and not confused with wedding ceremonies of heterosexuals.

Francis made his opinion known in one answer to five questions from five conservative cardinals from Asia, Europe, Africa, the United States and Latin America.

The cardinals sent the pope a set of formal questions, known as “dubia” (“doubts” in Latin), about issues relating to a global gathering that starts at the Vatican on Wednesday.

One of the questions specifically regarded the practice, which has become relatively common in places like Germany, of priests blessing same sex couples who are in a committed relationship.

The written exchange took place in July and the Vatican published the pope’s responses on Monday after the five cardinals unilaterally disclosed their initiative, saying they were not satisfied with Francis’ answers.

The pope’s nuanced response differed from an explicit ruling against such blessings by the Vatican’s doctrinal office in 2021.

In his seven-point response, Francis said the Church was very clear that the sacrament of matrimony could only be between a man and woman and open to procreation and that the Church should avoid any other ritual or sacramental rite that contradicted this teaching.

Still, he said “pastoral charity should permeate all our decisions and attitudes” adding that “we cannot be judges who only deny, reject and exclude”.

At times, he said, requests for blessings were a means through which people reached out to God to live better lives, even if some acts were “objectively morally unacceptable”.

The Church teaches that same-sex attraction is not sinful but homosexual acts are.

Any eventual blessings, Francis said, should not become the norm or get blanket approval from Church jurisdictions such as dioceses or national bishops conferences.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which promotes Church outreach to LGBT Catholics, said that while the response was not a “full-fledged, ringing endorsement” of such blessings, it was very welcomed.

In a statement DeBernardo said that the pope’s words implied “that the church does indeed recognise that holy love can exist between same-gender couples, and the love of these couples mirrors the love of God”.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi confirmed on Monday that he will stand for a third term in office in an election in December, as opposition parties complained that people trying to register support for other candidates had faced obstacles.

“Just as I responded to the call of the Egyptians before, today I respond to their call again,” Sisi said in a closing speech for a three-day event that promoted policies under his rule at a new capital being built in the desert outside Cairo.

“We are on the cusp of our new republic, which seeks to complete the process of the state’s survival and rebuild it on the foundations of modernity and democracy,” he said.

Sisi, a former army chief who has been president since 2014, had been widely expected to run again and secure a third term after constitutional amendments four years ago that would allow him to stay in office until 2030.

In recent weeks, supporters have mounted a campaign using billboards and public messages urging him to stand in the Dec. 10-12 poll, while Egypt’s fragmented opposition says it has come under pressure.

The campaign of Ahmed al-Tantawi, a former member of parliament and the most prominent potential opponent to Sisi, has complained that citizens have been impeded when they tried to register their support for his candidacy.

Many of those showing up at public notary offices to register their support for him were told the system was not working, or ordered to come back later or register somewhere else, Mohamed Abol Deyar, Tantawi’s campaign manager, told Reuters. Some had faced harassment, attacks or abuse, he said.

The Civil Democratic Movement, which groups together some small opposition parties, also said in a statement on Sunday that there had been multiple violations against citizens trying to nominate candidates to stand against Sisi.

Egypt’s National Election Authority says it is investigating complaints and has called such allegations baseless. Prospective candidates need 25,000 public signatures or the support of 20 members of a heavily pro-Sisi parliament to stand.

Sisi came to power after leading the ousting of democratically elected Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. He was announced winner of presidential elections in 2014 and 2018 with 97% of the vote.

His rule has been marked by a widespread crackdown on dissent during which activists say tens of thousands have been jailed. The Muslim Brotherhood, historically by far Egypt’s strongest opposition force, has been outlawed, its leaders jailed or in exile.

Sisi and his backers say the measures were needed to stabilise Egypt after the turmoil caused by the country’s 2011 “Arab Spring” popular uprising.

The election comes as Egypt is struggling with an economic crisis that has seen record inflation and a chronic foreign currency shortage.

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Microsoft (MSFT.O) chief executive Satya Nadella dismissed as “bogus” an argument by rival Google that it is easy to change defaults on computers and smartphones, as he testified in a landmark antitrust trial against its parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O).

At the trial – the first major antitrust case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice since 1998 – Nadella said that Microsoft, itself a tech powerhouse, had sought to make its Bing search engine the default on Apple (AAPL.O) smartphones but was rebuffed.

John Schmidtlein, Google’s lead lawyer, pressed Nadella on the occasions when Microsoft did win default status on computers and mobile phones but users bypassed Bing and continued to use Google by a wide margin.

Schmidtlein argued that Microsoft had made a series of strategic errors that led to Bing’s inability to grab a foothold, including a failure to invest in servers or engineers to improve Bing and a failure to see the mobile revolution.

Schmidtlein also said Microsoft’s success in becoming the default – on some Verizon phones in 2008, and BlackBerry and Nokia in 2011 – ended with the same result: users bypassed the default and did the vast majority of their searches on Google.

On laptops, most of which use Microsoft operating systems, Bing is the default search engine and has a market share below 20%, Nadella acknowledged.

The government has argued that Google, with some 90% of the search market, illegally paid $10 billion annually to smartphone makers like Apple and wireless carriers like AT&T (T.N) and others to be the default search engine on their devices.

The clout in search makes Google a heavy hitter in the lucrative advertising market, boosting its profits.

“Changing defaults today is easiest on Windows and toughest on mobile,” Nadella said.

“You get up in the morning and you brush your teeth and you search on Google,” he added in a reference to Google’s dominance in search.

Judge Amit Mehta, who will decide the case being tried in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asked Nadella why Apple would switch to Bing given the Microsoft product’s lower quality.

The question suggests Google’s argument – that it is dominant because of its quality and not because of illegal activity – has caught the judge’s interest.

Nadella responded that Microsoft had sought to show that Bing engineers would be able to “bridge the quality gap” with access to the number of queries made on Apple smartphones.

On the next big tech market – artificial intelligence – Nadella testified that tech giants’ efforts to build vast content libraries to train their large language models “reminds me of the early phases of distribution deals.”

“When I am meeting with publishers now, they say Google’s going to write this check and it’s exclusive and you have to match it,” he said.

Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, long after the tech giant had faced its own federal antitrust lawsuit. That court fight, which began in 1998 and ended in a 2001 settlement, forced Microsoft to end some business practices and opened the door to companies like Google.

Microsoft, which has a market capitalization of about $2.3 trillion, is bigger than Google by that metric, given Alphabet’s market capitalization of about $1.7 trillion.

As Google, which was founded in 1998, became an industry leading search engine, the two became bitter rivals. Both have browsers, search engines, email services and a host of other overlaps. They have recently become rivals in artificial intelligence, with Microsoft investing heavily in OpenAI and Google building the Bard AI chatbot among other investments.

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Iran said Monday it opposes any “geopolitical changes” in the Caucasus, where it has long been angered over Azerbaijan’s desire to set up a transport link along the Armenian-Iranian border.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani, while voicing support for Azerbaijan’s reclamation of the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh region last month, said Tehran is “against making geopolitical changes in the region and this is our clear position.”  

He was referring to the Zangezur land corridor which would connect mainland Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan and then to Turkey.

Relations between Baku and Tehran have been traditionally sour, as Turkic-speaking Azerbaijan is a close ally of Iran’s historical rival Turkey.

Following a lightning Azerbaijani military offensive which recaptured the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh enclave to the east of Zangezur last month, some experts believe that Azerbaijan’s leader Ilham Aliyev could now seek to launch operations in southern Armenia to create territorial continuity with Nakhchivan.

Armenian separatists, who had controlled Nagorno-Karabakh for three decades, agreed to disarm, dissolve their government and reintegrate with Baku.

Nakhchivan does not share a border with Azerbaijan but has been tied to Baku since the 1920s — and is located between Armenia, Turkey and Iran.

The annexation of this corridor, strategic to Tehran, would cut off Iran’s access to Armenia and consequently to Europe.

Kanani was commenting after the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigoryan, met Sunday with his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Ahmadian, during a visit to Tehran.

They discussed “the latest developments in the South Caucasus” and “military movements in the region,” Kanani said.

“We have always supported the return of these occupied territories to Azerbaijan,” he said, referring to Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Islamic Republic, bordering Azerbaijan and Armenia, has an Azeri-speaking community of around 10 million people, as well as an Armenian community of just under 100,000 people.

Ties between Azerbaijan and Iran soured in January when a gunman stormed into Baku’s embassy in Tehran.

He killed a diplomat and wounded two embassy security guards.

Tehran fears that its archenemy, Israel, also a major weapons supplier to Azerbaijan, could use Azerbaijani territory for an offensive against Iran.